ABSTRACT
This chapter describes how historiography has been transformed by the question of gender, both in the ways that the subject is researched and written, but also how historians have read evidence to include women and gender issues more generally. It describes relationship between gender and class in historical analysis, and investigates how an interest in female experiences in the past has created a considerable and diverse body of work. The chapter examines how feminist work since the 1980s has effectively challenged the primacy previously placed on class to provide nuanced interpretations of such events as the industrial revolution and Italian Renaissance. It also explores questions around feminine and masculine identities, and the significance of work on witchcraft with due consideration of approaches which borrow from psychoanalytical and linguistic theory. Both conservative and liberal feminist ideologies have fed into the writing of histories, but Marxist-inspired feminism has probably enjoyed the most influence.
