Women's History at the IISH

Introduction

This page provides an overview of women's and gender history projects at the International Institute of Social History (IISH), one of the world's largest documentary and research institutions in the field of social history in general and the history of the labour movement in particular. Women's roles in social movements are documented in IISH archival and manuscript collections. The Institute provides information on women's and gender history elsewhere in the Netherlands and worldwide. It maintains ViVa, a current bibliography of women's history in scholarly journals, the WWW Virtual Library Women's History, and Kenau, the discussionlist for women's and gender history in the Netherlands and Belgium (discontinued). The web pages of the Socialism and Sexuality Network and the Dutch yearbook for women's history were hosted by the IISH. The Institute participates in important projects on early modern women's work and homosexuality in the Netherlands.

Women's History Collections at the IISH
An introduction, a Dutch and an international guide to primary sources for women's and gender history in the archives and manuscript collections of the IISH.

Neo-Malthusianism: Birth Control in the Netherlands
A digital exhibition on the introduction of birth control in the Netherlands between 1870 and 1940, and the accompanying debate. The leading part is taken by the Nieuw-Malthusiaanse Bond ("Neo-Malthusianism League"), whose archives are housed in the IISG.

Le Néo-malthusianisme en France
A virtual exhibition devoted to the history of contraception in France in the 19th and 20th centuries. The ideas of both adherents and opponents of birth control are presented in posters, photos, booklets, pamphlets and letters, mainly from Jeanne and Eugène Humbert, anarchists and pioneers of birth control in France. Their papers are kept in the International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Both the documents and the accompanying texts are in French.

The World Wide Web Virtual Library: Women's History
A guide to women's history on the Internet. The main purposes of this virtual library are to list women's history institutions and organizations world wide, locate archival and library collections, and provide links to Internet resources on women's history. In addition, also included are a list of women's studies journals and a few comprehensive link collections useful as a starting point for searching the Internet for women's studies in general.

ViVa: A Bibliography of Women's History
ViVa is a current bibliography of women's and gender history in historical and women's studies journals. The ViVa database contains bibliographic records describing more than 12,000 articles published between 1975 and 2009. It is online and freely accessible. You can search the database or browse by year of publication.

Kenau
A Discussion list for women's and gender history in the Low Countries. Discontiuned.

Socialism and Sexuality
An academic network promoting scholarly work on socialism and sexuality. General information about the aims of the network, conference information, papers presented at past conferences discussionlist. Discontinued.

Jaarboek voor vrouwengeschiedenis
Tables of contents of the yearbooks 1980-2010. (Dutch text.)

Women's Work Research Project
Introduction to a research programme about women's work in the early modern Netherlands. The programme also aims to document the history of working women between c. 1500-1815, from the perspective of the labour market and the women themselves.

Homosexuality in the Netherlands
An introduction to three research projects into homosexuality in the Netherlands. Taken together, the projects cover the twentieth century from 1911, but they focus on the Second World War.