Alice Austen was introduced to photography at the age of ten, and over the course of her life she took nearly 9,000 photographs, of which some 3,500 still exist. Austen was very interested in sports, including women's lawn tennis. She was a member of the Ladies Club for Out-Door Sports and frequently attended events at the Clifton Boat Club in Staten Island and Rutgers College in New Brunswick, N.J. This collection consists of a scrapbook detailing her interests and social life.

A resident of Shawnee, Oklahoma, Dorothy C. Black was an active member of a women's bowling team from the late 1950s to the early 1980s. The team participated regularly in Women's International Bowling Congress (WIBC) and Oklahoma Women's Bowling Association (OWBA) tournaments in the Southern and Midwestern United States.This collection consists of an album documenting Black's twenty-plus years of involvement in competitive women's bowling. The album includes photographs with many of the individuals identified; annotated scoring charts; and articles about bowling news; and memorabilia.

The Boston Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) was founded in 1866 to "serve the temporal and religious welfare of young women who are dependent upon their own exertions for support." Over the years the Boston YWCA has adhered to goals established by its first executive director, Charlotte Drinkwater, to provide affordable housing, enrichment courses, vocational training, physical education, career counselling and placement to the working women of Boston.

This collection consists of programs from women’s clubs, including the Forty-Second Ladies' Day of the New York Athletic Club, held on Dec. 9, 1898.

Founded in 1892 in Boston's South End by a small group of college-educated women, Denison House was a settlement house that offered camps, clubs, sports for girls and boys, classes, a library and clinic, union organization, and other services for the neighborhood's mixed nationalities.

Margaret Claire Dunkle was involved in a number of women’s advocacy organizations and the author of Competitive Athletics: In Search of Equal Opportunity (1977). Her collection includes files on women in sports.

Patty Dyer grew up in Portland, Maine. After graduating high school, she joined the All-American Red Heads, one of the first women's professional basketball teams, and played with them from 1977 to 1980. She later worked as an L.P.N. in nursing homes, and, after graduating from the University of New England (BA, MSW), as a family therapist.

This collection contains a baseball hat for the women's baseball team "Silver Bullets" of Colorado and four boxes of the General Mills cereal "Wheaties," which feature women athletes including Boston Marathon winner Joan Benoit Samuelson (1996), the women's gymnastics team from the 1996 Olympics, Olympic swimmer Amy Van Dyken (1996), and tennis player Althea Gibson (2001).

Alice Bertha Foster taught physical education and was director of the women's gymnasium at University of Chicago, Bryn Mawr College, Oberlin College, and All Saints School in South Dakota. The collection contains Foster's incoming personal and professional correspondence. Most professional correspondence is related to her work teaching physical education for young women, and includes letters from other instructors (including former students who went on to become instructors); with program administrators, with doctors and with companies that manufactured gymnasium apparatus. This correspondence includes requests for rules of the game of basketball and other games, as well as for suggestions of programs of exercises and general curricula for physical education of women.

Fox dedicated her professional life to collecting images of women. She believed graphic imagery (drawing, painting, photography, sculpture, etc.) revealed more about the real-life experiences of women than written sources. Her collection is especially strong in images from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which show women in various cultures engaged in sports and at work.

Susan F. Fratkin is director of special programs at the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges in Washington, D.C. The collection contains background material and draft documents regarding Title IX (concerning sex discrimination) of the Education Amendments of 1972, and educational institutions’ responses to drafts.

The highest ranking female judoist in the world, Keiko Fukuda was the granddaughter of a samurai who taught jujitsu in Tokyo. One of his students, Jigoro Kano, transformed jujitsu into judo, and in the 1930s he invited Fukuda to study at his school. Although she had already earned a degree in Japanese literature, Fukuda found her calling in judo and devoted the rest of her life to its teaching and study. When judo was recognized as an Olympic sport in 1964, she received worldwide recognition by demonstrating her art at the Olympic Games. She moved to the San Francisco area in the 1960s, teaching at local colleges, her Women's Judo Club in San Francisco, and around the world. She became an American citizen after training dozens of women who were then newly entering the police force, arguing to the immigration authorities that her work was vital to the defense of the country. See also the film Mrs. Judo: Be Strong, Be Gentle, Be Beautiful.

An accomplished swimmer, Fuller won several competitions in the Boston area as a teenager. She also participated in many sports while attending Radcliffe College (A.B. 1925).

The first woman umpire in professional baseball, Bernice (Shiner) Gera was born in Ernest, Pennsylvania. In 1967 she enrolled in the Florida Baseball School, which at the time had no facilities for women, and she was forced to spend most of the six-week program living in a motel. Rejected by the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues (NAPBL), Gera took the NAPBL to court and won a discrimination suit in 1972. She won a contract to work in the New York-Pennsylvania Professional Baseball League, but following a game between the Geneva Senators and the Auburn Twins she decided to resign, citing the non-cooperation of other umpires. Gera worked for the New York Mets in their community relations and promotions program from 1974 to 1979 before retiring to Florida.

Tove Gertrud (Mueller) Gerson was born in Munich, Germany. She worked as a teacher and physical education instructor until 1939, when she joined her husband, who was half Jewish and working for Phillips Petroleum, in the United States. For the next three decades, while they lived in Michigan, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, and Cambridge, Mass., she was a teacher, physical therapist, YWCA administrator, and activist for peace and civil rights. In 1970 Gerson began to lose her sight; she returned to Germany in 1973.

A socialist and deist, Gilman was an independent thinker, author, and speaker who was an intellectual leader of the women's movement from the late 1890s through the mid-1920s. An advocate of economic independence for women, Gilman considered the ballot of secondary importance. Her interests included women’s physical fitness. The Schlesinger holds a wide breadth of material related to Gilman, much of which has been digitized. Please see the Charlotte Perkins Gilman research guide for more information about accessing the digitized materials.

This collection includes Aletha Harms's Bates College scrapbook detailing her career as a star scholar and athlete (1909-1913).

During the early 1970s, Hartry was a convening member of the Washington chapter of the Women's Equity Action League (WEAL) and director of WEAL's first national office. After moving to Boston in 1973, she served as secretary on the national board of the WEAL Educational and Legal Defense Fund, was a sports consultant for the WEAL Fund in preparing an information kit about women and sports, and was associate director of the New England Region of the Federation of Organizations for Professional Women.

This collection of Diana Mara Henry's works consists of nearly 500 black and white photographs of women in the United States. The emphasis of the collection is on women in politics, particularly in campaigns, conventions, feminist demonstrations, and fund-raising events. Also included are photographs of actresses, athletes, lawyers, journalists, fashion editors and models, children, teenagers, and old women.

Matina Horner, the sixth and youngest president of Radcliffe, has an extensive collection of papers which include records illustrating women's issues of the 1970s and 1980s, such as the inequity and reform of women's athletics (crew, swimming, fencing, squash, etc.).

Feminist and historian Margaret R. Hunt was a member of the Radcliffe Crew, active in gay and lesbian groups (including Radcliffe Lesbians), and a volunteer at Transition House, a battered women's shelter.

Photojournalist and free-lance photographer Bettye Lane was best known for her documentation of the women's movement of the 1970s and 1980s. This collection consists of over 1500 black and white photographs of women in the United States, mainly women actively participating in politics, sports, demonstrations, the arts, and conventions.

A graduate of Harvard University (A.B. 1978), Nancy Debra Levin helped to establish Harvard's first women's soccer team. In 1993, Levin started the Women's Sports Connection, a quarterly newspaper aimed at increasing the visibility of women's sports. Subsequently Levin wrote "Nancy Levin's Sports Beat," a section of BayInsider.com, a web site focusing on sports and recreation. She also was director of sports news for Pupulé Sports, a women's fitness website.

A writer and journalist, Ludtke graduated from Wellesley College and drew national attention in 1977 when, as a reporter for Sports Illustrated, she sued Major League Baseball to gain women reporters equal access to athletes' locker rooms.

The Massport Jets was a groundbreaking girls' ice hockey team founded in 1970 by Anthony Marmo, a figure well known in East Boston, Massachusetts, for his advocacy of youth ice hockey programs. The team was partially supported by the Massachusetts Transportation Authority, which is where the team derived its name.

The Melpomene Institute for Women's Health Research was founded in 1982 by Judy Mahle Lutter, a national authority on the effects of exercise on women. Its mission was to bring cutting-edge health research to ordinary women and girls and to develop programs to engage them in leading healthy lives. Initiatives included publications and videos, conferences, 5K races, and research studies. Between 2007 and 2009, Melpomene Institute sponsored fourteen projects among underserved women in Hispanic, African American, and Somali communities.

African American minister Irene Monroe was abandoned at six months of age in Brooklyn, N.Y. A graduate of Samuel Tilden High School, she attended Wellesley College, Union Theological Seminary, and Harvard Divinity School. She served as assistant pastor at United Baptist Church in Jamaica Plain, Mass. (1990-1992) and as Christian education minister at Old Cambridge Baptist Church (1993-1996). A board member of CLOUT (Christian Lesbians Out Together), Monroe is a columnist for In Newsweekly and has contributed essays to a number of publications.

New Agenda: Northeast was founded in 1987 to advance the role of women in sports. Supported by the Massachusetts Association for Health, Physical Education, Recreation, and Dance, New Agenda: Northeast sponsors conferences and seminars and a Women's Hall of Fame for women teachers and coaches.

Paine was employed at Radcliffe as Assistant to the Secretary (1904-1912), and Dean's Assistant (1910-1922). In 1922, she became Secretary to the Director of Athletics of the Harvard Athletic Association (HAA) and accountant of HAA (1928-1948).

Plimpton was a physical education teacher educated at Radcliffe. Her collection includes scrapbooks of college memorabilia and articles about athletics at Radcliffe, a list of expenses at college (1925-1929), reunion material, and Radcliffe athletic costumes.

Kitty Porterfield was Vice President for Women of the United States Rowing Association. She was interested in the history and iconography of women rowing.

Elizabeth West collected postcards of women, which are loosely organized by topic (performers and entertainers, rodeo and the West, etc.) and include women in sports, hunters, women working, and women in vehicles (motorcycles, bicycles, cars, airplanes).

This collection consists of over 250 posters, mostly in English, about women and women's issues, including women athletes.

This collection includes photocopies of student and alumnae publications, reports, and oral history interviews with Harvard coaches and athletic directors relating to the history of Radcliffe athletics. This history was compiled by Kristin Powell, formerly of the Harvard Athletics Department.

The Project on Equal Education Rights (PEER), a project of the National Organization for Women Legal Defense & Education Fund (NOW LDEF), was established in 1974 to monitor the government's progress in enforcing federal laws against sex discrimination in the public schools. The collection contains the records of PEER's analysis of the enforcement of Title IX of the 1972 Education Amendments. Included are copies of Title IX complaints for 1972 through 1976; legislative hearing files; interviews with the staff of the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (which was responsible for enforcement), students, parents, teachers, and school administrators; forms; and information on the study's methodology.

The Project on the Status and Education of Women (PSEW) was formed under the auspices of the Association of American Colleges in 1971. PSEW staff worked in conjunction with Congressional staff and other interested organizations and coalitions on the development and passage of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, mandating that educational institutions that received federal funding could not discriminate on the basis of sex.

Although opportunities to play sports were provided to Radcliffe students in earlier years (gymnastics, 1881; basketball, 1895; tennis), the Department of Physical Education was not established until the opening of the gymnasium in 1898. After 1915, the department administered medical examinations, compulsory physical education, and after 1920, a swimming test. It continued these functions until 1924 when Physical Education became a sub-department of Health Education. The Office of Sports, Dance and Recreation supervised the athletics program from 1960 to 1971. Radcliffe's Athletic Association was formed in 1901 and sponsored intramural and intercollegiate competitions in gymnastics, basketball, field hockey, swimming and other sports.

This collection contains subject files related to Radcliffe College, mostly consisting of printed materials. Topics include the Alumnae Association, athletics, college organizations, publications, buildings, events, committees, conferences, etc. The collection is organized by subject and arranged alphabetically.

A mountaineer, skier, and writer, Christine Lincoln Reid was born in Belmont, California, and studied for two years at the Museum School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. The first woman to climb Mount Columbia in the Canadian Rockies, she also made many ascents in the Pennine Alps and climbed all major peaks in the Zermatt (Switzerland) area. A route in the Piz Popena south wall in the Dolomites was named for her: the Via Christine. Reid was also an avid skier, photographing ski races and completing a film on ski technique. A member of the editorial board of Appalachia, she also wrote articles for the American Alpine Journal and the Boston Transcript. She helped develop the New England chapter of the Explorer's Club and was a member of the Women's Travel Club. This collection consists of color slides, lantern slides, and glass plate negatives taken by Reid of hikers, skiers, and people climbing, camping, canoeing, etc., mostly in the United States with a small number in Canada and Europe.

Bessie Huntting Rudd graduated from Radcliffe College in 1917. She served as assistant director of physical education at Radcliffe (1924-1931), was an active alumna, and was a professor at Pembroke College (Brown University) until her retirement in 1961.

Sabak played third base for the Arians, a women's softball team founded in 1934 in Linden, N.J., by Margaret ("Toots") O. Nusse. This collection includes photographs, programs, and clippings.

After receiving her doctorate in counseling at the University of Maryland in 1969, Sandler found it hard to find work, and she began a career-long endeavor to ensure equal access to educational employment for women. Under the auspices of the Women's Equity Action League (WEAL)'s Committee for Federal Contract Compliance, she filed administrative complaints against over 250 colleges and universities under the U.S. Department of Labor, charging the department's Office of Federal Contract Compliance with failing to enforce federal contract compliance at colleges and universities. The publicity which Sandler generated through these complaints contributed to Congressional hearings on the topic of women in education and led Representative Edith Green to author the legislation which eventually became Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. This collection includes materials relating to Title IX.

Born in Boston, Mass., Gretchen Schuyler graduated in 1931 from Boston University (BU), where she excelled in nine different sports; an award in her honor is given annually to the top woman student and athlete at BU. In 1935 she became a member of the first U.S. women's lacrosse team; she also served on the U.S. women's field hockey team. Schuyler received her master's degree from Columbia University and taught at the Cathedral School of St. Mary (Garden City, N.Y.) and at the Chapin School in New York City. During World War II she was a member of the American Red Cross Clubmobile Service, receiving a Bronze Star from President Truman for her bravery during the Battle of Bastogne. She was a professor of physical education at BU for 28 years, retiring in 1973.

South Boston Neighborhood House was founded in 1901 as the South Boston Day Nursery through the efforts of a group of women that included Mrs. William Dewart, Olivia Buckminster James, and Marian J. Homans. Gradually adding more and more educational and recreational programs, the nursery was renamed Olivia James House ("the Ollie") in 1935. A year later a gymnasium, kitchen, and print shop were added. During the 1940s, under the guidance of Mary Mooney Perry and Vincent Connors, the Friendly Circle for the Blind, road racing, wrestling, boxing, and gymnastic activities were established, as were youth programs, including a summer camp, musical reviews, dances, and pet shows.

After graduating from Wellesley in 1935, Katharine Toll worked as parish secretary at Grace Episcopal Church in Amherst before becoming a winter sportswriter for the Boston Post, the first woman appointed to the position. After being recruited to the Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (WAVES), where she served from 1942 to 1946, Toll returned to the Boston Post as a staff reporter (1946-1954).

Jean Elizabeth Wolfe developed a deep, life-long love of camping, physical education, and water sports at an early age. She spent every summer from 1934 to 1960 at various girls’ camps including Eagle Island (New York), Blazing Trail (Maine), Silver Lake (New York), Quanset Sailing (Massachusetts), Onaway (New Hampshire) and others. After earning a bachelor's degree in physical education in 1947 from Russell Sage College in Troy, New York, Wolfe worked as an instructor at Pembroke College at Brown University, teaching swimming and personal exercise under the supervision of Bessie Huntting Rudd. From 1950 to 1952, Wolfe was head of the physical education department at the Kimberley School, a private girls' school in Montclair, New Jersey.

The Women's Equity Action League (WEAL) was a national membership organization, with state chapters and divisions, dedicated to improving the status and lives of all women by concentrating on economic advancement primarily through education, litigation, and legislation. This collection includes the records of the Sports Project Referral and Information Network (SPRINT), which collected and distributed information on women and girls in sports, particularly in educational institutions, and monitored legal and political developments, model programs, and trends in women's physical education and athletics.

The YWCA of Cambridge (Massachusetts), established by members of the Cambridgeport branch of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, was incorporated in February 1892. The YWCA provided inexpensive, safe accommodations for working women and transients and offered programs in music, dressmaking, cooking, Bible study, watercolors, German, hygiene, and physical culture. Additional programs and services have included vocational guidance, an employment office, youth programs, day care, senior citizens' activities, recreational facilities, and study groups on public affairs.