"This encyclopedia has over one hundred and fifty biographical entries on specific women artists, writers, musicians, patrons, religious leaders, and medical practitioners. There are articles on nuns, working-class women, and women of the elite classes. There are essays on topics ranging from amazons and alchemy, marriage and midwifery, prostitution, the book trade, the figure of the hermaphrodite, to Sappho. There are essays on such public roles as women's involvement in religious reform, education, medical care, entertainment at courts, salons, and homes; and the more domestic issues such as marriage, birth control, and child rearing. Above all, there are articles on feminism, the idea and ideology of gender, and the concept of woman and sexuality in the Renaissance."