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This is, as the subtitle indicates, a joint paper in two voices. Each author has worked with her counterpart to revise what began as their position paper for the Round Table ‘Women’s History at the Cutting Edge’ at the International Congress for the Historical Sciences, held in August 2015 in Jinan, China, which met jointly with the International Federation for Research in Women's History (IFRWH). Chen Yan explains her perplexity about the reticence of Chinese historians (based in China) to embrace topics in women's and gender history, using her own case as an example. She then poses five questions in the paper to stimulate reflections from the commentators, drawing on their varied experiences as historians of women and gender in other countries. Her particular objective is to ‘jump-start’ research and publication in these areas in China, where a variety of obstacles dissuade scholars from pursuing this path. Karen Offen’s contribution builds out from that of Chen Yan, arguing that women's and gender history is at the cutting edge of historical research precisely because it offers ‘a revolutionary development in the politics of historical knowledge’. No historian can be considered ‘up-to-date’ in the field of history without taking its findings into account. Offen addresses each of the five questions, making provocative arguments and rehearsing some of the achievements in providing an organizational structure that welcomes historians from many lands through the IFRWH. She emphasizes the vast expansion of publications in the field during the last twenty-some years in many languages besides English and addresses the controversies of the 1990s concerning the ‘turn’ to gender history and to theoretical analyses. Offen then proposes thinking about ‘women’ and ‘gender’ as two focal points along the continuum of the same project, using the analogy of the ‘zoom lens’. Making women's history an integral part of historical study requires a ‘gendered analysis’ of any historical topic, but it also requires deeper thinking about communication strategies that can bring the findings of our research to the general public. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This Special Issue on women's and gender history consists of substantially revised papers that were initially presented at the XXII International Congress for the Historical Sciences, held in August 2015 in Jinan, China, which met jointly with the International Federation for Research in Women's History. A number of commentators respond to a position paper on ‘Women’s History At the Cutting Edge’, presented by Chen Yan and Karen Offen, noting the existence of contextual and political specificities that condition (and constrain or promote) the possibilities for researching and writing women's history in their respective countries. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A personal narrative is presented in which the author talks about her collaboration with historian and author Susan Groag Bell since 1971, after she attended her lectures on women's history, and her responsibility of preparing manuscript for Bell's publication "Women, the Family, and Freedom."

In this article, the authors explain the opinions of various scholars of women's history on the status of European women's history as of 2013. The authors asked the scholars a series of questions that addressed such specific topics as the meaningfulness of "Europe" as a category of analysis within the women's history field, the institutionalization of the field in Europe and the U.S., and the global nature of European women's history.

This is an abbreviated version of a presentation to the Conference of the International Federation for Research in Women's History in Sofia, 2007. The article traces the origins and foundation of the Federation in 1989. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article is a plenary address presented at the twentieth anniversary conference, titled 'Women, Gender and the Cultural Production of Knowledge', of the International Federation for Research in Women's History (IFRWH), Sofia, Bulgaria, 8-12 August 2007. It places the IFRWH within a broad comparative historical context, namely that of the growth of civil society and of women's international associations, networks and publications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Women's history encompasses the history of humankind, including men, but approaches it from a woman-centered perspective, highlighting women's activities and ideas and asserting that their problems, issues, and accomplishments are central to the telling of the story of humankind [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article talks about the International Museum of Women (IMOW), a San Francisco, California-based museum which values the women's lives around the globe. For the task to be made possible, the museum highlights the voices of women through cultural exhibits and programs, history, and the arts which inspire action, educate people, and build community. Moreover, its exhibition strategy centers around the exploration of the history of women as well as the contemporary gender issues.