Engendering Argentine History: A Historiographical Review of Recent Gender-Based Histories of Women during the National Period

As Dora Barrancos pointed out in her 2004 state-of-the-field essay, since the early twentieth century, a small number of Argentine scholars have dedicated themselves to writing histories about women.(3) The 1980s witnessed a significant increase in female-focused scholarship across the world; and Argentina, especially after the fall of the military dictatorship in 1983, was no exception. In Argentina, as elsewhere in Latin America, scholars from other social science disciplines were among the first to employ gender-based analysis.(4) By the end of the decade, feminist scholars in Argentina founded the first interdisciplinary institutes of women's studies in national universities.(5) And during the early 1990s, scholars at a number of these institutes began to publish interdisciplinary feminist journals including La Alijaba: Segunda Epoca, Mora, and Zona Franca.(6) In 1991, the Universidad de Lujan hosted the first academic meeting focused squarely on women's history. The following year, historians at the Universidad de Buenos Aires hosted the second iteration of this workshop, adding gender into the new title, 'II Jornadas de Historia de las Mujeres y Estudios de Genero.'(7) Ever since, a growing number of (primarily Argentine) historians have met at this annual conference to present new research on women and gender. Adapted from the source document.