About Women and Social Movements, International, by co-editors Kathryn Kish Sklar and Thomas Dublin.
1. About the Database
In June 2016 Alexander Street implemented a new platform—short name LAZR—that significantly increases the power and functionality of the WASI database. Experienced users of WASI may find things a bit strange at first, but we feel sure that you’ll soon agree that the new platform is a powerful and helpful addition for accessing the site’s resources. If you discover problems as you use the new platform, please contact Alexander Street and we will give the issue our prompt attention.
Women and Social Movements, International—1840 to Present is the collaborative product of five years of work by hundreds of historians, librarians, archivists, and IT professionals.
This digital archive includes 150,000 pages of conference proceedings, reports of international women's organizations, publications and web pages of women's non-governmental organizations, and letters, diaries, and memoirs of women active internationally since the mid-nineteenth century.
It also includes photographs and videos of major events and activists in the history of women’s international social movements. Finally, we have commissioned from leading contemporary scholars 30 essays exploring themes illuminated by the primary documents in the archive.
The vision for the project arose from our work as editors of Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000. After a decade of rewarding effort with that online journal, in 2007 we wanted to aid the international turn in historical studies. We became intrigued by the challenge of creating an online archive of primary sources generated by women's international activism, 1840 to the present. We decided to move ahead and try to meet the needs of scholars as well as students—to collect in depth as well as breadth.
We began by identifying leading women's organizations and events through which women's international activism was channeled. The support of an international advisory board convened at the June 2008 Berkshire Conference on Women's History at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis was crucial in defining the scope of the project and selecting appropriate organizations, topics, events and persons. Using the online catalogs of WorldCat and Reader's Guide Retrospective, we found materials that fit our selection criteria. Then we began to consult leading international archives in women's history to choose likely manuscript materials and rare published works for inclusion. To keep track of our bibliographies, we relied on Zotero software created by the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University.
Ultimately we secured about 20 percent of the database’s materials through books and serials from our university's library at the State University of New York, Binghamton. Another 55 percent of sources came from libraries around the world through interlibrary loan requests. Librarians at Binghamton helped us launch the project and remained consistently supportive during three years of hyper-active library work. About 25 percent of the documents came from manuscripts and rare books in various archives, or directly from organizations and NGO websites. Our publisher, Alexander Street Press, helped us acquire these extensive materials from archives in the United States and internationally. Throughout this process ASP staff maintained the high scholarly standards for which the press is well known. As the work proceeded we needed to reach beyond the normal ILL channels and made numerous phone calls directly to librarians at lending institutions to confirm their holdings and arrange for interlibrary loans. On several occasions, this coordination revealed rare proceedings that were not listed in online catalogs. Some institutions provided rare works outside the formal interlibrary loan process. Others made arrangements to scan or photocopy works that could not be loaned. The archive was considerably enhanced by their generous assistance.
Because we collected extensively from the decades after 1950, the vast majority of materials in the archive are protected by copyright. Much of our work assembling the archive was devoted to securing the permissions of copyright holders to reprint the materials. Women's organizations were the principal copyright holders we contacted. More than half the published material in the archive was published outside the United States. Through email, correspondence, and phone calls to locations around the world, we contacted staff and officers of women's organizations as well as authors, heirs of authors, and publishers. We are especially grateful for the generosity of those now directing women's international organizations for their permission to reprint compelling documents that will permit scholars and students to explore the past century and a half of women's international activism. The following list is of organizations and individuals who granted us permissions.
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The Aletta Institute for Women's History, Amsterdam |
International Women's Rights Action Watch, Minneapolis, Minn. International Women's Tribune Centre, New York, N.Y. International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs, Copenhagen Devaki Jain, New Delhi, India Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, Md. Barbara Johnson Josephine Butler Society, Canterbury, United Kingdom Journal of Home Economics Kumarian Press, Sterling, Va. Nella Las, Jerusalem Lady Deirdre Curteis Laura Lederer Latin American and Caribbean Women's Health Network, Santiago, Chile Palgrave Macmillan Professor Elsa Leo-Rhynie, University of the West Indies Leyden Lane, Chatham, MA Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, Philadelphia, Penn. MADRE, New York, N.,Y. Marijke Peters, Amsterdam Mary McLeod Buthune Council House NHS Massachusetts Review, Amherst, Mass. Medical Women's International Association, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada Middle East Institute, Washington, D.C. Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark, Copenhagen The Nation, New York, N.Y. National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A., New York National Council of Jewish Women, New York, N.Y. National Council of Women, New York, N.Y. National Council of Catholic Women, Arlington, Va. National League of Women Voters, Washington, D.C. National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh National Society for Human Rights, Namibia Historic National Woman's Party, Washington, D.C. The Network of East-West Women, Gdansk, Poland Oberlin College Archives, Oberlin, Ohio Office for Women, Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, Canberra, Australia Ohio Historical Society, Columbus, Ohio Ohio State University Press, Columbus, Ohio Orbis Books, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers, Maryknoll, N.Y. Organization of American States, Washington D.C. Pan-Pacific and South East Asia Women's Association, Independent Samoa Philippine Commission on Women, Manila Professor Judy Polumbaum, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa Population Council, New York, N.Y. Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University, New York, N.Y. Reformed Church in America, Grand Rapids, Mich. Diana E. H. Russell, Berkeley, Calif. Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. Socialist International Women, London Solidarity Center, AFL-CIO, Washington, D.C. Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Mass. St. Joan's Alliance, Brussels Stanley Foundation, Muscatine, Ia. Swarthmore College Peace Collection, Swarthmore, Penn. The Christian Century, Chicago, IL The Streetfeet Women Professor Meredeth Turshen, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N.J. UCLA African Studies Center, Los Angeles, Calif. United Nations, New York, N.Y. United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia United Nations Non-Governmental Liaison Service, Geneva University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Ill. University of Illinois Press, Champaign, Ill. Nicole Van de Ven, Sint Pieters-Woluwe, Belgium War on Want, London Tamiment Library, New York, NY The Way, Oxford, United Kingdom Thomas G. Weiss, CUNY Graduate Center, New York, N.Y. Univ. of Delaware Archives and Records Management Univ. of Delaware Press WFP Library, World Food Programme, Rome Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, N.Y. Women on Waves, Amsterdam Woman's Board of Missions, Cleveland, OH Woman's Christian Temperance Union, Evanston, Ill. Women's Board of Foreign Missions, Grand Rapids, MI Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, Geneva Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, Minnesota Metro Branch Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, U.S. Section Women's International Zionist Organization, Tel Aviv, Israel World Council of Churches, Geneva World Health Organization, Geneva World YWCA, Geneva Annie Wright, Amsterdam Zed Books, London |
Users of the database may read, print, and use for research and teaching all the documents in the database. However, if they desire to reprint, quote in a publication, or post on the internet any copyrighted documents from the database, they will need to contact the copyholders directly and secure permission for such use. We at the Women and Social Movements websites cannot grant such permission.
With a combination of funding from Alexander Street Press and SUNY Binghamton, we assembled a talented staff of graduate students—Denise Ireton, Jessie Frazier, Carol Linskey, Jennifer Tomas, and Kelly Marino—all of whom are writing dissertations on topics related to women's social movements. They populated the fields of the Zotero database, generated Excel spreadsheets, selected and acquired documents to be considered for inclusion, improved the database's indexing, and supervised the work flow of undergraduate students who scanned documents. (Click here for a full list of graduate and undergraduate students who helped create the archive.)
Throughout our work we benefited greatly from the recommendations of members of our scholarly Advisory Board. By August 2010 the board had grown to more than 130 members, drawn from 30 countries. That month we met with board members at a conference of the International Federation for Research in Women's History at the Aletta Institute in Amsterdam. In October 2010 we posted a penultimate version of the archive online in the form of about fifty bibliographies of items arranged by organizations, events and global regions. Reviews by Advisory Board members of the bibliographies helped us fill in gaps and eliminate redundancies as we selected final items for the archive. (Click here for Advisory Board members.)
We published the first release of the archive in January 2011 and with the June 2016 we published the last few documents and enhanced the indexing and functionality of the archive and database.
2. How to Cite Sources from WASI International
Because WASI 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:
- author
- title of document (for e.g. a speech or a newspaper article)
- author and title of original source (for e.g., a newspaper or a book).
- original place of publication, publisher, and date of publication
- in Kathryn Kish Sklar and Thomas Dublin, eds., Women and Social Movements, International—1840 to Present
- accessed through [name of subscribing library]
- at [URL of home page of subscribing library]
- accessed [give date].
3. WASM International Advisory Board
Advisory Board members come from 30 countries.
| Alexandrova, Nadelja | University of Sofia, Bulgaria | Bulgaria |
| Allen, Ann Taylor | University of Louisville | USA |
| Allen, Margaret | University of Adelaide | Australia |
| Antler, Joyce | Brandeis University | USA |
| Bader-Zaar, Brigitta | University of Vienna | Austria |
| Badran, Margot | Northwestern University | USA |
| Bandhauer-Schoeffmann, Irene | University of Vienna | Austria |
| Barnes, Sherri | UC, Santa Barbara | USA |
| Berger,Iris | SUNY Albany | USA |
| Bloch, Avital | University of Colima | Mexico |
| Blom, Ida | University of Bergen | Norway |
| Bonfiglioli, Chiara | Utrecht University | Netherlands |
| Boris, Eileen | UC, Santa Barbara | USA |
| Bosch, Mineke | Groningen University | Netherlands |
| Boxer, Marilyn J. | San Francisco State University | USA |
| Brookes, Barbara | University of Otago | New Zealand |
| Butterfield, Jo | University of Iowa | USA |
| Caine, Barbara | Monash University | Australia |
| Camiscioli, Elisa | SUNY, Binghamton | USA |
| Campbell, Lara | Simon Fraser University | Canada |
| Carlier, Julie | Ghent University | Belgium |
| Chung, Hyun-Back | Sungkyunkwan University, Seoul | South Korea |
| Cîrstocea, Ioana | CNRS, National Center for Scientific Research, Strasbourg | France |
| Clowes, Lindsay | University of Western Cape | South Africa |
| Cobble, Dorothy Sue | Rutgers University | USA |
| Cott, Nancy | Harvard University | USA |
| Cova, Anne | University of Lisbon | Portugal |
| Cowling, Camillia | Cândido Mendes University, Rio de Janeiro | Brazil |
| Dalakoura, Katerina | University of Crete | Greece |
| Daskalova, Krassimira | University of Sofia | Bulgaria |
| de Haan, Francisca | Central European University, Budapest | Hungary |
| Dojcinovic, Biljana | University of Belgrade | Serbia |
| Doress-Worters, Paula | Brandeis University | USA |
| DuBois, Ellen | UCLA | USA |
| Duncan, Jennifer S. | Bridgewater College | USA |
| Eichner, Carolyn | University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee | USA |
| Elgan, Elisabeth | Sodertorn University College | Sweden |
| Enloe, Cynthia | Clark University | USA |
| Falierou, Anastassia | School for Advanced Studies, Paris | France |
| Faulkner, Carol | Syracuse University | USA |
| Florin, Christina | Stockholm University | Sweden |
| Fonow, Mary | Arizona State University | USA |
| Formaglio, Cécile | University of Angers | France |
| Fournaraki, Eleni | University of Crete | Greece |
| Fraser, Arvonne | Minneapolis, Minn. | USA |
| Frost, Jennifer | Auckland University | New Zealand |
| Garner, Karen | Empire State College | USA |
| Gaucher, Julie | University of Lyons | France |
| Gilmore, Stephanie | Dickinson College | USA |
| Gold, Carol | Unversity of Alaska | USA |
| Goodman, Joyce | University of Winchester | UK |
| Gouda, Frances | Amsterdam University | Netherlands |
| Grimshaw, Patricia | University of Melbourne | Australia |
| Gwinn, Kristen | Independent Scholar | USA |
| Haggis, Jane | Flinders University | Australia |
| Henold, Mary | University of Roanoke | USA |
| Hervé, Florence | Independent Researcher, Düsseldorf | Germany |
| Hunter, Jane | Lewis and Clark University | USA |
| Iacovetta, Franca | University of Toronto | Canada |
| Ishii, Noriko | Otsuma Women's University | Japan |
| Janke, Linda | Community College | USA |
| Karakaya-Stump, Ayfer | Cornell University & Harvard University | USA |
| Kohiyama, Rui | Tokyo Women's Christian University | Japan |
| Kolly, Berengere | University of Paris | France |
| Kolmerten, Carol | Hood College | USA |
| Kuhlman, Erika | Idaho State University | USA |
| Lake, Marilyn | LaTrobe University | Australia |
| Laughlin, Kathleen | Metropolitan State University | USA |
| Laut, Julie | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign | USA |
| Leslie, Grace | Yale University | USA |
| Limoncelli, Stephanie | Loyola Marymount University | USA |
| López, Carolina Rodríguez | Complutense University of Madrid | Spain |
| Maffi, Irene | University of Lausanne | Switzerland |
| Malleier, Elisabeth | University of Vienna | Austria |
| McAlister, Melanie | George Washington University | USA |
| McCune, Mary | SUNY, Oswego | USA |
| McFadden, Margaret | Appalachian State University | USA |
| Mevis, Annette | Aletta Institute, Amsterdam | Netherlands |
| Midgley, Clare | Sheffield Hallam University | UK |
| Mishra, Yuthika | Vivekananda College, Delhi | India |
| Moses, Claire | University of Maryland | USA |
| Natchkova, Nora | University of Lausanne | Switzerland |
| Navarro, Marysa | Dartmouth College | USA |
| Nazarska, Georgeta | State University of Library Studies, Sofia | Bulgaria |
| Naznin, Mir Zahida | Jahangirnagar University | Bangladesh |
| Neunsinger, Silke | Labour Movement Archives and Library, Stockholm | Sweden |
| Nijhawan, Shobna | York University, Toronto | Canada |
| Novikova, Natalia | Yaroslavl State Pedagogical University | Russia |
| Oertzen, Christine von | Max Planck Institute, Berlin | Germany |
| Offen, Karen | Stanford University | USA |
| Olcott, Jocelyn H. | Duke University | USA |
| Paisley, Fiona | Griffith University, Brisbane | Australia |
| Partington, John S. | Freelance historian | UK |
| Patterson, Tiffany | Vanderbilt University | USA |
| Perry, Elisabeth | St. Louis University | USA |
| Petit, Jeanne | Hope College | USA |
| Possing, Birgitte | Danish National Archives | Denmark |
| Prieto, Laura R. | Simmons College, Boston | USA |
| Purvis, June | University of Portsmouth | UK |
| Pushkareva, Natalia | Russian Academy of Sciences | Russia |
| Quataert, Jean | SUNY, Binghamton | USA |
| Rapp, Anne | DePaul University | USA |
| Redmon, Sherrill | Sophia Smith Collection | USA |
| Reeves-Ellington, Barbara | Siena College | USA |
| Renda, Mary | Mount Holyoke College | USA |
| Ribberink, Anneke | Free University, Amsterdam | Netherlands |
| Roces, Mina | University of New South Wales, Sydney | Australia |
| Rogers, Rebecca | Paris Decartes University | France |
| Rosen, Ruth | UC, Berkeley | USA |
| Rosenberg, Emily | UC, Irvine | USA |
| Roth, Benita | SUNY, Binghamton | USA |
| Rupp, Leila | UC, Santa Barbara | USA |
| Ruthchild, Rochelle Goldberg | Harvard University | USA |
| Sangster, Joan | Trent University | Canada |
| Sarkar, Tanika | Jawaharlal Nejru University | India |
| Schuler, Anja | University of Hedelberg | Germany |
| Schwalm, Leslie A. | University of Iowa | USA |
| Shemo, Connie | SUNY, Plattsburgh | USA |
| Sluga, Glenda | University of Sydney | Australia |
| Spruill, Marjorie | University of South Carolina | USA |
| Swain, Shurlee | Australian Catholic University | Australia |
| Takahashi, Yuko | Tsuda University | Japan |
| Threlkeld, Megan | Denison University, Granville | USA |
| Torres San Martin, Patricia | University of Guadalajara | Mexico |
| van der Spuy, Patricia | Castleton State College, Vermont | USA |
| van, Dijk, Suzan | Huygens Instituut KNAW, the Hague | Netherlands |
| Vezzosi, Elisabeth | University of Trieste | Italy |
| Waaldijk, Berteke | Utrecht University | Netherlands |
| Wamsley, Sue | Kent State University | USA |
| Wernitznig, Dagmar | University of Oxford | UK |
| Wheeler, Leigh Ann | SUNY, Binghamton | USA |
| Wieringa, Saskia | Amsterdam University | Netherlands |
| Wikander, Ulla | Stockhold University | Sweden |
| Wils, Kaat | Catholic University Leuven | Belgium |
| Wilson, Ann Marie | Harvard University | USA |
| Woollacott, Angela | Australian National University | Australia |
| Yamaguchi, Kiyoko | Chinese University of Hong Kong | China |
| Yasutake, Rumi | Konan University | Japan |
| Zimmermann, Susan | Central European University, Budapest | Hungary |
| Zinsser, Judith P. | Miami University, Ohio | USA |
4. Scholarly Reviews of the Database
For a review of Women and Social Movements International in History Workshop Online, click here. Our second review came in the Journal of American History, click here. Christy Snider also reviewed the website in Peace & Change 39:4 (October 2014), 564-66, click here, and finally, a fourth review, written by Patrick Manning, is available online here.
5. Project Staff
Kathryn Kish Sklar, co-editor of the web site, is Distinguished Professor of History Emerita and Founding Director of the Center for the Historical Study of Women and Gender 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 her books on Catharine Beecher and Florence Kelley were awarded the Berkshire Conference 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, 1826-1860 (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.
Denise Ireton served as the Managing Editor of the digital archive, "Women and Social Movements, International—1840 to Present." She completed her Ph.D at SUNY Binghamton, with a dissertation entitled, “’Responsible to the Peoples of the World’: Activist Women, Peace Efforts, and International Citizenship, 1890-1940,”
Jessie Frazier served as Project Coordinator on the digital archive, "Women and Social Movements, International—1840 to Present." She completed her Ph.D. at SUNY Binghamton, with a dissertation entitled, "Making Connections in Viet Nam: Transnational U.S. Women Activists and the Meanings of Race, Gender, and Revolution, 1965-1975.”
Carol Linskey served as Project Coordinator on the digital archive, "Women and Social Movements, International—1840 to Present." She earned her Ph.D. in U.S. Women's History at SUNY Binghamton in 2013 for a dissertation entitled, "Invisible Politics: Dorothy Kenyon and Women’s Internationalism, 1930s-1950."
Jennifer Tomas served in 2011-2012 as a graduate assistant for the Women and Social Movements web sites. In Spring 2012 she completed her dissertation at SUNY Binghamton entitled, "The Women’s History Movement in the United States: Professional and Political Roots of the Field, 1922 to 1987." She is an Assistant Professor of History at Piedmont Virginia Community College.
Kelly Marino served in 2012-2013 as a graduate assistant for the Women and Social Movements web sites. She earned her Ph.D. in U.S. Women’s History at SUNY Binghamton, with a dissertation entitled, "Votes for College Women: Women’s Suffrage and Higher Education in Modern America, 1900-1960."
6. About the Center for the Historical Study of Women and Gender
Click here for the web site of the Center for the Historical Study of Women and Gender at SUNY Binghamton, where the editorial work for this digital archive was carried out.
7. 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.
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10. Copyright
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These digitized collections are accessible for education and research. The editors have identified and contacted copyright holders and have secured permissions to reprint items in the archive from more than two hundred publishers, archives, libraries, organizations, and individuals. On rare occasions we were not able to identify and contact appropriate persons and we are eager to hear from those rights owners. Upon request, we'll remove material from public view while we address a rights issue.
11. Archiving
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