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Image credit: The Women's Library, London Metropolitan University - see picture references at the end
See our collections on display in our free exhibitions "All work and low pay: the story of women and work" and "Cycling to Suffrage: The Bicycle and Women's Rights, 1890-1914" and related events
Key class numbers and search terms
Key references, latest academic works acquisitions
Periodicals
Press cuttings and ephemera
Zines and artist books
Electronic resources
Archives (personal, organisational papers and oral histories)
Museum Collection (objects, textiles and visual materials)
Identifing images
Web archive
TUC Collections
London Metropolitan research institutes and centres
Further resources in other archives, libraries and museums
Further information
The Women's Library, founded in 1926 as the Library of the London Society for Women's Service, exists to document and explore women's lives in Britain in the past, now and in the future. The collections include a wide range of resources for the study of women and employment. In addition to historic and contemporary books, pamphlets and periodicals on women's employment and gender issues in the workplace, the collections also contain scrapbooks of press cuttings, archives of organisations promoting women's employment, and the papers and letters of individual campaigners for equal opportunities, badges, photographs, postcards, posters, banners and objects.
Key class numbers and search terms The Women's Library's printed materials are arranged in the Dewey Decimal Classification and listed on London Metropolitan University's online catalogue. Key class numbers and search terms for employment include:
Key references, latest academic works and acquisitions The Library holds directories of organisations, bibliographies, encyclop?dias and other references sources useful for identifying further information on women and work, such as:
Barrett, Jacqueline K. (ed). Encyclopedia of women's associations worldwide a guide to over 3,400 national and multinational nonprofit women's and women-related organizations London, Detroit: Gale Research, c1993. Reading Room 305.406
McFeely, Mary Drake. Women's work in Britain and America : from the nineties to World War I : an annotated bibliography [Boston, MA: G.K. Hall, 1982]. Reading Room 016.33140941
Moore, Louise. Occupations for girls and women selected references, July 1943-June 1948 Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1949. Reading Room 016.3314
Women at work. London: Fawcett Library, 1974. Vault OS Pamphlet 016.33140941 WOM
University of Warwick. Modern Records Centre. Women at work and in society 2nd ed. compiled by Clare Wightman, edited by Richard Storey. Coventry: University of Warwick Library, 1991. Vault Pamphlet 016.33140941 UNI
Dimand, Robert W., Dimand, Mary Ann and Forget, Evelyn L. (eds). A biographical dictionary of women economists Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2000. Quick Ref 330.0922 BIO
Periodicals
The Women's Library holds a wide range of periodicals on women which include academic titles, popular and professional magazines and campaigning newsletters. Some relevant titles include Equality now,: magazine of the Equal Opportunities Commission, Executive woman, The woman worker, The woman engineer: journal of The Women's Engineering Society and Women in medicine: newsletter of the Medical Women's Federation. Office employment related titles
Employment office.pdf
Equal Opportunities related periodical titles
employment equal opportunities.pdf
Further details and titles can be found identifield through the online catalogue and further guidance on identifying periodicals click here.
Press cuttings and ephemera
The presscuttings collections cover the whole of the 20th century and are particularly valuable for identifying contemporary comment where retrospective online newspaper coverage is unavailable. The Library holds microfilmed cuttings, up to 1979, on motherhood on reels 13 and 47. The Library holds a sequence of biographical press cuttings drawn largely from obituaries
The Library's ephemera collection contains information relating to women's organisations, including leaflets, flyers, minutes of meetings, agendas and all kinds of campaign literature. It includes ephemera for home workers and associations for housewives and married women plus material on the Wages for Housework campaigns.
Zines and artist books
The Library's collections currently include more than 350 zines and 27 artist books some of which explore motherhood.
Electronic resources
Electronic resources (online journals and databases) are currently only available to London Metropolitan University staff and students, and can be accessed via the online catalogue with their institutional identification and password. London Metropolitan Academic Liaison Librarians have provided a list of relevant e-resources.
Archives (personal and organisations' papers, oral histories)
A brief guide to the archives is available on The Women's Library's website. Further details of archives available for research can be found in the archive and museum catalogue, or in the hard copy catalogues available in the Reading Room on the shelves adjacent to the Information Desk. The following archives, including the records of organisations, societies, campaigns, personal papers and letters, relate to employment:
5WAM Records of the Working Association of Mothers (1969-1980)
6APC Association of Post Office Women Clerks (1901-1932)
6AWC Association of Women Clerks and Secretaries (1920-1936)
6BFB British Federation of Business and Professional Women (1933-1972)
6CCS Council of Women Civil Servants (1920-1959)
6CFW Records of Careers for Women (1935-1993)
6EPC Equal Pay Campaign Committee (1943-1956)
6FCS Federation of Women Civil Servants (915-1942)
6ICS Records of the Institute for Consumer Sciences (1954-2007)
6IHE Records of the Institute of Home Economics (1929-2000)
6NCS National Association of Women Civil Servants (1901-1959)
6WEF Women's Employment Federation (1910-1979, previously National Advisory Centre on Careers for Women
6WIC Records of Women into Computing (1987-2005)
6WIL Women in Libraries (1973-1987)
6WLN Records of Women Leaders in Museum Network (2007-2008)
7AMB Papers of Alice Baldwin
7ANG/B contains Angela Martin's drawings which include many cartoon depictions of women's economic place in the labour market
7BNS Papers of Baroness Beatrice Nancy Seear (1963-1988) social scientist and politician
7DFP Papers of Dorothy Foster Place (1975) farmer
7EDT Papers of Edith Tancred (1939-1951) women police campaigner
7HBE Papers of Helen Bentwich (c.1910-c.1960) Social worker and writer
7HMS Papers of Hilda Squire medical social worker (hospital almoner)
7JOL Papers of Joan Lock (1973-1982) writer
7NLA Papers of Nina Last (c.1895-2009) nurse at Endell Street Military Hospital
7NMM Papers of Norma Marjorie Majoram 1940s member of the Women's Land Army
7PTS Papers of Dr Patricia Shaw (1948-1965) Doctor
7TBG Papers of Teresa Billington-Greig (1903-1964) suffragist
7VIC Papers of Phyllis Vickers (1958) civil servant
7WCU Papers of Winifred Cullis (c.1900-1950s) physiologist
8WPC Women's Police Collection (1972-2003)
9/02 The Autograph Letter Collection: General Women's Movement
10/03 Scrapbook pages of Edith Martyn: Women's War Work
10/06 Scrapbook: Women's work during the First World War
10/07 Scrapbooks of Miss L F Nettlefold (lawyer)
10/13 and 10/16 Scrapbook papers [of Edith How Martyn]: Women's war work
10/26 Scrapbook relating to women's work in the First World War
10/39 Scrapbook of press cuttings relating to The Central Employment Bureau for Women
10/41 Scrapbook of press cuttings relating to 'Hints on how to find work'
10/42 Scrapbook of press cuttings relating to careers and vocational training
10/43 Scrapbook of press cuttings relating to careers, women's employment and hints on how to find work
10/44 Scrapbook of press cuttings: A-Z of women's employment
10/51 Press cuttings album: women's work in the First World War
The Gertrude Tuckwell papers on microfilm
Women at work collection in the Imperial War Museum on microfilm
Museum (objects, textiles and visual materials)
This includes badges, postcards, photographs, posters, textiles, some ceramics and other objects. Further details of museum objects available for research can be found in the archive and museum catalogue or in the hard copy catalogues available in the Reading Room on the shelves adjacent to the Information Desk. Specifically the Museum Collection holds objects on childcare and birth as well as postcards on the working mother. Museum objects on this topic can be located in the catalogue using terms such as nurser*, mother, parent and child.
Identifying images
Images can be found throughout The Women's Library's collections. Many digital images are available on Flickr, Vads, the archives catalogue (click on the number in the left hand side) and Mary Evans Picture Library. Use Mary Evans Picture Library's fast service for a non-watermarked high resolution images suitable for publication. If you require an image which has not been digitised you are welcome to use our reprographic service. Normal copyright conditions will apply.
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Web Archive
Women's Issues is maintained by the British Library in collaboration with the Women's Library, London Metropolitan University. The collection was established in 2005 and has regularly collected web sites since then. It includes sites of women's organisations and campaigns, research reports, government publications and statistics pertaining to women, personal sites of women, such as blogs, and women focused e-zines. Specifically relevant to employment are sites such as Association of Women Solicitors (AWS) and Women's Design Centre.
TUC Collections (TUC), London Metropolitan University
TUC Collections were founded in 1868 and holds historical and current reference works on the trade union movement in the UK and overseas, working conditions and industrial relations much of which relates to women and employment. For more information see Sources for the study of women and gender issues in the TUC Library.
London Metropolitan research institutes and centres
The Working Lives Research Institute (WLRI) which is based in London Metropolitan University's Faculty of Applied Social Sciences (FASS). WLRI undertakes socially committed academic and applied research into all aspects of working lives, emphasing equality and social justice, and working for and in partnership with trade unions.
Further information
The staff of The Women's Library can help you find material relating to your subject area; please don't hesitate to ask. You can contact the Information Desk staff prior to your visit on email twlinfodesk@londonmet.ac.uk, by telephone 020 7320 3515 or in person at the Information Desk when in the Reading Room.
Image references
Front and back cover: Great Britain. National Union of Women Workers of Great Britain and Ireland. Occasional paper no. 74. London : National Union fo Women Workers. Apr. 1917. Located in UDC pamphlet box collection Box 300 PC/06/044 ; Postcard: Votes for workers, 1910 2ASL/11/04/2 located in 2ASL
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