The Encyclopedia of Women in World History captures the experiences of women throughout world history in a comprehensive, 4-volume work. Although there has been extensive research on women in history by region, no text or reference work has comprehensively covered the role women have played throughout world history.The past thirty years have seen an explosion of research and effort to present the experiences and contributions of women not only in the Western world but across the globe. Historians have investigated womens daily lives in virtually every region and have researched the leadership roles women have filled across time and region. They have found and demonstrated that there is virtually no historical, social, or demographic change in which women have not been involved and by which

known as the Shingi Waō (親魏倭王; "Ruler of Wa, Friend of Wei"), was a shamaness-queen of Yamatai-koku in Wakoku (倭国). Early Chinese dynastic histories chronicle Himiko (卑弥呼; c. 170–247/248 AD), also known as the Shingi Waō (親魏倭王; "Ruler of Wa, Friend of Wei"), was a shamaness-queen of Yamatai-koku in Wakoku (倭国). Early Chinese dynastic histories chronicle tributary relations between Queen Himiko and the Cao Wei Kingdom (220–265) and record that the Yayoi period people chose her as ruler following decades of warfare among the kings of Wa. Early Japanese hi The… The country formerly had a man as ruler. For some seventy or eighty years after that there were disturbances and warfare. Thereupon the people agreed upon a woman for their ruler. Her name was Himiko [卑弥呼]. She occupied herself with magic and sorcery, bewitching the people. Though mature in age, she remained unmarried. She had a younger brother who assisted her in ruling the country. After she became the ruler, there were few who saw her. She had one thousand women as attendants, but only one man. He served her food and drink and acted as a medium of communication. She resided in a palace surrounded by towers and stockades, with armed guards in a state of constant vigilance. The "Records of Wei" also records envoys travelling between the Wa and Wei courts. Himiko's emissaries first visited the court of Wei emperor Cao Rui in 238, and he replied: In Japanese historical and archeological periodization, the 2nd- and 3rd-century era of Queen Himiko was between late Yayoi period and early Kofun period. Kofun refers to characteristic keyhole-shaped burial mounds, and the Wei Zhi noting "a great mound was raised, more than a hundred paces in diameter" for Himiko's tomb, may well be the earliest written record of a kofun. Several archeological excavations of Yayoi and Kofun sites in kinki region, have revealed Chinese-style bronze mirrors, called shinju-kyo ("mirror decorated with gods and animals") . Many scholars who support the Kinki theory associate these shinju-kyo with the "one hundred bronze mirrors" that the Wei Zhi records Emperor Cao Rui presented to Queen Himiko, while other scholars oppose it. The Hashihaka Kofun in Sakurai, Nara was given a recent boost by radio-carbon dating circa 240–60. The early Chinese records of Himiko and her Yamatai polity remain something of a Rorschach test. To different interpreters, this early Japanese shaman queen can appear as evidence of communalism (Marxists), the "patriarchal revolution" replacing female deities and priestesses with male counterparts/Jōmon priestess rulers (Feminist history), the Japanese conquest of Korea, the Mongolian conquest of Japan (Namio Egami's "horserider theory" (ja)), the imperial system…