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Women's History
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American Periodicals This link opens in a new windowThis database contains periodicals published between 1740 and 1940, including special interest and general magazines, literary and professional journals, children's and women's magazines and many other historically-significant periodicals.
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Black Women Writers This link opens in a new windowBlack Women Writers presents 100,000 pages of literature and essays on feminist issues, written by authors from Africa and the African diaspora. Coverage begins in the 18th century with narratives depicting slavery, moves through and beyond the Harlem Renaissance, and includes writers from the movements of the 1960s, covering womanism, black feminism, and related topics.
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British and Irish Womens Letters and Diaries This link opens in a new window British and Irish Women's Letters and Diaries includes the immediate experiences of approximately 500 women, as revealed in over 90,000 pages of diaries and letters, spanning from 1550s to 1950s. The collection also includes biographies and an extensive annotated bibliography of the sources in the database.
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British Women Trade Unionists on Strike at Bryant & May, 1888 This link opens in a new window These papers combine business records from Bryant and May with press coverage of the matchwomen's strike over their working conditions in 1888. Photographs of the women who were involved are also included.
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Colonial Women Missionaries of the Committee for Women's Work, 1861-1967 This link opens in a new window The committee underwent several changes of name, but originally it was a semi-autonomous body linked with the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. The collection includes minutes of main and sub-committees, candidates' books, in and out letters, and reports. Comprises approximately two thirds of the vast records relating to the Committee on Women's Work stored at Rhodes House Library, Oxford.
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Defining Gender This link opens in a new windowUK primary source materials from 1450 – 1910 relating to the study of history, literature, sociology and education from a gendered perspective. Documents include ephemera, pamphlets & periodicals, education documents, books, personal writings, business records, government papers, ballads and literature.
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Everyday Life & Women in America c.1800-1920 This link opens in a new windowUnique primary source material for the study of American social, cultural, and popular history in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
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Feminism in Cuba, 1898-1958 This link opens in a new window Mostly Spanish-language documents relating to Cuban feminism, women in politics, literature by Cuban women and the legal status of Cuban women. The collection spans the period from Cuban independence to the end of the Batista regime (1898-1958), and contains memoirs, essays, journals, speeches, radio broadcasts and literary works.
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Food and Drink in History This link opens in a new windowFrom feast to famine, explore five centuries of primary source material documenting the story of food and drink.
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Food Studies Online This link opens in a new window Contains archival content, visual ephemera, monographs, and videos that explore how food shapes the world around us. Content is mainly C20, but there is a small amount of older material. The scope is global, though most material is focused around Europe and North America.
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Gender, Feminism, and the British Left, 1944-1991 This link opens in a new window Contains records compiled by the Communist Party of Great Britain's Women's Department during the period 1944-1991. These records include minutes, agendas, and promotional materials from various women's campaigns, events, and conferences. They also include copies of Link, the party's women's magazine, and Red Rag, a controversial journal published by the party's more militant feminist members.
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Gender: Identity and Social Change This link opens in a new windowThis collection documents the changing representations and lived experiences of gender roles and relations from the nineteenth century to the present. This collection offers sources for the study of women's suffrage, the feminist movement, the men’s movement, employment, education, the body, the family, and government and politics.
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Gerritsen Collection of Aletta H. Jacobs This link opens in a new windowCollection of books, pamphlets and periodicals reflecting the evolution of a feminist consciousness and the movement for women's rights. Coverage includes the UK and Europe, the US and Canada, and New Zealand. Contents are primarily in English with some German, French and other languages and cover 1543-1945.
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Harper's Bazaar Archive This link opens in a new windowFull colour magazine archive covering from 1867 - current. A chronicle of American, British, and international fashion, culture, and society, offering unique insights into the events, attitudes, and interests of the modern era.
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Independent Voices This link opens in a new windowIndependent Voices is an open access digital collection of alternative press newspapers, magazines and journals. These materials were produced by feminists, dissident GIs, campus radicals, Native Americans, anti-war activists, Black Power advocates, Hispanics, LGBT activists, the extreme right-wing press and alternative literary magazines during the latter half of the 20th century.
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International Women's Movement: Pan Pacific and Southeast Asia Women's Association of the USA, 1950-1985 This link opens in a new window Founded in 1928 to strengthen international understanding and friendship among the women of Asia and the Pacific and and women of the U.S.A. Documents included cover 1938-2006 and cover the full range of the association's activities.
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Margaret Sanger Papers This link opens in a new window Covers every aspect of the birth control movement in the U.S., including the movement's changing ideologies, its campaign for legitimacy, its internal conflicts and organisational growth. Includes Sanger's correspondence, her personal papers and other papers that she collected to document the birth control movement.
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Perdita Manuscripts This link opens in a new windowThis resource is produced in association with the Perdita Project. “Perdita” means “lost woman” and the quest of the Perdita Project has been to find early modern women authors who were “lost” because their writing exists only in manuscript form.
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Phyllis Lyon, Del Martin and the Daughters of Bilitis This link opens in a new window Drawn from the archives of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Historical Society in the U.S., this archive contains information on the founding and growth of the homophile movement, especially the Daughters of Bilitis and The Ladder magazine, including early meeting minutes, correspondence, chapter records, membership data, and manuscripts unavailable elsewhere. Coverage is 1955-1984.
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Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin: Beyond the Daughters of Bilitis This link opens in a new window Drawn from the archives of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Historical Society in the U.S., this archive documents Lyon and Martin's work in the LGBT and women's rights movements. Coverage is 1966-1984 and documents include minutes, correspondence, notes related to their work with various organisations and materials related to their book 'Battered Wives'.
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Quest for Labor Equality in Household Work: National Domestic Workers Union, 1965-1979 This link opens in a new window Records of the United Domestic Workers Union (U.S) from 1965-1979, including minutes of committees, financial documents and legal documents. Topics include involvement in the Black community, the Manpower Program, the Career Learning Center, the Homemaking Skills Training Program, Maids Honor Day, the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA), and various federal agencies.
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Records of the Children's Bureau, 1912-1969 This link opens in a new window Consists of reports, speeches, correspondence, and research materials from the Children's Bureau, the first U.S. federal agency dedicated entirely to protecting the welfare of children and families. The documents in this collection originate from the administrative files of bureau staff members, including the bureau's chiefs throughout the years: Julia Lathrop, Grace Abbott, Katharine Lenroot, Martha Eliot, and Katherine Oettinger.
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Scottish Women's Suffrage Movement, 1902-1933 This link opens in a new window Contains documents from the Glasgow and West of Scotland Society for Women's Suffrage - a non-militant movement running during the period 1902-1933. Includes committee meeting minutes, letter books, and reports, which cover everything from the recruitment and selection of female candidates to fundraising for local hospitals. Campaigns include those for equal voting rights and the free distribution of information on birth control.
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Sex & Sexuality This link opens in a new windowSex & Sexuality provides unprecedented access to collections from prominent sex researchers and sexologists. Papers from Dr. John Money and Dr. Harry Benjamin document advances in areas such as diverse as biology, health and medicine, sociology, anthropology, and psychology, whilst collected research from Alice Withrow Field and James W. Edwards offer important investigations into criminology and global attitudes towards sex.
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Southern Women and their Families in the 19th and 20th Centuries, Holdings of the Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill This link opens in a new window Covers 1765-1923 across several collections of papers sourced from a range of Southern U.S. states. Several collections are family papers and many cover topics of illness, pregnancy and childbirth. Includes correspondence, extensive diaries, travel journals, essays and other writings created by women about their experiences of the time.
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Soviet Woman Digital Archive This link opens in a new windowEnglish language archive of the Russian magazine. Published by the Soviet Women’s Anti-Fascist Committee and the Central Council of Trade Unions of the USSR to counter anti-Soviet propaganda, and introduce Western audiences to the lifestyle, role and achievements of Soviet women. Publication spans from 1945 to 1991.
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Struggle for Women's Rights: Organizational Records, 1880-1990 This link opens in a new window Comprised of the records of three important women's rights organisations in the U.S.: the National Woman's Party, the League of Women Voters, and the Women's Action Alliance. Issues covered include employment and employment discrimination, childcare, health care, politics and education.
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Vogue Archive This link opens in a new windowArchive of the magazine American Vogue. Includes all editions from 1892 to the present. The collection provides an insight into US fashion, culture and society.
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Witchcraft in Europe and America This link opens in a new windowWritings on the subject of witchcraft dating from the 15th century to the early 20th century, sourced from the Cornell University Library. Rare and fragile manuscripts containing eyewitness accounts and court records of the trials of witches, including depositions obtained under torture.
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Women's Issues and Their Advocacy Within the White House, 1974-1977 This link opens in a new window Documents Patricia Lindh's and Jeanne Holm's liaison with U.S. women's groups and their advocacy within the White House on issues of special interest to women. The bulk of the collection is derived from liaison activities with over 300 women's organisations, agency women’s groups and program units, advisory committees on women and women appointees.
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Women's Magazine Archive This link opens in a new windowArchive of leading women’s interest consumer magazines from the late-19th century to 2005. Mainly US titles, but now expanded to include major UK titles as well. Subject coverage includes gender studies, social history, economics/marketing, media, fashion, politics, and popular culture.
Collections I, II and III available.
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Women's Periodicals: Social and Political Issues This link opens in a new window Covers 1786-1933 with content from the U.K. and the U.S. as well as some French, German and Icelandic publications. Includes titles published by men, for women; titles published by male editors with strong input from female assistant editors/; and titles conceived and published by women, for women.
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Women's Studies Manuscript Collections from the Schlesinger Library: Voting Rights, National Politics, and Reproductive Rights This link opens in a new window Contains collections from the Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe College in the U.S. focusing on voting rights, national politics and reproductive rights. The voting rights papers include documentation of national, regional, and local women leaders. For national politics, many women's own collections are included. Collections on reproductive rights are the Schlesinger Library Family Planning Oral History Project, and the papers of Mary Ware Dennett and the Voluntary Parenthood League.
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Women, War and Society, 1914-1918 This link opens in a new window Documents covering the First World War from the Imperial War Museum. Includes charity and international relief reports, pamphlets, photographs, press cuttings, magazines, posters, correspondence, minutes, records, diaries, memoranda, statistics, circulars, regulations and invitations.
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Women and Social Movements, International: 1840 to Present This link opens in a new window Includes the writings of women activists, their personal letters and diaries, and the proceedings of conferences at which pivotal decisions were made. Coverage is global, with the largest collections covering Africa and Asia. Collections can be searched or browsed by a variety of different aspects.
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Women and Social Movements: Development and the Global South 1919-2019 This link opens in a new window Themed around efforts to foster gender equity through expanded economic and social participation of women on a global scale, this database covers activism through individual efforts, organizational initiatives, and socio-cultural projects led by or for women in the Global South. Also includes accompanying essays looking at the shifts in approaches to development.
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Women and Social Movements in Modern Empires Since 1820 This link opens in a new window Explores prominent themes in world history since 1820: conquest, colonization, settlement, resistance, and post-coloniality, as told through womens' voices, particularly those of the colonized. Includes documents related to the Habsburg Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the British, French, Italian, Dutch, Russian, Japanese, and United States Empires, and settler societies in the United States, New Zealand and Australia.
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Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000 This link opens in a new window Contains 124 document projects and archives with more than 5,100 documents and 175,000 pages of additional full-text documents, written by 2,800 primary authors. It also includes book, film, and website reviews, notes from the archives, and teaching tools, all covering the history of women in social movements.
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Women at Work during World War II: Rosie the Riveter and the Women's Army Corps This link opens in a new window Contains the Records of the Women's Bureau of the U.S. Department of Labor (1918-1965), and Correspondence of the Director of the Women's Army Corps (1942-1946). Included are reports, records of bureau-sponsored conferences, speeches, articles, studies on the treatment of women by unions, community studies, subject files and correspondence. The WAC correspondence covers recruiting, public support for the WAC, personnel matters like discipline and conduct, and race.
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Women in The National Archives This link opens in a new windowThis collection consists of two distinct elements:
A finding aid to women's studies resources in The National Archives.
Original documents on the suffrage question in Britain, the Empire and colonial territories.
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Women Organizing Transnationally: The Committee of Correspondence, 1952-1969 This link opens in a new window Includes official correspondence (1952-69) as well as hundreds of letters to and from correspondents throughout the world documenting the work of the U.S. based Committee of Correspondence. Also includes official records; minutes; and multiple other publications and materials pertaining to the status and problems of the world's women.
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