This resource guide has been designed for students in SEXISM AND POLITICS, a Spring 2020 Expos 20 course taught by Sparsha Saha.
The resources and strategies described on this page are specifically targeted: they represent our first best guesses at where you might find background research, primary source materials, and current scholarly conversations to use in your essays and capstone project.
See our suggestions simply as starting points -- a preliminary toolkit or research workbench. As you proceed, other resources or other problem-solving strategies may have to be added in.
Remember that good research is often about following up on hunches, testing out a hypothesis and then seeing where else (or to what else) it leads. You may need to try several search combinations before you strike gold.
Let me know if questions arise at any point in your project. We'll triage by email or set up a time to meet in person.
Enjoy your work!
Sue Gilroy, Librarian for Undergraduate Programs for Writing, Lamont Library
Image: From left, Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., speak at the Capitol in Washington, July 15, 2019. AP Images.
A nationally recognized, leading source of scholarly research and current data about American women’s political participation and under-representation in political leadership. The Center for American Women and Politics is housed at the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University.
Sections of CAWP worth exploring include:
The Barbara Lee Family Foundation advances women’s equality and representation in American politics (as well as in contemporary art).
The Foundation has studied and published research about every woman’s gubernatorial race since 1998. Through strategic partnerships and capacity building via grants and endowments, the Foundation also aims to help women gain essential knowledge and tools to meet the challenges of campaigning, including best practices for ads.
Part of the National Council of State Legislatures, the WLN is a professional development organization to which every female state legislator in the 50 states, United States territories, and the District of Columbia. belongs.The mission of the Women's Legislative Network is to promote the participation, empowerment, and leadership of women legislators.
The site includes a state suffrage history timeline, current and historical statistical snapshots of women legislators by state, a state-level directory of women's caucuses, commissions, and committees, and other information.
Gender Parity Index (Represent Women)
Overview, comparative/longitudinal data, and statistical snapshots of each state.
A project of the nonpartisan Parity Project, dedicated to changing the face of U.S. politics, this free publication compiles and distils research on women candidates and elected officeholders.
Not to be confused with a Harvard Library research database that's similarly named, this website was joint project of the CAWP and Barbara Lee Family Foundation during the 2018 midterms. It aimed to monitor and analyze the numbers, successes, and strategies of women candidates. While no longer updated,it Includes a research bibliography of books and articles, as well as some multimedia, graphics, and candidate lists.
News sources provide an obvious way to track the rise of candidates into political prominence, trace coverage of campaigns, elections, and issues, and find out how they fare in the court of public opinion. Editorial opinions/candidate endorsements and, of course, published interviews with candidates, their supporters and/or opponents or transcripts of these conversations can also be revealing. Good databases for information of this kind include:
It covers more than 3000 newspapers from around the globe, most in English (or English translation). Coverage varies by title but usually dates from the 1980s forward. Nexis Uni is also good for searching transcripts of major TV and radio news broadcasts (including BBC and NPR).
TIP: This database does not include contents of the Boston Globe or WSJ. See Factiva, below, for access to these titles, if you need them.)
Produced by the Dow Jones company, Factiva contains content from more than 200 countries (and in 28 languages, though English predominates). Material is drawn from newspapers, news sites, newswires, TV and radio transcripts. Full-text coverage varies by title, but is generally better from 1980 forward. Factiva's major competitor is Nexis Uni.
TIPS:
By default, Factiva searches only the most recent three months. Change the time frame if you need to.
By default, Factiva returns results in reverse chronological order (most recent item first). Resort by relevance if you need to.
Produced and maintained by citizen labor (conservative and liberal), Vote Smart's stated mission is to provide free, factual, unbiased information on candidates and elected officials to all Americans. Volunteers research and compile information on the backgrounds and records of thousands of political candidates and elected officials to discover their voting records, campaign contributions, biographical data (including their work history) and evaluations of them generated by over 400 national and 1300 state special interest groups.
Often, you can also find transcripts of speeches and public statements on issues.
This national resource for women in politics was created by Ellen R. Malcolm in 1985 to fund campaigns for pro-choice Democratic women, and strategically change the balance of power in our government. (The name “EMILY's List” was an acronym for "Early Money Is Like Yeast" [i.e., it makes the dough rise]. The saying is a reference to a convention of political fundraising that receiving major donations early in a race is helpful in attracting other, later donors.) A source of information on female candidates at the local, state, and federal level endorsed by the organization.
Congressional Directory, 1996-present
Short biographies of members, listed by state or district, together with the the member's dates of service, committee memberships, staff assistants, contact information.
Women in Congress (Office of the Historian, US House of Representatives)
Brief biographical sketches of all current and former women members, with bibliographical references and (when appropriate) information on manuscript collections. Also provides a detailed set of historical essays on women senators and representatives over the alst 100 years.
IMPORTANT TO NOTE: the Introductory chapter, "Women in Congress" has both a section on historiography (which might help you discover some fo the significant scholarly work already done on the topic, broadly) and on the process of researching (which might help you identify sites for some important primary source exploration).
A project of the Center for Responsive Politics, Open Secrets is the most comprehensive resource available for federal campaign contributions, lobbying data and analysis. It includes a Donor Lookup database, ways of discovering election spending figures on the presidential and congressional levels (including some historical data), and more. Its Reports page contains several gender-themed studies.
The National Institute on Money in Politics collects reports submitted to agencies in every state by all candidates for statewide office, the legislature, and state Supreme Court; major political party committees; ballot measure committees; independent spending; and lobbying expenditures. The data is made freely available via Follow the Money, along with reports and analysis.
A collection of tools that make it possible for citizens to track what is happening in their state's capitol by aggregating information from all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico.
Using the site is simple: enter a U.S. address or select a state to start to research bills, review voting records, contact elected officials and more.
NCSL 50-State Searchable Bill Tracking Databases
Searchable state-level legislative tracking databases
Arizona
Colorado
Maine
Maryland
Massachusetts
Nevada
Oregon
Research projects often require you to look close up at a body of inquiry produced by scholars in a particular field.
This research is typically collected, codified, and made findable in a tool called a subject database. You'll use them to complement, supplement (and sometimes, depending on the project, instead of) HOLLIS.
Every academic discipline has at least one subject database that's considered the disciplinary gold standard -- a reliable, (relatively) comprehensive, and accurate record of the books that scholars are publishing, and the ideas they're debating and discussing in important and influential journals.
Databases are like lenses: they change what you see and how you see it -- and they offer you easy and efficient ways to bring your questions into sharper focus. Some good options for Essays 2 and 3:
A key database for both deep and broad access to scholarship in this discipline and the subfields that may be useful for your Expos 20 projects: political psychology, political communication, etc.
The premier database for scholarship on the history of U.S. and Canada; covers all eras, including contemporary topics.
Accesses mainstream scholarly publications on issues related to women, gender roles, identity from a wide range of disciplines; also includes alternative press publications.
A database of U.S. public policy research drawn from over 350 public policy think tanks, nongovernmental organizations, research institutes, university centers, advocacy groups, and other entities. Over 75 public policy topics are covered, from foreign policy to domestic policy. Approximately 250 new records are added weekly. and organizations are reviewed daily in order to add their latest information into the database.
One nice feature of PolicyFile is its ability to browse entities by political leaning (or to limit your results that way, once you've performed a keyword search).
Multidisciplinary and scholarly; can search within subject categories; has a "moving wall" -- so sometimes recent volumes of scholarly journal aren't available.
Multidisciplinary; not all information is scholarly; ASP's value is that it includes news and magazine content, in addition to taking a wide (rather than deep) swath through scholarship from many disciplines.
BEST PRACTICES FOR SEARCHING HOLLIS:
elections AND candidates AND gender
(gender OR sexism) AND candidates AND presidential
politic* will also retrieve politics | political | politician | politicians | politically (etc.)
____________
LIBRARY CATALOG OR EVERYTHING: WHAT'S WITH THOSE OPTIONS?
HOLLIS combines the extensive contents of our library catalog, the record every item owned by every Harvard Library with those of another, large and multidisciplinary database of journal, newspaper, and magazine articles.
When you search "everything" you're searching both of these databases together, at once. For better or for worse, "everything" is our system default.
The broad and panoramic approach to searching HOLLIS can be mind-opening but if you find yourself overwhelmed by either the numbers or types of results your search returns, try one of these options:
Your numbers will immediately get smaller. Keep in mind, though, that the results will be heavily weighted toward book-length studies.
You'll eliminate newspaper and magazine materials as well as books, of course, but you'll also raise the visibility of scholarly journal articles in what displays.
Peer-reviewed articles are more generally favored as sources for academic assignments.
By doing so you'll get a snapshot of the most recent research trends and scholarly approaches in a field (or around a particular issue).
Your "default" approach to searching Harvard's catalog, HOLLIS, is probably similar to your Google approach: enter some words, see what comes up, then try again or improve from there. But BROWSING in the catalog is an under-appreciated research strategy, especially when you're trying to discover your interest. It helps you see how writing ABOUT an author, an idea, an event, etc. has been broken down and categorized. So instead of getting the typical list of titles, you see results in terms of sub-topics. Inspiration may lie there!
HOW DO YOU BROWSE?
Open HOLLIS. Click on the link above the search box. Then change the option from AUTHOR to SUBJECT.
WHAT DO RESULTS FROM A BROWSE SEARCH LOOK LIKE?
Click on the image above to find out.
SMART BROWSING TIPS :
One simple change can turn Google Scholar into what's effectively a Harvard database -- with links to the full-text of articles that the library can provide. Here's what to do: Look to the left of the GS screen and click on the "hamburger" (); then click on . Look for "Library Links." Then type Harvard University into the search box and save your choice. As long as you allow cookies, the settings will keep.