CUTV News Radio spotlights European Historian Dr. Karen Offen Ph.D.

Woodside, CA – Dr. Karen Offen Ph.D is a historian and independent scholar, affiliated as a Senior Scholar with the Michelle R. Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University. Dr. Offen publishes on the history of Modern Europe, more specifically France and its global influence on thought and politics with reference to family, gender, and the relative status of women.

As a historian of Europe, Dr. Offen is particularly interested in the history of women because it was neglected for so long. Her two most recent books The Woman Question in France, 1400-1870 and Debating the Woman Question in the French Third Republic, 1870-1920 explore the struggle regarding the place of women in France and their relationship to men over 600 years.

“In the wake of the #MeToo movement, it's amazing to me that the French have been talking about such issues for 600 years, and in print!” says Dr. Offen. “It's essentially about how the relationships between women and men should be restructured. It started out with questions about whether women were inferior, questions about the laws concerning marriage, questions about women’s education. Then came the economic questions. Should women even be in the paid labor force? The right-to-work and equal pay for equal work, reproductive freedom, protests again male misuse of their power and privilege: those ideas are all on the table by the later 19th century.”

“When you study long periods of history, as opposed to five or ten years, you necessarily develop a long view,” says Dr. Offen. “And the long view is actually rather comforting."

For more information on Dr. Karen Offen, visit www.karenoffen.com