Sites on Women's Issues

This collection of links is by no means complete and almost certainly has circularities. I have tried to organize them under some loose categories, but some sites fall under many categories and I have had to chose where to list them using my best judgement. Hopefully my summaries of what each site includes will be of help.

At the bottom of this page I have a list of unsorted, undescribed sites that I haven't had a chance to look at yet. These will eventually be processed, but I wanted to make them available.

Obviously, I do not necessarily support the views of any site that I have listed here. My intention is to reflect a wide range of views. If you have a site that you would like to see listed here, e-mail me at hollandm@cs.cornell.edu and let me know. Though I reserve the right to omit any site from this list, I will most probably include any sites that are suggested.

Feminist Organizations and Publications

The Independent Women's Forum: The Independent Women's Forum is a non-partisan, non-profit organization which sponsors public speaking events and has the goal of promoting "individual responsibility, strong families, more opportunity, and less government." They offer themselves as an alternative to the "old feminist Establishment." Their page includes a description of the issues that the IWF is concerned with and their positions as well as a list of news items that are relevant to the issues they pursue, a calendar of their upcoming events, a list of related publications and recent speakers and information on joining IWF.
On the Issues Home Page: "On The Issues: The Progressive Woman's Quarterly" is a service of CHOICES Women's Medical Center, Inc. and identifies themselves as "a feminist, humanist magazine of critical thinking, dedicated to fostering collective responsibility for positive social change." Their web site contains general information on the publication, subscription information, and a selection of articles and features from each issue (the site maintains the on-line articles from both the current issue and past issues). The featured articles often include book/film reviews, the letters section, and the cover story.
Women's InSite: A collection of articles on a variety of topics with a focus on their interest to women. Topics include media reviews, travel, cooking, and the women's experience in general. There are also short stories and poetry by women and a hotlist of other sites to explore.

Feminist Writers

Andrea Dworkin Web Site!: This site contains an on-line library of many of Andrea Dworkin's books (both non-fiction and fiction), speeches, articles and interviews, as well as biographical information about her.

Men's Issues

Fathers' Rights and Equality Exchange: The web page for an organization working to gain equality for fathers. They have information on support for fathers, educational information on the issues they are concerned with and information on their legislative goals. Their resources include on-line support for people currently struggling with fathers' rights issues.
Men's Issues Page: The goal of this page is to cover the several men's movements encyclopediacally. They maintain lists of men's movements organizations as well as related books, web links, and other resources. They also maintain an online reference to statistics, studies and bibliographies which may be of interest to those interested in the men's movement.
MenWeb - M.E.N. Magazine: A collection of articles, stories and poems which is associated with the Men's Voices quarterly journal. It also includes a list of resources on and off the internet and a forum for online questions about men's issues. A very well organized site.

Sexual Assault and Harassment

Freedom of Speech vs. Workplace Harassment Law: This site maintained by a UCLA Law School professor discusses the conflict between freedom of speech and workplace harassment law. The discussion does not single out sexual harassment but rather focuses on Title VII in general; however, sexual harassment is addressed. Most of the information is divided into articles (divided into the categories: what kind of speech is suppressed, a 1st ammendment analysis of the law, a proposed solution to the conflict, Q&A for lawyers, and procedural, slippery slope and cyberspace issues) and a section of reference materials (divided into sections on: definitions of harassment law, court precidents, a bibliography of harassment law articles from a variety of perspectives and a keyword index into the site).
Sexual Assault Information Page: This page "provides information concerning acquaintance rape, child sexual abuse/assault, incest, rape, ritual abuse, sexual assault, and sexual harassment. Information is provided via the WWW, email, a bi-monthly electronic newsletter, as well as occasional hardcopy mailings for specific requests. All information, including the newsletter, is provided totally free of charge." There is an area for announcements and requests as well as search facilities for this site.
Sexual Harassment: This page, maintained at the University of Maryland, maintains a set of reports about sexual harassment, including Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Information, the 1993 New York Task Force Report on sexual harassment, a review of the Tailhook 91 navy investigations and general documents about sexual harassment and questions to ask during sexual harassment investigations.
Sexual Harassment: Myths and Realities: The American Psychological Association's fact page on sexual harassment, including the legal definition and a description of the psychological and physical effects on the victim. Strategies for responding to harassment are also given.
Stop Sexual Harassment: Definitions of sexual harassment and what recourses what can take either legally or personally. Legal and emotional support resources for harassment in particular and women's issues in general are listed by state. There is also a list of internet resources given. This is a focused and easy to navigate site.
The SOHO Guidebook -- What Is Sexual Harassment?: A definition of sexual harassment with examples. This is part of an online workplace guidebook that also discusses other types of harassment and goes on to discuss strategies for preventing harassment and techniques for handling harassement as a victim and as an employer. This site has a lot of information, though it may be difficult to find. The focus is on issues from the view point of an employer.

Women's Education

American Association of University Women: The American Association of University Women is "a national organization that promotes education and equity for all women and girls." Their activities include lobbying and advocating for education and equity, funding research on girls and education, providing fellowships and grants for outstanding women internationally, and funding and supporting women taking legal action against sex discrimination in higher education. Their web site gives information about all of these programs, gives information about particular issues of concern as well as providing a voting record of US senators and representatives on these issues. Their "AAUW Resources" section is extensive and well worth checking out.
Expect the Best from a Girl: This small site which is sponsored by the Women's College Coalition presents the message that girls and boys start life with the same range of abilities in academic and physical areas and that most of the differences in performance can be attributed to the influences of society, culture and family. Given this, ideas are given for concrete things parents can do to encourage their girls to do their best. Specific ideas are given for encouraging girls in math and science. They also give an interesting list of facts about the differences that show up between boys and girls and where these differences become apparant in looking at the condition of women in the workplace. Finally, they provide a list of educational programs for girls and women's colleges who support such activities.
TAP Junior: A sub-site to TAP: The Ada Project (listed under "Women in Science"), this page lists information on programs, organizations, activities and web sites which are geared towards interesting girls and children in general in computing. This includes listings of science and math camps or programs which can be integrated into a classroom setting. Relevant software and games are described.

Women's Health

Women in Business

Women's Business Ownership Home Page: The Women's Business Ownership Program strives to help women who own or are want to own a business by providing training, counseling and mentoring services. Their web page includes a newsletter, a most commonly asked questions page which includes answers to many questions women have about starting their own business, a list of useful programs and resources as well as links to local information for many areas.

Women in Government

Radcliffe Public Policy Institute: The Radcliffe Public Policy Institute "works to engage women and men as equal partners in shaping policy on important national economic, social and political issues." Their web page gives information on RPPI projects including their fellowship program and lists the publications that you can order from them. They also maintain links to other policy related sites.

Women in Science

4000 Years of Women in Science: This site broadcasts the fact that women have been participating in science for as long as science has existed. It tells the stories of the women of science of the past who are known and are on the lookout for stories of those who have been forgotten. The list of biographies can be displayed in alphabetically by scientist name, time-ordered or ordered by field of study. References for the biographies are given, as well as references about women's contributions to science in general.
TAP: The Ada Project: The Ada Project is a project geared towards "tapping internet resources for women in computer science". This page contains news-types articles about current projects for helping women in computer science and the trends within the field which affect women. They also maintain a discussion board and have on-line resources which include listings of papers, conferences, projects and news articles or announcements about women in science or technology. There is also information about employment resources and fellowship and grant information. They also have lists of past and current women in computer science (grouped by position held) and statistics on women in computer science. Tap Junior, described under the "Women's Education" section on this page, is a sub-page devoted to describing programs, organizations and activities designed for young girls and kids in general which get them interested in computing.

Women on the Internet

Virtual Sisterhood: In their own words, "Virtual Sisterhood, a global women's electronic support network, is dedicated to strengthening and magnifying the impact of feminist organizing through promotion of electronic communications use within the global women's movement." This includes collecting women's firsthand electronic communication stories, maintaining an electronic conference and mailing list for women activists, listing feminist newsletters and publications from a variety of resources both online and off. They are also building an interactive electronic clearinghouse where women can point each other to resources that they have found useful and share information about what they are currently doing to organize and empower women online. This page already has or is creating translations of this page from English into Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Russian and Spanish.

Women's Personal Web Pages

Vandergrift's Special Interest Page: This home page contains information and ideas on "youth literature, genre fiction, women's studies, and related topics." In the area of women's issues, there are sections on gender and culture in picture books, empowering girls, and women's heritage and history. The "feminist studies" section of the page includes a large bibliography of feminist readings as well as a supplemental short bibliography of readings in women's history. She also maintains her own extensive list of feminist websites.

Women's Web Searches and Link Collections

femina : Web Search for Women: Femina is a searchable database of links to "female friendly sites and information on the World Wide Web." There is a search engine as well as a Yahoo-like index into the database. Vistors can submit new sites to be added to the database. They have a featured women's site of the month and maintain a calendar of female-oriented events. They have an associated mailing list where women online can help each other find sites for personal, academic research, or work related needs. I think this is a fun place to poke around.
women.com: the smart network: Women's Wire is a network of sites which center around women: the women.com's "Women's Wire" newsletter, Beatrice's Web Guide, and the Prevention's healthy ideas site. There are search capablities enabled which search across all of the sites which make up women.com, as well as an index of general topics by which the contents of the sites are indexed.
WWWomen Search Directory: WWWomen is a search directory which indexes sites focusing on women and women's issues. It allows both key word searches and yahoo-like category searches. The choice of categories is customized to the existing content for women on the web. There is also a "select random site" feature, a "best of the web" page, and a "resource room" singling out links to pages felt to be of particular value or interest to women on the web. WWWomen also maintains a mailing list and the WWWomen webring.

Reference Sites

The Equal Rights Amendment: An online copy of the text of the Equal Rights Ammendment to the US Constitution from 1921, written by Alice Paul.
Statistics on the Pay Gap: This post from soc.feminism gives statistics from 1992/1993 about the pat gap between men and women in different jobs. The statistics are copied from the January 1994 "Working Woman Magazine" and were based on professional society reports or Department of Labor Stats. The stats show men overall making more money than women in the same field.

Miscellaneous Women's Sites

Gender Equity In Sports: This research project based out of the University of Iowa is designed to present information on the state of affairs in interscholastic or intercollegiate sport. It includes reports from newspaper articles, the Women's Sports Foundation and a variety of other references. Topics which are focued on include a survey of Title IX from both legal and practical perspectives, voluntary actions on the part of a range of institutions related to gender equity, and an up-to-date news watch. There is also a listing of resources and informational documents.
Heartless Bitches International - "Deal With It!": This site is an outlet for women who are fed up about a variety of annoyances which face them, from clueless or pushy men to women who think the world owes them something. Features the "Sappy site-of the-day", the How do you know if she's a Real(tm) engineer? list, a discussion group, lists of books, movies and music which member heartless bitches recommend, and other stuff. Basically, a meeting place for women to let out their frustrations and anger. Visit at your own risk.
the kassandra project: The kassandra project is a collection of web pages which is meant to serve as an introduction of German women writers, artists and thinkers from the second half of the 1700s through the beginning of the 1800s. This includes an extensive section focusing on Karoline von Günderrode, a German woman writer from the early 1800s, as well as general biographies and bibliographies, a collection of images and links to other sites of interest on the internet.
PACAWOM Home Page: PACAWOM is an international group which is commited to the advancement of women in Pakistan. Their site contains a large amount of information about the problems currently facing Pakistani women as well as links to other sites which focus on the state of women in different countries around the world.

There are also a lot of web sites out there that are anti-feminist; some of which are serious and some of which are supposedly humorous but, at least in my view, only succeed in being sexist. These are sites that I happened across in my search for sites on women's issues. I am including them to give a taste of some of the anti-feminist and anti-women sentiment that is present on the internet. I have chosen not to give descriptions of these sites as I am not sure that I could do so fairly.

The Domain of Patriarchy

Feminist's Hall of SHAME

Misogyny Unlimited

This is my list of to-be-sorted web sites. Feel free to peruse them.

Feminist Bookstore News Information

FEMINIST MAJORITY FOUNDATION

Now Approaching Planet Girl

National Women's History Project

On the Road... Again

WWWomen WebRing Home Page!

http://www.advancingwomen.com

The New York Times Magazine: Heroine Worship