This month it has been five years since I nervously pressed publish for the very first time. I’m somewhat amazed to still be learning and sharing women’s history, and I’m honored by the number of total strangers who listen. Some of those total strangers you are going to hear from today, as they sent in questions for this Q&A episode. In the audio version, I enlisted a few history podcaster friends to help out by reading their questions aloud. Please check out their shows for more great history, including a healthy dose of women’s history: Shea La Fountaine of the History Fix podcast, Alycia Asai of the Civics and Coffee podcast, and Madison Schmidt of the It’s a History podcast.

And now for your questions, starting with one from the beautifully named Anonymous:

What made you decide to start a podcast? And how did you decide on a topic?

This podcast is a Covid project. I was already a longtime listener of fabulous history podcasts like Mike Duncan’s History of Rome and David Crowther’s History of England, and I would always listen and think how fun it would be to do a podcast like that, but only in the way that you daydream about things you will never actually do. Then Covid happened, and I was one of the lucky people who still had a job, but all my music gigs were cancelled for the foreseeable future, and I was going crazy. Suddenly, a podcast sounded totally reasonable compared to the rest of life.

For the topic, I didn’t choose women’s history because I’m so interested in women’s history. I chose it because I’m too scattered a person to stick to one country and a chronological order like some of those other podcasts I loved. I like bouncing around the globe and the timeline and seeing the connections. It occurred to me that women lived everywhere and every when, but the history podcasts I loved said very little about them. And the rest is Her Half of History.

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Several beautiful people asked me some variation of the following question:

Where do you find all your sources? Are you combing through archives with gloves on or what?

Nope, no gloves are necessary! In historical research, a primary source is when we use first-hand account of the incident we are discussing, such as a diary, an autobiography, a photograph, or a court record. A secondary source is when we use a second-hand account, such as a biography, a scholarly article, or (quite often) a news report. I use both types, but either way I only have access if someone has published it somewhere that is accessible to me. I live in an area with an amazing public library that gets me almost everything I want. I am happy to pay my property taxes to support that library. I also extensively use Jstor (a scholarly database), Internet Archive (an online public library), and Wikimedia Commons (for images for the website). If you are a regular supporter or an occasional financial supporter of the show, you should know that I use part of your donation to me every month to make a contribution from Her Half of History to these services. The podcast would not exist without them.

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In a related question, Teresa asked:

When you can find only one main source about the historical woman, how do you determine how accurate that source is?

Yeah, it’s tricky. But the principles are the same even when there are multiple sources on the topic. You ask yourself not just what the source says, but who wrote it down? Where did they get the information? Did they write it down immediately after the event or decades later? Were they a first-hand witness? Or are they repeating something they were told, maybe second, or third, or fourth-hand? Were they in a position to know the whole story? Why are they writing it down? Do they have something to gain from it? Do they have a motive to lie? Are they hiding something?

Sometimes we can answer those questions, and sometimes not. But at the end of the day, it comes down to a judgment call, and there’s never a guarantee that I’m calling it right. We just do the best we can with what we’ve got, and that’s why two historians can look at the same sources and still come out with a different story.

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Also, in a related question from Grace:

Have you ever had an episode in mind, and then realized it was so difficult to find relevant and reliable information that you had to cancel the episode?

Yes! And it’s so disappointing, especially because it happens most often on women from marginalized areas of the world, who I would really like to cover better, if only I had good sources. I remember one in particular was in series 4 on Born a Slave, but Now I’m Free. I ran across the name of a woman who was a slave in early modern Egypt, but then was freed and rose to quite an important position. And that was it. The grand total of what I was able to find out, so no episode on her because I had nothing else to say. (At this point, I don’t even remember her name.)

Occasionally, I’m able to turn the lack of story into the actual story. For example, episode 12.6 Xiuhtlaltzin, Last Queen of the Toltec. There really are not good sources on women from the pre-Columbian Americas. But the reason why is worth telling too. But generally on women like that, I just can’t cover them, and it’s sad.

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“Preventing contractions in the chewing muscles of a woman. […]. Cowpea (vigna unguiculata). Grind it with […] ²⁶ […] for her teeth the day she gives birth will drive away the pain on her chewing muscles. This is something really good, (tested) a million (times).” (Source)

Admittedly, I’m confused by my doctor’s advice here. Are we talking about a woman with contractions related to childbirth and you drive the pain away by chewing on the cowpea? Are we talking about a woman with pain in her jaw and the suggested remedy is to chew on a cowpea and also to give birth? Because I feel like a lot of people would choose a toothache over labor and delivery.

If you don’t think that prescription was about childbirth, then the next oldest account I found isn’t medical, it’s literary. In 1600 BCE, the papyrus Westcar tells a story as follows:

“One of these days it happened that Reddedet took sick and it was with difficulty that she gave birth. The Majesty of Ra (=the sun-god) (…) said to Isis, Nephthys, Meskhenet, Heket, and Khnum: May you proceed that you may deliver Reddedet of the three children who are in her womb (…) These goddesses proceed, and they transformed themselves into musicians, with Khnum accompanying them carrying the pack. When they reached the house of Rawosre, they found him standing with his apron untied (…) he said to them: My ladies, see, there is a woman in labor, and her bearing is difficult. They said to him: Let [us] see her, for we are knowledgeable about childbirth (…) Then they locked the room on her and on themselves.” (Source)

As a side note, that locked door may explains why there are so few ancient descriptions of childbirth itself. Babies were largely delivered by midwives, which was largely (but not exclusively) a female occupation. Women were largely illiterate, or if they were literate, their words were not necessarily copied and recopied by later generations, thus bringing those words to us. If the literate men were all locked out of the birthing room, then how could they describe it in their writings? They’d never seen it. (Secondary source)

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For example, if you were so poor you didn’t even legally own yourself (meaning you were enslaved), then sure, you might be able to shack up with the man of your choice, but it wasn’t a marriage because your enslaver could end it at any time in a variety of ways, including assigning you to a new partner without your consent.

If you did own yourself but not much else, you often did still needed a dowry. It might be household tools, like a cookpot, or maybe one or two livestock animals. These things make a very big difference to your standard of living when there aren’t enough of them to go around. On the flip side, your groom needs a trade, a guild membership, a bit of land, or something to offer on his own account. If you fall in love with the hired day laborer, he won’t earn enough to set up a household. Even the men with the trade, guild membership, and land, probably can’t afford to take you unless you have something to offer, like that cookpot, or those livestock animals, or (at the very, very least) demonstrated skill at household tasks.

Many girls built their own dowry, consisting of bed linens, towels, pillows, etc., all of which they spun, wove, and sewed themselves. We sometimes imagine that girls in the past were getting married at crazy young ages, like twelve, but that wasn’t normal. Very rich girls could do that because their parents provided the dowry, but many girls were not very eligible for matrimony until they’d had time to earn and make their own dowry. Nobody’s done that by the age of twelve. Getting married for the first time in your twenties was perfectly normal.

Another strategy in Renaissance Italy was that a poor girl might enter domestic service. She’d be given bed and board, but no salary because the arrangement was that when she had completed a certain number of years of service, her employer would pay her dowry. Obviously, she’s taking a financial risk there, but sometimes it was the only way a girl could get the dowry paid.

If all of this sounds terribly unromantic … yes, it was terribly unromantic. In many ways, romance is a luxury, and not everyone could afford it. Marriage was primarily an economic arrangement, so you’ve got to have something to bargain with, even if the amounts are low. The very poorest of the poor often just didn’t get married at all.

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From Peter:

Who was the first non-native woman to arrive in the Americas? (If you can’t find a name, maybe you could talk about women in Jamestown.)

I did some digging and I can in give you a name, sort of. The name is Gudrid Thorbjarnardóttir. According to the Icelandic Sagas, she was one of the Vikings who made settlements on the mainland in North America. Now there is some debate about the accuracy of those sagas (see my earlier answer to the question about reliability), but I was sufficiently intrigued that I’m putting Gudrid into this upcoming series on the First Woman. If you don’t accept the Gudrid theory, then the next woman would be a collection of four who came with Columbus on his second voyage: “María Fernández, ‘maidservant to the Admiral [Columbus];’ María de Granada, about whom no more details are given, and the merchants Catalina Rodríguez, ‘a native of Sanlúcar,’ and Catalina Vázquez” (source). Even just that list is extremely intriguing, and maybe at some point, I’ll be able to find more information.

Jamestown is much later, but it does indeed include several interesting women involved there that I do hope to cover in a future series some day.

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The long answer is also no. However, the vast majority of ancient texts are anonymous. (Actually the vast majority of current texts are also anonymous; think about all the receipts you get.) But in the ancient world, if a whole collection was written by women, we wouldn’t necessarily know it. But there’s no reason to think that was the case. Comparisons with later societies suggest it was more likely to be the opposite.

However, there are some individual cases that edged in the direction you’re suggesting. In early Medieval Europe there were convents that were specifically devoted to producing books. One of the early ones worked under the direction of Charlemagne’s sister, Gisela. Charlemagne was not taught to read and write as a child because it wasn’t considered necessary for a young aristocratic man. He’d have scribes for that. Gisela was taught because she was destined for a life in the church, and literacy was a valued skill there, for both men and women.

There are also some societies where men and women were literate in very different ways. For example in Heian Japan (that’s 794 to 1185 CE), the prestigious language was Chinese. That’s the language that upper-class men wrote their lofty thoughts and poetry in. Upper-class women were taught Japanese because writing in Chinese would be getting above themselves. (Murasaki Shikibu, author of the Japanese Tale of Genji, also knew Chinese, but she pretended not to know it for social reasons.) And it’s precisely because women weren’t allowed into the prestigious world of Chinese literature that Japanese, as a written, literary language, was primarily developed by women, like Murasaki Shikibu.

Another interesting example is that of Nüshu, a phonetic script in Hunan, China. Women there weren’t taught how to write in any language, so they developed their own script used exclusively by women writing to other women. Nüshu amalgamated four different local dialects with a symbol for each phonetic syllable, which is not the system used by Chinese. Among other things Nüshu provided women with a way to express thoughts that were socially unacceptable to say out loud, particularly when men might hear. Nüshu was less needed when educational opportunities were opened to women and then it was deliberately crushed by the Cultural Revolution, but I am pleased to say that Nüshu is experiencing a revival. People are trying to preserve it.

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From Grace:

Sometimes people try to diagnose historical figures with conditions like bipolar or autism. How do you feel about that?

First let me make it clear that I am not a psychologist, psychiatrist, or therapist in any way qualified to diagnose anybody, past or present. My own personal observations of people I know suggest that a diagnosis is a pretty tricky thing, even in the present day when qualified people can give the patient all the standard questionnaires and tests. I am totally confident that these conditions existed in the past, but I’m not real confident that we can accurately diagnose it in people who are dead.

I noticed this especially when I covered Marie Antoinette, who some people say had ADHD, and her husband Louis, who some people say was autistic. In Marie Antoinette’s case, the major basis for the ADHD theory seemed to be that one tutor said she had trouble paying attention, which is hardly conclusive. Maybe that tutor had unreasonable expectations for a young teenager. Maybe she was a little jittery about being engaged to the most eligible bachelor in Europe. Maybe she was in pain because an early orthodontist was rearranging her teeth so they would be straight enough for a Crown Princess of France. There are loads of reasons why she might have had trouble paying attention. ADHD is just one of them.

So I don’t really mind when people raise these diagnoses as a possibility, rather than as a fact. It could be true, and it is an interesting way to explain some of the choices these people made. We just can’t prove it.

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And we’re going to conclude with another one from Grace

Do you believe in the idea that history repeats itself? Are you ever watching current world news and think this sounds familiar?

I’m detecting a little note of angst behind this question. Maybe I’m overinterpreting Grace’s comments, but I’m definitely not overinterpreting so many things I see online from my fellow history-lovers. I do have a strict no-politics-on-the-show policy, but the angst online is not confined to one political persuasion, and I don’t think I have to get political to answer this.

Here’s my opinion (and it is only an opinion, feel free to disagree): Yes, I think history repeats itself, but only on the big scale. Nations rise and nations fall. Economies boom and economies crash. Diseases come and diseases go. Natural disasters come and natural disasters go. These things are cyclical. But the details are always, always different and often unclear, and that means that history is unreliable as a predictor of the future.

Here’s one historical example of the difficulties involved (and I’m deliberately casting my glance way, way back beyond the current political tensions): The Fall of the Roman Empire supposedly happened in 476, when the last emperor of Rome was kicked off his throne, though some historians have chosen other dates. Thus began the period that was called the Dark Ages, though historians don’t like that term anymore. The lives of people in this period were said to have been nasty, brutish, and short, but that has been called into question too. Whatever you call it, it’s usually described as a cataclysmic event in history, and loads of people have used it as a cautionary tale for those of us who live in a currently powerful country.

However, whatever moral lesson we’re supposed to be learning from this is unclear because the reasons the Roman Empire fell are confusing. Historians have repeatedly explained it at least since the 18^th century, their explanations are all different, and they usually say more about the time period of the historian than they do about the Roman Empire. Historians writing during economic depressions say it was the Roman economy. Historians writing during war times say it was outside invaders. Historians with a beef about religion say it was Christianity’s fault. Historians writing during scandalous times say it was internal corruption. And on and on.

To complicate the matter further, a lot of Romans in 476 wouldn’t even know what you were talking about because as far as they were concerned, the empire didn’t fall in 476, not even close. The eastern half of the empire was alive and well for another millennium. We call it the Byzantine Empire, but that’s not what they called themselves. They called themselves: the Roman Empire. They were Romans, even if they didn’t live in Rome. From their perspective, all that had happened was the capital wasn’t Rome anymore Rome (which wasn’t new, incidentally), and they lost a few of the outer, less profitable, less important provinces. No big deal. Life went on.

The only reason so many historians have written about this as such a cataclysmic event is that they happened to live in one of those outer, less profitable, less important provinces. Such as Britannia, later known as England. These historians also happened to idolize Roman art and institutions, and they dismissed medieval ones as dark, nasty, brutish, and short, which, as I said, is debatable on both sides. I’ve heard medieval historians discuss the fall of the Roman empire as a very good thing. If only it had happened earlier!

My point here is that historians can’t even agree on the past. So what hope do we have for agreeing on the future? Like statistics, history can easily be manipulated to prove whatever point you are already trying to make.

To get back to Grace’s question. Studying history allows me to feel pretty confident that all the nations that are currently powerful right now will someday not be so powerful, but when and why and how many people will get hurt along the way? I don’t think studying history gives me conclusive answers to those questions.

In fact, whenever I encounter someone telling me that they know the answers, I immediately wonder whether it’s my vote or my money they are angling for. And if you think it’s neither, remember that your attention online is money. I know because I also earn ad money for your attention. Not a lot of money, Patreon and direct donations are better, links on the website, but a little comes from ads. Thank you, I appreciate it.

Studying history also tells me is that every time period has people worried about impending doom and the collapse of all that they held dear. Sometimes they were right to worry. But sometimes they were wrong, and that can be a comforting thought.

My own personal survival strategy is to limit my exposure to the doomsday theories. I listen to a middle-of-the-aisle weekday news broadcast from trained journalists who present a broad range of perspectives, and when it’s over I turn it off. On social media, I block, mute, and ignore political comments because, for me, it’s a healthy place to receive political news. (The weekday news alone gives me more knowledge of the world than historical women ever dreamed of. There’s no need to make it last 24 hours a day.)

I also vote. Sometimes I donate a portion of my time and money to causes that I think will make the world a better place. Mostly I just try to be a decent person to the people right around me because, in my opinion, that’s the only thing that’s going to make the world livable, no matter what times we live in.

It’s true that concerning things are happening. But my living in a constant state of angst, fear, or outrage isn’t going to change the world. It will only change me. And not for the better.

It’s a crazy world out there, and someday it will make an excellent history lesson, but while we’re struggling through it, I’ll just quote a podcast that I personally listen to. It’s Freakonomics, where Steven Dubner signs off by saying “Take care of yourself, and, if you can, someone else too.”

Many thanks to the lovely listeners who sent in the questions. If I didn’t include your question, for a variety of reasons, don’t worry! You are still appreciated, and you still got in the drawing for the Her Half of History swag, and the winner is Grace! Grace sent in several questions and some of the audio that you heard earlier. If you were not today’s lucky winner, stay tuned because there will be more chances to win in the future. Women’s History month is coming up.