This book gives new insight into how to write comparative women's history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The volume emphasizes the virtues of such research, but it also recognizes the methodological difficulties. The contributors have published widely and are well known experts in the field.

A unique two-volume examination of the progress women have made in achieving political equality worldwide, Women and Politics around the World addresses both transnational issues and specific conditions in approximately 30 different countries.

Gender is one of the most productive, dynamic, and vibrant areas of Africanist research today. This volume looks at Africa now that gender has come into play to consider how the continent, its people, and the term itself have changed.

The American Historical Association's Committee on Women Historians commissioned some of the pioneering figures in women's history to prepare essays in their respective areas of expertise. This volume, the second in a series of three, collects their efforts. As a counterpoint to the broad themes discussed in the first volume, Volume 2 is concerned with issues that have shaped the history of women in particular places and during particular eras. It examines women in ancient civilizations; including women in China, Japan, and Korea; women and gender in South and South East Asia; Medieval women; women and gender in Colonial Latin America; and the history of women in the US to 1865. Authors included are Sarah Hughes and Brady Hughes, Susan Mann, Barbara N. Ramusack, Judith M. Bennett, Ann Twinam, and Kathleen Brown. Incorporating essays from top scholars ranging over an abundance of regions, dates, and methodologies, the three volumes of Women's History in Global Perspective constitute an invaluable resource for anyone interested in a comprehensive overview on the latest in feminist scholarship.

From the first European encounters with Native American women to today's crisis of sexual assault, The Oxford Handbook of American Women's and Gender History boldly interprets the diverse history of women and how ideas about gender shaped their access to political and cultural power in North America. Over twenty-nine chapters, this handbook illustrates how women's and gender history can shape how we view the past, looking at how gender influenced people's lives as they participated in migration, colonialism, trade, warfare, artistic production, and community building. Theoretically cutting edge, each chapter is alive with colorful historical characters, from young Chicanas transforming urban culture, to free women of color forging abolitionist doctrines, Asian migrant women defending the legitimacy of their marriages, and transwomen fleeing incarceration. Together, their lives constitute the history of a continent. Leading scholars across multiple generations demonstrate the power of innovative research to excavate a history hidden in plain sight. Scrutinizing silences in the historical record, from the inattention to enslaved women's opinions to the suppression of Indian women's involvement in border diplomacy, the authors challenge the nature of historical evidence and remap what counts in our interpretation of the past. Together and separately, these essays offer readers a deep understanding of the variety and centrality of women's lives to all dimensions of the American past, even as they show that the boundaries of "women," "American," and "history" have shifted across the centuries.

Historians today like to preach the virtues of comparison and cross-national work. In the last decade, cross-national histories have prospered, yielding important work in the subjects as diverse as the transatlantic trade in slaves and the cultures of celebrity. In the meantime, comparative history has also enjoyed a renaissance, but what is largely missing in the rush beyond the nation is any sense of how to tackle this research. This volume brings together scholars who have worked either cross-nationally or comparatively to reflect upon their own research. In essays that engage practical, methodological, and theoretical questions, these contributors assess the gains--but also the obstacles and perils--of research that traverses national boundaries. Drawn from the subject-areas that have attracted the most comparative and cross-national attention: war, welfare, labor, nation, immigration, and gender. Taken together, these essays provide the first critical analysis of the cross-national turn in European history.

Originally published in 1974, this study offers valuable perspectives on the status and roles of women in Stuart England and in the newly settled colonies of North America, particularly Massachusetts and Virginia. Incorporating both new research on the subject, and the findings of other scholars on demographic and social history, the author examines the effects of sex ratios, economic opportunities, Puritanism and frontier conditions on the emancipation of American women in comparison with their English counterparts. He discusses the effects of these major differences on women’s roles in courtship, marriage and the family, educational, legal and civic opportunities. In the final chapter, he compares the moral climate of the two cultures in the latter part of the seventeenth century.