Preceding the biographies is a series of "introductory surveys", a product of a somewhat dated notion in gender studies that women can be grouped into categories.

[citation needed] There are many women artists mentioned in the surveys whose biography was not included, because there was not enough documented material to fulfill the inclusion criteria.

The work was meant as a follow-up to a previous reference work including 21,000 women painters, sculptors, printmakers, and illustrators by Chris Petteys, the Dictionary of Women Artists: An International Dictionary of Women Artists Born Before 1900, published in 1985.

[2] The problem with that work is that the more well-documented women were included with countless "one-liners".

In 2001, Gaze produced a new "Concise" edition with a smaller selection in a single volume.