Howdy y'all!

As March and Women’s History Month comes to a close, the AskHistorians flairs would like to present a collection of new and previous writings on women through history!

This diverse collection brings you on a globe-spanning journey—from noblewomen in Three Kingdoms China, to indigenous translators in Mexico during the Spanish conquests, to women in the Knights Hospitaller, and many more—revealing the fascinating and often overshadowed lives of women. It is my hope that everyone reading this will be as enchanted by these stories as I am.

I’d like to thank everyone who submitted a piece for this mosaic of stories. This has truly been wonderful and I have loved reading everything that everyone has put together. And finally, a big thank you to the entire AskHistorians community, who without we’d simply be yelling into the void.

Anyways, without further ado, here are the pieces. I truly do feel that there is something for everyone here, regardless of where your interests lie, so please do look through them!

• Eleanor Plantagenet, Countess of Pembroke and Leicester by /u/Herissony_DSCH5.
• Consider the Consequences!: One of the Earliest Diverging Narrative Books by /u/jbdyer.
• Templars, Hospitallers, and Teutonic Knights: Women in the Military-Religious Orders by /u/Rhodis.
• Šibtu, Queen of Mari (18th century BCE) by /u/Bentresh.
• Malinche, the Translator Between the Spanish and the Aztecs by /u/drylaw.
• Gender Roles and Female Education in Pre-Hispanic Mexico by /u/drylaw.
• Lady Wu of Wu in the Three Kingdoms by /u/Dongzhou3kingdoms.
• The Filipino Women Fighters of the Hukbalahap Movement by /u/KippyPowers.
• How did Teaching Become “Women’s Work?” by /u/EdHistory101.
• Isabel de Clare by /u/J-Force.
• The Story of Sergeant Candelaria Pérez by /u/Bernardito.
• Reconstructing Women From a Thousand Years Ago Through Art and Storytelling by /u/Kelpie-Cat.
  • If you loved /u/Kelpie-Cat's post here, be sure to check out their blog WomenOf1000AD, where they post about the history of women and also draw them! A pretty neat combo!
• Education of Palaiologan Women in the Byzantine Empire by /u/xeimevta.
• The Secret, Unsexy Lives of Harem Women in the Ottoman Empire by /u/Snipahar.

I have put together these pieces in a PDF, for your viewing pleasure, so you may be interested in checking that out as well!

I'd also like to take a moment to recognize some of the great answers from the recent "Women's History" weekly theme.

• There's a lot of myths and legends about Ann Bonny, famously one of the few female pirates, but what do we REALLY know about her? Answered by /u/TylerbioRodriguez.
• Romans without male heirs adopted grown men to keep their lines going. But what about the adoption of women? Do we have any accounts of women being adopted? Was this not done because there was no political value? Answered by /u/QVCatullus.
• Why is the Queen married to a "prince"? Answered by /u/auditorygraffiti.
• Women often face systems that label them responsible for crimes committed against them, like rape, and murder. In the west, legal systems don't do this, and our culture is moving further away from it. When and why did the west begin moving away from the blame-the-victim approach common elsewhere? Answered by /u/Kugelfang52.
• Was there a time or place when brewing ale was considered a female occupation? Answered by /u/Noble_Devil_Boruta.
• 15 of Shakespeare's 37 plays feature suicide as a significant theme, how common was suicide in everyday life during the Elizabethan Era? Answered by /u/amandycat.
• When did the women's 'traditional' role of staying at home emerge, when there is evidence of ancient and prehistoric women performing so-called male activities like hunting, fighting/protecting and leadership? Answered by /u/Erft and /u/mimicofmodes.
• Did the Mulakkaram (breast tax) ever exist and are the stories around it true? Answered by /u/jar2010 and /u/Sikander-i-Sani.
• I've come across Western men's (sometimes fantastical and obviously 2nd or 3rd hand) accounts of women in the Ottoman Empire and the harem system. Do we have any examples of Western women's accounts of Ottoman women? Or of elite Ottoman women's accounts of Westerners? Answered by /u/sunagainstgold.
• 18th-century Russia had four Empresses-regnant (most famously, Catherine the Great), wielding considerable, formally absolute power. How did a patriarchal, heavily religious society, with ordinary women generally having next to no power or representation, end up accepting female rulers as autocrats? Answered by /u/mimicofmodes.
• Pre-Colonial African Slavery, Pawnship, and Matrilineal Kinship in West and Central Africa Answered by /u/Commustar.
• The Sumerian king list contains a single woman as ruler, a former alewife called Kubaba. Do we know how this was interpreted by Ancient Mesopotamian societies? And what significance did an alewife have? Answered by /u/SirVentricle.
• In 1979, what did Leftists and feminists think of the fact that Margaret Thatcher, the first female PM of the UK, was a conservative? Answered by /u/PeteEdinburgh.

If you really enjoyed any of these writings, please let the person know in the comments section below!