Research Guides: Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies: Find Primary Sources

What's the Difference Between Primary and Secondary Sources?

Primary sources are firsthand accounts of an event - or original records created during its time period - which do not contain any outside interpretation. Examples include:

letters, diaries, interviews
historical news reportage
original works of fiction, art, or music
original research or data
testimony or speeches

Primary sources are usefel because they give researchers a better understanding of an event, written by someone who experienced or witnessed the event in question.

Secondary sources are one step removed from the original event. They provide criticism or interpretation of a primary source.

For more information, check out this video.

Primary Source Databases for GSWS

Here's a list of some of the databases that we subscribe to that may be of interest to GSWS researchers. For more comprehensive lists, visit our A-Z Database lists for Primary Sources (History) and Primary Sources (Literature).

Archives of Sexuality and Gender This link opens in a new window
Access guaranteed through May 2027
Archives of Sexuality and Gender provides primary sources for the historical study of sex, sexuality, and gender with material dating back to the sixteenth century,
Black Women Writers This link opens in a new window
Black Women Writers contains fiction, poetry, and essays, of women from Africa and the African Diaspora.
Defining Gender, 1450-1910 This link opens in a new window
Defining Gender, 1450-1910 is an online collection that contains images and documents relating to Gender Studies. The sources come from libraries and archives throughout the world, including many from the Bodleian Library in Oxford, England.
Everyday Life & Women in America, c1800-1920 This link opens in a new window
Everyday Life & Women in America, c1800-1920 is a digital collection of American social, cultural, and popular history, providing access to primary source material from the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History, Duke University and The New York Public Library.
Gender: Identity and Social Change This link opens in a new window
Gender: Identity and Social Change covers gender history, women’s suffrage, the feminist movement and the men’s movement, and includes pamphlets, speeches, newsletters, newspaper clippings and more.
Gerritsen Collection - Women's History Online, 1543-1945 This link opens in a new window
Gerritsen Collection - Women's History Online, 1543-1945 was founded in the late 1800s, by Dutch physician Aletta Jacobs Gerritsen. It contains monographs and periodicals reflecting the evolution of a feminist consciousness and women's rights.
Latin American Women Writers This link opens in a new window
Latin American Women Writers contains literature by Latin American women from the colonial period in the 17th century forward to the present. The database presents the works in their original languages and includes literary works, memoirs, letters, and essays.
Manuscript Women's Letters and Diaries This link opens in a new window
Access guaranteed through May 2027
Manuscript Women's Letters and Diaries brings together the personal writings of women of the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries, displayed as high-quality images of the original manuscripts.
North American Women's Letters and Diaries This link opens in a new window
North American Women's Letters and Diaries Includes the personal experiences of women writing from Colonial times to 1950; represented are all age groups and life stages, all ethnicities, many geographical regions, the famous and the not so famous.
Perdita Manuscripts (1500-1700) This link opens in a new window
The Perdita Manuscripts include documents written or compiled by women in the British Isles during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. They have been sourced from archives and libraries across the United Kingdom and the USA.
ProQuest History Vault This link opens in a new window
Access is guaranteed through May 2027
Legacy History Vault platform
ProQuest History Vault includes several subject modules: Civil Rights and the Black Freedom Struggle; Southern Life, Slavery, and the Civil War; Women's Studies; Workers, Labor Unions, and Radicals; American Indians and the American West; American Politics and Society (from Kennedy to Watergate); International Relations and Military Conflicts; Latinx History; Revolutionary War and Early America.
Queer Pasts This link opens in a new window
Queer Pasts is a collection of queer history and culture primary source exhibits that address LGBT topics as well as other sexual and gender formations that are queer. Particular focus is given to perspectives from people of color, trans people and people with disabilities.
Travel Writing, Spectacle and World History This link opens in a new window
Travel Writing, Spectacle and World History offers over two hundred accounts by women of their travels across the globe from the early 19th century to the late 20th century, and covers a variety of topics including; architecture; art; the British Empire; climate; customs; exploration; family life; housing; industry; language; monuments; mountains; natural history; politics and diplomacy; race; religion; science; shopping; war.
Women in The National Archives This link opens in a new window
Women in The National Archives offers a finding aid to women's studies resources in The National Archives, as well as original documents covering the campaign for women's suffrage in Britain, 1903-1928 and the granting of women's suffrage in colonial territories, 1930-1962.
Women Writers Online This link opens in a new window
Women Writers Online includes texts written by women between 1400 to 1850.

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