Breaking Out of Invisibility

Book excerpt: Since the mid-1970s gender has been introduced as a fundamental category of social, cultural and historical reality, perception and study. Social history is becoming more intelligible through recent studies on women. Women are no longer invisible in history. This monograph marks a welcome recognition of the importance of situating women's history within the broader perspective of social history, and illustrates the wide variety of themes in women's history on which historians have been working over the last few decades. The essays in this monograph have been written with great insight and bear ample evidence of painstaking research.