Feminist Resources
This list is a work-in-progress of feminist and related history resources. We hope to expand it as we learn more, so please send us anything you think should be added to this list. But please consult the FLA directory first, as it contains listings of nearly 90 national organisations and another 90 international ones. FLA has been an invaluable resource to HOWL, both collaborating with and providing a platform for some of its activities.
HOWL exists to fill a gap in the archiving and sharing of personal stories of women who were involved in the Women’s Liberation Movement but there are many other valuable feminist resources and projects that exist. If you want to learn more, please have a look at the following:
FLA – Feminist & Women’s Libraries and Archives Network
The FLA directory is a most valuable resource and a great starting place. It contains many links to feminist archives, libraries and other organisations archiving feminist movement histories. It includes UK archives, such as the Feminist Library in London, Feminist Archive North (Leeds) and South (Bristol), and Sheffield Feminist Archive. The FLA directory also includes many important international archives, such as the Feminist Memory Project in Nepal and Bunt Kobiet in Poland and although it is not comprehensive, it also includes links to some feminist archives within general archives. A few of the most important archives in the FLA directory are also listed individually below.
This HOWL Resources List currently consists of the following sections:
Feminist organisations and archival resources
Black and UK minority ethnic groups resources
Irish resources
Lesbians+ resources
Disability resources
Health resources
Film resources
Arts and Culture resources
Left-wing and alternative organisations (holding substantial feminist resources)
General resources
Planned additional sections are:
Older women resources
Violence against women resources
Weblinks can go out of date, so please let us know if you find any broken ones.
Feminist organisations and archival resources
Business of Women’s Words
A four-year research project (2018-2021) – a collaboration between the University of Sussex, the British Library, and the University of Cambridge – looking at the histories of feminist publishing enterprises in the 70-90s, such as Virago Press and Spare Rib. Includes and ‘brings to life’ oral histories, and archival documents from the British Library.
East End Women’s Museum
A public history project aiming to record, share, and celebrate women’s stories and voices from east London’s history. Working towards opening the East End Women’s Museum in a permanent home in Barking – in the meantime a ‘kitchen table museum’ without an office or a building
Finn Mackay’s blog
The blog of long-time feminist activist Finn Mackay, includes an articles archive, as well as links to relevant campaigns. The new website includes links to books, other publications, as well as an events calendar.
Glasgow Women’s Library
The GWL Archive Collection comprises donated papers and records of organisations and individuals representing the achievements and activities connected to women and women’s issues, including for example, the Scottish Women’s Aid archive, and GWL’s own archives, which records their ground-breaking work with women across Scotland and beyond. It also contains the Lesbian Archive (formerly the LAIC, started in London in the 1970s), one of the most significant LGBT historical collections in the UK, with material spanning from the 1920s to the present day.
Her Inside
A blog created during the pandemic and dedicated to collecting stories of women’s experiences of it. Created by Susan Croft, who also runs the Unfinished Histories website, which focuses on the history of alternative theatre, especially feminist and LGBT theatre.
Liberating Histories: Women’s Movement Magazines, Media Activism & Periodical Pedagogies
Based at Northumbria University, this project explores UK feminist magazines from 1968 to the present day, and the influence they have all had on readers’ lives. The website resources include reader testimonies, as well as links to digitised archives of some of the magazines and other feminist archives.
Red Rag
An archive of digitised copies of Red Rag: A Magazine of Women’s Liberation, published between 1972 and 1980.
Redstockings – Women’s Liberation Movement Think Tank & Archive for Action
Digital archive of pamphlets, broadsides, journals and audiotapes from and about the revolutionary organising of the 1960’s and beyond, from one of the original and most influential radical feminist groups in New York.
Rise Up! Feminist Archive, Canada
In many ways this digital archive of feminist activism in Canada from the 1970s to the 1990s is the most similar to the HOWL project we have come across. They say, ‘We were part of a worldwide wave of liberation and anti-oppression movements that won some victories, changed some attitudes, and radically altered the gendered and political landscape. This site is dedicated to documenting and sharing these histories.’
Trouble and Strife
The website contains an archive of material previously published in the print version of Trouble & Strife journal, published between 1983 and 2002.
Wages for Housework
There are various Wages for Housework archives in different institutions, including Bishopsgate Institute and Mayday Rooms.
Woman and Her Sphere
Books and Ephemera for sale – by and about women. Issued 179 printed catalogues of books and ephemera by and about women – particularly women’s history – between 1984 and 2013. Online-only since then.
Women’s Budget Group
The Women’s Budget Group is an independent, not-for-profit organisation that monitors the impact of government policies on men and women. The reports archived on their website contain a wealth of information on the position of women in relation to key policy questions. Campaign resources and toolkits are also available.
Women’s History Network
The Women’s History Network is a national association and charity for the promotion of women’s history and the encouragement of everyone interested in women’s history. Archived copies of the Women’s History Journal can be found on their website (and are free to download).
Women’s Resource Centre
WRC is the leading national umbrella organisation for the women’s sector. Their website contains a wealth of information, including a history of the WRC, past projects, and a research library. The WRC has created Sisters Doing it for Themselves, an oral history archive of women involved in the women’s voluntary and community sector since 1970.
Black and UK Minority Ethnic Groups resources
Asian Women’s Resource Centre
Established over 40 years ago, the AWRC is a pioneer of services for BME women experiencing domestic abuse. Resources include reports with data supporting the need for specialist services for BME women.
Black Cultural Archives
The home of Black British History – its mission is to collect, preserve and celebrate the histories of people of African and Caribbean descent in the UK. Collection guides include one dedicated to the Black Women’s Movement.
Forward to Freedom
Forward to Freedom tells the story of the British Anti-Apartheid Movement and its campaigns to support the people of South Africa in their fight against apartheid. Part of the Forward to Freedom website is dedicated to the stories of women in the movement, including pictures, documents and newsletter.
Remembering Olive Morris
A collection of archives gathered from the Remembering Olive Collective, Lambeth Archives, Freedom Bookshop, artists and community members, to show how robust Olive’s legacy is, and also to show a human side to Olive Morris, so that those who engage with her work may feel connected.
Southall Black Sisters
Southall Black Sisters, a not-for-profit, secular and inclusive organisation, was established in 1979 to meet the needs of Black (Asian and African-Caribbean) women. Archival resources, including SBS reports and newsletters, as well as their timeline can be found on their website.
Striking Women
An educational site about migration, women and work, workers’ rights, including links to research articles written by the Striking Women Team, the story of South Asian women workers during the Grunwick and Gate Gourmet industrial disputes, and related resources.
Irish resources
Archiving the 8th
A research and networking project, which emerged following the referendum on the 8th Amendment of the Irish Constitution on 25 May 2018, with the aim to support nationwide efforts to archive, collect, and research issues concerning women’s reproductive health and rights, spanning the two abortion referenda in Ireland (1983-2018).
Linen Hall Library
In Belfast, it contains the extraORDINARYwomen archive encompassing a wealth of materials, posters, artefacts, work on politics, theatre and performing arts, literary, academic and popular writings, and oral histories documenting the Northern Irish women’s movement.
London Irish Women’s Centre
Its archives (1989-2012), held at the London Metropolitan Archive, contain annual reports, newsletters, press coverage and photographs, but especially the Centre’s conference reports on anti-Irish racism, Northern Irish Women’s Rights, Strip Searching of female prisoners and the Prevention of Terrorism Act.
National Archives (Ireland)
Includes various sources for women’s history, such as on suffragette prison conditions and women in 20th century Ireland.
University College Cork
University College Cork Library includes feminist resources such as the archive of Attic Press. Deposited by Roisin Conroy in 1997, it contains many other papers relating to women’s groups and associated organisations, including the Irish Women’s Liberation Movement. There are sister collections to this archive housed in the Irish History Archive in Dublin. A complete set of Attic Press publications lie alongside the books published by Arlen House and Women’s Community Press at the Women’s Studies Dept., in University College Galway.
Lesbians+ resources
The Lesbian Archive | Glasgow Women’s Library (womenslibrary.org.uk)
A definitive collection of UK Lesbian history and culture hosted by Glasgow Women’s Library. With material spanning from the 1920s to the present day, the collection holds some really significant archives and artefacts.
Hall-Carpenter collection
An extensive collection of archives, oral history interviews, ephemera and printed material documenting the development of gay activism in the UK since the 1950s. Housed at the LSE Library.
Lavender Menace
Queer books archive and blog, it grew out of Lavender Menace which first opened as a lesbian and gay bookshop in Edinburgh in 1982. While the physical archive is in Edinburgh, the web archive includes a blog, including some radical bookselling history pieces and links to events recordings.
LGBT Community Archives at LMA
The London Metropolitan Archives’ LGBT Community collections include archives of lesbian organisations, such as Lesbian London and Older Lesbian Network, among others. The LMA organises an annual conference looking at LGBT history.
Queer Britain
The UK’s first national LGBTQ+ museum. Physically located in King’s Cross, London, the online archive includes, among other things, its history and record of past exhibitions.
Queering Public Space
A collaboration between Arup and the University of Westminster, the project explores the relationship between queer communities and public spaces. The report includes a section on queer heritage, highlighting the importance and loss of queer spaces.
Disability resources
Disabled women organising: Feminism and disability rights activism | The British Library
Disabled women have long been a force in feminist and disability activism. Beckie Rutherford looks at the people and groups fighting for equal access within the Women’s Liberation Movement.
Sisters of Frida » Kirsten Hearn | Sisters of Frida (sisofrida.org)
Sisters of Frida is an experimental collective of disabled women. We want a new way of sharing experiences, mutual support and relationships with different networks. We are seeking to build a/or different networks of disabled women. The barriers and multiple discrimination have not changed, we struggle to have our voices heard as disabled women in our own rights. We would like a sisterhood, a circle of disabled women to discuss, share experiences and explore intersectional possibilities.
Regard: Campaigning for Disabled LGBTQI+ People
Regard is a national organisation of lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, transgender, queer and intersex people (LGBTQI+) who self-identify as disabled. We follow the Social Model of Disability. This is a way of thinking about disability that says it is society that needs to change by removing the barriers that deny us inclusion and equal rights. As with 90% of LGBTQI+ voluntary organisations, Regard is run by its members for its members and has no paid staff. We are a registered charity number 1056873.
Disability Rights UK
The UK’s leading organisation led and run by and working for disabled people, Disability Rights UK work with Disabled People’s Organisations, public bodies, businesses and Government across the UK to influence regional and national change for better rights, accessibility, benefits, quality of life and economic opportunities for Disabled people.
Health resources
Boston Women’s Health Book collective records
In 1969, a small group of women came together to collect information about their health which became the ground-breaking Our Bodies Ourselves. Records in the Schlesinger Library describe the making of Our Bodies Ourselves in its many editions, and the later publications produced by the collective, including its many translation/adaptation projects. In 2018 they came to the painful conclusion that the organisation couldn’t continue its main programmes using paid staff, so then in 2022, in collaboration with Our Bodies Ourselves, the Center for Women’s Health & Human Rights at Suffolk University launched the new Our Bodies Ourselves Today platform.
ICW (International Community of Women Living with HIV/AIDS)
The ICW archive is in the process of being sorted out and is still largely in boxes at the Wellcome Institute. Its organising office was in London from the early 90s to its closure in 2010.
National Abortion Campaign
NAC administrative and organisational records, including documentation on campaigns and events, conferences, publications, correspondence, and related organisations, can be found in the Wellcome Collection archives.
Women Listening to Women
An oral history project of the Bristol Crisis Service for Women. The website resources include a history and timeline, booklet, podcasts, and exhibitions.
Women’s Health Library archive
Women’s Health was formed in 1988 as a merger between the Women’s Reproductive Rights Information Centre (WRRIC) and Women’s Health Information Centre (WHIC). The arrangement of the 71 boxes of this irreplaceable collection, to be found at the Wellcome Collection, follows the Women’s Health Library’s own classification system. The Wellcome Collection also includes many other collections of interest to women’s health.
Film resources
There are several films relating to international feminist libraries and archives, as well as other feminist spaces, such as ‘The Archivettes’ about the Lesbian Herstory Archive in New York and ‘Hauntings in the Archive’ about the Women’s Arts Library in Vienna. In the UK, Breaking Ground, the film about the Irish Women’s Centre in London, and the film about the first WLM conference in Oxford, A Woman’s Place, should be of interest.
CINENOV
Cinenova currently has over 400 feminist film & video titles in its collection, made up of an assortment of works that range from experimental film and artists’ film and video, to narrative feature film, documentary work and educational video. Made between 1912 and 2001, with its core coming from the Women’s Liberation Movement, the titles cover oppositional histories, post-colonial struggles, reproductive labour and the representation of gender, race and sexuality, focusing on the relations and alliances between these different struggles.
Women’s Film and Television History Network – UK/Ireland
From its beginning women have been active in and around cinema as directors, scriptwriters, designers, cinema owners, distributors, publicists, reviewers, audiences, campaigners and so on, so the WFTHN was set up to support research into women’s filmmaking history in Britain and Ireland, from the silent period to the present.
Left on Pearl
A documentary about a highly significant but little-known event in the history of the US Women’s Liberation Movement – the 1971 takeover and occupation of a Harvard University-owned building by hundreds of Boston area women, demanding and enacting a Women’s Centre through the occupation. The website includes information about screening the film, as well as the film synopsis, filmmaker bios, and a page on The 888 Women’s History Project – creating a larger archive of the movement in Boston.
Arts and Culture resources
Art for All by All
An organisation campaigning for more work by women artists and People of Colour in our public galleries. The resources list on their website includes related articles, books and website links.
Feminist Art Observatory
This online archive of materials on women’s and feminist art includes: free back copies of n.paradoxa journal (1996-2010), feminist art books, magazines and exhibitions databases, links to other feminist art and history archives, and other relevant links.
inVisible Women
inVISIBLEwomen is a catalyst for gender equality in civic statues in the UK. The website includes useful statistics, as well as the story so far, with links to other useful sites and articles on the topic.
grassrootsfeminism.net
Grassroots Feminism: building a transnational community towards participatory culture and civic engagement. The preconception of youth and in particular of girls and young women, as culturally unproductive and passive consumers of mass culture and media, is still very much ingrained today. However, girls and young women are capable cultural producers who create a wide variety of their own films, music, media and festivals. To gain insight into and to document the cultural spaces girls and young women create and the meaning they have, it is vital to look closely at their own cultural spaces – not only at media produced for them (which is done more frequently).
Left-wing and alternative organisations (holding substantial feminist resources)
Bishopsgate Institute Library
The Library has been collecting records and providing a home for archives of women’s participation in public life for a century, but it has grown its holdings on feminist and women’s history substantially since receiving the Feminist Library Pamphlet Collection, donated to the Institute in 2009, and which provides an exciting and comprehensive view of the Women’s Liberation Movement from the 1960s to the present day. The Institute’s 30 feminist collections include ephemera from protests and campaigns, papers of pioneering individuals, and records of women’s organisations, and it continues to actively collect in this area. Bishopsgate Institute’s Special Collections also contain a number of LGBT+ and other collections of interest.
Commonweal Collection
The Commonweal Collection is an independent specialist library concerned with issues relating to nonviolent social change. It contains over 11,000 books and pamphlets, 150 current journals and a variety of videos and educational materials on peace and disarmament, environmentalism and the green movement. Commonweal is located in the JB Priestley Library of the University of Bradford. Includes materials such as the records of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom.
FWWCP Digital Collection
The Federation of Worker Writers and Community Publishers (FWWCP) was a network of working-class writing groups which circulated over one million publications during its 30-year history. This is a completely invaluable collection for anybody who is interested in working-class women’s writing and experience from the 1970s to the 2000s.
Hatful of History
Provides links to numerous, international radical archives, collections, and other sites of digitised radical literature. Alongside links to many socialist and anti-racist resources, feminist ones include, for example, the Emma Goldman Papers at Berkeley and m/f feminist journal.
History from Below
Founded in 2012, HFB is a loose international network of independent radical history activists and practitioners. Website includes links to other interesting and relevant international archival-activist projects, such as East End Walks (including Rebel Women and Men of Poplar) and Past Tense (including herstories of London on their blog).
Left on the Shelf
Specialist second hand bookseller of material on all topics to do with Socialism. Research pages include links to PDF copies of the Radical Bookselling History Newsletter and Radical Bookshops Conference Report, which featured WLM booksellers, authors, and events.
Mayday Rooms
Archive of social struggles from the 1960s to the present – with substantial feminist collections, including Women’s Liberation Movement and Marxist-Feminism.
NORLA
The Network of Radical Libraries and Archives is made up of independent archives from around the UK that hold material relating the radical histories of struggle, emancipation and liberation movements, and counter culture.
People’s History Archive
Street art and ephemera archive documenting the creative and complex ways people make use of public space. Includes items such as The F Word: Galway Feminist Festival and Make Feminism a Threat Again.
Peoples History Museum
People’s History Museum, Manchester, is the UK’s only museum entirely dedicated to sharing the stories of the revolutionaries, reformers, workers, voters and citizens who believed, then and now, in ideas worth fighting for – ideas such as equality, social justice, co-operation, and a fair world for all.
Radical Print Shops
A site devoted to the history of late 20th century radical and community printing collectives and co-ops in the UK. Feminist ones include Onlywomen Press and See Red Women’s Workshop.
Working Class Movement Library
Based in Salford, Manchester, their collections include resources on feminist organisations, like Lancashire Women Against Pit Closures, as well as individual activist collections, such as that of Barbara Castle.
General resources
British Library
It is helping to make visible the extensive networks of WLM activity across the UK, alongside a range of other resources on women and feminism. It includes original material, such as the archive of Carmen Callil, as well as digitised feminist resources, including the Spare Rib map and the ‘Sisterhood & After oral histories of the WLM’ project and a timeline of the Women’s Liberation Movement.
Google Arts & Culture
Feminist collections of mainly ephemera, posters and so on, digitised from the Feminist Library, The Feminist Institute, Gloria’s Foundation, the Road to Equality project and more.
Historic England
Includes the Pride of Place project, celebrating spaces and places connected to LGBT+ history.
London Metropolitan Archives
Their special collections include a number of relevant archives, such as LGBT+ community archives, the Jessica and Eric Huntley Archive, and the archives of the London Irish Women’s Centre.
Manchester Central Library
Their special collections include many interesting women’s collections (such as the Elizabeth Gaskell collection).
Manchester University Library
Includes the Ahmed Iqbal Ullah RACE Centre (Race Archives and Community Engagement), which features the activities of many Black women within its collection. There is also the very similarly named Ahmed Iqbal Ullah RACE Centre and Education Trust at the Race Archive, located at Manchester Central Library.
The National Archives
The UK government’s official archive; includes many resources on women, including suffragettes, women’s role in the war effort, women in sport, and more.
National Library of Scotland
Various relevant collections are included in the Library, such as collections of Women’s Studies periodicals, including international ones.
The People’s Collection of Wales at the National Library of Wale
These collections promote the recognition of women in Welsh history. The People’s Collection of Wales and the National Library of Wales hold a comprehensive collection of materials, Welsh Women’s Aid among them.
UEFA Women’s EURO Heritage Programme
An arts and heritage programme which ran alongside the UEFA Women’s EURO 2022. Links to other resources can also be found on the website. In collaboration with the UK Web Archive, which supported the collection of the websites relevant to the topic.
Resources List last updated 29 May 2023
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