About Women and Social Movements in the
United States
1. About the Web Site (last updated October 2014)
ISSN 2164-5361 (Scholar's Edition)
ISSN 2164-537X (Basic Edition)
This Web site is intended to serve as a resource for students and scholars of U.S. history and U.S.
women's history. Organized around the history of women in social movements in the U.S.
between 1600 and 2000, the site seeks to advance scholarly debates and understanding of U.S.
history at the same time that it makes the insights of women's history accessible to teachers and
students at universities, colleges, and high schools. We are an online journal and publish new
issues twice a year, in March and September. The site is available to academic libraries by
subscription or purchase in either the Basic or the Scholar's edition.
Women and Social Movements: Basic Edition contains the following resources:
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114 document projects and document archives that interpret and present documents, most
of which are not otherwise available online. Each document project poses an interpretive
question and provides a collection of documents that address the question. Altogether
these document projects provide 4,600 documents, 1,300 images, and 1,000 links to other
websites. They demonstrate that historical analysis is an interpretive process based on
documents. Viewers of the site are encouraged to participate in that interpretive process.
We add four new document projects or archives annually. We are always interested in
considering submissions of proposals for new document projects or archives for online
publication.
About 3,200 publications with 67,000 pages of full-text sources pertaining to Women and
Social Movements in the United States. These materials have been selected by the Editors
for their relevance to the focus of the website. We add about 5,000 additional pages of
new sources annually. For a listing of full-text sources, go to Browse Bibliography and
click on Full Text Primary Sources.
A dictionary of social movements and organizations.
A chronology of U.S. Women's History.
Teaching Tools with lesson ideas and document-based questions related to the website's
document projects.
Book and web site reviews published twice annually.
Regularly-published news from the archives about primary sources in U.S. Women's
History.
Women and Social Movements: Scholar's Edition contains all of these resources plus:
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A digital archive, consisting of 90,000 pages of publications of federal, state, and local
Commissions on the Status of Women between 1961 and 2005.
An online edition of the five-volume biographical dictionary, Notable American Women
(1971-2004).
2. How to Cite Sources from WASM
Because WASM is accessible through the servers of subscribing libraries, the URL (Uniform
Resource Locator) will vary, depending on the library, and the URL citation will also vary
depending on the library.
We therefore recommend that users include the following elements in their citations:
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author
title of document (for e.g. a speech or a newspaper article)
author and title of original source (for eg. a newspaper or a book).
original publication date
(If in a WASM document project or document archive, author and title of the project or
archive.)
in Kathryn Kish Sklar and Thomas Dublin, eds., Women and Social Movements in the
United States, 1600-2000
accessed through [name of subscribing library]
at [URL of home page of subscribing library]
accessed [give date].
3. Submission Guidelines
Women and Social Movements welcomes proposals for online document projects. Co-directors
Kathryn Kish Sklar and Thomas Dublin draw on a Board of Editors who referee submissions and
offer support to prospective author/editors.
Prospective submissions should be built around primary sources addressing a concrete question
concerning some aspect of women and social movements in the United States. Ideally the project
question should address issues raised in relevant secondary literature. The project should include
a brief introductory essay with endnotes and about 20-30 primary source documents (texts,
images, audio or video) with headnotes that address the central question and annotations that
identify obscure references within the documents. The project should also include a bibliography
and a set of related WWW links. Author/editors of projects accepted for publication on the
website will also need to secure permission for the publication of any copyrighted material. Staff
of the Women and Social Movements website will provide support in this process.
In March 2009 we introduced a new format – the document archive. In document archives
authors can present larger groups of documents relatively unmediated by interpretation. By
publishing a blend of document projects and document archives, we hope to make available an
even wider array of new interpretations and new documents in U.S. Women's History.
Prospective authors should contact the editors at the outset of their work to discuss whether they
would like to prepare a proposal for a document project or a document archive.
Because so much work is involved in preparing a web-based document project, and there are
limited venues for publication of such work, we ask prospective contributors initially to submit a
3-5 page abstract noting the project's central question, its connection to relevant historiography,
and the main primary sources to be employed. In addition we ask prospective authors to submit
an annotated list of documents likely to be included in the project. Staff at the website and
members of the editorial board will offer responses and assistance to prospective contributors.
We send proposals and related lists of documents out for double-blind peer review. Based on
reviewers’ comments, we will accept a proposal, urge the author to revise and resubmit the
proposal, or decide not to move forward with the proposal.
We encourage prospective contributors to contact Tom Dublin, co-editor, by email to discuss
their proposals before submitting them. All submissions must be electronic—on diskettes, zip
disks, cd-roms, or via email or email attachments. We find it helpful to have considerable email
exchange during the proposal preparation process and during work on the project because of the
unique demands of the document project genre.
Professor Jay Kleinberg of Brunel University has written an article describing her experience
preparing a document project for WASM and has kindly permitted us to mount the piece here for
prospective contributors. You may find her discussion helpful if you are anticipating preparing
your own document project
4. About the Women's Commission Database
In December 1961, President John F. Kennedy appointed Eleanor Roosevelt to chair the
President's Commission on the Status of Women, a bipartisan organization whose goal was to
examine discrimination against women in the United States and to study and make
recommendations on policies designed to enable women to fulfill their potential in American
life. When the President's Commission disbanded in 1963, it issued a series of final reports
documenting, among other topics, labor policies and practices relating to women, educational
opportunities available to women, the legal status of women in American law, and services
available to women in the realms of training, counseling, and child care. In addition, the
commission recommended that states and localities establish their own commissions on the
status of women to continue research and advocacy to promote the equality of women in all
aspects of American social and political life. Today, there are approximately 270 state and local
women's commissions around the United States.
These federal, state, and local commissions have produced a wealth of primary materials
documenting conditions in the lives of American women over the second half of the twentieth
century. Reports and publications issued by these commissions provide information at a level of
depth that is not common in other primary materials available for this time period. However,
these publications have not been widely accessible, and never before have they been indexed and
made searchable. Our goal with the Women's Commission Reports is to compile in one place, for
the first time, the complete text of virtually every report on the status of women issued by these
bodies during this time period. Since its completion in September 2009, the database has
provided 90,000 pages of materials documenting women's issues over more than four decades in
all fifty states, Washington, D.C,.and a number of territories.
The database also includes the full text of the Status of Women in the States reports published by
the Institute for Women's Policy Research (IWPR). Between 1996 and 2004, the IWPR
published reports documenting the status of women in each of the fifty states. Individual copies
of these reports are also available from the IWPR directly. More information can be found on the
IWPR's website: http://www.iwpr.org.
We have also published eight essays to help users understand the context for the emergence of
state and local commissions, the construction of the database, and interpretive uses to which
these resources can be put. The following essays are accessible through the Scholar's Edition:
Thomas Dublin, "Constructing the Database of Commissions on the Status of Women"
Kathleen Laughlin, "Introduction to the Women and Social Movements State Commissions
Database"
Dorothy Sue Cobble, "The Labor Feminist Origins of the U.S. Commissions on the Status of
Women"
Marjorie Spruill, "The Conservative Challenge to Feminist Influence on State Commissions on
the Status of Women"
Cynthia Harrison, "State Commissions and Economic Security for Women"
Carrie Baker, "How Are Issues Related to Sexuality Treated in Publications of Commissions on
the Status of Women?"
Gerda Lerner, "Midwestern Leaders of the Modern Women's Movement."
Keisha Blain and Kathryn Kish Sklar, "How Did the President's Commission on the Status of
Women and Subsequent State and Local Commissions Address Issues Related to Race, 19631980?"
In addition to providing the full text of these materials, Alexander Street's Semantic Indexing
allows the information contained in the reports to be accessed and analyzed in ways never before
possible. Subjects indexed include affirmative action, crime and violence, education, economics,
housing, childcare, health services, abortion, pornography, language, jobs, maternity leave,
politics, law, disability, minority rights, and the image of women, among many others. Some of
the most valuable information in the collection is statistical and is captured in charts, graphs, and
tables, and users can search the information contained therein by x- and y-axes. Moreover,
reports can be searched across geography and time, allowing users to compare data at different
points in time or across different states.
5. Editorial Policy
A note on transcription:
To prepare our key-entered transcriptions of documents we begin with photocopies of the
original documents, whether archival manuscripts or published works. We transcribe originals as
they appear and do not correct errors in spelling or non-standard punctuation except in the case
of typographical errors in printed sources or insignificant errors in manuscript sources. Errors
have not been noted with "[sic]" except in cases where recognition of the error illuminates the
document. We have only added words occasionally to clarify the meaning of an obscure passage
and have always used brackets [ ] on such occasions. We have always used ellipses to indicate
places where we have excerpted portions from a longer document. Where we have deleted a
paragraph or more, we have inserted asterisks to mark this editing. We have also added
signatures in brackets if the original document was an internal copy of a letter and as such did
not have a signature.
We add 5,000 pages of new full-text sources annually. For the first three years these documents
included books, pamphlets, and other publications focusing on "One Hundred Years of the
Struggle for Woman Suffrage, 1830-1930." In 2007 we completed a run of the minutes of the
annual national meetings of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. In September 2009 we
completed a selection of 8,000 pages of publications of the League of Women Voters, 19202000.
6. Editorial Board
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Anne-Marie Angelo (US-UK & South Africa--(U. of Sussex)
Marilyn Booth—(Arabic Cultures--University of Oxford
Eileen Boris (US in the World--UC SB)
Marilyn Boxer (Europe--San Francisco State)
Antoinette Burton (Empire—U. of Illinois)
Jo Butterfield—(League of Nations—U. of Iowa )
Jacqueline Castledine (US in the World--U. of Massachusetts, Amherst)
Nupur Chaudhuri (South Asia--Texas Southern U.)
Francisca de Haan—(Central Europe--Central European University)
Ellen DuBois (US in the World--UCLA)
Carolyn Eichner (France and French Empire--U of Wisconsin, Milwaukee)
Cynthia Enloe – (Empire--Clark Univ.)
Carol Faulkner ( US Women--Syracuse Univ.)
Jennifer Frost (U.S. Women, U of Auckland)
Julie Gallagher (US in the World--Penn State Univ., Brandywine)
Pat Grimshaw (New Zealand, Australia--University of Melbourne)
Ellen Hartigan-O’Connor(British Empire in North America--UC Davis)
Jane Hunter (US in the World--Lewis and Clark University)
Franca Iacovetta – (Italy in the World--Toronto)
Rui Kohiyama (US, Japan--Tokyo Women’s Christian University)
Kathleen Laughlin (US in the World--Metropolitan State U., Minneapolis)
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Philippa Levine (Empire--UT Austin)
Lisa Materson (US in the World--UC Davis)
Kathleen McCarthy (US in the World--CUNY)
Annette Mevis (Women in the World--ATRIUM archives, Amsterdam)
Clare Midgley (British Empire--Sheffield Univ.)
Gail Minault (South Asia--UT Austin)
Michelle Moravec (US--Rosemont College)
Asha Islam Nayeem (Bangladesh--Univ. of Dhaka, Bangladesh)
Karen Offen—(Europe--Stanford)
Jocelyn Olcott (Mexico--Duke)
Annelise Orleck (US in the World--Dartmouth)
Fiona Paisley (Pacific Rim--Griffith University)
Rebecca Plant (US in the World--UC San Diego)
Jessica Pliley (US in the World --Texas State Univ.)
Claire Potter (US in the World--New School)
Jean Quataert (Europe in the World--SUNY Binghamton)
Barbara Reeves-Ellington (US in the World--Independent Scholar, UK)
Mary Renda (US in the World--Mt. Holyoke)
Leila Rupp (International Women’s Organizations--UCSB)
Rhonda Semple (South Asia--St. Francis Xavier, Canada)
Mrinalini Sinha (Empire--U of Michigan)
Glenda Sluga (Transnational--U of Sydney)
Marjorie Spruill (US in the World--Univ of South Carolina)
Landon Storrs (US in the World--Univ. of Iowa)
Shurlee Swain (Australia--Australian Catholic University )
Yuko Takahashi (Japan and US--Tsuda College)
Rosalyn Terborg-Penn (US in the World--Morgan State Univ.)
Jenny Thigpen (US in the World--Washington State U., Pullman)
Brandy Thomas Wells (US in the World—Ohio State Univ.)
Wang Zheng (China--Univ. of Michigan)
Judy Wu (US in the World--Ohio State Univ.)
Special Editors
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Book Review Editor:
Kathleen Laughlin, Metropolitan State University
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Digital Humanities Editor:
Michelle Moravec, Rosemont College
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News from the Archives Editor:
Tanya Zanish-Belcher
7. Project Staff
Kathryn Kish Sklar, co-editor of the web site, is Distinguished Professor of History Emerita at
the State University of New York at Binghamton. In 2005-2006 she was the Harmsworth
Professor of American History at the University of Oxford. She is the author of Florence Kelley
and the Nation's Work: The Rise of Women's Political Culture, 1830-1900 (1995) and other
books and articles on women and social movements. Her first book, Catharine Beecher: A Study
in American Domesticity (1973), analyzed how women reshaped gender identities and gender
relationships in the antebellum era. Both Catharine Beecher and Florence Kelley were awarded
the Berkshire Prize. She is currently completing a study of women and social movements in the
Progressive era, 1900-1930.
Thomas Dublin is co-editor of the web site. He serves as Bartle Distinguished Professor of
History and Co-Director of the Center for the Historical Study of Women and Gender at the State
University of New York at Binghamton. He is the author or editor of eight books including
Women at Work: The Transformation of Work and Community in Lowell, Massachusetts, 18261860 (1979), winner of the Bancroft Prize and the Merle Curti Award. His latest book, The Face
of Decline: The Pennsylvania Anthracite Region in the Twentieth Century, co-authored with
Walter Licht, received the 2006 Merle Curti Award for Social History and the Philip S. Klein
Prize.
Jessica Derleth is serving as a graduate assistant for the Women and Social Movements web
sites for 2014-2015. She is a graduate student in U.S. Women's History at the State University of
New York at Binghamton.
8. Project Contributors
Click here for details of contributors.
9. History of the Web Site
The website that appears here under the joint imprint of the Center for the Historical Study of
Women and Gender at the State University of New York, Binghamton, and Alexander Street
Press of Alexandria, Virginia, began in a senior seminar that Kathryn Sklar taught at the SUNY
Binghamton in the Spring of 1997. The course was designed to introduce advanced
undergraduates to the excitement of discovering, editing, and analyzing historical documents that
focus on women and social movements in American history. The students produced portions of
what became the website's first document projects in December 1997.
When the format of documentary projects proved extremely well matched to the new internet
media, Thomas Dublin, her colleague at SUNY Binghamton, joined her to create an innovative
website for the documentary projects, adding his knowledge of U.S. women's history and his
experience with the use of computers in historical research. With support from the National
Endowment for the Humanities, and later from Houghton Mifflin and ProQuest Information and
Learning, the Women and Social Movements website grew rapidly. In 2001, with a second NEH
grant, we began a collaboration with eleven faculty from other colleges and universities around
the country. By the end of 2002 the website offered 43 documentary projects that interpreted
about 1000 documents ranging from 1775 to 2000. The site attracted about 30,000 viewers a
month from more than ninety countries. Yet two aspects of the website were not sustainable: the
intensive labor needed to transform student work into authoritative scholarly analysis; and the
initial sources of the site's funding.
This combination of success and challenges prompted us to reconceive the Women and Social
Movements website in the Spring of 2002. Convinced that the technology and the format of the
website were ideally matched to generate new knowledge in U.S. Women's History, we decided
to encourage faculty and advanced graduate students to create document projects for the site.
That effort was remarkably successful; for more than two years we published regular additions to
the website from a wide range of scholars drawing on their specialized knowledge of women and
social movements to create documentary projects for the site. We established an Editorial Board
for the website as well as guidelines for submissions with blind peer review. In the Spring of
2002 we also began discussions with Stephen Rhind-Tutt of Alexander Street Press, which
resulted in our decision to publish jointly with ASP. This relationship has provided stability for
the website and facilitated its expansion.
In March 2004 we became a quarterly online journal and for five years added new document
projects quarterly, publishing on average eight new projects annually. Because each issue grew
in size, in 2009 we changed to a semi-annual publication schedule to give ourselves time to
prepare the extensive material that now flowed into WASM. In addition to document projects,
with each issue we also publish digitized versions of books and pamphlets related to women and
social movements in the U.S. expanding the site by about 5,000 pages a year. Initially these
volumes focused on one hundred years of the woman suffrage movement, 1830-1930, including
the six volumes of The History of Woman Suffrage (1881-1922) edited by Stanton, Anthony, and
other leaders of the woman suffrage movement and all the proceedings of the three national
conventions of anti-slavery women held in the 1830s and the national woman's rights
conventions held between 1848 and 1869. Alexander Street Press has provided detailed semantic
indexing and database searching for these and other resources on the site, greatly improving its
scholarly utility. A Dictionary of Social Movements and a Chronology of U.S. Women's History,
both especially prepared for the website, provide users unique subject access to both document
projects and full-text sources on the site. We also publish book reviews under the editorial
direction of Professor Jeanne Petit of Hope College and website reviews edited by Melanie
Shell-Weiss of Johns Hopkins University.
In addition to the continuing publication of new document projects and digitization of additional
sources, we are committed to expanding the Teaching Tools component of the website. Since
January 2001 we have published lesson ideas and document-based questions drawing on the
website's rich collection of document projects. These teaching tools—now numbering 46 in
March 2014—are now fully indexed and searchable.
In March 2007 we introduced the new, expanded Women and Social Movements in the United
States: Scholar's Edition. The new expansion of the site includes 90,000 pages of publications of
state and local Commissions on the Status of Women and Harvard University Press's landmark
five-volume Notable American Women: A Biographical Dictionary, available for the first time
in electronic form. Women and Social Movements in the United States: Scholar's Edition is
available as an upgrade to the Basic Edition. We have just completed a major new digital
archive, "Women and Social Movements, International, 1840-Present," which contains 150,000
pages of published and manuscript resources generated by women's international activism since
1840. It also includes 26 scholarly essays with further additions scheduled for Fall 2014.
Kathryn Sklar and Thomas Dublin will continue to serve as co-editors of the website and shape
its content. Along with high scholarly standards, Alexander Street Press brings unique talents to
the technical dimensions of the project. They have developed the site's new search engine,
database, semantic (keyword) indexing and design.
By adding new document projects and extensive full-text sources to the database annually, we
plan to create a rich and continually expanding resource for the ongoing study of U.S. Women's
History.
10. Reviews
Click here for reviews about the database.
11. Permissions
Click here for permissions granted for copyrighted materials used on the web site.
12. About the Center for the Historical Study of Women and Gender
Click here to go to the web site of the Center where our editorial office is housed.
13. Errata
Please report any errata to the editor at the address at the bottom of this document. There are no
known errata at this time.
14. Technical Support
You can contact us by:
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email at support@alexanderst.com
telephone toll-free on 1-800-889-5937
When reporting a problem please include your customer name, e-mail address, phone number,
domain name or IP address and that of your web proxy server if used.
15. Subscription and Free Trial Information
Women and Social Movements: Basic Edition and Scholar's Edition are available for one-time
purchase of perpetual access, or as an annual subscription. Please contact us at
sales@alexanderstreet.com if you wish to begin a subscription or to request a free 30-day trial.
16. Copyright
All materials in Women and Social Movements are protected under U.S. and International
Copyright Law. Fair use under the law permits reproduction of single copies for personal
research and private use. Further transmission, reproduction, or presentation of protected items
requires the written permission of the copyright owners.
17. Archiving
Texts produced for Women and Social Movements are considered research materials and receive
the same level of stewardship as books, paper documents, and photographs. Copies of the
database are given to all purchasing institutions, thereby ensuring that the materials are available
to subsequent generations.