Primary sources provide firsthand testimony or direct evidence about a topic. Often, primary sources are contemporaneous with the events or conditions that are being documented and are created by individuals who witnessed or experienced them. Examples of primary sources include:
The databases below have a broader focus but also contain sources of interest to Women's & Gender Studies:
Women's America: Refocusing the Past by
Divided into four sections which cover the span of women's experiences in the US from colonial times to the present. Each section begins with a short introduction by the editors which sums up the particular historical era being covered and the scope of the documents which follow.
Women's Rights in the United States: A History in Documents by
A diverse collection of documents - including manifestoes, letters, diaries, cartoons, broadsides, legal and court records, poems, satires, advertisements, petitions, photographs, leaflets, maps, posters, autobiographies, and newspapers - to examine major themes in the history of women's rights and women's rights movements in the U.S. The documents encompass the experiences of women from a wide range of racial, ethnic, class, economic, sexual, marital, and social groups. Covers such topics as organized social movements; changing definitions of rights and different women's access to rights; divisions among women within women's rights movements; global contexts for women's rights activism; and the question of what it means for women and men to be "equal."
Women's Rights in the United States: A Documentary History by
The 125 historical documents in this volume bring to life the triumphs, disappointments, and enduring contributions of women's struggle for equal rights in America.
Women and the National Experience: Primary Sources in American History by 
Women's Rights Emerges Within the Anti-Slavery Movement, 1830-1870 by
Combining documents with an interpretive essay, this book is the first to offer a much-needed guide to the emergence of the women's rights movement within the anti-slavery activism of the 1830s. A 60-page introductory essay traces the cause of women's rights from Angelina and Sarah Grimké's campaign against slavery through the development of a full-fledged women's rights movement in the 1840s and 1850s. A rich collection of over 50 documents includes diary entries, letters, and speeches from the Grimkés, Maria Stewart, Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Theodore Weld, Frances Harper, Sojourner Truth, and others.
The Columbia Documentary History of American Women Since 1941 by
This collection of documents seeks to chronicle the exciting and tumultuous recent history of American women, beginning with World War II, and the lasting reverberations of the greater employment opportunities for women created by the war effort. Subsequent documents speak to a series of timely topics: the ideas and changes brought about by the women's movement, the challenges to and defense of reproductive rights, the backlash against feminism in the name of family values, and new visions for women's lives in the twenty-first century.
From Megaphones to Microphones: Speeches of American Women, 1920-1960 by 
Women's Letters: America from the Revolutionary War to the Present by
Historical events of the last three centuries and personal milestones in women's lives come alive through these singular correspondences, over 400 letters accompanied by over 100 photographs.
The Search for Self-Sovereignty: The Oratory of Elizabeth Cady Stanton by
Elizabeth Cady Stanton was one of the founding philosophers of America's women's rights movement. The first woman's rights convention in the United States was held in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848; there she helped write and present the Declaration of Sentiments, a woman's bill of rights which articulated the inferior and unjust position of women in law, church, and society and called for redress. From this grew the organized demands by women in the United States for the ballot and other social change.
The Selected Papers of Jane Addams: Preparing to Lead, 1860-81 by 
Gender Issues and Sexuality: Essential Primary Sources by
Contents: Beyond Femininity and Masculinity : Perspectives on Gender and Sexuality |
Women's Rights Movement |
Gay Rights Movement |
Transgendereds and Transsexuals |
Gender and Sexuality Issues in Medicine and Public Health |
Gender and Sexuality in School and the Workplace |
Sex, Gender, and Sexuality in the Media |
Obscenity, Pornography, and Sex Crimes
Great Events from History: Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Events by
With contributions from prominent scholars in the field, this set chronicles the events and the people who have defined the GLBT experience since the mid-nineteenth century. Most of the essays were originally commissioned by Salem for inclusion in the EBSCO database GLBT Life with Full Text. (2 volumes)
