From women's history to gender history: A reply to 'Playing the Gender History Game' (J. Purvis and A. Weatherill)

This article offers a response, written by two feminists employed in a univ ersity, to Penelope J. Corfield's article 'History and the Challenge of Gen der History', published in Volume 1, No. 3 of Rethinking History. The autho rs argue that Corfield fails to distinguish between women's history and fem inist history, as well as between gender history and history of gender. How ever, the primary focus of this article is an exploration of the implicatio ns for women's history of Corfield's claim that it is 'mutating' into gende r history. The authors challenge this supposed 'mutation' positing that whi le many men who hold key positions of power in the academy might prefer the term 'gender' to 'women', seeing the former as more neutral, balanced and complex than the latter, feminist academics may play 'the gender game' as a politics of subterfuge whereby they overtly exhibit a loss of feminist con victions in order to covertly exist.