When I started working on women’s history about thirty years ago, the field did not exist. People didn’t think that women had a history worth knowing.
—Gerda Lerner, Women and History (1986; 1993)

Before 1970, women’s history was rarely the subject of serious study. As historian Mary Beth Norton recalls, “only one or two scholars would have identified themselves as women’s historians, and no formal doctoral training in the subject was available anywhere in the country.” Since then, however, the field has undergone a metamorphosis. Today almost every college offers women’s history courses and most major graduate programs offer doctoral degrees in the field.

The Women’s Movement

Two significant factors contributed to the emergence of women’s history. The women’s movement of the sixties caused women to question their invisibility in traditional American history texts. The movement also raised the aspirations as well as the opportunities of women, and produced a growing number of female historians. Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, one of the early women’s historians, has remarked that “without question, our first inspiration was political. Aroused by feminist charges of economic and political discrimination . . . we turned to our history to trace the origins of women’s second-class status.”

Visit The National Women’s History Museum!