Women's history is the study of the role that women have played in history and the methods required to do so. It includes the study of the history of the growth of women's rights throughout recorded history, personal achievements over a period of time, the examination of individual and groups of women of historical significance, and the effect that historical events have had on women. Inherent in the study of women's history is the belief that more traditional recordings of history have minimised or ignored the contributions of women to different fields and the effect that historical events had on women as a whole; in this respect, women's history is often a form of historical revisionism, seeking to challenge or expand the traditional historical consensus. The main centers of scholarship have been the United States and Britain, where second-wave feminist historians, influenced by the new approaches promoted by social history, led the way. As activists in women's liberation, discussing and analyzing the oppression and inequalities they experienced as women, they believed it imperative to learn about the lives of their fore mothers—and found very little scholarship in print. History was written mainly by men and about men's activities in the public sphere, especially in Africa—war, politics, diplomacy and administration. Women were usually excluded and, when mentioned, were usually portrayed in sex stereotypical roles such as wives, mothers, daughters, and mistresses. The study of history is value-laden in regard to what is considered historically "worthy." Other aspects of this area of study are the differences in women's lives caused by race, economic status, social status, and various other aspects of society. The study of women's history has evolved over time, from early feminist movements that sought to reclaim the lost stories of women, to more recent scholarship that seeks to integrate women's experiences and perspectives into mainstream historical narratives. Women's history has also become an important part of interdisciplinary fields such as gender studies, women's studies, and feminist theory. Some key moments in women's history include the suffrage movement, which fought for women's right to vote; the feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s, which brought attention to issues such as reproductive rights and workplace discrimination; and the #MeToo movement, which has drawn attention to the prevalence of sexual harassment and assault. Notable women throughout history include political leaders such as Cleopatra, Joan of Arc, and Indira Gandhi; writers such as Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf, and Toni Morrison; activists such as Harriet Tubman, Susan B. Anthony, and Malala Yousafzai; and scientists such as Marie Curie, Rosalind Franklin, and Ada Lovelace.
Regions
Europe Changes came in the 19th and 20th centuries; for example, for women, the right to equal pay is now enshrined in law. Women traditionally ran the household, bore and reared the children, were nurses, mothers, wives, neighbours, friends, and teachers. During periods of war, women were drafted into the labor market to undertake work that had been traditionally restricted to men. Following the wars, they invariably lost their jobs in industry and had to return to domestic and service roles.
Great Britain
In 1801 the Welsh protofeminist author Hester Thrale published Retrospection..., an attempt to write a popular history from a female perspective. However, the work faced strong criticism with one reviewer calling it "a series of dreams by an old lady." While some of Thrale's contemporaries resented a female writer intruding into the male preserve of history, the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography now states that "it has since been seen as a feminist history, concerned to show changes in manners and mores in so far as they affected women; it has also been judged to anticipate Marxian history in its keen apprehension of reification: 'machines imitated mortals to unhoped perfection, and men found out they were themselves machines.'" The history of Scottish women in the late 19th century and early 20th century was not fully developed as a field of study until the 1980s. In addition, most work on women before 1700 has been published since 1980. Several studies have taken a biographical approach, but other work has drawn on the insights from research elsewhere to examine such issues as work, family, religion, crime, and images of women. Scholars are also uncovering women's voices in their letters, memoirs, poetry, and court records. Because of the late development of the field, much recent work has been recuperative, but increasingly the insights of gender history, both in other countries and in Scottish history after 1700, are being used to frame the questions that are asked. Future work should contribute both to a reinterpretation of the current narratives of Scottish history and also to a deepening of the complexity of the history of women in late medieval and early modern Britain and Europe. In Ireland studies of women, and gender relationships more generally, had been rare before 1990; they now are commonplace with some 3000 books and articles in print.
France
French historians have taken a unique approach: there has been an extensive scholarship in women's and gender history despite the lack of women's and gender study programs or departments at the university level. But approaches used by other academics in the research of broadly based social histories have been applied to the field of women's history as well. The high level of research and publication in women's and gender history is due to the high interest within French society. The structural discrimination in academia against the subject of gender history in France is changing due to the increase in international studies following the formation of the European Union, and more French scholars seeking appointments outside Europe.
Germany
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