Women’s History and governance

The history of women is a field of historiography created to counteract the classical epistemology of history that attributes to males a character of uni- versality. Its roots can be traced back to 1970 with the spread of feminism and the recognition in historical research methodology of the interplay between anthropology and the history of mindsets, social history, and popular memory research. Above all, its focus on women at the center of research and reflections on women’s history, identity, and gender relations, highlight, above all, issues arising from social and political issues of the past and their impact on the present. Furthermore, its status as an independent field of research and the definition of issues for study have made the subject an integral part of women’s claims on political and social grounds. The declared aim of early research on the part of feminist historians was that of filling a void: the absence of women from history (Scott 1991). Between the mid-1970s and mid-1980s, studies prevalently of middle-class white women became the interpretative point of reference. From the mid-1980s onward, the analysis of female diversity became core through categories such as class, race, ethnicity, and religion. In addition to debate on these categories were the impact on identity of regional, local, and national perspectives and the boundaries between the public and the private sphere.