Women and Social Movements: Development and the Global South, 1919 - 2019

Edited by Jill Jensen. This database examines efforts to foster gender equity through expanded economic and social participation of women on a global scale. Covering a century, the database highlights and evaluates activism through individual efforts, organizational initiatives, and socio-cultural projects led by or for women in the Global South. It shows how women have negotiated power and status regarding private or public programs centered on their rights and social inclusion. Stressing the historical problem of the “feminization of poverty,” coupled with women’s invisibility within most foreign aid regimes and approaches to technical assistance, the project documents how women and their allies worked to balance economic growth and social improvement while navigating equity and the fairer allocation of resources. Accompanying essays by leading scholars in the field outline and critique significant shifts in approaches to development, including that of a gendered “post-development” perspective.

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Records of the Peace Corps, 1961 - 2000. Women in Development (WID) Program Files, 1974 - 1988

The Peace Corps is a federal agency that currently provides Volunteers for more than 75 countries around the world who request assistance. This selection of documents was digitized from the National Archives Records Administration. It consists of reports, memorandums, and correspondence concerning the Women in Development program, and its progress in different countries.

The Papers of Caroline Farrar Ware

The papers consist of correspondence, lists, maps, memoranda, minutes, newsletters, notes, programs, and reports relating to Dr. Ware’s teaching career, government service, inter-national, civic and professional activities, and research projects. Included are materials relating to women’s issues, ethnic and cultural studies, community development, Latin America, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Washington Urban League, InterAmerican Commission of Women, Overseas Education Fund of the League of Women Voters, the President’s Commission on the Status of Women, worker’s education, health, housing, youth, and social security.

International Labour Organization (ILO)

The International Labour Organization (ILO) was founded in 1919 as part of the postwar settlement of World War One. The history of ILO action regarding women in the Global South follows a common trajectory as that of other UN bodies, multilateral initiatives, bilateral aid programs, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Many of the documents in this selection are dated from 1970 to the early 2000s and range from reports on meetings of the African regional committee aiming at the integration of women in development (1983), to analysis of small-scale female enterprise in Bangladesh (2001). There are also publications on women and jobs, including micro-industries, in Latin America and the Caribbean, and seminars on women’s involvement in development programs in India_.

Women and Development, a selection of U.S. government documents, 1973-2018

This set of curated congressional documents contextualizes US policies on programs offered through the United Nations (UN), as well as non-governmental organizations (NGO), on the status of women. The government documents range from the United States Foreign Assistance Act amendments of 1973—which included the Percy Amendment, first calling on a focus on women in the US development assistance—to the Women's Entrepreneurship and Economic Empowerment Act of 2018.