Bolanle Awe has identified the male-oriented nature of the origin of African historiography and its effect on women's historical realities. She points out that, like the Western historiographical tradition, men were largely responsible for pioneering African history. From the late 1950s, when modern historical scholarship on African history emerged, to the early 1980s, women's history was sidelined in the mainstream of African historical scholarship according to Awe, to the extent that the eight-volume UNESCO General History of Africa, one of the first major comprehensive readings on African history, says nothing about female contributions to African history. The same applies to the Groundwork of Nigerian History. This general survey of Nigerian history does not have a single chapter on women's history or the place of women in Nigerian historical experience. Yet the project on the biographies of Nigerian women undertaken by Awe did not appear until 1992, because “publisher after publisher declined to take on the manuscript because they decided that the time was not ripe for the publication of a book on Nigerian women and that such a book would not have much market value.” It was not until 1988 that the first panel on women in Nigeria was organized at the thirty-third annual congress of the Historical Society of Nigeria (HSN), the nation's professional body of historical scholarship. Four years later, LaRay Denzer presented a study, “Yoruba Women: A Historiographical Study,” as the lead paper at the annual congress of HSN.