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Women's & Gender Studies Program
Wake Forest University
Tribble Hall, A106A
P.O. Box 7365
Winston-Salem, NC 27109

Phone: 336-758-3758
Fax: 336-758-4143
wgs@wfu.edu

General Resources

Atlas of American Women
Ref G1201 E1 S5 1987
It is recognized that women are making strides in terms of gaining equality, however, it is not universally so. This book is a resource about where women are making achievements and where the struggles lie by looking comparatively at American women. It can be a critical resource for looking at discrimination issues. The book is divided into chapters based on women’s issues (i.e. sports, relationships, occupations, etc.) Each chapter has text as well as tables, maps, and statistics. It is a very comprehensive and well rounded tool.

Encyclopedia of Women’s Associations Worldwide: A Guide to Over 3,400 National and Multinational Nonprofit Women’s and Women-Related Organizations
Ref HQ1883 E53 1993
This is a resource guide to women- related nonprofits and national/ multinational organizations worldwide. They are divided into regional chapters and then broken down further by country. There are also keyword subject indexes to find groups with a specific purpose.

The European Women’s Almanac
Ref HQ1587 S69 1992
This is a book that provides information about European women and provides data on how they comparatively fare in terms of employment, education, health care and more. This book is an excellent resource, however, is only about women in 26 European countries thus does not provide global comparisons. The book includes snapshots of each country with general facts and a map, a description of each country’s political and cultural status, and extensive statistic sections covering everything from equal rights to parental leave pay and benefits.

NWO: A Directory of National Women’s Organizations
Ref HQ1903 N9 1992
This is a multi-indexed volume that provides descriptions of most of the national women’s groups and organizations, women’s funds (national, regional and local), women’s political action committees, federal agencies and offices, state commissions on women, and National Council for Research on Women member centers. Each entry includes contact information (address, phone number), contact people, descriptions, areas of focus, services offered, publications, user access information, target populations, and organization meeting information. There is also the option to search by category or key words (i.e. breast cancer) which is really helpful if you need to search by subject matter.

Reader’s Guide to Women’s Studies
Ref HQ1180 R42 1998
This is an encyclopedia type reference for all topics related to women. It is broken down both alphabetically and also thematically. Since it can only provide brief descriptions of each of its topics it offers places to further research as well.

Statistical Handbook of Women in America
HQ1420 T34 1996 (Main Stacks)
This a resource that provides charts, tables and statistics as well as narrative introduction to the trends and topics discussed. It is divided into four sections: demographic characteristics, employment and economic status, health aspects, and social characteristics. This is an excellent place to look for tables to accompany research but does not provide in depth discussion of the issues.

Statistical Record of Women Worldwide
Ref HQ1150 S73 1991
This is a book of statistics, tables and charts on women’s issues. The book is broken into thematic chapters that are then broken down further into lists of tables under broad subject headings for narrowing the search. For example under the chapter Health and Medical Care, there is a subcategory of Pregnancy and Infant Health and then a number of more specific tables including prenatal alcohol, etc. This is excellent for supplementary research or additions to papers but provides no written descriptions—only tables and statistics.

Where Women Stand: An International Report on the Status of Women in 140 Countries 1997-1998
Ref HQ1154 N39 1997
This is an excellent book for straight forward information about issues regarding women. Broken down into sections based on topics it provides written descriptions, tables, factoids, statistics, graphs and more. Easy to read, big fonts and lots of diagrams make it a very user friendly book.

Women in the World: An International Atlas
Ref HQ1154 S34 1986
This book was created to look at the daily lives of women worldwide and how their lives differ with the lives of men. It stresses the importance of geography and looks specifically about where women are in the world in addition to how they live their lives. It provides colored and wonderfully coded maps, tables and statistics about women throughout the world. It is an excellent tool for adding charts, maps and data to research papers and also excellent if looking for global comparisons of women’s issues.

Women’s Atlas of the United States
Ref G1201 E1 G52 1995
This atlas looks at topics of importance to women geographically—thus it provides statistics and comparison about the issues across geographic areas. The chapters are divided based on themes important to women and provide texts and LOTS of maps. The maps are helpful, easy to read and in color.

Women’s Desk Reference
Ref HQ1236.5 U6 F73 1993
This is an encyclopedia covering the entire spectrum of women’s concerns—ranging from social, legal, psychological, and medical with a strong effort to address the issues not from any particular feminist standpoint (i.e. not traditional or radical in anyway) to be a resource to all women. The entries, while brief, also provide information for other resources including books, organizations and publications.

Women’s Issues
Ref HQ1115 W6425 1997
This is a three volume set encyclopedia that addresses women’s issues, people, organizations and more. It is primarily focused on the United States but does cover Canada as well. It also provides info about Supreme Court cases, federal legislation, women’s colleges and even women’s experiences in America’s wars. It also provides further references and additional, related subjects to further the search. As an encyclopedia, however, the entries are often brief and very general.

Women’s Studies: A Guide to Information Sources
Ref Z7961 C37 1990
This is a guide to sources available in the field of women’s studies. It also provides a guide to where research has been done and where could use more extensive study. It covers from 1978-1989 only, however. And it is also a British book so most of the information comes from England, not the United States. It is divided into sections based on themes of women studies and then further divided into sections by types of resources like periodicals, collections, theses, organizations, etc. It could be helpful, however, it also is only an intermediary step between you and the information which in the technologically age seems tedious to me…

Women’s Studies Encyclopedia
Ref HQ1115 W645 1989
This is a three volume set is an encyclopedia of women’s issues. It is written in non specialist language and is divided among the three books based on categories. Since it can obviously only scratch the surface in terms of the topics it covers, it also provides further references for most entries. The fist volume is limited to fields considered part of the “sciences” including natural, behavioral, social, health and medical, economics, legal and political. The second volume cover literature, arts and learning and the third volume covers history, philosophy, and religion.

The World’s Women 1995: Trends and Statistics
Ref HQ1154 W675 1995
This is the official document from the Fourth World Conference on Women and it covers topics of concern to women that were key in the discussions at the conference. Its goal is provide the numbers and analysis critical to understanding how conditions are or are not changing for women worldwide. Its target audience is for researchers and policy makers in NGOs and other organizations but it does provide a wealth of information about the status of women presently. It is divided into chapters based on topics of study (i.e. Health, Population Growth, Education, etc.) Each chapter includes descriptions, charts, tables and a variety of statistics. It provides comparative information as well. It is a smaller book and therefore less intimidating to work with and since it is not encyclopedic in nature it delves further into the issues discussed.

Indexes

Alternative Press Index
Ref A13 A27
This is the print version of the online database available. Since it’s online, I don’t think the print version is that helpful.

Women Studies Abstracts
Ref Z7962 W65
This index covers fewer journals (& only scholarly ones) but provides abstracts summarizing the contents of the articles. To use, you look up a topic in the index section, where you get an abstract number or numbers, which you then look up in the earlier parts of the issues or volumes.

Women’s Studies Index
Ref Z7962 W66
This index covers 70 scholarly journals and popular magazines as well; you simply look up your topic directly in the volume(s) and see where articles on that issue have been published.

Databases

Contemporary Women’s Issues
This database covers women’s issues from 1992 to current with the option for the article in full text. It covers a variety of disciplines and pulls from 190 different countries. When you search you can do a basic keyword or author search but can also search by topic (i.e. abortion, welfare, etc) or by geographic region (i.e. Afghanistan). It was really simple to use and offered a proliferation of good articles.

Academic Search Premier
This database is not specific to women’s issues but does cover mainly the social sciences, humanities, education and has many articles related to women. It does offer the full text article.

Alternative Press Index
Indexes over 250 alternative, radical and leftist (or left wing) publications, including periodicals, newspapers and magazines, in the areas of cultural, economic, political and social change so while it is not specifically women studies oriented—it does offer resources to many women’s magazines, etc. This is also in print as well as located online. This only provides citations not the full text articles.

Arts and Humanities Citation Index
This is a database of 1,100 journals in the arts and humanities including history, literature, and philosophy. Thus, it covers many areas where gender is critically analyzed. This database only offers citations not full text articles so is a little more time consuming.

Humanities International Index
This database covers journals in the areas of: archaeology, art, classics, film, folklore, journalism, linguistics, music, the performing arts, philosophy, religion, world history, and world literature. Thus, it covers areas where women and gender studies are incorporated. It also only offers citations not full text articles, however.

ProQuest/PA Research II
Contains articles covering the humanities, social sciences, sciences, and business. Databases include: ABI/Inform Global; Periodicals Abstracts Research II; Greensboro News & Record; New York Times; Wall Street Journal; and Wilmington Morning Star thus it contains resources that are both local and more national in scope. It offers full text articles.

Social Sciences Citation Index
This database includes journals from many areas of the social sciences including women’s studies specifically as well as areas like sociology, psychology and anthropology where women and gender issues are central. Searching is nice because they offer two options—either easy or full searching so you can do either broad or more specific searches. It does only offer citations or abstracts rather then the full article, however.

 
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