Celebrating Women’s History Month with Digital Commons Collections

Join us in honoring the myriad contributions of women to history and the present day through a few of the Digital Commons collections below. These IRs are publishing varied celebrations of women’s contributions through law journals, annual student events, newspapers, faculty lecture series, theses, niche research journals, and more. Some repositories are also actively promoting the education of female students in fields where they have historically been under-represented, such as science and mathematics, through community outreach.

Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University uses the tools in their IR to manage an annual event called WiSER where high schools register teams of sophomores and juniors who are interested in mathematics, physics and science in general. “WiSER is an outreach program dedicated to help high school female students to discover potential future careers in science,” which speaks directly to ERAU’s commitment to community outreach.

The life of Judge Florence Allen, first female judge elected to a state supreme court (in 1922), was the topic for one of Kent State University – Ashtabula’s Faculty Lecture Series. “Throughout her career, Judge Allen worked for women’s rights and served as a role model for women who wanted to enter the field of law.” Preserving and disseminating these unique historical documents are proving to be important collections for many repositories.

The Yale Journal of Law and Feminism includes a popular paper on feminist legal theory entitled “By Any Other Name: The Vocabulary of “Feminism” at the Supreme Court.” Augustana College students publish on women’s history including this paper on “Social Change and the Reconstitution of Feminine Norms at Augustana College in the Postwar Period, 1945-1962.” Similarly, an undergraduate from Brigham-Young University published a much-downloaded thesis on “Understanding Biracial Women’s Identity Formation.” Women’s Studies Quarterly is a peer-reviewed interdisciplinary forum for the exchange of emerging perspectives on women, gender, and sexuality published by the City University of New York (CUNY).

Search the Digital Commons Network for more free, full-text research on women’s contributions and everything else under the sun.