So first I must say: we tend to forget about it today, but there is actually a stunning, if small, body of women's history from the first half of the twentieth century. After reading so many later accounts of how bleak and nothing the picture was, I was flabbergasted to discover some good, critical (not just hagiographical "what wonderful ladies") takes on medieval women all the way back to the 1900s.

That said.

The real birth of women's history is in the 1960s and 70s, which is exactly when you'd put it, in conjunction with second wave feminism. In history more specifically, this is also the era when attention to "people" and "culture"--a MASSIVE, epochal shift away from seeing history as purely a tale of kings and states--was in full blossom. Annales d'Histoire Economique et Sociale, whence the Annales school gets its name, was founded in 1929 and worked to make all layers of society visible. The 1960s added cultural history to the social and economic focus of the Annales and Marxist historians. Women tend to be more historically 'visible' in social, economic, and cultural history than in a narrative of thrones and elections. Historians were asking questions that women's lives and texts could help answer, or could uniquely answer.

But out of the women's movement, you also have to give heaps of credit to the individual scholars pushing women's history, often against serious blowback. Gerda Lerner probably did more for women's history as an academic subject than anyone else: first post-WW2 college course in women's history (Long Island University, 1963), first graduate program in women's history (Sarah Lawrence 1972), first PhD program in women's history (Wisconsin-Madison 1980). Joan Kelly, who worked with Lerner at Sarah Lawrence, published a 1977 article called, "Did Women Have a Renaissance?" that is absolutely foundational for the modern study of women's history. They obviously weren't alone, but they are probably the standouts.

In medieval history, the first generation of scholars who paid serious attention to women's history did their graduate work in the 60s and 70s; most of them are recently retired or on the brink. Nearly all of them wrote their dissertations on other topics, and there are lots of stories of being discouraged or basically forbidden by their PhD departments from focusing on women. Because they would never get a job that way, never.