An activist in the movement against domestic violence, Bako was coordinator of the Rape Prevention Committee of the New York City chapter of the National Organization for Women, helping coordinate the 1976 Women's Walk Against Rape. She was also on the New York Steering Committee of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence and served as executive director of Volunteers Against Violence Technical Assistance Program.

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. As the former national campaign director for ERAmerica and a lobbyist for Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Marie Bass and Joanne Howes brought together over 30 years of experience to form Bass and Howes, Inc. 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 project, directed by Betsy Warrior, published the directory Working on Wife Abuse, which was the first international directory of individuals and programs advocating for battered women. Warrior realized the need for a compendium of resources, analyses of male-pattern violence, and templates for shelter procedures. The directory provided statistics on wife abuse and articles on the history, motivations and utility of male-pattern violence, explained legal options like restraining orders, offered articles by men working to combat sexism by counseling abusive men, and provided a bibliography on woman abuse as well as advice from emergency room doctors treating battered women. It included guidelines for setting up shelters, hotlines, and support groups for battered women.

The Boston Area Rape Crisis Center began as a group of Boston-area women organized as Women Against Rape. Many of these women were, themselves, rape survivors. Their first meeting was held on November 7, 1972, at the Cambridge Women's Center. The group announced the opening of the Center on March 1, 1973, and provided an emergency aid telephone number (492-RAPE). The press release also promised that the Center would provide "detailed medical, legal, and psychological information and referrals...emergency transportation for rape victims and...accompany [individuals] to hospitals and police stations, [as well as to arrange] discussion groups and self-defense classes [for interested individuals]." In its early years the Center was run by volunteers and part-time staff, operating out of a room in the Cambridge Women's Center. As of 2019, the center has two offices, one in Boston, Massachusetts, and the other in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and employs over 50 staff members and has over 200 volunteers. It is considered the second oldest rape crisis center in the country and the oldest in New England. The collection includes minutes, correspondence, flyers, financial information, etc.

Braude was a psychiatrist, advocate for women's health care issues, and activist against domestic violence. She advocated for gender equality in medical research, sought to ensure women's access to abortions, supported the introduction of the abortion pill into the American market, and was editor of Women, Power, and Therapy. She also held a landmark conference on domestic violence in Los Angeles in 1994, and was an activist, writer, and speaker on women's medical and psychological issues.

Cora Brooks is a poet, teacher, and peace activist. In 1977, Brooks purchased a piece of property with two houses in Chelsea, Vermont, and began using one of the houses as a safe house for women and children. In 1982, prompted by abuse she herself had experienced, Brooks helped found Chelsea Help for Battered Women, a hotline and group of safe houses for abused women.

Susan Brownmiller is a journalist and author perhaps best known for her book Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape (1975). Brownmiller was active in the women's liberation movement in the late 1960s and 1970s; she was a co-founder of the New York Radical Feminists. Her continuing interest in women's issues led her to help found Women Against Pornography in 1979.

Bunch was an educator, lesbian feminist, writer, and activist. She was also a co-founder, editor and writer for several publications, including Motive Magazine (1969), The Furies (1972-1973), and Quest: A Feminist Quarterly (1974-1984). In 1979, Bunch formed Interfem Consultants in Brooklyn, New York, to support feminist groups by organizing conferences, offering lectures, and providing educational resources. She was hired by the International Women's Tribune Center in 1981 to develop an international feminist network, which helped promote and expand its female sexual slavery project.

The Cambridge Women's Center was founded in 1971 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. initially occupying a Harvard University-owned building on Memorial Drive. Community donations allowed the group to buy a house in Cambridge at 46 Pleasant Street; the Center opened there in January 1972. The Women's Center, staffed by volunteers, provided referrals for services, housed a library with reference files, and provided safe space for women to meet. Several smaller organizations were begun in or housed within the Women's Center, including the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center and Transition House, a domestic violence shelter. The Cambridge Women's Center continues to operate as a safe space for women, and provides educational, employment, and crisis support for women. These records document the outreach and organizing work of the Center, and provides a snapshot of local feminist organizing efforts in the 1970s and 1990s.

Founded in 1972 as the nation's first feminist policy research organization, the Center for Women Policy Studies seeks to promote justice and equality for women through research publications, convening of conferences and seminars, and other advocacy efforts. The collection includes manuals, reports, flyers, brochures, newsletters, etc. from various jurisdictions and institutions in the United States and Canada.

Deming was an author and activist. In 1959, inspired by Mohandas Gandhi's writings, she became politically active, advocating nonviolence in all spheres of life. Periodicals such as The Nation and Liberation (for which she was an editor) published many of her political essays. She was active in several peace organizations, demonstrated for peace and civil rights, and was jailed several times for acts of civil disobedience. In the early 1970s, Deming became a feminist and concentrated her efforts on women's and lesbians' issues. She helped organize a branch of Women Against Violence Against Women in Monticello, NY.

Dworkin was an author, critic, lesbian, and radical feminist who wrote Pornography: Men Possessing Women (1981). In 1983, with lawyer Catharine MacKinnon, Dworkin drafted a controversial civil rights ordinance defining pornography as sex discrimination, which was later overruled in 1986 as a violation of the First Amendment. Dworkin engaged in activism around many issues, including abortion rights, rape, battery, pornography, and incest in the United States and abroad.

The Franklin Square House, a hotel for young working women and female students, was founded in 1902 by Reverend George Perin. The House was located at 11 East Newton Street in Boston's South End in the former St. James Hotel. In 1914, a second building was added to the location. In 1970, the East Newton Street property was sold to the city of Boston and the House moved to a high-rise building containing 147 apartments, where it provided affordable housing, shelter for battered women, and day care. Franklin Square House eventually sold the apartment building and transitioned into the Franklin Square House Foundation, which provides grants to organizations dedicated to providing affordable housing and essential services necessary for women and families to live productive and successful lives.

This collection includes notebook and conference material from the Socialist-Feminist Conference held at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, in July 1975; autobiographies of women students and class material on the American family; a directory of women in film; papers and printed material on women in Japan and South Korea; and organizing material from Take Back the Night, a Boston-area organization against violence against women.

An attorney and senior policy advisor, Joan A. Kuriansky has spent the bulk of her professional life focused on leading local and national non-profit organizations that empower women and girls throughout their lifespans. A graduate of Washington University (BA 1973), Occidental College (MA 1974), and the University of Virginia Law School (JD 1977), Kuriansky began her work with battered women in 1978 when she helped establish the first shelter in Washington, D.C. She later served as executive director of Women Against Abuse in Philadelphia (1981-1987) and in 1995 was recruited to provide technical assistance to state agencies implementing the Violence Against Women Act (1995-2001). She also served on President Clinton's Advisory Council on Violence Against Women (1995-2000). From 2001-2011 Kuriansky was executive director of Wider Opportunities for Women, which works nationally to achieve economic independence for women.

MacKinnon is a feminist lawyer and professor. She saw pornography as a form of sex discrimination that fosters the exploitation and abuse of women and co-wrote,with Andrea Dworkin, Pornography and Civil Rights (1988), Only Words (1993), and In Harm's Way: The Pornography of Civil Rights Hearings (1998), among others.

See also Letters to Ms. (MC 331)
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. These two collections contain letters written to the editors of the magazine, spanning a wide array of topics including rape, domestic abuse, and other forms of violence against women.

Founded in 1979, the National Center on Women and Family Law provided case consultation, guidance, and technical assistance to lawyers and paralegals working for low-income American women and men on a wide range of family law matters; co-counseling and amicus briefs on "cutting-edge" family law issues; public policy analysis; training for lawyers and paralegals on representation of low-income persons; and publications on a range of family law matters, particularly battered women, child support, and child custody. The center provided these services under annual contracts with the federally-funded Legal Services Corporation until the end of 1995. It was dissolved in 1996.

A rape crisis center, New York Women Against Rape (NYWAR) was formed in 1973 by N.Y. women who had belonged to the Women's Anti-Rape Group. The Women’s Anti-Rape Group, started in 1971, prepared a handbook on rape and held "rape speakouts" but did not counsel victims. NYWAR offered rape victims psychological support, medical and legal information, and referrals, and also worked for more just and humane treatment for sexually assaulted women.

The NOW Legal Defense & Education Fund (known as Legal Momentum since 2004) was one of the first legal organizations in the United States devoted solely to working for gender equality. It was established in 1970 to further women's rights through litigation and to raise funds to support legal and educational projects relating to women. NOW LDEF has focused its efforts on gaining legal rights for women in education and employment, in cases of physical abuse and sexual harassment, and by changing marriage and divorce laws. In the early 1990s NOW LDEF began lobbying in Washington, D.C., for the Violence Against Women Act (passed in 1994), and also worked to pass effective legislation on topics ranging from sexual harassment to welfare.

Legal Momentum is the oldest non-profit legal organization dedicated to advancing the rights of women and girls. Formed in 1970 as the NOW Legal Defense & Education Fund, it changed its name to Legal Momentum in 2004. Legal Momentum works to enhance participation of girls in career and technical high schools; protect workplace rights; strengthen the social safety net; expand rights of and services for victims of violence; and to promote gender equality in all aspects of women's lives.

This collection consists of two typescript papers by Saenger: "Attribution of Fault to a Rape Victim as a Function of Marital Status and Occupation" and "Rape in Perspective: The Ramifications of Rape in Polite Society" (Harvard University, 1977, n.d.). It also includes two bound volumes entitled Rape Papers containing ten unpublished papers on the subject of rape by various authors (1976-1978).

Schechter was involved in the battered women's movement and helped to organize the first battered women's shelter in Chicago. In 1978 Schechter left Chicago and moved to New York City. For a short while, she worked for the Family Abuse Project at the Henry Street Settlement, leaving this position to become coordinator of children and youth development services at the Park Slope Safe Homes Project in Brooklyn, New York. In 1991, Schechter took a position as clinical professor at the University of Iowa School of Social Work. Co-author of Effective Intervention in Domestic Violence and Child Maltreatment, the authoritative manual on the subject, Schechter was also the author of Women and Male Violence: The Visions and Struggles of the Battered Women's Movement (1982) and (with Ann Jones) When Love Goes Wrong (1992).

Cheng Imm Tan came to the United States in 1978 to study at Wilson College, and graduated from Dickinson College in 1981. She received a M.Div from Harvard Divinity School in 1986. Tan worked at Renewal House, a battered women's shelter in Roxbury, Massachusetts, from 1986-1991. Realizing that language and cultural barriers prevented the few Asian women who used the shelter from getting effective help, Tan founded the Asian Task Force Against Domestic Violence (ATASK) in 1986. ATASK established the Asian Shelter and Advocacy Project (ASAP), which opened New England's first emergency shelter and transitional housing program for Asian survivors of domestic abuse. ATASK's other services include a 24-hour multilingual hotline and, in collaboration with the Unitarian Universality Urban Ministry, the only food pantry in the greater Boston area serving the Asian American community with culturally appropriate food.

Transition House was founded in 1976 when Cherie Jimenez and Chris Womendez opened their five-room apartment as a refuge for battered women and their children; it was the first shelter of its kind in Massachusetts. It has moved several times and expanded to include volunteers and paid staff offering support for legal, welfare, and housing advocacy, a crisis hotline, and outreach programs. The Dating Violence Intervention Project, initiated in 1986, is a collaboration between Transition House and Emerge, an intervention program for violent and abusive men. In 1992, DVIP collaborated with the Massachusetts Criminal Justice Training Council to develop a pilot program for police officers and educators. Transition House has also worked with Boston and Cambridge public schools to raise consciousness about battering.

Professor and pioneering researcher into the consequences of childhood abuse, Penelope K. Trickett was educated at Bryn Mawr College (BA 1964), University of Denver (MA 1967), and New School for Social Research (PhD 1976). Trickett worked at Yale University and the National Institute of Mental Health before joining the faculty of the University of Southern California in 1990. Known for her groundbreaking longitudinal study of the developmental trajectories of girls who experienced sexual abuse, Trickett also correlated biomarkers of stress, such as cortisol, with psychological development. Trickett served as president of the American Psychological Association's Society for Child and Family Policy and Practice Section on Child Maltreatment and won the Independent Scientist Award from the National Institute of Mental Health, among many others.

A Boston-area feminist, Betsy Warrior was a founder of Cell 16 (formerly Female Liberation Front) in 1968, which published a periodical entitled No More Fun and Games. She was part of a demonstration in 1971 seeking improvements in services for women at Harvard and Massachusetts Institute for Technology, and was one of the early supporters of the Women's Educational Center in Cambridge, Mass. She later addressed the issue of violence against women, publishing Houseworker's Handbook (1975), Working on Wife Abuse (1977), and Battered Women's Directory (1982).

A minister with United Campus Christian Ministry and a doctoral candidate in history at the University of Arizona, Fran Leeper Buss has been a community organizer since the late 1960s, when she herself was struggling to survive as an ill, divorced mother of three, dependent on welfare for support. She founded and directed the Women's Crisis and Information Center in Fort Collins, Co. (1971-1973), worked in community outreach in Denver and Las Vegas, and taught at the University of Wisconsin--Whitewater and the University of Arizona. The collection consists of audiocassettes and transcripts of fifty-six oral histories conducted by Fran Leeper Buss with low-income and minority women of all ages from various geographic areas and racial/ethnic groups. The interviews focus on the experience of being poor and female, on employment, and on family life, with particular attention paid to the issue of domestic violence.