"In times of political volatility, it's more vital than ever that we tell women's stories"

What impact has recent instability around the world had on the study of women’s history? Does our desire for strong female role models risk erasing complexity? And whose lives are still overlooked? Ahead of Women’s History Month, ELLIE CAWTHORNE spoke to three historians about the state of the discipline

- ELLIE CAWTHORNE

Ellie Cawthorne Before we get into some of the thornier elements of the study of women’s history, let’s talk about some of its achievements. What strides have been made over the past few years?

Sarah Richardson The relationship between women’s history and other types of history has really come to the fore in recent years. There’s been fascinating work going on into the role of women as activists, for instance, and connecting the study of women and of disability in past centuries. So I think we’ve been moving away from the traditional approach of looking at individuals, to consider the intersections between different areas of history.

Hannah Cusworth My area is mostly black British history, in which there has been a renewed focus on the individual – particularly on black women whose stories we have known about for a little while, but which are now in the spotlight thanks to novels, films and television series. Following the focus on Queen Charlotte in Bridgerton, for instance, there’s been an explosion of interest in women of colour in 18th-century Britain.

I recently asked a group of fellow historians about the trends they had spotted, and someone mentioned that there had been two novels about [Queen Victoria’s ward] Aina Forbes Bonetta published in the past year or so alone! So it would be nice to move away from the individual stories of great women – but I think that, sometimes, telling those kinds of stories has to happen first in order to lay the groundwork for other types of history.