New Zealand – Trailblazers in Women’s Suffrage

Images from historic journal - NEW ZEALAND MALE AND FEMALE EQUAL ELECTORAL RIGHTS

│By Darren Brain, Senior Sales and Marketing Executive, Gale Australia and New Zealand│ On September 19, 2021, it will be 128 years since New Zealand’s Governor, Lord Glasgow, signed the Electoral Act granting women the right to vote in parliamentary elections. With this Act, New Zealand became the first self-governing country in the world to … Read more

Franco Stevens and the History of Curve Magazine

Covers of Curve Magazine

|By Jen Rainin, Co-Founder of The Curve Foundation| Franco Stevens arrived in the San Francisco Bay Area, California, in the late-1980s, looking to immerse herself in the lesbian community she knew existed there. Certain that the Castro’s A Different Light bookstore would carry a magazine that would connect her to San Francisco’s vibrant lesbian scene, … Read more

Free from Male Influence: The Second Wave Feminist Press

Three images from blog post - montage of three women's periodical front covers

│By Rebecca Bowden, Associate Acquisitions Editor, Gale Primary Sources

During the 1960s and 1970s, the second wave feminist movement took off. Catalysed in the United States by Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique (1963), it quickly spread to other Western countries, focusing on issues of equality and discrimination, including rape, reproductive rights, domestic violence and workplace harassment. Central to this fight were feminist periodicals – an opportunity for women to communicate their narratives in their own voices, free of the influence of men. Many of these periodicals are now preserved in archives.

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