Women’s Studies Archive: Issues and Identities spans multiple geographic regions, providing a variety of perspectives on female history, gender, and women’s experiences and cultural impact. Fascinating historical records from Europe, North and South America, Africa, India, East Asia, and the Pacific Rim—with content in English, French, German, and Dutch—can be found within the archive. The resource brings together archival collections, manuscript collections, and special collections from across the world, and features primary sources from eminent libraries and archives, such as the archives of the New York Public Library; the London School of Economics and Political Science Women’s Library; the Sophia Smith Collection of Women’s History from Smith College Library; the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library of the History of Women in America at Harvard University; the Swarthmore College Peace Collection; Northeastern University; the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender (GLBT) Historical Society; the National Women’s History Project; and the People’s History Museum. Gale’s goal to digitize a broad array of primary source material, covering multiple aspects of women’s history across the globe, makes this an essential resource for those researching sexuality and gender studies, women’s history and feminist theory, and social studies.

The digital collections included in the resource cover a vast amount of primary source material, digitized directly from the archives, enabling researchers to examine and conduct studies into female and gender history. Some highlights include:

• The Malthusian League records from the London School of Economics and Political Science Library, a collection of resources from one of the first organizations in the world to advocate voluntary family limitation as the solution to the problems of overpopulation and poverty, including the journal The Malthusian and the publication The Eugenics Review, which feature articles on topics ranging from poverty, race, and birth control to abortion, child welfare, fertility, and peace.
• The Planned Parenthood Federation of America record collection from Smith College Library, which documents the history of the organization and its struggles to provide services, such as birth control, men’s sexual health, relationship counseling, sex education, treatment for sexually transmitted diseases, and international family planning.
• The Grassroots Feminist Organizations collection, which includes manuscripts and papers covering multiple aspects of the women’s liberation movement, the history of feminism, and gender studies.
• The Herstory Collection, within which can be found journals, newspapers, and newsletters of women’s liberation and civic, religious, professional, and peace organizations from all over the world, offering multiple perspectives on the history of feminism and feminist activism and the empowerment of women in the 20^th century.
• Women and Law, a collection of materials across a variety of categories, covering women’s experience, rights, and politics in history—including information on the changing roles and social conditions of women throughout the world, how men have related and reacted to women and women’s movements in history, materials on stereotypes, and materials about women’s liberation groups.
• The records of the Women’s Labour League, a broadly based feminist pressure group founded in London, England, which feature a collection of materials that document the organization’s efforts to promote the political representation of women in parliament and local bodies.
• The European Women’s Periodicals collection, which offers academics the opportunity to explore female-oriented periodicals from across Europe, dated 1840‒1940, from women’s groups against German National Socialism, as well as from continental European suffragists, birth control propagandists, housewives’ associations, and educational reformers.

These collections represent only a small fraction of the coverage within the archive. By exploring these resources, along with the numerous other collections featured in Women’s Studies Archive: Issues and Identities, scholars of history, gender, social science, and more can begin to uncover the history of women’s experience, from women’s suffrage and women’s rights to legal and medical support, gender studies, and women’s literature. Bringing all these materials, from eminent libraries and archives across the globe, together in one place, the module forms an essential resource for scholars, both in their own research and in the classroom, seeking to uncover and document the full picture of women’s experience through the 19^th and 20^th centuries.

With primary sources from libraries and archives across the world, Issues and Identities is a key resource for academics and teachers to explore, both in their research and in classroom teaching, when undertaking studies into women’s experience. Using this resource, essential archival material can be uncovered, through which studies into gender history, suffrage, feminism, and many other aspects of women’s history—from the history of feminism and feminist theory to the history of gender and female culture to labor history and peace activism—can be conducted. The diverse primary sources in the archive provide a rich history of women’s experiences in the 19^th and 20^th centuries.

Approximately one million digitized pages

Content will include approximately one million never-before-digitized pages of primary source material, all aligned with women’s studies.

Covering important topics

Including: the History of Feminist Theory and Activism; domestic culture; lay and ordained church women; women in industry; women's sexuality and gender expression; women’s education; women’s movement; women’s health and mental health; women and law; women and the control of their bodies; and women’s roles and interactions within society.

Discover new connections

Integrate content from complementary primary source products in one intuitive environment, uncovering valuable connections between history and the issues facing us today.

Empower insights from the source

Discover content from resources like the New York Public Library, The National Women’s History Project, the London School of Economics, Women's Library and many more.

About the individual collections

Click on the links below to be taken to a detailed description. 

Collected Records of the Women's Peace Party: 1914-1920

Committee of Fifteen Records,1900-1901

European Women's Periodicals

The Herstory Collection

Grassroots Feminist Organizations, Part 1: Boston Area Second Wave Organizations, 1968-1998

Grassroots Feminist Organizations, Part 2: San Francisco Women's Building / Women's Centers, 1972-1998

Malthusian, 1879-1921 (formerly Women and the Social Control of Their Bodies)

Planned Parenthood Federation of America Records, 1918-1974

Records of the Women's Peace Union: 1921-1940

Women and Health/Mental Health

Women and Law Collection

Women's Lives

Women's Labour League: Conference Reports and Journals, 1906-1977

Women's Trade Union League and Its Leaders

Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom: United States Section, 1919-1959