This collection of primary source materials was compiled from 1969 to 1975 by the Women's History Research Center, Inc., an organization established in Berkeley, California in 1968 to provide resources to burgeoning university women's studies programs. The collection covers six broad topics within the framework of women and law, including general information on women's legal issues, politics, employment, special films on rape, prison and prostitution, and issues specific to black and minority women. Much of the content is contemporary to the collection, but historical documents can be found here as well.
Unique to this collection is its presentation of multiple perspectives on a wide range of legal issues that affect the lives of women. While most of the materials focus on women in the United States, there are categories that consider international issues and women in different countries. These texts include newspaper, magazine, and journal clippings, speech transcripts, academic and position papers, newsletters, legal test cases, films, images, surveys, and other media.
The collection also includes sources related to early equal-rights efforts and protests and the women's liberation movement. News clippings, for example, document child-care protests in Berkley, California, and protests against the media for sexism in journalism. The women's suffrage movement, anti-war protests, and demonstrations in support of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) are addressed here as well.
Also of interest to legal scholars are files related to the ACLU Women's Rights Project, which was established in 1971 by Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a Rutgers Law professor at the time. Other source materials consider laws that apply to women's access to employment and education, as well as legal cases that tested common practice, such as challenges to employee benefits and maternity leave.
This wide-ranging collection offers researchers the opportunity to study the changing roles of women in the United States and abroad, and to examine the legal underpinnings of the American feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s.
