The collection in which "It's a Woman's World" appears, Night Feed, stirred some controversy upon its publication in 1982. Along with Boland's In Her Own Image, Night Feed marked a departure from her first collection by focusing on the role of women in Irish literature and society. Some early critics dismissed Boland's poetry as "woman's writing," or unimportant in subject matter, while other critics lauded Boland's woman-centered, feminist perspective, as well as her technical agility.

Many of the poems in Night Feed were republished in Boland's collection Outside History, along with poems from her 1983 collection The Journey and newer poems. With Outside History, Boland gained wide recognition in the United States for her poetry, which bolstered her reputation in Ireland. Published in 1990, Outside History was praised for its craft and its ennoblement of previously overlooked subjects. Writing in the Women's Review of Books, Jody Allen-Randolph notes, "By...