Library Guides: Women's and Gender Studies Research Guide: Finding Articles

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Getting Started - Finding Articles

Women's and Gender Studies comprises an intensely interdisciplinary subject area. For this reason, there are many subject-focused indexes that may be useful to you, depending on your topic. Indexes listed below are core indexes for finding scholarly, popular, and news articles, book chapters, and other resources in women's and gender studies. Each index differs in scope and type of material included.

Core Databases

This set of databases will help you find research articles, news articles, and more:

Contemporary Women's Issues This link opens in a new window
CWI is a multidisciplinary full-text database that brings together relevant content from magazines, some peer-reviewed journals, and the alternative press, focusing on critical issues and events that influence women's lives in more than 190 countries. It includes English-language titles from East and West Africa, Asia, and South and Central America, the Caribbean, North America and Europe.
Gender Studies Database This link opens in a new window
Provides indexing and abstracts covering the full spectrum of gender-related scholarship. It offers over a million records from scholarly and popular publications, including journals, books, conference papers and theses. Subjects include gender inequality, masculinity, post-feminism and gender identity.
LGBTQ+ Source This link opens in a new window
"Leading full-text index for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender literature and research material including periodicals, books, journals, and publications. Ideal for gender studies, queer studies, and more."
LGBT Thought and Culture This link opens in a new window
This digital resource compiles primary sources and archival documentation of LGBT political and social movements from the 20th century to the present. Materials range from important texts, letters, interviews, speeches, periodicals to memoirs, biographies, poetry, and works of fiction that illuminate the lives of lesbian, gay, transgender, and bisexual individuals and the community.

Additional Useful Databases

Depending on your topic, you may find some of the following to be useful:

Alt-Press Watch This link opens in a new window
While not focused solely on WGS content, this database is an excellent choice for accessing "... full-text newspapers and magazines from alternative, independent presses, providing an unmatched, multidisciplinary resource for researchers seeking an alternative to mainstream media perspectives." More than 270 publications are included!
Family Studies Abstracts This link opens in a new window
Family Studies Abstracts provides access to research articles covering essential areas related to family studies, including marriage, divorce, family therapy, and other areas of key relevance to the discipline. The index contains more than 53,500 records from the most important sources within the discipline. Note that this is not a full-text index; use GetIt@ISU plus Quick Search and/or Interlibrary Loan, as needed.
Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index This link opens in a new window
This index "...covers journal articles, book reviews, and essays in books about women, sexuality, and gender during the Middle Ages." Hosted by the University of Iowa, international scholars and librarians have been contributing to this Open Access resource since 1996, making it the pre-eminent index focused on medieval women.
Women and Social Movements, International, 1840 to present This link opens in a new window
This unique database is a landmark collection of primary source materials drawn from more than 300 repositories.
Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000 This link opens in a new window
Organized around the history of women and social movements in the U.S. between 1600 and 2000, this unique database provides access to primary sources including full-text documents and digital images.

Subject-Focused Indexes

Since Women's & Gender Studies is an interdisciplinary research area, you will need to search more than one article index, including indexes focused on other disciplines in order to find additional relevant material. Here are a few:

Academic Search Ultimate This link opens in a new window
This index covers many subject areas and is especially good at interdisciplinary areas. You can find current women's & gender studies full-text articles easily.
America: History and Life This link opens in a new window
Does your WGS topic concern US history? Search this database to check for relevant research articles, book chapters, and dissertations. This is the primary research tool for finding scholarly research on US history topics. Note that this is not a full-text database; use GetIt@ISU plus Quick Search and/or Interlibrary Loan, as needed.
ERIC (Education Resource Information Center) - EBSCOhost Access This link opens in a new window
Does your WGS topic concern education, including campus life issues? Check here! ERIC is a huge index of education research articles, curriculum materials, case studies and reports. Publications date back to 1966-present. Note that this is not a full-text database.
Sociological Abstracts This link opens in a new window
Does your WGS topic concern sociology or the social sciences? Be sure to search this huge database that covers sociological research articles, book chapters, dissertations, and conference papers. Publications date from 1974-present. Note that this is not a full-text database.

Other Article Indexes & Databases
Need a different index? Check out our mega list! You can filter by broad subject to find indexes of interest.

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Susan A. Vega García

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Subjects: Ethnic Studies, Cultures & Communities, Women's & Gender Studies