The AHA’s Committee on Women Historians has launched a new web page on the AHA’s web site to provide useful information on issues relating to women historians, gender equity, and so on.

Gender equity remains an elusive goal in the historical profession. Across the United States, only 31 percent of all history faculty are women, in spite of the fact that women make up 42.5 percent of faculty across disciplines. The numbers are especially troubling for recent PhDs. Over the past two decades approximately 41 percent of history PhDs were awarded to women. But after significant improvement—until the 1990s—in the representation of women in the profession, the proportion of women hired in history fell 25 percent between 1992 and 2003; women now account for just 32.8 percent of the assistant professors as the most recent survey indicated.

The AHA’s Resources for Women Historians web page includes a range of reports and articles on gender equity, the status of women in the historical profession, and information about the AHA’s recommendations for ensuring gender equity in hiring, employment, and tenure practices and policies. The Committee on Women Historians hopes that this page will not only provide information, but will also help encourage and stimulate new conversations about how practices within the profession might be improved to extend gender equality within the profession and beyond. Please visit the Resources for Women Historians page.