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.

Collection consists of pamphlets giving advice to expectant and new mothers on pre-natal care, care of infants, breastfeeding, etc., most issued by federal or state governments, the Better Babies Bureau of the Woman's Home Companion, or the Russell Sage Foundation.

The most prominent members of the Blackwell family were Elizabeth (1821-1910) and Emily (1826-1910), among the earliest women doctors and founders of the New York Infirmary and College for Women; their brother Henry Browne Blackwell (1825-1909), his wife Lucy Stone (1818-1893), and their daughter Alice Stone Blackwell (1857-1950), known for their leading roles in the abolition, woman suffrage, and prohibition movements; and their sister-in-law Antoinette Louisa (Brown) Blackwell (1825-1921), wife of Samuel Charles Blackwell (1823-1901), the first woman ordained as a minister in the United States and an active speaker on behalf of abolition, women's rights and prohibition. The material in this collection relating to Elizabeth and Emily includes correspondence, financial documents, and diaries. See also Additional Papers of the Blackwell Family. These collections have been digitized and can be accessed through the finding aids. Please see the Blackwell Family research guide for more information.

The Boston Association for Childbirth Education (BACE) was incorporated in 1958, although its founders had begun meeting as early as 1953 to discuss how best to reform obstetrical and maternity care and to disseminate information about natural childbirth. Some of the early educators were Justine Kelliher, Abigail Avery, and Sylvia D. Sawin. In seeking to further the acquisition and application of information concerning family-centered maternity care and breastfeeding, BACE sponsored studies, held workshops and classes, published newsletters and other printed material, and collaborated with the International Childbirth Education Association.

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. See also Boston Women’s Health Book Collective (Additional records) and Boston Women’s Health Book Collective (Printed collection).

The Boston 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, and career counselling and placement to the working women of Boston. Assistance with settlement of immigrants began in 1887 through the Travelers' Aid department. Since 1970, the Boston YWCA has introduced innovative programs to strengthen diversity and eliminate racism. It has been outspoken in public policy issues such as apartheid and offered services to youth, child care for working mothers, and special training for displaced homemakers.

Ambassador and breast cancer advocate Nancy Goodman Brinker attended Peoria High School and the University of Illinois (B.A., 1968), where she was a member of the Alpha Epsilon Phi sorority. Brinker's older sister Susan Goodman Komen died of breast cancer at age 36 in 1980. In 1982, Brinker established the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, a nonprofit organization to raise money for breast cancer research. serving as CEO of Komen from 2009 to 2013. Brinker herself survived breast cancer in the early 1980s. Her memoir, Promise Me: How a Sister's Love Launched the Global Movement to End Breast Cancer, was published in 2010. In 2018, Brinker founded the Promise Fund of Florida with Julie Fisher Cummings and Laurie Silvers, to raise money for breast cancer prevention and diagnosis specifically in South Florida. Brinker was an early donor to the Presidential campaign of fellow Texan George W. Bush. President Bush nominated Brinker to be the United States Ambassador to Hungary; she served in that capacity from 2001 to 2003. Brinker also served as Chief of Protocol of the United States from 2007 to January 2009. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009. Since 2009, Brinker has been the World Health Organization's Goodwill Ambassador for Cancer Control.

Barbara Haak Cane (A.B., Radcliffe, 1966) practiced law in Boston, Mass. The mother of two, she was an active member of Birth Day, a group of Boston women advocating improved pre-natal care and the legalization of nurse-midwifery. She also contributed articles to the Women's Yellow Pages published by the Boston Women's Collective.

C/Sec (Cesareans/Support Education and Concern) was formed in March 1973 by Nancy Wainer Cohen and Jini Duffy Fairley in Massachusetts. A nonprofit organization that provided information on cesarean childbirth, cesarean prevention, and vaginal birth after cesarean, C/Sec sought to provide emotional support and to change attitudes and policies affecting cesarean childbirth. C/Sec conducted research, developed educational programs (including a slide presentation), and published a newsletter.

Dickersin is a professor of epidemiology and advocate for breast cancer survivors. She has conducted studies in a number of important subject areas, including eyes and vision, surgery, and women’s health. Dickersin was diagnosed with breast cancer when she was 34 years old. A breast cancer survivor, she has dedicated much of her career to breast cancer research advocacy. In 1984, Dickersin and fellow advocate and nurse, Marsha Oakley, cofounded Arm-in-Arm, a Baltimore-based breast cancer support group and the support arm of the Maryland Women’s Health Coalition.

Tove Gertrud (Mueller) Gerson was born in Munich, Germany, and married Gerhard Gerson, a research engineer, in 1924. 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 ranged from sensible dress for women, physical fitness, more rational domestic architecture, and professionalized housework, to birth control, Freud, and immigrants. 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.

Collection consists mostly of pamphlets issued by companies giving advice to girls on a variety of topics, including menstruation and the fitting of bras and girdles. Also included is a brochure advertising books on sex and birth control and a flyer advertising lectures on etiquette, manners, etc.

HealthRight, Inc., was founded in the mid-1970s in New York City. It issued a newsletter and provided information to women seeking physicians who were supportive of the women's health movement. One of its key leaders was Rachel Fruchter. The collection includes questionnaires regarding women's health groups in Canada and other parts of the United States, and publications about women's health mostly issued by other organizations.

Hiler became a registered nurse in the 1930s and eventually enlisted in the United States Army Nurse Corps. Based at Madigan Army Medical Center in Washington state, she served as a lieutenant during the Korean War with the 171st Evacuation Hospital at Taegu, ASCOM, and Yong Dong Po; retiring from the Army with the rank of major in 1965. Hiler's photograph album contains candid photographs documenting Hiler's experiences at the Madigan Army Medical Center and serving in Korea during the Korean War. Photographs taken during Hiler's Korean service tour include images of Army facilities at Taegu, ASCOM, and Yong Dong Po; Army personnel in posed groups, working on patients, and engaged in social activities; North Korean prisoners of war, including images of doctor's treating their war wounds; a visit to a Korean temple; and multiples images of a disabled tank. A small number of clippings, daily bulletins from Fort Ord, California, and examples of United States military and Korean currency are also included.

An author, journalist, breast cancer expert, and patient advocate, Rose (Rehert) Kushner was born in Baltimore in 1929. She worked as a technical writer and editor and was a correspondent covering the Vietnam War for the Baltimore Sun in 1967. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1974 and went on to found and direct the Breast Cancer Advisory Center in Kensington, Md. A consultant and speaker on breast cancer, Kushner was the author of Why Me? What Every Woman Should Know About Breast Cancer to Save Her Life (1977); a revised version, Alternatives, was published in 1984. She was also the author of numerous articles and fact sheets. She was a member of the National Cancer Advisory Board (1980-1986), served on many of its task forces, and was a founder of the National Alliance of Breast Cancer Organizations. Her trip to China (1984) drew attention to the increase of breast cancer there. Kushner died of breast cancer in 1990.

Founded in 1848 for the purpose of "promoting among women a knowledge of the human system, the laws of life, and the means of relieving sickness and suffering," the Institute sponsored lectures on health, physiology, and related topics.

Founded in 1960 as the American Society for Psychoprophylaxis in Obstetrics (ASPO), the organization was later known as ASPO/Lamaze and Lamaze International. The Lamaze method of childbirth involved the psychological and physical preparation by the mother for the purpose of suppressing pain and facilitating delivery without drugs. Originally a medical society, it was soon organized into three divisions: physicians, professionals and teachers, and parents. Two of the earliest organizers were Marjorie Karmel, author of Thank You, Dr. Lamaze (1959), and Elisabeth Bing, a physical therapist who became one of the country's leading proponents of the method.

Levey grew up in New Jersey and attended Brown University, where she studied women's history. She worked for four years as an assistant in the publicity department at Yale University Press before entering the doctoral program in American Studies at Yale in 1989. During this period she began the process of "coming out" as a lesbian. In 1996 she moved to Somerville, Mass., and continued to teach at Yale while working on her dissertation. In March 1998 Levey was diagnosed with leukemia; she underwent chemotherapy at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston and Mount Sinai Hospital in New York and a bone marrow transplant at Yale-New Haven Hospital. Released from the hospital in December 1998, she lived with a friend in New Haven, where she died in April 1999. During her illness, friends and family of Jane communicated with her and each other via email, creating a network (FOJ for Friends of Jane) of support and information for approximately 100 people.

Mary-Helen Mautner was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1982, and in 1989 died from the disease at the age of forty-four. Three weeks before her death, she envisioned an organization that could extend to other lesbians the support and assistance she had received from her partner and friends. In January 1990, a few months after her death, her partner Susan Hester and a group of friends and supporters founded the Mary-Helen Mautner Project for Lesbians with Cancer. The Mautner Project is a nonprofit organization located in Washington, D.C., whose mission is to provide direct services to lesbians with cancer, as well as to their partners and caregivers; to inform the lesbian community about cancer; to educate the health care community about the special concerns of lesbians with cancer and their families; and to advocate on lesbian health issues in national and local arenas.

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.

The menstruation collection of Chris Bobel includes buttons, stickers, printed material, and other ephemera collected by Bobel documenting organizations and campaigns related to menstruation education, destigmatizing menstruation, and menstruation advocacy issues such as anti-tampon campaigns and the promotion of environmentally friendly feminine hygiene products. Chris Bobel is a Professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, focusing on critical menstruation studies, activism and social movements, body studies, and critical trauma studies and a past president of the Society for Menstrual Cycle Research.

Rachel Henrietta Palmer was born in Baltimore, Maryland, attending the public schools before dropping out of high school. By 1992 she had had three children by three different fathers: Domanic, Jesse, and Adrienne. She struggled with drug and alcohol abuse and was in and out of addiction therapy. Palmer worked with preschool children at churches and day care centers, and is employed as a classroom teacher's assistant in the Baltimore public school system. This collection includes a diary begun at the suggestion of her addiction counselor which documents her feelings about her childhood, her two abortions, her children and their health, relationships, her difficulties with substance abuse, and her spiritual and work lives.

Lydia E. Pinkham brewed home remedies, concoctions of herbs and alcohol, for menstrual pain and other health issues. The tight finances of the Pinkham family after the financial crash of 1873 apparently led her to ask for payment from those neighbors to whom she normally gave her remedy for free. In 1875 the Pinkham family realized the potential money-making opportunity in selling remedies, and worked together to produce, market, and sell Lydia E. Pinkham's Vegetable Compound. The Lydia E. Pinkham Medicine Company was officially founded in 1876. The company eventually had operations in Mexico and Canada as well as the U.S., and its trademark was registered in Europe, Latin America, the Caribbean, and East Asia. In 1968 the company was sold to Cooper Laboratories of Connecticut (later of California).

The Project on Women and Disability was founded in 1987 in the Boston (Massachusetts) area to bridge a gap between the women's community and the disability rights movement. Marsha Saxton was a founder who later served as executive director and as special projects coordinator focusing on medical advocacy and reproductive technologies. The mission of the Project was to eliminate sexism and disability bias, and to empower women with disabilities as equal and active partners in addressing the issues facing them. It sponsored training workshops, provided community-building resources and referrals, and published educational material including WILDA, A Journal for Women in Leadership/Disability Activists. The Project worked with the Boston Women's Health Book Collective on the 1985 edition of Our Bodies, Ourselves.

The Reproductive Health Technologies Project was founded in 1988 as a working group to provide public education and build public understanding about the French "abortion pill" RU 486 and other antiprogestins. It works to advance the ability of every woman to achieve full reproductive freedom with access to the safest, most effective, and preferred methods for controlling her fertility and protecting her health.

Seaman (Oberlin, B.A., 1956) was a feminist as well as a columnist and contributing editor at Ladies' Home Journal (1965-1969), child care and education editor at Family Circle (1970-1973), and author of articles and reviews in numerous newspapers and magazines. The author of The Doctors' Case Against the Pill, Free and Female, and Women and the Crisis in Sex Hormones, she was cited for her part in seeing that appropriate written warnings to patients accompany each prescription. See also Barbara Seaman (Additional papers).

An attorney and an expert in women's health law, Sybil Shainwald graduated from the College of William and Mary (B.A. 1948), Columbia University (M.A. 1972), and New York Law School (J.D. 1976). She has litigated thousands of cases involving drugs and medical devices that have injured women and their offspring, including DES (Diethylstilbesterol); the Dalkon Shield Intrauterine Device; silicone breast implants; Parlodel, a drug to suppress lactation; and Norplant, a contraceptive device. She has also served as co-counsel in cases involving other product liability actions. Shainwald was chair of the board of directors of the National Women's Health Network, and she also served on the boards of the Consumer Interest Research Institute and the Hysterectomy Educational Resources and Services Foundation. She has written, testified, and lectured widely on subjects such as obstetrical malpractice, IUDs, hormone therapy, and product liability.

Dedicated to identifying links between the environment and women's health, especially with respect to breast cancer, the Silent Spring Institute was founded in 1994 as a nonprofit scientific research organization. Within its first three years, the Institute launched its Cape Cod Breast Cancer and Environment Study and its Newton Breast Cancer Study with funding from the Massachusetts Department of Public Health. Through its research, the organization discovered endocrine disrupting compounds (cancer-causing agents) in both drinking water and in personal care products, thereby linking environmental toxins with breast cancer. The Institute continues to conduct leading edge research and influences the public policy agenda nationally by bringing together activists, scientists, and the people affected by breast cancer.

The Society for Menstrual Cycle Research is a nonprofit organization founded in 1977 by a multidisciplinary group of women who were pioneers in understanding the centrality of the menstrual cycle to women's health. The organization includes researchers, health care providers, and policy makers, and it identifies research priorities, provides a formal communication network, and seeks to influence public policy for the enhancement of women's health.

A research scientist in the field of occupational health and safety, Stellman is known for her work in women’s health, gender bias, occupational health management, and the health of veterans. Stellman is also the founder of the Women’s Occupational Health Resource Center (WOHRC) and is the author of Work Is Dangerous to Your Health (1973) and Women’s Work, Women’s Health (1977). She has taught at several universities (Rutgers University, City College of New York, University of Pennsylvania, and Columbia University); worked with the Health and Safety, Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers International Union (Denver), the American Health Foundation (New York), and the International Labour Office of the United Nations (Geneva, Switzerland); developed a core curriculum on reproductive hazards in the workplace; worked as an editor for several major health and safety journals; and served in a variety of governmental and non-governmental advisory capacities.

Obstetrician, gynecologist, and advocate for women's access to emergency contraception and abortion services, Felicia (Hance) Stewart graduated from the University of California, Berkeley (A.B. 1965) and Harvard Medical School (M.D. 1969). The co-author of My Body My Health: The Concerned Women's Guide to Gynecology (1979), Understanding Your Body: Every Woman's Guide to Gynecology and Health (1988), and Contraceptive Technology (1989), a major reference source in the field of family planning, Stewart practiced medicine in Sacramento and San Francisco. Perhaps best known for her research which established the efficacy and safety of the emergency contraceptive known as "Plan B," she also led the successful legal effort that allows qualified nurses and midwives to perform abortions in California.

A childbirth educator and a licensed home-birth lay midwife, Fran Ventre graduated from the Georgetown University Nurse-Midwifery Program (1978) and earned a master's in public health from Boston University (1980). She was coordinator of the North Shore Birth Center in Beverly, Mass., and founder of HOME (Home Oriented Maternity Experience) and editor of its newsletter (1973-1979). She was active in the American College of Nurse-Midwives and a founder of Midwives Alliance of North America in 1982. She practiced in community hospitals and tertiary care teaching hospitals and was midwife director of the first out-of-hospital birth center in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Wainer was a midwife and a childbirth writer and speaker. From 1972 until 1982, she was a leader in La Leche League, a nonprofit organization founded in 1956 to promote breastfeeding. In 1973, Wainer and Jini Duffy Fairley founded the nonprofit organization C/Sec Inc. (Cesareans/Support Education and Concern), which provided information on cesarean childbirth, cesarean prevention, and vaginal birth after cesarean, or VBAC, a phrase coined by Wainer. Wainer was instrumental in changing hospital policies regarding cesarean sections and VBAC and spoke out forcefully against a growing reliance in the United States on technology and surgery during birth. She is the author (as Nancy Wainer Cohen) of Silent Knife: Cesarean Prevention and Vaginal Birth after Cesarean (1983).

Warner was born in New York, N.Y., in 1921. As a young woman, Warner served in the Office of Strategic Services in Europe during World War II. She graduated from Barnard College (A.B. 1949) and received an M.A. from Lesley College in Cambridge, Mass., in 1985. In 1978 she founded the Anorexia Nervosa Aid Society of Massachusetts, then the only self-help group in New England for persons suffering from eating disorders. Renamed Anorexia Bulimia Care, Inc. (ABC) in 1986, the organization sponsored workshops and support groups and served as a clearinghouse for gathering and disseminating information regarding eating disorders. It also maintained a registry of physicians and mental health professionals and published a monthly newsletter. In 1994, ABC merged with the Massachusetts Eating Disorders Association.

In 1989, Susan Shapiro of Lexington, Mass., published an article entitled "Cancer as a Feminist Issue," which ultimately brought together a group of Boston-area women who initiated the Women's Community Cancer Project. A grassroots volunteer organization made up of women with cancer or cancer histories, as well as friends, family, and care-givers of those with cancer, the WCCP advocated changes in medical, social, and political approaches to cancer, particularly as they affected women. It was a founding organization of the National Breast Cancer Coalition. In 2003 the WCCP announced that it would continue its work in coalition with Prevention First and Alliance for a Healthy Tomorrow.

Women's Community Health Center in Cambridge, Mass., was incorporated in February 1974 as a women-owned and women-controlled health center. Initially staff offered self-help programs and gynecological services, and by May 1975 they were performing first trimester abortions. Educational programs centered upon sexuality, menopause, and natural birth control, and WCHC literature was translated into Spanish and Portuguese. The WCHC operated on a suggested fee system of payment, and funding was often dependent upon contributions from supporters. In the late 1970s a hostile legislature sought to curtail government funding of abortions and raised a debate concerning the licensing of clinics. In 1981 WCHC closed, largely due to financial instability.

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. The Cambridge YWCA is self-governing; it is administered by a volunteer Board of Directors and a small professional staff. Originally funded by membership fees, benefits, lectures, and bazaars, the YWCA has since 1938 received part of its budget from United Community Services (now United Way).