CAWHC
CHICAGO AREA WOMEN’S HISTORY COUNCIL
2109 N. Humboldt Blvd., Chicago, IL 60647
Phone: 773-227-0093 Fax: 773-235-9296
www.cawhc.org
Documenting the Women’s Movement in Chicago, 1960s-1980s
A Chicago Area Women’s History Council Project
Scope
For the purposes of our project we define this movement as the broad and diverse range of
ideologies, constituencies, strategies, organizations and policies that challenged inequalities in our
society based on gender, beginning in the early 1960s and continuing to the present.
Our project aims to identify significant personalities, issues, actions, organizations, institutions,
legislative initiatives, cultural innovations and other elements that contributed to social, cultural,
political and legal change during this period. The project will embrace feminism in all of its
diversity and contradictions including advocates of equal rights, equal opportunity, women’s
liberation, social feminism, lesbian feminism, radical, socialist and liberal feminism, and the work of
feminist theologians and women religious. It will take a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, multi-racial
approach to movement issues. In addition it will consider conservative aspects of the movement
that contributed to a backlash against feminism during certain periods.
Although the Second Wave of the Women’s Movement is generally considered to be in decline by the
1980s, our project will also include aspects of the revival of feminism in more recent times, known
as the Third Wave.
The focus of our project is the Chicago area, defined generally as the city proper and its immediate
surrounding communities.
Strategies
The role of the Chicago Area Women’s History Council in this project is to serve as a central registry
for information about resources and activities, and as a catalyst for projects undertaken by the
community.
CAWHC will begin the project with a survey of relevant archival resources in the Chicago area. This
effort will be aided by archivists in repositories throughout the community. During this phase we
will also identify repositories that are interested in, and able to, acquire Second Wave archival
material that surface during the course of the project.
CAWHC will also create a central database that will record information about archival resources,
organizations, personalities, oral history interviews, etc. This information will be captured by a
flexible, searchable database program that will eventually be posted on our website, available to all.
Long-range activities of the project include: supporting oral history interviews with significant
personalities in the movement, developing guidelines for identifying archival material in the
community, supporting community based programs designed to highlight local Second Wave leaders
and organizations, and developing a website where ongoing programs and projects can be identified
and promoted.
The substance of this project will be individual projects designed by members of the academic
community and undertaken by colleagues, students or community members. We welcome the
opportunity to discuss any ideas you may have for projects that are relevant to your interests or
local context.