10/20/2020 Where have all the women gone? Challenging structural patriarchy and rethinking feminist art history - Leiden Arts in Society Blog https://www.leidenartsinsocietyblog.nl/articles/where-have-all-the-women-gone 1/8 leidenartsinsocietyblog HOME CONTRIBUTORS DOSSIERS ABOUT Catherine Powell PhD student in Art History Where have all the women gone? Challenging structural patriarchy and rethinking feminist art history October 15, 2020 • Medieval and Early Modern Studies • 7 min read Where have all the women gone? It can be difficult, sometimes, to find evidence of female participation in the arts and culture of the early modern period. Catherine Powell explores how we can locate women and their participation by asking different questions. Early on in my research regarding the history of art of the seventeenth- century in the Dutch Republic, I began grappling with an apparent contradiction: if the women of the young Republic were freer, tended to have more economic power, and were better educated than their counterparts