In 1928, in the preface to her history of the British women's movement, The Cause, Ray Strachey observed that

Twentieth-century historiography shows Strachey's enthusiasm to have been somewhat misplaced. Early participatory accounts of women's part in achieving these liberties were joined by other attempts to broaden knowledge of women's contribution to the nation, notably those produced by women scholars associated with the London School of Economics. The writers were products of ‘first wave’ feminism, university educated and seeking paying and fulfilling careers. Yet the presence of their works in academic libraries did little to alter the overall construction of the discipline of history, which remained largely gendered as male. Only with the emergence of ‘second wave’ feminism in the 1970s were sustained attempts made to establish women's history as a distinct category, first in challenges from the margins of academia – women's groups and adult education departments – and then increasingly from within established history faculties.

The most urgent project for the new discipline was to identify and recover its subjects. Although some broad overviews emerged, the nineteenth century, as Strachey had predicted, was identified as ‘a turning point in the history of women’ and received special attention. Particular changes in women's status were assessed, often within the categories identified in Strachey's preface. The ‘personal’ and ‘legal’ liberties were comparatively easy to chart, resulting from steady campaigns that improved women's legal status and widened their opportunities through removing existing boundaries in education and the professions. ‘Social’ liberties, although more difficult to quantify, have begun to be investigated. However, it is the ‘political’ category that has so far invited the most attention. From the suffrage movement onwards, histories of women's politics and the history of women have often appeared inseparable.