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The Women's Action Alliance (WAA) was founded in 1971 to coordinate resources for organizations and individuals involved in the women's movement on the grass-roots level. Founders included Gloria Steinem (see also the
In the early years, several well-known figures - including Bella Abzug, Shirley Chisholm, John Kenneth Galbraith, and Maya Miller -- were appointed to the Alliance's board of directors. While these figures contributed largely just the weight of their association, other board members -- like Franklin Thomas and Cory Eklund -- gave a great deal of energy to the Alliance. Over the years, Gloria Steinem's efforts were considerable, and at times crucial, to the organization's very survival. Steinem chaired the board from l97l to l978 and subsequently assisted on fundraising projects benefiting the Alliance.
During the first three years of the Alliance, the executive directors changed almost annually, with Brenda Feigen, Grace Helen McCabe, and Marlene Krauss serving. In l974 the WAA hired Ruth J. Abram, formerly a project director with the American Civil Liberties Union and executive director of the Norman Foundation. Abram, who served for five years, had close ties to the foundation and corporate grants community. Her fundraising expertise enabled the WAA to start and maintain various projects in child care, job training and placement, legislative action, and political lobbying (outlined below), but the organization's desire to avoid any administrative practices that appeared to replicate patriarchal hierarchy caused a host of administrative problems throughout the 1970s.
In l979 Abram was replaced by Arlie C. Scott. While Scott lacked Abram's strong fundraising connections, she came to the WAA after a long association with the National Organization for Women, including a term as national vice president, and so possessed greater credibility in feminist circles. Always short of funds, Scott saw the Alliance through a period of increasingly shrinking budgets. Staff and project plans shrunk as well. In early l982, after two years as executive director, Scott took an extended leave of absence from the WAA, never to return.
Sylvia Kramer was hired as executive director in the fall of l982. As the Alliance started its second decade, Kramer, a former teacher, placed greater emphasis on educational programs directed at older children (e.g. the Computer Equity Project and the Portable Women's History Project). The organization continued to focus on women's centers and economic opportunity for women as well. By the late 1980s, the WAA had three major arms: the Non-Sexist Childhood Development Project (under whose auspices projects like the 1988 study of "Children of Single Parents in the Schools" were carried out), the Women's Centers Project (the WAA helped establish the National Association of Women's Centers in 1986), and Information Services, which continued to provide reference and referral services for WAA's broad constituency.
Beginning in the late 1980s and continuing on through the 1990s, the WAA began to place greater emphasis on women's health issues, launching initiatives such as the 1987-88 Teenage Pregnancy Prevention Project, the Women's Alcohol and Drug Education Project, the Resource Mothers Program, and the Women's Centers and AIDS Project. Shazia Rafi became Executive Director in 1991.
Karel R. Amarath became the WAA's final executive director in 1993. Amarath worked with the Board of Directors to restructure the organization, making it more internally organized and fiscally aware. Gender equity initiatives continued to emphasize education and health care. The Computer Equity Expert Project (C.E.E.P) targeted more than 200 schools nationwide, reaching nearly 10,000 educators and almost 80,000 students. The Task Force on Integrated Projects (T.F.I.P) worked with pregnant and parenting adolescent and adult single parent mothers and their children, while the Women's Alcohol & Drug Education Project continued to assist African-American and Caribbean women, and Latinas, reaching more than four hundred women and girls annually.
By the mid-1990s, the WAA had become largely dependent on New York City and state budgets for its funding. The organization was dealt a severe blow in August 1995, when, on the eve of their twenty-fifth anniversary, their funding was cut by 65% with just thirty days notice. The Women's Alcohol and Drug Education Project, for example, one of the WAA's most successful programs at that time, lost $350,000 in funding, spelling the end of some twenty training sites in New York State. With more than half of their support removed, the organization hired development consultants to try to replace the funding, meanwhile looking for "neighbors" with whom to share space and rent. However, the WAA ultimately found it impossible to recover; in June 1997, by a vote of the Board of Directors, the Women's Action Alliance was dissolved.
The breadth and scope of the WAA projects are indicative of the diversity of the women's movement itself. The most successful projects include the Information and Reference Service, the Non-Sexist Childhood Development Project (NSCD), and the National Women's Agenda and Women's Centers Projects.
The WAA's main modus operandi was to identify a problem, question, or population with specific needs; formulate and distribute a questionnaire exploring the activities and needs of groups or individuals concerned with the issue in question; and summarize the results in a directory, guide, or manual. As a result, scattered throughout the records of the WAA and its many initiatives are caches of replies, reports, and data on far-ranging subjects.
A significant proportion of this material documents the activities of a large number of women's centers, projects, and services across the U.S. and abroad, from the mid 1970s to the mid 1980s. By 1974 the WAA had begun to collect and preserve files tracking such activities, while the production of the "Practical Guide to the Women's Movement" and subsequent directories, organized both by geographic location and by program area, also involved the distribution and return of questionnaires in which women's centers and service organizations outlined their services, objectives, and goals. Vertical files in the reference collections of the WAA library, organized alphabetically by state and generated in connection with the "Practical Guide to the Women's Movement," preserve these profiles together with associated correspondence and literature. Another set, generated by the Women's Center Project, is housed with the records of that initiative.
The WAA's work with women's centers illustrates the organization's Byzantine nature, in that some of the WAA's initiatives were conceived by one department, launched by another, and administered by a third, with records and files shared and transferred between offices. Thus, in some cases, records pertaining to a significant issue embraced by the WAA are distributed throughout several series. For example, from the National Women's Agenda Project (SERIES II. PROJECTS) sprung the idea to create a networking service and national directory for local women's centers across the country. When the NWAP folded in 1980, the "Women's Centers Project" was created to take its place, offering networking and technical assistance programs. Eventually, the directory was compiled and printed. The organizational profiles gathered in this effort were preserved in the WAA library (SERIES III. RESOURCES-Library-Reference collections-Vertical files), while material pertaining to the actual publication, Women Helping Women: A State-by-State Directory of Services (1981) is found in SERIES III. RESOURCES-Library-Publications.
As the organization evolved and matured, projects were increasingly launched by the WAA and then handed off to largely independent staff who carried them through. For that reason, records of some WAA programs (e.g. Buddies Exploring Science Together (BEST) and the Women and AIDS project) are either represented by a very small amount of material, or not represented at all. By 1993, for example, of the WAA's fifteen paid staff people, six worked outside the organization's Lexington Avenue headquarters, in the South Bronx office of the Citizens Advice Bureau, Brooklyn's Medgar Evers College, and even Mujeres Latinos en Accion, based in Chicago, though there are no materials preserved here from the South Bronx, Brooklyn or Chicago personnel. For these reasons, the records fully document the organization's growth and development through the 1970s and 1980s, but contain comparatively little material from the 1990s. Records pertaining to the dissolution of the WAA will not be available until 2004, after they are released by the law firm that served the organization.
In as many places as possible, elements of the WAA's filing system were preserved. For example, the general subject files kept by the Executive Director's office, as well as those kept by Ruth Abram, arrived nearly intact, and each set has been left in its original order. A large series of files containing information on potential funders has also been preserved (SERIES I. ADMINISTRATION-Development and fundraising). By and large, however, the records of the various WAA projects and programs came in different levels of organization, reflecting in part the decentralized structure of the organization. In addition, the records reflect the idiosyncrasies of an ever-changing cast of project directors and administrative assistants. The present arrangement of the records, especially in the case of administrative files, reflect our effort to achieve some consistency across and between programs.
This collection is organized into five series:
The papers are open to research according to the regulations of the Sophia Smith Collection, with the following restrictions:
The Women's Action Alliance retains copyright ownership of their records. Permission must be obtained to publish reproductions or quotations beyond "fair use." Copyright to materials created by others may be owned by those individuals or their heirs or assigns. It is the responsibility of the researcher to identify and satisfy the holders of all copyrights. Permission to publish must also be obtained from the Sophia Smith Collection as owners of the physical property.
Please use the following format when citing materials from this collection:
Women's Action Alliance Records, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Mass.
Portions of the Women's Action Alliance Records are available on microfilm in the Sophia Smith Collection and in the circulating collection of Neilson Library. The latter is available on interlibrary loan. A reel guide is also available. Contact the SSC for more information.
Selections from the Women's Action Alliance Records can be viewed in the Web exhibit
The Women's Action Alliance began donating their records to the Sophia Smith Collection in 1987.
Processed by Marla Miller and Amanda Izzo, 2000.
Related material can be found in the
This series documents the general operations of the WAA. The Alliance was run by a Board of Directors and an Executive Director together with administrative and project staff. Its activities were financed by federal, state, and New York City governments as well as corporate and foundation grants and individual donations. The series consists of general administrative records and those of the Executive Director, the Board of Directors, the Development office, Publicity and Public Education department and other WAA officers and staff.
General
Materials in this subseries reflect the overall operations of the WAA, including the Articles of Incorporation and related documents, fact sheets, mission statement, and annual and quarterly reports. Of particular interest are several reviews of the organization, some in-house and others by consultants, which provide insight into the WAA's growth and challenges from the 1970s and early 1980s. Some especially illuminating documents are Catherine Samuels' circa 1974 summaries of the evolution of the women's movement, 1971-74, and the movement's "goals, ideology and strategies," which she hoped would inform the future direction of the WAA.
Board of Directors
Materials from the Board of Directors is arranged in five sections: General, Chairs, Committee work, Membership, and Minutes. Four members of the Board - Gloria Steinem, Joan Shigekawa, Catherine Samuels, and Kay Ellen Consolver - served as Chairs. In these cases, the material pertaining to their chairmanship and their board membership more generally is collected under Chairs, organized chronologically according to each individual's dates of tenure. In most cases, this material is mainly correspondence and scattered biographical information, though Catherine Samuels' files from her service on the American Revolution Bicentennial Administration as well as her own subject files are preserved here. Of particular interest is her unpublished paper "The Evolution of the Women's Movement, 1971-74," as well as a folder of material on consciousness-raising.
Material related to Committee work is mainly correspondence, minutes, and memoranda from the several committees that helped run the WAA. The bulk of this material, however, was generated by the WAA's Executive Committee. Membership contains lists, addresses, and individual files containing correspondence and biographical material of board members.
The largest amount of material pertaining to the Board is Minutes from the Board of Directors and Executive Committee annual, quarterly, and monthly meetings. Board of Directors minutes, including annual, quarterly, and special meetings, are filed chronologically. They contain general program and financial information as well as summaries and reports on different WAA projects. Pertinent local, national, global, personnel, and occasionally personal issues are addressed in various board minutes and staff reports and memoranda.
Executive Directors
Papers pertaining to the Executive Directors are organized in two sections that preserve the original order of this office's files. The first, the Executive Director's General office files, contain correspondence, ordered chronologically, from directors Brenda Feigen Fasteau (1971-72; including several letters containing advice on organizing from Elizabeth Forsling Harris), Grace Helen McCabe (1972-73), and Marlene Krauss (1973-74). There is some correspondence pertaining to the Board of Directors, though the bulk of this material reflects the Executive Directors' role in fundraising. General materials also include subject files kept by the office of the Executive Director.
Beginning with the tenure of Ruth J. Abram (1974-79), the amount of material preserved grows greatly, and so the tenures of Abram and her successors Arlie Scott (1979-82); Sylvia Kramer (1982-91); and Karel R. Amarath, (1993-97) are filed separately, as Individuals. There is no material related to the tenure of Shazia Rafi (circa 1991-93).
Public relations and education
The subseries is arranged in four parts: General, Press coverage, Promotion, and Public Interest Public Relations (PIPR), the latter being the public relations firm engaged by the WAA to help promote its programs. Material here includes clippings collected by the WAA on programs and events in which it participated as well as outreach efforts such as press releases and advertising. The material pertaining to PIPR is generally related to the retention of the firm (including contracts and correspondence) but includes as well some media advisories, press releases, and fact sheets developed by the firm for the WAA's use.
Staff
Records pertaining to the WAA staff illuminate the day-to-day operations of the WAA, including its office procedures and general employment policies. Sections here include General, Intra-office communication, Meetings, Personnel, Policy development, and Project directors. Especially interesting are the minutes and memoranda from staff meetings, revealing the particular tensions that arose in an organization striving to put feminism into practice in the workplace. Sets of floorplans illuminate the physical setting in which these tensions played out. Access to material pertaining to personnel issues and salaries is restricted.
Development
This documents the organization's ongoing efforts to secure financial support for both specific projects and programs and its general operation. It is arranged as follows: General, Fundraising, Funders, and Proposals. Files pertaining to fundraising and development are also found throughout the records associated with individual programs and projects; materials in this subseries reflect the work of the central WAA office.
General records include the correspondence and subject/research files of Director of Development Donna Meade and Development Coordinator Sally Li Young, research and correspondence on past and potential contributors, and the Development office's subject files. Especially interesting, filed under "research," are reports and papers illuminating general issues related to women and philanthropy, including "The Women's Movement and Foundations," a transcript of a 17 September 1971 symposium involving Brenda Feigen Fasteau, Marjorie Fine, Eleanor Holmes Norton, and Gloria Steinem among others; and the 1982 report "Inequality of Sacrifice: The Impact of the Reagan Budget on Women." Material pertaining to Fundraising includes records from annual individual, foundation and corporate fundraising campaigns and records from fundraising events, including the WAA's annual celebrity "Roasts."
The Funders section comprises the WAA's extensive set of files of potential funders. These files, arranged alphabetically, contain annual reports from potential foundation and corporate funding sources, and correspondence. In several cases, proposals, particularly related to the 1990s campaign to fund the Women's Alcohol and Drug Education Project, were also filed here; these have been left in their original order to preserve this late usage of these files, though in general, proposals seeking both general operating support and funding for specific programs are housed in the section devoted to Proposals.
Financial
The Financial records of the WAA document the organization's finances from 1972 to 1993. They are arranged as follows: Financial statements and audits, Budget information, and Income. Annual financial statements produced by independent auditors, organized chronologically, provide an overview of the WAA's financial status. The contents of intact budget books for 1975-77 provide an exceptionally complete view of the WAA's finances for those years. Records pertaining to the WAA's income include royalty statements, a savings account passbook, and tax records.
Throughout its history the WAA initiated projects and programs intended to address "concrete manifestations of discrimination." This series, containing material generated by those varied initiatives, is broken down into five subseries, representing the general areas in which the WAA was active: Economics, Education (including the Non-Sexist Child Development Project), Health, and Coalitions. The latter is comprised of the National Women's Agenda Project and the Women's Centers Project. Researchers interested in a specific program may also want to consult the general support proposals in SERIES I. ADMINISTRATION-Development, as these often include year-end reviews of program activities.
Economics
Economic Development Project (1980-84), 1.75 linear ft.
In the fall of 1982, The Women's Action Alliance formed an advisory committee of economic development experts. The goal of this committee was to obtain funding from large corporations and foundations which would support an Economic Development Project. Under the direction of Sara Gould, the EDP's goals were: 1) to act as a resource for women's social service organizations seeking greater economic self-sufficiency, and 2) to increase the economic self-sufficiency of women's nonprofit service organizations through improved management practices and the development of income-generating projects and activities. The EDP researched, advised, and communicated with a variety of women's groups, and published a handbook,
The Economic Development Project's records are arranged in the following sections: Administrative, Conferences and travel, Fundraising and foundations, Groups, and Resources.
Non-traditional Occupations for Women (1977-86), 1.5 linear ft.
The Non-traditional Occupations for Women Project (NTO), in an effort to expand women's career choices, conducted surveys and workshops designed to increase women's access to trades dominated by men. Among the products of the project, based on the surveys and other research, was
The Non-traditional Occupations for Women records are arranged as follows: General, Programs, and Survey. Of particular interest are notes from interviews with women who held non-traditional occupations, responses to a nation-wide survey, and evaluations of participants in programs designed to encourage women in non-traditional occupations.
Women at Work Expositions (1978-79), 2.5 linear ft
The Women at Work Expositions, carried out in 1978 and 1979, were convocations of women's organizations, foundations, and corporations. National organizations set up displays and sent staff to discuss their projects and priorities. Workshops addressed issues like flexible work schedules, affirmative action, and women returning to work and school. The events were designed to build bridges between women's organizations, corporations, foundations, and government; gain press exposure for areas of concern; and create networking opportunities for feminist leadership. The WAA's technical assistance program (SEE SERIES III. RESOURCES-Information and Referral Services) was in part a follow-up activity intended to facilitate the continued matching of resources.
Records pertaining to these expositions are arranged in two groups, one for each exposition. Administrative material includes correspondence, budget and publicity for the events, and post-conference feedback and evaluative material. Most interesting, however, are the materials pertaining to the various topical workshops for the 1979 Exposition, which include transcripts and typescripts of presenters' remarks. Slides and photographs from the Expositions are found in SERIES IV. PHOTOGRAPHS.
Education
Children of Single Parents in the School (1987-91), 3 linear ft.
This project was undertaken in the summer of 1988, with funding from the John and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The four-month research project explored the educational needs and school experiences of elementary school children from single-parent families, focusing on the children of widows, divorced or separated women, and never-married women. In order to gather information, the project conducted interviews with academics, the leaders of single-parent service organizations, and school practitioners. Focus group interviews were also conducted with elementary school children, day camp students, mothers, and teachers. Project coordinator Meg Hargreaves published a book on the subject as well. Papers pertaining to this program include a small amount of administrative material; project files, arranged alphabetically, regarding some two-dozen service organizations; subject files, arranged alphabetically, on topics of interest to the project; and notes, correspondence, summaries and data sheets from the field interviews and focus groups [see also SERIES V. AUDIOVISUAL MATERIAL, for thirteen audiotapes of interviews]. A large amount of material, arranged chronologically, is Hargreaves' book,
Institute on Women's History (1978-80), 1.25 linear ft.
The Institute on Women's History was held at Sarah Lawrence College from July 14 to 31, 1979. The Institute was sponsored and administered by WAA in cooperation with the Smithsonian Institution, and was funded by the Lilly Foundation. The Institute was attended by forty-five women activists and leaders representing thirty-seven national, regional, and local women's organizations. Many of the women's organizations represented were members of the National Women's Agenda Coalition (see below). The institute was directed by Gerda Lerner, professor of history and co-director of the MA Program in Women's Studies at Sarah Lawrence College. In addition to Lerner, the institute faculty were Alice Kessler-Harris, Associate Professor of History and co-director of the Center for the Study of Work and Leisure at Hofstra University, and Amy Swerdlow, director of the American Historical Association's Institute for Women's History in Secondary Schools.
The Institute sought to elevate women's history within women's organizations and the nation; to make women's history an integral part of the program and consciousness of women's organizations; and to increase the awareness of all barriers to full participation of women, with particular attention to those of race and class. At the conclusion of the event, participants and staff issued a resolution calling for the creation of Women's History Week during the week containing March 8, International Women's Day.
The final report to the Lilly Foundation provides detailed information about the participants, activities, and recommendations of the institute. The sixty applications received by the institute include narrative biographies with detailed information about the leadership, goals and activities of thirty-seven national, regional, and local women's organizations.
These materials are arranged in the following sections: Organizational/Planning, Financial, Publicity, Participants, Women's History Week, and Evaluations.
Non-Sexist Child Development Project (1972-91), 26.75 linear ft.
The first national program to focus on non-sexist education in early childhood, the WAA's Non-Sexist Child Development Project (NSCD) was among their first, largest and longest-running initiatives. It was launched in the spring of 1972 to "counteract the destructiveness of sex-role stereotyping." The project created the first National Institute for Equal Early Education, held a national conference on educational equity for disabled women and girls, and conducted Beginning Equal, a project on non-sexist childrearing. The NSCD project was conceived in direct response to letters received from parents concerned that their pre-school aged children were already subjected and responding to sex-stereotyped roles. The Women's Action Alliance had no place to refer them and so founded the project themselves. The overall aim of the project was twofold: to develop a non-sexist, multi-racial curriculum and manual for parents and teachers, and to effect change in the attitudes and materials of the existing network of private and public schools.
Records pertaining to the administration of the NSCD include correspondence, arranged chronologically, from 1972 to 1982, and by subject; financial records; development materials.
Materials developed and distributed by the NSCD include curriculum guides, toys, films and filmstrips, and photographic collections. In 1979, NSCD launched
The Subjects section of the NSCD records contains files on a variety of topics and projects of interest. It includes lesson plans and curriculum material for teachers interested in non-sexist techniques in the classroom, Sylvia Kramer's 1981
Symposia, conferences and workshops includes records pertaining to events attended by project director Barbara Sprung and her successor, Merle Froschl, or hosted by the WAA.
Several related projects were carried out under the auspices of the Non-Sexist Childhood Development Project. These include the Beginning Equal Project, the Computer Equity Training Project, the Portable Women's History Project, Project R.E.E.D., and Project T.R.E.E.
Beginning Equal Project, (1981-1984), 1.75 linear ft.
The Beginning Equal project, originally called Early Intervention for Equality, began in 1982 as a two-year joint pilot project of the Women's Action Alliance and the Preschool Association of the West Side. The principal objective, according to BE coordinator Barbara Sprung, was "to foster nonsexist childrearing and educational environments for children ages 0 to three."
The project was designed and conducted in five separate phases: Outreach and awareness, Needs assessment, Workshops for caregivers and parents, Materials development, and Implementation/Dissemination. Strategies for non-sexist childrearing were developed, discussed, and implemented at three New York City pilot test centers during the first year. Focus during the second year shifted toward a wider audience: BE held press conferences and workshops open to the general public, published relevant articles, and most importantly, developing and printing a manual on nonsexist child care.
Besides financial and administrative records, the collection contains information and material on non-sexism in early learning and parenting, as well as information on sex role stereotyping. Publications on these issues were evaluated by staff members, and other objects such as baby toys and gendered greeting cards are catalogued as well. Of particular interest are files of materials collected under "Field Research," largely field notes taken by project observers of children, parents and caregivers in local day care centers, and their subsequent summary reports on day-to-day life in those centers.
Computer Equity Training Project (CETP) (1982-91), 2.25 linear ft.
The Computer Equity Training Project, launched in 1983 and funded by the Women's Educational Equity Act Program (WEEAP), responded to educators' growing observation that girls, beginning in the middle school years, were lagging behind boys in voluntary, non-class computer use. The CETP, led by Project Director Jo Sanders, worked to increase girls' interest in and use of computers by developing, publishing, and disseminating a manual for educators,
Records of the CETP include administrative and development materials; notes, correspondence and other materials generated by the two-phase fieldwork process; and materials pertaining to the publication of the CETP manual. Of special interest are the results of several surveys conducted by the CETP of students and teachers in participating middle and junior high schools.
Portable Women's History Museum Project (1979-86), .75 linear ft.
The Portable Women's History Museum was an eighteen-month project to develop self-contained participatory exhibits on women's history for elementary and middle-school students, as well as teachers manuals with instructions on how to use the museum, with follow-up classroom activities. National Advisory Committee members included Smithsonian Institution curators Edith Mayo and Keith Melder as well as scholars like Carol Berkin, Darlene Clark Hine, and Alice Kessler-Harris. The records consist of correspondence, research notes, and proposal materials, including budgets, drafts, and a plan of work.
Project R.E.E.D: Resource on Educational Equity for the Disabled (1977-83), 5 linear ft.
Project R.E.E.D. was a two-year research and development project designed to incorporate non-sexist multicultural images of children and adults with disabilities into the early childhood classroom. The project was particularly interested in the special issues of discrimination faced by disabled women and girls throughout their education.
Project records are arranged as follows: Administration, Research and development, Pilot testing, National field testing and the "Access to Equality" Conference. The administration section includes minutes from planning and national advisory board meetings, proposals to the U.S. Department of Education, and extensive interim and final reports which detail the creation of early childhood classroom materials and strategies. Project R.E.E.D sought recommendations of appropriate texts in the field of early childhood education from publishers, organizations, and universities. The Research and development section contains the responses to those requests. This section also contains classroom observation forms, and teacher and director interviews from the on-site classroom observations conducted as part of Project R.E.E.D. research and development work.
During its first year, the project reviewed literature, performed needs assessments in pre-school programs in Mississippi, Colorado and Texas, and observed early childhood centers in California, Illinois, North Carolina and New York City. Based on their findings, the project developed prototype classroom materials - including puzzles, puppets, block accessories, resource photos, and a slide show and tape-recorded song -- designed to introduce children to non-stereotyped information about the disabled. The materials were pilot-tested in the New York City metropolitan area in 1981, and subsequently in Glens Falls, New York, Jersey City, New Jersey, and Puerto Rico. National field testing of the classroom materials was conducted in Head Start and elementary classrooms in rural, urban, and suburban areas of Florida, Massachusetts, North Carolina, and Oregon. The project also produced the first training guide designed to help teachers and parents combat stereotyping based on sex, race, and disability.
The project culminated in "Access to Equality," the first national forum on educational equity for disabled women. Held on June 25-27, 1982, the conference was sponsored by Project R.E.E.D. and The Disabled Women's Educational Equity Project.
Project R.E.E.D. obtained resource materials from a number of human service organizations listed in the "Resources: miscellaneous" file of the Research and development section, a small sample of which has been retained. Records pertaining to the National Field Testing consist of extensive, detailed classroom observation forms, adult reactions to materials, and participant profiles.
Project T.R.E.E.: Training Resources for Educational Equity (1977-79) 1 linear ft.
Project T.R.E.E., made possible by a grant from the Women's Education Equity Act Program of the U.S. Department of Education, worked to develop and field test a model non-sexist early childhood training program and manual. The project and manual,
Health
Resource Mothers Project (1993-96), .25 linear ft.
Resource Mothers was a peer-driven, community-based nutrition and prenatal care training program. Resource Mothers were outreach or lay health workers trained to help pregnant women and their children get the healthcare and social services they need. The project was established in collaboration with Project Connect, an alcohol and substance abuse program at Harlem Hospital, designed to be of service to women of childbearing age in the community. The pilot project of the WAA Resource Mothers program was implemented at the Bright Temple A.M.E. in the South Bronx. With funding from Pfizer, Inc., the program expanded into the Central Harlem community. Workshop issues included prenatal care; domestic violence; the effects of AIDS, STDs, alcohol, and substance abuse on fetuses; and proper nutrition.
Records of the Resource Mothers Project include brochures, the handbook
Teenage Pregnancy Prevention Project (1985-88), 6.5 linear ft.
The main emphasis of the Teenage Pregnancy Prevention Project (TAPP), underway from March 1987 to February 1988, was the compilation of a national directory, with state-by-state listings, of teenage pregnancy prevention programs and resources for use by service providers, networks and coalitions, national organizations, schools, libraries, and other professionals. The completed directory, which listed some 1200 programs, appeared in the spring of 1988. The records are arranged as follows: Administration, Development, Organizations, and Directory. Of great interest are the files of responses from providers.
Women's Alcohol and Drug Education Project (1988-95), 1 linear ft.
Launched in 1987, the Women's Alcohol and Drug Education Project, or WADEP, sought to reduce alcohol, tobacco and other drug use (ATOD) among women and adolescent girls. In the 1990s, WADEP was one of the WAA's largest and most successful programs. Working with service organizations, WADEP, under the leadership of Project Director Chris Kirk, offered skill-based training to staff, teaching them how to identify, assess, and intervene with substance users. It then provided technical assistance to establish comprehensive prevention programs. By 1995, WADEP had worked with more than fifty organizations, creating prevention programs that linked ATOD use with other issues in women's lives, including domestic violence, pregnancy, and unemployment.
Records of the WADEP are mainly related to funding, including lists of funders, correspondence with funding organizations, and funding proposals. In addition to several publications produced by the project, there is a small amount of correspondence and memoranda from Project Director Chris Kirk, and the contents of Kirk's rolodex of contacts. Researchers should be aware that most of the administrative material pertaining to WADEP came to the SSC on 3.5" floppy disks; these documents were printed out at Smith College in the spring of 1999. If a document's purpose was not apparent from a title contained within the document itself, it was given a heading indicating the name that the file had been assigned by WADEP. For a videotape produced by the WADEP project
Coalitions
National Women's Agenda Project (NWAP) (1975-80), 17 linear ft.
In an ambitious effort to create consensus on the definitions of, and solutions to, women's problems, the WAA initiated the National Women's Agenda Project in 1975. NWAP quickly achieved a large measure of success when more than 100 women's organizations with a combined constituency in excess of 33 million women joined to draft a platform of areas of concern to women, the United States National Women's Agenda. After successfully creating and publicizing the Agenda, NWAP shifted to implementing the goals set out in this document and, in what would become the larger focus for the remainder of its existence, maintaining a coalition (formalized in 1977 as the National Women's Agenda Coalition) among women's groups as disparate as the Junior League and the National Gay Task Force. From the onset, NWAP suffered from financial and organizational limitations. Budget cuts in 1977 and 1978 forced reductions of both scale and scope, and project directors Catherine Samuels, Madeline Lee, and Susan Jenkins had short tenures, leaving the project without sustained leadership. Administrative assistant and eventual project coordinator Anne Bowen was one of the few staff members involved in NWAP for a sustained period of time.
The records of the NWAP are organized into Administrative and Projects sections. Administrative material includes fundraising, committee work, and staff material. It contains the correspondence of key NWAP figures. The Projects section is divided into five major initiatives: Platform development, Task forces, International Women's Year, National Women's Agenda Coalition, and
Women's Centers Project (1979-91), 4.25 linear ft.
Working with national, regional and local women's organizations through the NWAP established the WAA as a significant feminist organization, and the networks established by the National Women's Agenda Coalition helped to launch one of the WAA's most successful programs, the Women's Centers Project. Beginning in the late 1970s, the WAA sought to ally and bring into contact women's centers and programs in the national, regional, and local arenas. The project surveyed and published studies on women's centers, and also offered support, technical assistance, and training. With critical assistance from the WAA, especially Executive Director Sylvia Kramer, the National Association of Women's Centers was founded in 1986.
Records of the Women's Centers Project (WCP) are arranged in six sections: Administration, Surveys, the National Association of Women's Centers, Women's Rights Lobby Day, the Women's Centers and AIDS Project, and the Job Training Partnership Act and Women's Centers Project. The Administration and Surveys sections document how the WAA sought to identify and analyze the multi-service women's center, which was in the 1970s an emerging form of community-based social-service delivery agency. Preliminary data was gathered in 1978, which brought together the staff of five exemplary centers: the Women's Center for Education and Career Advancement (New York, NY), a project of the National Council of Negro Women; the Lesbian Resource Center (Seattle, WA); WomenSpace (Cleveland, OH); the Midwest Women's Center (Chicago, IL); and the Everywoman's Center (Amherst, MA). In 1980, the WCP took a broader survey of women's centers across the U.S. in which they conducted site visits and interviews and mailed questionnaires. Among the WCP's results were two publications: an annotated directory of multi-issue women's centers, and a detailed report on the women clients who used and preferred the services women's centers provide.
This work spearheaded the creation of the National Association of Women's Centers (NAWC), established in May 1986 to strengthen women's centers, provide technical assistance to them, and advocate on their behalf. The records document the series of conferences that were held to launch the organization.
The Women's Center's Project additionally hosted independent initiatives. The 1987-88 Job-Training Partnership Act and Women's Centers Project (JTPA) analyzed the effectiveness of the JTPA in reaching women's centers by fifteen women's centers across the nation. Jo Sanders's
In addition to the projects the WAA supported, one of the organization's main functions was to act as an information clearinghouse, though the form this aspect of the organization took underwent several changes over the years. Only a few months after the WAA's formation, it was receiving some 200 letters per week from women seeking advice and information. In response to those inquiries, the WAA launched its Information and Referral Services. Much of this mail came from women across the country "who want to know about existing women's organizations in their area, or who want to find a local woman professional - a sympathetic lawyer, doctor, psychiatrist, etc. - to help with a particular problem." In response, the WAA initiated a directory and referral service. Over time, this arm of the WAA would grow to include a large library, a publications program, and other referral services. The series is divided into three subseries: Information and Referral Services, Library, and Publications.
Information and Referral Services
Records pertaining to the WAA's Information and Referral Services are arranged in three sections that reflect the development of this information-clearinghouse function of the organization over time: Project SHARE, Technical Assistance Program, and Reference Services.
The first incarnation of the WAA's informational clearinghouse was Project SHARE, which supplied "support, hook-up, research and education" assistance. SHARE's three areas of activity included information collection, maintenance, and dissemination; materials development; and technical assistance training. In response to numerous requests from women and women's centers throughout the country, in 1973 Project SHARE published
In 1977-78, SHARE evolved into the Technical Assistance Program (TAP). TAP was formed to provide information, referrals, and consultation services to women's organizations planning new projects. The Library took over the general duties of collecting information. Technical Assistance programs and projects focused on assisting women and women's organizations in one or more of seven areas; fundraising, management, legal assistance, program planning and development, outreach, and community and political action. Eventually, the WAA decided to publish such information in a directory format, embarking on the Technical Assistance Directory Project.
The Technical Assistance Program records are arranged into three parts: Administration, Directory Project, and Proposal Critique Service. The Administration section includes fundraising materials and surveys. Directory Project records include surveys and responses in addition to the administrative records of the technical assistance directory.
The Proposal Critique Service was undertaken by the Women's Action Alliance in cooperation with Women & Foundations/Corporate Philanthropy (WAF/CP). Its mission was to "encourage organized philanthropy to support programs for women." The service provided technical assistance in proposal writing to individuals and organizations seeking corporate, governmental, and foundation funding. Upon receipt, proposals were either critiqued by a member of the WAA Technical Assistance staff or referred to a member of Women in Foundations/Corporate Philanthropy whose area of expertise was relevant to the proposal's subject. The program began in January 1979 and was discontinued in December 1980 due to volunteers' inability to provide their services in a timely enough fashion.
Proposal Critique Service records are comprised of administrative material, including such materials as general history, program descriptions, promotional information, and submitted proposals with critiques. The administrative records, especially the surveys, logs and requests, reflect the WAA's efforts to address the needs of women and women's organizations in the late 1970s. The proposals themselves are organized into subject areas.
A fourth section of the Information and Referral Services subseries is devoted to Reference Services. Collected here are the inquiries fielded by the Information and Referral Services program. In many ways, this is the genesis of the whole WAA project; inquiries include the early letters sent to Gloria Steinem and
Library
This subseries is arranged in two sections: Administration, and Reference collections. Administrative materials include documents illuminating collection development. A small amount of material relates to the Women's Information Services Network, and the Women Helping Women Database Project, an effort to create a computerized companion to the publication of the same name (see Publications). The majority of the WAA's Reference collections, e.g. the many books, magazines, newsletters, journals, and most of their vertical files, were not acquired with the organization's records; materials preserved here, however, include numerous topical bibliographies, handouts, and reading lists collected and developed by the WAA. Two sets of card files containing contact information for agencies and organizations are each filed by subject. The two sets appear very similar in organization and purpose, but have been retained, in their original order, as separate systems; researchers interested in a particular topic should check both.
Also housed here are subject files originally collected by Catherine Samuels and a set of vertical files, organized by state, with information gathered on women's centers. Finally, the New York City Referral System was created for internal purposes in 1977 to enable the WAA to refer local women to services in the metropolitan area.
Publications
This subseries contains booklets and books published and distributed by the WAA (by contrast, publications produced by individual WAA initiatives, e.g.
The 1973
This series includes primarily photographs from WAA events; photographs of WAA staff members are interspersed throughout. Photographs of WAA Events include Lynn Scherr, Marcia Ann Gillespie, Lily Tomlin, Gloria Steinem, and Wendy Wasserstein, as well as the subjects of the annual Women's Roasts: Geraldine Ferraro, Liz Smith, Donna Shalala, and Pat Schroeder. A set of portraits associated with an unidentified project includes Gloria Steinem, Selena, and Brenda Feigen Fasteau. Also housed here are photographs taken in connection with the various programs run by the WAA, including the Women and Work Expositions, the Non-Sexist Childhood Development project, "The Body Alliance: A Wellness Day for Women," the Resource Mothers project, and other efforts by the Women's Alcohol and Drug Project. Photographs associated with the Women's Centers Project include those taken at the Everywoman's Center (Amherst, MA) and the New Haven Women's Liberation Center Technical Assistance Workshops from 1980.
The photographs related to the Non-Sexist Child Development Project consist of "resource photographs" developed by the project as teaching tools. These include photos of "Men in the Nurturing Role," photos of disabled children and adults, and images of men and women at work in occupations that challenge stereotypical sex roles. There are also photographs of the dolls developed by the Non-Sexist Child Development Project and distributed by Milton Bradley.
This series includes mainly audiotapes, the bulk of which are associated with the Non-Sexist Child Development Project. The majority of these tapes were only partially labeled when they arrived at the Sophia Smith Collection. Some effort was made during processing to determine which WAA program or subprogram a given tape was associated with, but more research in the papers would probably enable a researcher to identify the specific event recorded. There are also audiotaped interviews from the Children of Single Parents in the Schools Project (1988).
Among the audiovisual materials are several videotapes, most notably one surveying the Alliance in 1976, and one other, from the 1990s, surveying the WADEP project
[Originals restricted - copies must be made for research use.]
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[see also SERIES IV. PHOTOGRAPHS and SERIES V. AUDIOVISUAL MATERIAL]
[see also SERIES I. ADMINISTRATION-Development-Funders, A-Z]
[see also National Women's Agenda Project-Projects-Media Monitoring Project]
[see also National Women's Agenda Project- Staff, Anne Bowen]
[see also Technical Assistance Program-Correspondence-General, 1978-80, and Reference Services-Correspondence]
[see also SERIES II. Projects-Coalitions-Women's Centers Project]
[ORIGINALS RESTRICTED - Copies must be made for research use]
[Originals restricted - please use tapes labeled "Research Copies"]
[Originals restricted - please use tapes labeled "Research Copies"]
Oversize material contains resource photographs from the Non-Sexist Child Development Project [See SERIES IV. PHOTOGRAPHS], promotional posters, organizational flow charts, office floor plans, and memorabilia, including buttons, erasers, and tote bags.