Term · Global
Women in the Archive
Why women performers and writers are under-recorded, and how scholars recover them.
Women were legally barred from many professional stages — in England until the Restoration of 1660, and in Japanese kabuki after 1629, even though kabuki is traditionally traced to the female performer Izumo no Okuni. Where women did perform or write, records often name them less, attribute their work to men, or survive only in moralising criticism.
Recovery work on figures such as Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim (10th century) and Aphra Behn (1640–1689) has reshaped theatre histories, while many women performers remain known only by first names in account books.