Women in East Asian History

While East Asia is already a topic embedded into my 10th grade World History and AP World History curriculum, women are often left out of the discussion. This seminar has inspired me not only to include more discussions, sources, and perspectives on women in my classroom, but also to create a new unit. I plan to end the year with a unit on women in world history. This unit will focus on women’s roles and legacies in different regions. We will begin with a discussion of gender, and students understand the creation of hierarchies after early humans settled into civilizations. From there, we will dive into examples from Latin America, East Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and Africa. I’ve left out the US because this topic will be covered in 11th grade. For my curriculum project, I created the learning segment on East Asia. I’ve checked out two books on women in East Asia, and am trying to learn more about women in region in order to better teach East Asian history.

The women in East Asia that I included in my lesson plan are: Ban Zhao, Sin Saimdang (1504-1555), Queen Sondok of Silla r. 632-647 was a queen, Qiu Jin, and He Zhen. I also plan to use He Zhen’s work in my Cold War unit because we spend around 10 days on China in the Cold War and I’ve realized that I do not use many sources from women at this time. I also will incorporate some of the propaganda focused on women, and have a lesson on feminism in Mao era China.

As we discussed in class, women should not be a topic we force into our lessons because they have always existed in history. It is difficult to include women’s history in any other way because it is left out of our curriculum. However, the more I study and know women’s history, the better it will find a way into my classroom.