History

Women’s History

Documents

• Enheduanna: Hymns to Inana (ca. 2250 BCE)
• Divine Birth and Coronation Inscriptions of Hatshepsut (1473 BCE)
• Ban Zhao: Lessons for a Woman (ca. 80)
• Gospel According to Mary Magdalene (ca. 120–180)
• The Pilgrimage of Etheria (ca. 380)
• Anna Comnena: The Alexiad (ca. 1148)
• The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus (1565)
• Virginia's Act XII: Negro Women's Children to Serve according to the Condition of the Mother (1662)
• Ann Putnam's Confession (1706)
• Catherine II of Russia: The Grand Instructions to the Commissioners (1767)
• Abigail Adams: Letter to John Adams (1774)
• Abigail Adams: “Remember the Ladies” Letter to John Adams (1776)
• Abigail Adams: Letter to John Quincy Adams (1780)
• Abigail Adams: Letter to Lucy Cranch (1784)
• Olympe de Gouges: Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen (1791)
• Mary Wollstonecraft: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792)
• Abigail Adams: Letter to Thomas Boylston Adams (ca. 1796)
• Organizational Records of the Dorcas Society of Cincinnati (1816-1924)
• Germaine de Staël: Considerations on the Principal Events of the French Revolution (1818)
• Margaret Fuller: "A Short Essay on Critics" (1840)
• Margaret Fuller: Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 (1844)
• Margaret Fuller: Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845)
• Seneca Falls Convention Declaration of Sentiments (1848)
• Sojourner Truth: "Ain't I a Woman?" (1851)
• Elizabeth Cady Stanton's Address to the New York Legislature (1854)
• Caroline Norton: Letter to the Queen on Lord Chancellor Cranworth’s Marriage and Divorce Bill (1855)
• Queen Victoria: Proclamation concerning India (1858)
• Elizabeth Cady Stanton's Speech for the Anniversary of the American Anti-Slavery Society (1860)
• Harriet Jacobs: Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861)
• Victoria Woodhull: "'And the Truth Shall Make You Free'" (1871)
• Victoria Woodhull: Lecture on Constitutional Equality (1871)
• Susan B. Anthony: Letters concerning Casting a Vote in the 1872 Federal Election (ca. 1872)
• Susan B. Anthony: "Is It a Crime for a Citizen of the United States to Vote?" (1873)
• Mary Baker Eddy: Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (1875)
• Anna Julia Cooper: "Womanhood: A Vital Element in the Regeneration and Progress of a Race" (1886)
• Nellie Bly: Ten Days in a Mad-House (1887)
• Pandita Ramabai: The High-Caste Hindu Woman (1888)
• Helena Blavatsky: The Secret Doctrine (1888)
• Jane Addams: "The Subjective Necessity for Social Settlements" (1892)
• Elizabeth Cady Stanton's "Solitude of Self" (1892)
• Ida B. Wells: "Eight Men Lynched" (1892)
• Frances Willard: Address before the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (1893)
• Ida B. Wells: The Red Record (1895)
• Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin: "Address to the First National Conference of Colored Women" (1895)
• Jane Addams: "A Modern Lear" (1896)
• Susan B. Anthony: "The Status of Woman, Past, Present, and Future" (1897)
• Mary Church Terrell: "The Progress of Colored Women" (1898)
• Mary Kingsley: West African Studies (1899)
• Ida B. Wells: "Lynch Law in America" (1900)
• Ida B. Wells: "Lynching and the Excuse for It" (1901)
• Clara Barton: A Story of the Red Cross (1904)
• Ida B. Wells: "Booker T. Washington and His Critics" (1904)
• Jane Addams: "Passing of the War Virtues" (1907)
• Ida B. Wells: "Lynching: Our National Crime" (1909)
• Jane Addams: "Why Women Should Vote" (1910)
• Margaret Sanger's "Sexual Impulse-Part II" (1912)
• Margaret Sanger's "The Prevention of Conception" (1914)
• Alice Paul: Testimony before the House Judiciary Committee (1915)
• Emma Goldman: “The Philosophy of Atheism” (1916)
• Margaret Sanger's Hotel Brevoort Speech (1916)
• Emma Goldman: "Anarchism: What It Really Stands For" (1917)
• Emma Goldman: "Marriage and Love" (1917)
• Emma Goldman: "The Psychology of Political Violence" (1917)
• Emma Goldman: Speech against Conscription and War (1917)
• Margaret Sanger's “Birth Control and Racial Betterment” (1919)
• Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (1920)
• Mary Harris Jones: The Autobiography of Mother Jones (1925)
• Alice Moore Dunbar-Nelson: "The Negro Woman and the Ballot" (1927)
• Eleanor Roosevelt: "Women Must Learn to Play the Game as Men Do" (1928)
• Frances Perkins's "Social Insurance for U.S." Radio Address (1935)
• Eleanor Roosevelt: Resignation from the Daughters of the American Revolution (1939)
• Mary McLeod Bethune: "What Does American Democracy Mean to Me?" (1939)
• Frances Perkins's "What You Really Want Is an Autopsy" (1940)
• Frances Perkins's "City Diets and Democracy" (1941)
• Frances Perkins's "Three Decades: A History of the Department of Labor" (1943)
• Eleanor Roosevelt: "The Struggle for Human Rights" (1948)
• Marian Anderson: My Lord, What a Morning (1956)
• Eleanor Roosevelt: “In Your Hands” (1958)
• Ella Baker: "Bigger than a Hamburger" (1960)
• Betty Friedan: The Feminine Mystique (1963)
• Equal Pay Act (1963)
• Fannie Lou Hamer: Testimony at the Democratic National Convention (1964)
• Executive Order 11246: Equal Employment Opportunity (1965)
• “Sex and Caste” (1965)
• "The SCUM Manifesto" (1968)
• Ella Baker: "The Black Woman in the Civil Rights Struggle" (1969)
• Gloria Steinem: “Living the Revolution” (1970)
• Ella Baker: "Developing Community Leadership" (1970)
• Shirley Chisholm: Speech in Favor of the Equal Rights Amendment (1970)
• Angela Davis: "Political Prisoners, Prisons, and Black Liberation" (1971)
• Shirley Chisholm: Announcement of Candidacy for the Democratic Nomination for President (1972)
• Equal Rights Amendment (1972)
• "Conversations with Alice Paul: Woman Suffrage and the Equal Rights Amendment" (1972)
• Roe v. Wade (1973)
• Shirley Chisholm: "The Black Woman in Contemporary America" (1974)
• Barbara Jordan's "The Constitutional Basis for Impeachment" (1974)
• Barbara Jordan's "Who Then Will Speak for the Common Good?" (1976)
• "Ella Baker: Organizing for Civil Rights" (1980)
• Sandra Day O'Connor: Opinion in Webster v. Reproductive Health Services (1989)
• Webster v. Reproductive Health Services (1989)
• Sandra Day O'Connor: Opinion in Metro Broadcasting, Inc. v. Federal Communications Commission (1990)
• Aung San Suu Kyi: “Freedom from Fear” (1991)
• Anita Hill: Opening Statement at the Senate Confirmation Hearing of Clarence Thomas (1991)
• Barbara Jordan's "Change: From What to What?" (1992)
• Ruth Bader Ginsburg's Opinion in United States v. Virginia (1996)
• Ruth Bader Ginsburg's Opinion in Friends of the Earth, Inc. et al. v. Laidlaw Environmental Services (2000)
• Ruth Bader Ginsburg's Opinion in Stenberg, Attorney General of Nebraska, et al. v. Carhart (2000)
• Condoleezza Rice's Address to the Republican National Convention (2000)
• Condoleezza Rice's Keynote Address at the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum (2000)
• Sandra Day O'Connor: Opinion in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris (2002)
• Sandra Day O'Connor: Opinion in Grutter v. Bollinger (2003)
• Ruth Bader Ginsburg's Opinion in Eldred v. Ashcroft (2003)
• Wangari Maathai: Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech (2004)
• Condoleezza Rice's "International Support for Iraqi Democracy" (2005)
• Condoleezza Rice: "Transformational Diplomacy" (2006)