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Gender & Women's History Resources

There are many women's history resources online. Listed below are starting points to explore online resources. They will lead you to many treasures. This page has not been updated in a while. Most links should be available.

women's history

History links - annotated list of resources: bibliographies, African-American women's resources, biographies, politics and women, women's suffrage, women in the military and other resources from the National Archives Information Center.

non-western women's history

Women in World History - extensive primary source documents, curriculum modules, teaching case studies and more from George Mason University.

western women's history

Women and Social Movements in the US, 1600 - 2000 - thoughtfully collected primary source documents with contextual information and teaching ideas; an annotated guide to archives and webographies in women's history; teaching links, women's history projects; and women and social movements today.

Women Working, 1870-1930 - "digitized historical, manuscript, and image resources selected from Harvard's library and museum collections. This collection explores women's roles in the US economy between the Civil War and the Great Depression. Working conditions, conditions in the home, costs of living, recreation, health and hygiene, conduct of life, policies and regulations governing the workplace, and social issues are all well documented. The collection currently contains 2,850 books and pamphlets, 1,125 photographs, and 7,489 pages from manuscript collections."

Women's History - commercial reference site with a wide range of links to online women's history resources.

women's & gender studies

Women's / Gender Studies: Internet Resources - California State University, Long Beach Library's selective, annotated guide to women's, gender and sexuality studies (WGSS) online resources.

Women's Studies Online Resources - Joan Korenman's rich, selective, and wonderful 2014 annotated guide to women's studies/women's issues resource sites; women- and gender-related email lists; women's studies programs, departments and research centers; and the WMST-L file collection.

general web archives of note

Scholars know that almost any archives can be a treasure trove for studying women's history. Search these general archives for a fascinating variety of primary source materials about women's history, as exemplified by some of the Internet Archives described below.

Internet Archives - public domain movies, text, audio, classics to contemporary. A "non-profit that was founded to build an ‘Internet library,’ with the purpose of offering permanent access for researchers, historians, and scholars to historical collections that exist in digital format." Their WayBackMachine archives 55 billion old websites from 1966 to a couple of months ago. For more information, also see Wikipedia's Internet Archives page.

  • Explore the National Organization for Women's website archives from 1966 to the present.
  • Watch the 4th International Women's Day Video Festival , Part 4 (1988)
  • Examine women's roles in Classic Television Commercials (Part I) (1948) or "how the all-electric home emancipates women" in Mother Takes a Holiday (Part II) (1952)
  • View Training Women For War Production, a film about women in homefront jobs during World War II narrated and introduced by Eleanor Roosevelt.
  • Watch the Serpentine Dance (1902) - "Edison kinetoscope Serpentine Dance (1895), produced by the Edison Co., was banned because the brief film included titillating glimpses of the female performer's (Annabelle Whitford) undergarments. But content wasn't the only concern. "Indeed," notes Champlin in an article on the film production code for American Film, "it was the instant and immense popularity of the movies that stirred the first fears of their corrupting and inciting power."

Online Archives of California - "historical materials from a variety of California institutions, including museums, historical societies, and archives. Over 120,000 images; 50,000 pages of documents, letters, and oral histories; and 8,000 guides to collections are available."

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