With more than 10,000 biographical entries, this is the most comprehensive women's history encyclopedia available. This ambitious work profiles women throughout time and throughout the world. More than 2,500 signed articles written by academics, up to 5,000 words in length, highlight a particular woman's personal background and significance in history. Shorter entries spotlight historically important women who are less frequently researched or for whom less information is available.

This encyclopedia features women from all walks of life, including: rulers, royalty, lawyers, politicians, soldiers, heroines, pacifists, resistance fighters, financiers, entrepreneurs, philanthropists, investors, authors and more. Coverage includes many women for whom profiles are not included in traditional sources.

Features include: a short introductory quotation that exemplifies the woman being profiled; a short summary of each woman's life and achievements; more than 3,000 photos and illustrations; genealogical charts establishing standard names used throughout; sidebar entries for women whose lives touched that of the biographee; occupational, geographical, historical era and master indexes; essay-specific lists of sources consulted and further reading lists; lists of related media (recordings, television, etc.) about each woman; information on collections of any works by the subjects; extensive cross-references, and much more.

More than 600 books were analysed to identify the women most likely to be researched in a historical context. Look for these and other notables:

Ruth Aarons
Bella Abzug
Acte
Clover Adams
Joy Adamson
Laura Ashley
Natalya Dudinskaya
Elizabeth Hamilton
Isabella of Valois
Nora Joyce
Natalya Keshko
Eartha Kitt
Gerda Lerner
Jackie "Moms" Mabley
Maria Cadilla de Martinez
Carson McCullers
Princess Margaret

Women in World History's valuable 17th volume includes an occupational index, a geographical index, an historical era index and a master personal name index, which includes all the woman covered, their variant names and also the names of significant individuals mentioned in the text of entries. Because variant names can be a confusing component of research, the first volume and the index include genealogical charts that note relationships and establish a standard name to be consistently used throughout the set.