An agenda for women’s history in Ireland, 1500–1900: Part I: 1500–1800

In the last twenty years women’s history has emerged as a major field of scholarly inquiry. An extensive literature has accumulated on the history of women in western Europe and North America, and the contribution which women have made to many different aspects of western society has been rediscovered. New areas of study have been developed as the gender differences in men’s and women’s lives have been recognised and researched. The expanding secondary literature has also led to a lively debate about the purpose, methodology and theory of women’s history. A central focus of discussion has been the relationship between women’s history and mainstream history. Initially research on the history of women tended to work within the parameters of traditional history: to be fitted into its ‘empty spaces’. But dissatisfaction with the male-centred and patriarchal nature of the predominant historical discourse has led women historians to seek out new methodologies and to argue that consideration of history from the perspective of women, as well as of men, is a major challenge to the whole nature of historical inquiry. As Gerda Lerner, a pioneer of women’s history in the United States, put it, women’s history challenges the traditional assumption that man is the measure of all that is significant, and that the activities pursued by men are by definition significant, while those pursued by women are subordinate in importance. It challenges the notion that civilization is that which men have created, defended, and advanced while women had babies and serviced families and to which they, occasionally and in a marginal way, ‘contributed’.