As an example of her thesis in  "Women, Resistance and Revolution", she examined the role of Russian women in the late Imperial, Provisional government, and early Soviet periods. Rowbotham wrote that women played a key role in toppling Emperor Nicholas II and with him the House of Romanov, which had reigned since 1612, noting that the February Revolution in Petrograd began with women's demonstrations on International Women's Day. Rowbotham has praised Vladimir Lenin and the other Bolshevik leaders in "Women, Resistance and Revolution" for legalising abortion, divorce, and contraception plus founding the "Zhenotdel" (women’s department) together with socialised restraurants, health care and laundries. Rowbothham argued that the changes experienced by Russian women from the Imperial era, where superstition, poverty, illiteracy, and the patriarchal view as women as property were the norm to the early Soviet era were an improvement. She has criticised Soviet policies starting with the First five-year plan of 1928–33 for not only expecting women to work full-time, but also to take on the burdens of housework and child-raising while at the same time banning abortion and birth control. Rowbotham argued that the Stalinist era marked the beginning of a retrogression for Soviet women as Stalin to a certain extent brought about a return to traditional Russian values, most notably via a lavish personality cult that incorporated Tsarist imagery and iconography.