Historical censuses have often served as valuable sources for understanding the past. Yet, their use as sources about women’s work has been highly debated. This article engages with the continuing debate regarding the reliability and validity of censuses by exploring significant potentials and issues of censuses’ information about women’s work. While recognizing a critical perspective on censuses’ information about women’s work, this article identifies the need for more careful and contextualized readings of censuses. To this end, it presents five novel analytical approaches that aim to enhance readings and interpretations of censuses. The approaches reveal the purposes, focuses, self-reflections, ambiguities, and evolving categorizations of censuses, respectively. Through analysis of Swedish census materials from 1910 to 1940, this article moreover demonstrates that historical census personnel engaged with women’s work in sophisticated ways and that censuses’ representations were complex. The article argues against dismissing censuses outright as a fruitful source about women’s work. Instead, it recommends leveraging their inherent qualities in new and creative ways. Though non-neutral by incorporating and disseminating ideas about gender, censuses can serve as rich historical sources about women’s work and societal roles when approached contextually in various ways. The article advocates for contextualized and historicized approaches to using census data, moving beyond simplistic labels to explore the complexities of these important historical sources.