Research Project Ideas
Working on a school research paper or research project and want to write about women?
Check out the list of U.S. history ideas below!
Looking for topics for world history? We have a list available here
Period 1
Indigenous Societies, Origins - 1491
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Cherokee women
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Herbal healers & midwives
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The Coronation of Chief Powhatan Retold by Zitkala-Ša
Period 2
Colonization & Impact on Women's Experiences, 1492 - 1775
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Religion
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Antinomianism & American individualism
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Doctrine of Discovery
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Pueblo women
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People to research
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Anne Hutchinson
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Thomas(ine) Hall (gender non-conformity in colonial Virginia)
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Period 3
American Independence & Women in the Early Republic, 1776 - 1848
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Religion
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Quakers
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Shakers
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White House politics
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Labor rights
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Enslavement
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Afterlife of Reproductive Slavery by Alys Eve Weinbaum
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Women abolitionists
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White women & slavery
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Historiography of the Grimke sisters
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"The Grimké Sisters from South Carolina" by Gerda Lerner
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"The Grimkes" by historian Kerri Greenidge
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Primary sources
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People to research
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Lucretia Mott
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Abigail Adams
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Harriet Jacobs
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Maria Stewart
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Period 4
Seneca Falls, Manifest Destiny, the Civil War & Reconstruction, 1848 - 1876
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Seneca Falls Conference
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Imperialism
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Mexican American War
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Manifest Destiny
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Women writers
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Women in the transcendentalist movement
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Supreme Court Cases
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Women in reconstruction
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White supremacist women
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Post-war suffrage movement
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People to research
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Elizabeth Cady Stanton
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Sarah Winnemucca
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Harriet Tubman
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Susan B. Anthony
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Victoria Woodhull
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Ida B. Wells
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"Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases," 1892
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Primary Sources
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Letter from the Cambridge Branch of the Massachusetts Anti-Suffrage Association to the Congress of the United States of America
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Mary B. Talbert, "Women and Colored Women," from The Crisis, 1915
Period 5
Women's Inequality in the Gilded Age & Progressive Era Reforms, 1877 - 1913
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Abortion
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Women's suffrage movement in the Gilded Age
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American Women Suffrage Association
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Club Women
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YWCA
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National Association of Colored Women
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NAACP
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Women radicals
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Spiritualism & civil liberties
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Ida Craddock
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Victoria Woodhull
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Temperance
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Women in the west
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Women in the Klondike gold rush (Alaska)
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Settlement houses
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People to research
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Emma Goldman
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Anna Julia Cooper
Period 6
World Wars & Women in the Cold War,
1914 - 1970s
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Women's Suffrage movement
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NAWSA
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National Woman's Party
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League of Women Voters
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Indian Citizenship Act
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Women's activism in the "doldrums"
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Birth control movement
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The Harlem Renaissance
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Equal Rights Amendment
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Pacifism
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Inez Milholland
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The Great War
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World War II
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Worker's Rights
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The Cold War
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Women in the Lavender Scare
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Suffragists
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Adelina Otero-Warren
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Gail Laughlin
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Tye Leung Schulze
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Zitkala-Sa
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Alice Paul
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People to research
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Margaret Sanger
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Rose Schneiderman
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Margaret Chase Smith
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Phyllis Lyon & Del Martin
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Primary sources
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"Now We Can Begin" by Crystal Eastman
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Sr. Grace Dammann's Principles vs. Prejudice
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Articles on Black suffragists from the California Eagle
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Zikala-Ša's Americanize the First Americans (1920)
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Alice Dunbar-Nelson, Come Out of the Kitchen Mary (1919)
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Elsie Hill and Florence Kelley take Opposing Positions on Proposed Equal Rights Bill (1922)
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Buck v. Bell Supreme Court case
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Daughters of Bilitis, Purpose of the Daughters (1955)
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J. Edgar Hoover, "Mothers...Our Only Hope" from Women's Home Companion (1944)
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Period 7
Feminist Waves, Conservative Backlash & the Modern Women's Movement
1970s - Present
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Civil Rights Act of 1964
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Title VII
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Alice Paul
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Women in presidential politics
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Shirley Chisholm's 1972 presidential campaign
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Women in the civil rights movement
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SNCC
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CORE
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NOW & Liberal Feminism
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Pauli Murray
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Elizabeth Farians (Catholic feminist)
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Black feminism & Womanism
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Women's liberation
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Sexual politics
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Consciousness raising
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Civil rights & women's rights activists
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Diane Nash
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Valerie Solanas
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Anita Hill
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Angela Davis
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Roe v. Wade (1973)
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Women in the borderlands
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Chicana feminism
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Women in the Nation of Islam
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Conservative women's movement
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Stop ERA
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Phyllis Schlafly
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"What's Wrong with Equal Rights for Women"
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Young Americans for Freedom
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Women's health campaigns
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Our Bodies, Ourselves
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Cults in the 1970s
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Children of God
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Militancy for the ERA
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Fast for the ERA (1982)
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Catholic feminist nuns
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Disability rights movement
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Women & the American Presidency
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Geraldine Ferraro & Sonia Johnson in 1984
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Elizabeth Dole in 2004
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Hillary Clinton in 2016
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Third Wave feminism
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Riot Grrrl
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Transnational feminism
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Struggle for equal rights in the 21st century
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Women writers
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Modern day Equal Rights Amendment activists