Thematic emphases in this text include the contacts between European women and those outside European frontiers, sexuality and its importance for the construction of gender over the centuries, and the role of women in the great events and movements in European history and the impact of such events on them.

"Anthologizes primary source materials about women's lives and presents an overview of the variety of women's experiences dating from ancient Mesopotamia to contemporary Bosnia ... [including] Plato, Christine de Pizan, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Virginia Woolf, as well as sources that have never before been published in English. The collection ... ranges widely in terms of topic, social class, and geography; both male- and female-authored texts are included to present a range of normative, descriptive, and reflective materials"--Back cover

This book illustrates the social, cultural, legal and, political conditions that European women have faced from the Middle Ages to the present day.

The volume examines the lives and achievements of women who played determining roles in the history of European academies and in the development of modern science in Europe. These persevering personalities either had a key influence in the establishment of academies ("Patronae Scientiarum") or were pioneering scientists who made major contributions to the progress of science ("path-breakers"). In both cases, their stories provide unique testimonies on the scientific institutions of their time and the systemic barriers female scientists were facing. Conceptualized as a transversal series of biographical portraits, the contributions focus particularly on each personalities’ role in (or relation to) European academies, ensuring both a geographical and disciplinary balance. The co-editors of the volume are Professor Ute Frevert (Co-Director at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development), Professor Ernst Osterkamp (President of the Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung) and Professor Günter Stock (former ALLEA President).

The European Women's History Reader is a fascinating collection of seminal articles and extracts, exploring the social, economic, religious and political history of women across Europe since the late eighteenth century. This ambitious volume is arranged into four chronological sections all with their own introductions, which provide context for the chapters that follow. The collection also includes a useful general introduction, which makes the articles accessible to students and helps to define this increasingly important area of study.

This landmark publication collects the essays of the leading women's historians and provides the most coherent overview of women's role and place in Western Europe from the beginning of the eighteenth century to the twentieth century.