Women and Social Justice: What’s History Got to Do with It?

Over the last few decades, scholars of women’s history have immeasurably enriched our understanding of the past. Yet we might ask whether or not the flourishing field of women’s history has advanced in any meaningful way the cause of social justice for women, in the United States or abroad.  What is the relation between women’s historians and their "publics"?  Is a broad-based knowledge of women’s history among people outside the academy integral to a more just future for all women?  If so, what (if any) are the obligations of historians qua public intellectuals?