A public policy and public affairs consulting firm, Bass and Howes, Inc., was founded by political consultants Marie Bass and Joanne Howes in Washington, D.C., in 1986. While it operated largely in a male-dominated field, Bass and Howes came to be centrally involved in most of the key women's policy issues of the 1980s and 1990s, including reproductive rights, women's health, family and medical leave, domestic violence, and women in politics. The firm also ran the Reproductive Health Technologies Project, and this collection includes client files for the Project regarding HIV prevention programs.

Boston Women's Community Radio (BWCR) was founded in 1977. Beginning in 1978, BWCR's core staff and volunteers produced twenty-four hours of programming in commemoration of International Women's Day (IWD), which aired annually in March on WMBR-FM, student radio station licensed to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. BWCR served as an umbrella organization and training ground for feminist radio producers and local community groups, with many of the programs produced for the yearly event distributed afterwards to national audiences. A number of the programs dealt with AIDS issues.

The Boston Women's Health Book Collective began in 1969 when a small group of women gathered after a workshop on women and their bodies at a Boston-area female liberation conference to talk about some crucial health issues and to confront a medical establishment viewed as paternalistic and condescending. Perhaps best known for their pioneering handbook Our Bodies, Ourselves (1971 and subsequent editions and international adaptations), the Collective helped to create worldwide networks of women involved in health education and advocacy. They also produced Ourselves and Our Children (1978), Changing Bodies, Changing Lives, A Book for Teens on Sex and Relationships (1980), and Ourselves, Growing Older, Women Aging with Knowledge and Power (1987 and 1994), among others. This collection includes research and conference material about AIDS, as well as materials that the Collective published about AIDS.

Bunch was a feminist and anti-war activist who taught feminist theory at several universities as well as founding and writing for several feminist publications. This collection includes conference and campaign materials about AIDS from the Center for Women’s Global Leadership, of which Bunch was the director.

Eleanor Skelton Cash was born in Eldorado, Illinois. In 1949, she married Norman Everett Cash; they had four children before divorcing in 1970. She graduated from Empire State College with a major in social psychology in 1974. She moved frequently, living in Georgia, Virginia, Tennessee, California, and New York. A poet, Cash has given readings in Georgia and has published collections of her works privately. This collection includes correspondence, poems, audiotapes, and journals documenting Cash's marriage, children, divorce, sexual relationships, health problems, and living in poverty. Cash engaged in numerous sexual relationships in the 1970s and 1980s, and her journals document her increasing fear of contracting AIDS.

Challinor was a writer, producer, and academic who has also served on several advisory committees and worked with or supported numerous organizations, many of which are library and education-related. This collection includes a UNESCO report on the role of libraries in HIV/AIDS information dissemination in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Coyote (Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics) is an organization founded by Margo St. James, based in California, and concerned with the rights of prostitutes and others. Calling for the decriminalization of prostitution, Coyote sought to provide legal and medical services for prostitutes, offered employment, health, and financial counseling, and worked to educate the public about prostitution through publications, speeches, and seminars. In 1985 St. James and others formed the International Committee for Prostitutes' Rights. Reflecting a growing concern about AIDS during the 1980s, one of its projects was CAL-PEP (California Prostitutes Education Project), organized to provide public education on prostitution, and to provide education and counseling to prostitutes and other sex workers in the San Francisco Bay area. This collection includes conference and informational material about AIDS.

This collection consists of feminist flyers, pamphlets, directories, statements, bibliographies, curricula, programs, invitations, manifestos, articles, catalogs, and other printed materials. It includes ephemera concerning AIDS.

While attending Harvard Law School, Holtzman became active in the Civil Rights Movement. In 1967 she became the first female assistant to a New York City mayor, and in 1970, she ran a successful campaign to be the Democratic State Committeewoman from the Flatbush neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York, making her the youngest woman elected to the House of Representatives. She served in the House of Representatives from January 1973 to December 1980. In her role as Representative, she tackled a variety of local and national issues and was one of the founding members of the Congresswomen’s Caucus. This collection includes speeches that Holtzman made to HIV/AIDS conferences and organizations.

As a young adult, Kennedy struggled in her family relationships as well as with substance abuse and eating disorders. In the late 1970s she founded a watchband business that was successful for a time, but by the early 1980s she began training as an auto mechanic in New Hampshire and at ITT Technical School in Chelsea, Massachusetts, where she was one of three women in a class of 500. In 1984 she opened Chicago Auto, which she ran in Allston and Cambridge, Massachusetts, until the late 1990s when she moved to New Mexico. Kennedy was a volunteer in the buddy system program of the Boston AIDS Action Committee, and this work is referenced in her date books and journals.

Clinical psychologist Judith Kuriansky holds appointments at Columbia University and has lectured and led workshops around the world on peace, trauma recovery, and crisis counseling. A pioneer in providing radio call-in and internet advice, she is the editor of Sexuality Education: Past, Present, and Future (2009), among many others. This collection consists largely of brochures and other printed material collected by Kuriansky on AIDS and HIV, sexual assault, child abuse, and dressing for success. It also includes publicity from Mothers' Voices United to End AIDS.

Laubenstein was one of the first physicians to recognize the appearance of the AIDS epidemic. The author (with Dr. Alvin Friedman-Kien) of the first published article on the alarming appearance of Kaposi's sarcoma, Laubenstein was outspoken about what she saw as neglect of the epidemic by government and society. Her practice grew to consist predominantly of AIDS cases; in 1983 she helped organize the Kaposi's Sarcoma Research Fund and the first full-scale medical conference on AIDS, held at New York University. She was also one of the founders of MTS, Multitasking Systems, a non-profit office-service business that provided employment for people with AIDS. Laubenstein suffered from severe asthma and the effects of childhood polio, which forced her to use a wheelchair. Her role in the battle against AIDS inspired the character of Dr. Emma Brookner in Larry Kramer's play, The Normal Heart.

Created in 1971 by Gloria Steinem and fellow journalists, activists, and feminists, Ms. is a national monthly magazine published and written by women to provide a forum for women and women's issues. This collection contains letters to the editor of Ms. magazine and related documents. Some letters deal with AIDS.

Ann P. Meredith was a photographer, artist, film maker, and performance artist. Most of her career in photography was spent documenting the lives of women, gay and lesbian life, and her family. Her work includes photographs depicting the AIDS epidemic, particularly its effect on women.

Irene Monroe is an ordained minister, a public theologian, a syndicated columnist on religion, and a motivational speaker. She has served as assistant pastor at United Baptist Church in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts (1990-1992), and as a Christian education minister at Old Cambridge Baptist Church (1993-1996). She has also served as a board member for many organizations committed to civil and human rights. This collection contains materials from a conference about HIV/AIDS in the black community.

The National Organization for Women Legal Defense & Education Fund (NOW LDEF) was established in 1970 as a "public service organization dedicated to achieving equality for women and girls." LDEF has focused its efforts on gaining legal rights for women in educational and employment opportunity, cases of physical abuse and sexual harassment, and in marriage and divorce laws. This collection includes a videotape about women and AIDS produced by Gay Men’s Health Crisis in 1988.

Education for Action, initiated in 1966 with a grant from the Ford Foundation, was unique among the social programs at Harvard and Radcliffe in that it combined action-oriented education with community work and other forms of public service. It was run by a multi-cultural student board with the assistance of a program coordinator and served as a meeting place for socially-concerned students. It provided information, counseling, and funds for students to do research on, or participate in, social action projects. This collection contains grants and other materials about research concerning HIV-positive women.

Joel Redon is the author of Bloodstream (1988), concerning his experience with AIDS. In 1986, shortly before he was diagnosed as having AIDS, he began a correspondence with writer M.F.K. Fisher. This collection consists of photocopies of correspondence between Redon and Fisher concerning his writing and his disease as well as a copy of Bloodstream.

The mission of the Reproductive Health Technologies Project was "to advance the ability of every woman of any age to achieve full reproductive freedom with access to the safest, most effective, appropriate and acceptable technologies for ensuring her own health and controlling her fertility." It was managed, staffed, funded, and directed by the public policy and public affairs consulting firm Bass and Howes until 1992, when it became an independent non-profit 501 (c) (3) organization. In 1998, the Project began work on increasing public understanding of microbicides, which could protect women from sexually transmitted diseases, such as AIDS.

A feminist and social worker, Rush was a co-founder of Older Women's Liberation (OWL) in 1970, a founder and speaker for Women Against Pornography (1979-1987), chair of the Media Reform Committee of the National Organization for Women (1980-1985), and a member of the board of directors of New York Women Against Rape. When her younger son was stricken with AIDS in the mid-1980s, Rush formed one of the first mothers' support groups and became involved with the People with AIDS Coalition of New York. This collection includes notes on her son’s illness and records of various support groups for mothers and families dealing with AIDS.

Physician Joyce Wallace studied pre-med at Columbia University's School of General Studies before receiving her MD from the State University of New York Health Science Center in Brooklyn in 1968. She started practicing medicine in the late 1970s in Greenwich Village, where many of her patients were gay men. In 1981, before AIDS was recognized, she was among the first physicians to report finding Kaposi's sarcoma among their patients. Wallace shifted her focus to examining the impact of AIDS on female sex workers and dedicated herself to making them safer through AIDS tests, safe sex education and condom distribution, and needle-exchange programs. She also founded the Foundation for Research on Sexually Transmitted Diseases in 1982 and served as its executive and medical director until 2003. The papers of Joyce Wallace contain articles; medical research papers, conference materials, and research files on AIDS; and other materials documenting Wallace's career as a physician, AIDS researcher, and advocate for female sex workers. Also included in the collection are correspondence, committee materials, and policy documents relating to Wallace's employment at St. Vincent's Hospital in New York City and the hospital's response to the AIDS crisis.

Winship attended Vassar College before transferring to Radcliffe College, from which she graduated with a B.S. in psychology in 1943. Beginning in 1963, Winship wrote an advice column for teenagers in the Boston Globe called "Ask Beth.” In 1970 the Los Angeles Times Syndicate picked up "Ask Beth," which at its peak had 70 subscribing newspapers. In addition to her column, Winship tackled various health and sexuality issues in numerous publications, including Ask Beth: You Can't Ask Your Mother (1972) and Human Sexuality (1988). She regularly spoke with high school students, parents, and community groups on the topic of teenage sexual behavior and was also a consultant for a variety of family life educational programs. Among many other issues, Winship wrote about and answered letters about AIDS.

This collection consists of 100 episodes of the talk show Woman to Woman. On each 50-minute episode Pat Mitchell talks with five to ten women who have personal or professional experience with a topic pertaining to women, couples, children, relationships, religion, sexuality, health, or a social or political issue. Two episodes concern AIDS.