Introduction

The omission of women from most histories written before the 1970s denied women their past and presented a partial account of the forces which shaped American history. In The Creation of Feminist Consciousness Gerda Lerner observes that one can trace the study of women to “a significant and almost constant effort on the part of women to create Women’s History from the 7th century ad forward.” As Lerner notes, by the time people started to write history (a self-conscious record of the past), women were already significantly educationally disadvantaged. They were partners in making civilization, but very few were able to record or reflect upon it, and the chronicles of the past largely ignored women’s contributions.