Susan Smith's comprehensive study of the Power of Women topos in written texts and in art emphasizes the critical phase of its development from the late twelfth to the end of the fourteenth century. During this period, she argues, traditional employment of the topos exclusively to condemn women and justify male authority underwent a dramatic shift as new voices (some of them female voices) appropriated the Power of Women to contest and relativize the misogynistic views it had been created to promote.

The Power of Women analyzes the topos's shifting operations in the context of ancient and medieval theories of rhetoric, particularly with respect to the practice of exemplification, which presuppose the possibility of conflicting judgments on disputed topics. Smith further supports her argument by reference to a wide range of recent theoretical writings by Mikhail Bakhtin and others.