Ekonomisk historia, akademiska miljöer och kvinnliga forskare

Abstract

In this article we take a closer look at the roles of female researchers at our own department, the Department of Economic History at the University of Uppsala. Looking at career development and opportunities for women researchers we have used as a model three strategies formulated by Gerholm and Gerholm, the succession strategy, the subversion strategy, and the postponed subversion strategy. It is clear that the latter seems to have been the most successful strategy at our department, even if straitforward subversion stragegies also have yielded results. Nationally and as a group female historians can be seen to have started out with at modified subversive strategy aimed at re-writing and re-vising history. The subversive aspect becomes evident when sex and gender relations and consequently also power relations between the sexes more explicitly came into focus. The demands for a revised history were brought forward concurrently with the demand that a gender prerespective was integrated into curriculums and research projects. This double focus led to interdisciplinary discussions on methodology and theories. Nationwide feminist scholars demanded both integration into already excisting disciplines and departments as well as the establishment of separate centres for women's studies. For the female researchers at the department of Economic History the first task during the 60' s was to create space for women's studies inside the department. A seminar on women's history which was formed at this time can be seen both as a platform for subversive activity and as a step towards integrating a gender perspective. A conflict concerning introducing a gender perspective into one of the major research projects at the beginning of the 80' s illustrates a låter phase of the struggle for integration of a central area of research - the history of the industrial society. Here a gender perspective helped to broaden a traditional defined research area. For the future there is a need to define and discuss what strategy to employ; the question whether gender studies should be integrated or undertaken as separate projects is still of vital importance.