Rewriting the Scottish canon: The contribution of women’s and gender history to a redefinition of social classes

Over the last two decades, research on women and gender in Scotland has flourished and we have an increasingly full picture of women’s lives at all social levels across the medieval to modern periods. Yet, women’s and gender history has not stopped at filling in the gaps in our knowledge, but has actively shaped the terms in which we engage with the past, altering traditional narratives of the past and requiring new questions and new methodologies as we move forward. This article will explore how the incorporation of women and the implementation of gendered analyses have helped redefine ideas of status/class across the medieval to modern periods in Scottish history.