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Research Project Ideas

Working on a school research paper or research project and want to write about women?

Check out the list of ideas below!

Period 1

Indigenous Societies, Origins - 1491

  • Haudenosanee

  • Cherokee women

  • Herbal healers & midwives

  • Curanderas

  • The Coronation of Chief Powhatan Retold by Zitkala-Ša

Period 2

Colonization & Impact on Women's Experiences, 1492 - 1774

Period 3

American Independence & Women in the Early Republic, 1776 - 1848

Period 4

Seneca Falls, Manifest Destiny, the Civil War & Reconstruction, 1848 - 1876

Period 5

Women's Inequality in the Gilded Age & Progressive Era Reforms, 1877 - 1913

  • Abortion

  • Women's suffrage movement in the Gilded Age

  • Club Women

    • YWCA

    • National Association of Colored Women

    • NAACP

  • Women radicals

    • International Workers of the World (Wobblies)

    • Anarchism

  • Spiritualism & civil liberties

    • Ida Craddock

    • Victoria Woodhull

  • Temperance

    • Women's Christian Temperance Union

  • Women in the west

    • Women in the Klondike gold rush (Alaska)

  • Settlement houses

    • Hull House in Chicago

  • People to research

    • Lucy Parsons

    • Mary Church Terrell

    • Emma Goldman

    • Anna Julia Cooper

    • Alice Paul

    • Jane Addams​​​​​​​​​​​

Period 6

World Wars & Women in the Cold War,
1914 - 1970s

  • Women's Suffrage movement

  • Indian Citizenship Act

  • Women's activism in the "doldrums"

    • Birth control movement​

    • The Harlem Renaissance

  • Equal Rights Amendment

  • Pacifism

    • Inez Milholland​

  • The Great War

  • World War II

  • Worker's Rights

  • The Cold War

    • Women in the Lavender Scare​

  • Suffragists

    • Adelina Otero-Warren​

    • Gail Laughlin

    • Tye Leung Schulze

    • Zitkala-Sa

    • Alice Paul

  • People to research

  • Primary sources

    • "Now We Can Begin" by Crystal Eastman​

    • Sr. Grace Dammann's Principles vs. Prejudice

    • Articles on Black suffragists from the California Eagle

    • Zikala-Ša's Americanize the First Americans (1920)

    • Alice Dunbar-Nelson, Come Out of the Kitchen Mary (1919)

    • Elsie Hill and Florence Kelley take Opposing Positions on Proposed Equal Rights Bill (1922)

    • Buck v. Bell Supreme Court case

    • Daughters of Bilitis, Purpose of the Daughters (1955)

    • J. Edgar Hoover, "Mothers...Our Only Hope" from Women's Home Companion (1944)

Period 7

Feminist Waves, Conservative Backlash & the Modern Women's Movement
1970s - Present

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