Analysis of a data sub-set from an online survey of almost 1,000 history practitioners. This is the third (and final, for now) in a series of articles drawn from my Public Histories MA dissertation. (Read part one and part two.)
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Between December 2024 and July 2025, I surveyed 968 history practitioners, of which 545 (56%) were women. My analysis of all respondents’ answers found that 122 people (13%) practise some form of women-specific history, and a further 183 (19%) practised history that was women-related, such as family history and genealogy, gender history, and the history of marriage and children. Of the 122 people whose practice was women-specific, 109 (89%) were women, 7 (6%) were non-binary or gender non-confirming, and 4 (3%) were men. This makes women 16 times more likely to practise women’s history than the next largest group.
As Deborah Thom has written, “in histories of the experience of being oppressed, those most interested in the analysis are those most partisan in the politics”. Borrowing and re-mixing René Descartes’ famous philosophical statement (I think, therefore I am), this pattern could be summed up as: I am, therefore I do.
Indeed, it was common among the women history practitioners to start their responses to the survey question about how their lived experience influenced their work by stating “as a woman…”. For example, an 18-24-year-old from the United States wrote: “As a woman, I frequently focus on women as historical actors”. A 25-34-year-old from the United Kingdom said: “As a woman I feel particularly passionate about the inclusion of women in history”. And a 35-44-year-old from Australia wrote: “As a woman I feel compelled to seek women and their stories”.
Of the 545 women survey respondents, 84 (15%) explicitly cited women’s under-representation in history outputs as a contributing factor in their own history practice, while another 100 (18%) cited their lived experience of being a woman as an influence. It could be argued that a woman cannot exist in this world without being aware – regardless of whether they have encountered it first-hand – that women experience unequal treatment and opportunities to men. By extension, it could be argued that a woman cannot practise history without being aware that women’s lives and experiences have been given unequal treatment in the work of many historians; a trend which continues right up to the present day in history outputs. As such, I argue that at least 184, or 33% of, women history practitioners who responded to my survey are either explicitly or implicitly influenced in their work by the under-representation of women. (Only 5 other people who did not identify as women, or 0.5% of all survey respondents, cited women’s under-representation as an influence on their work.)
Collectively, these 184 women – this influenced sub-set – largely mirrored the demographics of all survey respondents, as well as all women survey respondents. They were from 18 different countries with the United Kingdom (42%) and United States (34%) making up the majority; their largest age bracket was 45-54 (26%); and they predominantly held a post-graduate degree (60%) or had no formal qualification (21%). Their primary practice was largely either full-time paid (32%) or an unpaid hobby (28%); and their primary audience was split relatively evenly between academia/history professionals (30%) and the public (27%). Their inspiration was primarily intellectual/personal curiosity (21%), a lifelong interest (21%), or a teacher/their education (15%); and their top ambition remained sharing, teaching, or generally inspiring others (35%), but academic development and/or contributing to history discourse moved up to second place (20%, versus third place and 15% for all women and 16% for all respondents).
When the influenced women sub-set described their work, they spoke of a desire to “change the narrative”, to look beyond “white male dominance”, and “combat HIStory”. They described women being “ignored”, “neglected”, “silenced”, “overlooked and downplayed”. They wrote of “hidden figures”, of stories being “left out of history”, and identities “so easily erased”. They felt “frustrated”, “aggrieved”, “marginalised”, “oppressed”, and that their past had been “denied”. As an 18-24-year-old practitioner from the United Kingdom wrote: “It’s hard to emotionally understand, as a woman, how historians can simply ‘forget’ my/our existence”. But despite all this, the influenced sub-set of women felt strongly that, in fact, women’s history was “valid and important”, and that “women matter”. They saw their work as a form of “activism”, as a fight for “justice”; as one 25-34-year-old woman from Canada stated: “The more the patriarchy gets me down, the harder I go”.
While the term ‘patriarchy’ was only mentioned explicitly by 6 women (3%) within the influenced sub-set, the theme of men’s power and authority, and women’s subsequent marginalisation and exclusion, came out clearly in many of their survey responses. A 35-44-year-old woman from the United States wrote that she was inspired in her practice by “the lack of people like me in the texts. I wanted to know what was really happening beyond white male dominant characters.” Similarly, a 45-54-year-old woman from the United States said: “the historical narrative has been, unsurprisingly, written by men. I’m invested in changing that” and that she wanted to “find lesser known […] historical women and bring their stories to life”. Likewise, a 55-64-year-old practitioner from the Netherlands said that “women are still largely erased from history” and that she wanted to “contribute to bring them back”. And a 55-64-year-old from the United Kingdom said she wanted to “share the stories of women who have been overlooked. I want to make history less centred on men.”
What is interesting to note also (and which contrasts the intersectionality challenges the field of women’s history faced in its early years) is that many among the influenced sub-set looked beyond only the under-representation of women to other minoritised identities as well. 34% (63 women) cited at least one other factor alongside their gender as an influence, while a further 9% (16 women) cited two or three additional factors. The most cited additional factor was sexuality or gender identity (34 mentions or 43% of influenced women), followed by class or socioeconomic status (29 mentions; 37%), and race and/or legacies of colonialism (14 mentions; 18%). For example, a 25-34-year-old history practitioner from Nigeria described how her country had been “classified a third world nation despite its vast human, agricultural and mineral resources, and centuries of strong rich history”; a history that had been “suppressed and largely under-valued”. This, she said, had informed her practice and its focus on “Nigerian history especially Nigerian women’s history which is often ignored and the history of underserved communities”. Similarly, a 35-44-year-old woman from the United States said: “People like me (female, from a working class background) are often excluded from both the practice of history and from historical representation. My work aims to make both of those things visible.” And a 35-44-year-old practitioner from Australia wrote: “I’m a queer woman interested in researching women who led queer lives in the past”.
Other motivating factors included a lack of women’s history in their education (a 25-34-year-old from the United Kingdom wrote: “I’m a black woman who always had to study old white male history in school” and that her “early higher education experience still rigidly clung to history as military and political history”; as a result, she “decided to literally never do that again”) and fears that women’s rights were regressing (a 65+-year-old woman from the United States said: “I watched women and minorities achieve a modicum of equal rights and now I am seeing that being stripped away”, while an 18-24-year-old from the United States wrote: “In a period of intense reaction against the existence of trans people, being able to articulate the real trans histories and trans lives past helps us to articulate a vision of trans presents and trans futures in the face of a denial of our existence.”).
For this influenced sub-set of women, their history practice is personal. Their survey responses conveyed strong feelings – confusion, frustration, and anger – about not finding enough women in history outputs, and demonstrated a commitment to doing something about it. They also showed a knowledge and a determination that they needed to drive the change they want to see; that they could not rely on others to do it for them. As a 55-64-year-old woman from the United Kingdom remarked in one of her answers, the more primary sources she explored through her work, “I realise, more and more, just how much history has been written by men about men”. While a 45-54-year-old practitioner from the United Kingdom said that “the way women’s lives have been circumscribed by patriarchy now and in the past” was part of what had “turn[ed] my drive for recording the lives of women into a passion”.
This commitment is heartening, but it also prompts the question: where are the allies? Why, for example, out of the 380 men who responded to my dissertation survey, do only 5 (1%) practise any form of women’s history? Why does the disproportionate load of addressing the under-representation of women’s presence and contributions in the past fall – whether by choice or necessity – to women?
Is the answer to the survival and thriving of women’s history for it to remain a distinct field, set apart but as a result given dedicated attention? Or should it be integrated into all other genres of history, so women are integral to the stories being explored and told, rather than seen as ‘other’? I have not settled on a definitive opinion (it’s probably both), nor did any of the survey respondents offer one. However, the answers of the 545 women history practitioners showed a clear preference for – an increased likelihood of 2.5 times to practise – women’s history over gender history (the latter having been championed as a solution to women’s marginalisation, particularly in the 1970s and 80s).
As Sheila Rowbotham said in the preface to her classic book, ‘Hidden From History’, “I don’t think there is an absolute answer to any of these questions in the present”. And as she intended with her work then, likewise, I see my dissertation research as an effort to “[turn] up the top soil in the hope that others will dig deeper”, and hope that the data I have collected and evidence I have established will prove a useful reference for others who continue to advocate for better representation of women in the exploration and production of history, and continue to do the work to make it so.
