A new Library of Congress exhibition, "Shall Not Be Denied: Women Fight for the Vote", features handwritten letters, speeches, photographs and scrapbooks of the American suffragists who persisted for more than 70 years to win voting rights for women. Explore the exhibition.

Books & Ebooks available through the SPC Libraries

Library Online - Search for books and e-books available at SPC. Print books from other SPC campuses and Florida colleges will be sent to the campus you select if you click on "Request."

American Women's History: a Very Short Introduction by Susan Ware
ISBN: 9780199328338
Publication Date: 2015-05-01
From Anne Bradstreet to Ida B. Wells to Eleanor Roosevelt, this Very Short Introduction recognizes women as a force in American history and, more importantly, tells women's history as American history.
Book of Awesome Writers by Becca Anderson
ISBN: 9781642501230
Publication Date: 2020-03-17
From the first recorded writer to current bestsellers, Becca Anderson takes us through time and highlights women who have left their mark on the literary world. This expansive compilation of women writers is a chance to delve deeper into the lives and works of renowned authors and learn about some lesser known greats, as well. Some of the many women writers you will love learning about are: Maya Angelou, Jane Austen, Judy Blume, Rachel Carson, Nadine Gordimer, Margaret Mead, Joyce Carol Oates, and many, many more.
The Boundaries of Her Body by Debran Rowland
ISBN: 9781572483682
Publication Date: 2004-08-01
Chicago-based writer, artist, and civil rights attorney Rowland covers the period from the 1600's to the early 1900s in the first section, then examines developments in the 20th century in a long second section. Final sections look at the politics of female adolescence and violence and women.
Lifting as we climb: Black women's battle for the ballot box. by Evette, Dionne
ISBN: 9780451481566
Publication Date: 2020
This is the overlooked story of black women as a force in the suffrage movement when fellow suffragists did not accept them as equal partners in the struggle.
Lighting the Fires of Freedom by Janet Dewart Bell
ISBN: 9781620973363
Publication Date: 2018-04-01
Recommended by The New York Times, The Washington Post, Book Riot and Autostraddle Nominated for a 2019 NAACP Image Award, a groundbreaking collection of profiles of African American women leaders in the twentieth-century fight for civil rights.
U.S. Women's History by Leslie Brown (Editor)
ISBN: 9780813575841
Publication Date: 2017-01-25
Spanning the antebellum era to the present day, these essays vividly convey the long histories and ongoing relevance of topics ranging from women's immigration to incarceration, from acts of cross-dressing to the activism of feminist mothers. This volume thus not only untangles the threads of the sisterhood mythos, it weaves them into a multi-textured and multi-hued tapestry that reflects the breadth and diversity of U.S. women's history.

PRINT BOOKS

The Book of Awesome Women by Becca Anderson; Ntozake Shange (Preface by); Vicki Leon (Foreword by)
ISBN: 9781633535831
Publication Date: 2017-07-25
Women have always been strong, true sheroes, oftentimes unacknowledged. As we shake off the last traces of a major patriarchal hangover, women are coming into their own. The Book of Awesome Women paints 200 portraits of powerful and inspiring role models for women and girls poised to become super women of the future.
Feminism 3.0 by Nadia Abushanab Higgins
ISBN: 9781467761475
Publication Date: 2016-01-01
While most people say they believe in equal rights, the word feminism--America's new F-word--makes people uncomfortable. Explore the history of US feminism through pioneers such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Betty Friedan, Shirley Chisholm, and Gloria Steinem. Meet modern leaders such as Rebecca Walker and Julie Zeilinger, who are striving to empower women at work, in government, at home--and in cultural and personal arenas.
Half the Sky by Nicholas D. Kristof; Sheryl WuDunn
ISBN: 9780307267146
Publication Date: 2009-09-08
From two of our most fiercely moral voices, a passionate call to arms against our era's most pervasive human rights violation: the oppression of women and girls in the developing world. With Pulitzer Prize winners Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn as our guides, we undertake an odyssey through Africa and Asia to meet the extraordinary women struggling there,
A History of the Birth Control Movement in America by Peter C. Engelman
ISBN: 9780313365096
Publication Date: 2011-04-19
This narrative history of one of the most far-reaching social movements in the 20th century shows how it defied the law and made the use of contraception an acceptable social practice--and a necessary component of modern healthcare.
Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
ISBN: 1400041597
Publication Date: 2007-09-04
Well-behaved women seldom make history. Today those words appear almost everywhere, on T-shirts, mugs, bumper stickers, plaques, greeting cards, and more. But what do they really mean? In this engrossing volume, Laurel Ulrich goes far beyond the slogan she inadvertently created and explores what it means to make history.
Women and the Vote by Jad Adams
ISBN: 9780198706854
Publication Date: 2016-06-14
Before 1893 no woman anywhere in the world had the vote in a national election. A hundred years later almost all countries had enfranchised women. The first genuinely global history of women and the vote, it takes the story of women in politics from the earliest times to the present day, revealing startling new connections across time and national boundaries - from Europe and North America to Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Muslim world post-9/11.

Databases

Women's History is an interdisciplinary topic. Broad search terms or keywords may be "women," "women's history" or "women's studies." Narrower search term strategies may use the word "women" and many other topics such as "business," "soccer" or "writer."

Academic Search Complete Academic Search Complete, designed specifically for academic institutions, is the world's most valuable and comprehensive scholarly, multi-disciplinary full-text database, with more than 5,300 full-text periodicals, including 4,400 peer-reviewed journals. In addition to full text, this database offers indexing and abstracts for more than 9,300 journals and a total of 10,900 publications including monographs, reports, conference proceedings, etc. The database features PDF content going back as far as 1865, with the majority of full text titles in native (searchable) PDF format. Funded by: Statewide Allocation
History Reference Center History Reference Center offers full text from more than 750 history reference books and encyclopedias, and cover-to-cover full text from nearly 60 history magazines. Further, the database contains 58,000 historical documents; 43,000 biographies of historical figures; more than 12,000 historical photos and maps; and 87 hours of historical film and video. Funded by: Statewide Allocation
JSTOR Access back issues of core journals in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences. Over 700 titles available. Funded by: Statewide Allocation
Biography (Gale in Context) Online experience for those seeking contextual information on the world's most influential people. The new solution merges Gale's authoritative reference content (including Lives & Perspectives) with periodicals and multimedia organized into a user-friendly portal experience while also allowing users to search for people based on name, occupation, nationality, ethnicity, birth/death dates and places, or gender as well as keyword and full text. Funded by: Statewide Allocation

Films on Demand

Search Films on Demand for nonfiction videos.

Alene Duerk, First Woman to Make Admiral
Tells the story of Alene B. Duerk, the first woman to earn the rank of Admiral in the U.S. Navy.. Admiral Duerk served in World War II and during the Korean and Vietnam Wars. (9:14 min.)
And She Could Be Next
And She Could Be Next tells the story of a defiant movement of women of color who are transforming American politics from the ground up. The documentary series, filmed from 2018 through 2019, follows forward-thinking candidates and organizers across the country, asking whether democracy itself can be preserved —and made stronger— by those most marginalized.
Global Issues: Women's Rights
This program contextualizes that struggle by comparing women’s rights in the U.S. with the status of women in China, Afghanistan, and Kenya. Hopeful signs such as rising levels of education for girls, female representation in government, and business opportunities for women are contrasted with the continuing practice of age-old antithetical abuses that have yet to be eliminated—nonconsensual marriage and severe domestic violence, to name two—and the demoralizing effect of seeing hard-won rights overturned.
Ida B. Wells, A Passion for Justice
Though virtually forgotten today, Ida B. Wells-Barnett was a household name in black America during much of her lifetime (1863-1931). This film is a stirring biography of a crusading journalist, anti-lynching campaigner, and black suffragette during the most repressive years of the Jim Crow period.
The Vote
This program traces the rise of suffrage militancy, a direct-action approach to politics inspired by Britain’s notoriously militant suffragettes. By 1911, “votes for women” had become, as one journalist noted, “the three small words which constitute the biggest question in the world today.” While galvanizing to many, such radical action was also divisive. Produced by PBS.

Journals

Search of a list of journals on this topic or specific journals available through SPC Libraries.

Women's Studies
Articles, review articles, poetry, short fiction, film and book reviews of scholarship and criticism about women in the fields of literature, history, art, sociology, law, political science, economics, anthropology and the sciences.
Frontiers: A Journal of Women's Studies
Original articles covering contemporary and historical social issues in women's studies.
Journal of International Women's Studies
A scholarly publication providing international coverage and analysis of women's studies, with particular respect to the relationship between theory and activism.
Journal of Women's History
A quarterly journal publishing new research in international women's history. Promotes scholarship about women in all time periods from multiple perspectives and does not represent a single interpretation of ""feminism."" Includes articles based on original empirical research as well as reflections on conceptual, theoretical, and methodological issues in women's history.

Suggested Internet Resources

Women's History Month
March is Women's History Month
The Library of Congress, National Archives and Records Administration, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Gallery of Art, National Park Service, Smithsonian Institution and United States Holocaust Memorial Museum join in commemorating and encouraging the study, observance and celebration of the vital role of women in American history.
Feminist Periodicals
An open access repository of digitized contents pages of 150 academic journals and pop culture magazines for researchers and scholars to view what is currently being published in the field of Gender and Women's Studies.
National Museum of Women in the Arts
Spanning over six centuries from the Renaissance to today, NMWA’s collection includes works by more than 1,000 nationally and internationally renowned artists.
National Women's History Museum
"Our mission is to tell the stories of women who transformed our nation. We will do that through a growing state-of-the-art online presence and a futre physical museum to educate, inspire, empower, shape the future, and provide a complete view of American History."
National Women's Studies Association
Established in 1977, the National Women's Studies Association has as one of its primary objectives promoting and supporting the production and dissemination of knowledge about women and gender through teaching, learning, research and service in academic and other settings.
Nobel Prize Awarded Women
The Nobel Prize and Prize in Economic Sciences have been awarded to women 58 times between 1901 and 2020. Only one woman, Marie Curie, has been honoured twice, with the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics and the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
PBS Videos: Black Women in History
A collection of PBS documentaries and programs about Black women who have made a special mark on their communities and the World.
Smithsonian Institute - Because of Her Story
To create a more equitable and just American society, the Smithsonian American Women's History Initiative will create, disseminate, and amplify the historical record of the accomplishments of American women.
U.S. Census Bureau - Women's History Month 2020
Fascinating statistics on women from the US Census Bureau.

Monthly Special Topics Resources

Books & Ebooks available through the SPC Libraries

Databases

Films on Demand

Journals

Suggested Internet Resources