Introduction

This introduction to the special issue ‘Women’s and Gender History in the Iberian Worlds: Global Knowledge Production’ argues that recovering women’s experiences of Iberian empires requires three interconnected methodological shifts. First, we must confront archival silences not as absences but as active productions of patriarchal and imperial power, requiring sensitive analysis that moves beyond traditional sources. Second, we advocate for a global approach that traces how local women’s actions and experiences shaped and were shaped by imperial structures. Third, we propose ‘knowledges’ in the plural to recognise diverse women’s expertise as central to imperial functioning. Building on the work of feminist and gender historians who have begun to recover intersectional histories across the Spanish and Portuguese empire, this special issue contributes to debates about gender, global history, and knowledge production

Economics · Knowledge management · Knowledge production · Computer Science · Historical Gender and Feminism Studies · History · History, Culture, and Diplomacy