Dictionaries, Handbooks, and Thesauruses
- Companion to Women's and Gender Studies A comprehensive overview of the interdisciplinary field of Women's and Gender Studies, featuring original contributions from leading experts from around the world.
- Research handbook on gender, sexuality and the law Explores the history and current discussions surrounding gender, sexuality, and the law
- Handbook on Gender and Social Policy Providing a state of the art overview, this comprehensive Handbook is an essential introduction to the subject of Gender and Social Policy.
- Sex and Gender: A Reference Handbook Readers of this reference book will examine a number of important current issues relating to sex and gender, such as transgenderism, gender dysphoria, the development of gender roles, the changing perspectives on these topics, and other controversial and unresolved issues in American society today.
- A Dictionary of Gender Studies This dictionary provides clear and accessible definitions of a range of terms from within the fast-developing field of gender studies.
- Historical Dictionary of Feminism This succinct handbook includes more than 1,000 entries covering the persons, organizations, campaigns and court cases, goals and achievements, and current and future directions of the feminist movement.
- Shapers of the Great Debate on Women's Rights: a Biographical Dictionary The three waves of feminism are explored through the lives of the women who made history in bringing women's issues to the forefront of American society.
- Biographical dictionary of women's movements and feminisms in Central, Eastern, and South Eastern Europe 19th and 20th centuries 150 expertly-researched biographical portraits (with pictures) of women and men who were active in, or part of, women's movements and feminisms in 22 countries in Central, Eastern and South Eastern Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries.
- Encyclopedia of Gender and Society The Encyclopedia of Gender and Society covers the major theories, research, people, and issues in contemporary gender studies.
- Women's lives around the world : a global encyclopedia This four-volume encyclopedia examine the lives of women around the world, with coverage that includes the education of girls and teens; the key roles women play in their families, careers, religions, and cultures; how issues for women intersect with colonialism, transnationalism, feminism, and established norms of power and control.
- The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Women's Issues Worldwide This groundbreaking reference set documents the achievements and current challenges for women in more than 130 countries in the world's most populated areas.
- The Oxford Encyclopedia of Islam and Women The Oxford Encyclopedia of Islam and Women provides clear, current, comprehensive information on the major topics of scholarly interest within the study of Islam and women.
- Encyclopedia of Women & Islamic Cultures This link opens in a new window Focuses on women and the civilizations and societies in which Islam has played a historic role.
- Encyclopedia of Prostitution and Sex Work This major 2-volume set is the first to treat in an inclusive reference what is usually considered a societal failing and the underside of sexuality and economic survival.
- Encyclopedia of Rape and Sexual Violence Content illuminates all aspects of this serious issue, including the forms of trauma experienced by survivors/victims; different types of rape, from incest to acquaintance rape to prison rape; specific cases, events, and controversies; laws, policies, movements, and organizations pertaining to the issue; and legal, political, and cultural contributors to rape and other forms of sexual violence.
- Encyclopedia of Women's Health The Encyclopedia of Women's Health meets this challenge by bringing together an impressive array of experts on topics from reproductive issues to gastrointestinal illnesses.
-
Encyclopedia of Women in American History This illustrated encyclopedia examines the unique influence and contributions of women in every era of American history, from the colonial period to the present.
- Political and Historical Encyclopedia of Women An illustrated encyclopedia examines the unique influence and contributions of women in every era of American history, from the colonial period to the present. .
- The Oxford Encyclopedia Women in World History With over 650 biographies of influential women and over 600 topical articles covering topics.
Specialized Databases
You can use the BU Libraries Search box to look for print and electronic resources available through the Boston University Libraries. These resources include print books and journals available in the library stacks, as well as e-books and full-text journal articles.
Sometimes, you might want to start your search in a focused research database. For women's studies, this can include:
Books
The Oxford handbook of American women's and gender history by Location: Available OnlineISBN: 9780190906573Publication Date: 2018The Oxford Handbook of American Women's and Gender History boldly interprets the history of diverse women and how ideas about gender shaped their access to political and cultural power in North America over six centuries.
Woman : the American history of an idea by Location: Available OnlinePublication Date: 2022A comprehensive history of the struggle to define womanhood in America, from the seventeenth to the twenty-first century.
Women's Activist Organizing in US History by Location: Available OnlinePublication Date: 2022Curated around the theme of organizing over two hundred years, each piece in the anthology shows a different dimension of nineteenth and twentieth century labor, activist, legal, political, or community organizing at work within the history of women, gender, and sexuality in the United States.
Violence Against Women in the US by Location: Available OnlinePublication Date: 2024Analyzing what is known about violence against women, this book centers on the contrast between the U.S.'s historic focus on a criminal legal framework and the human rights lens used globally by feminist activists.
Nice White Ladies by Location: Available OnlinePublication Date: 2021Daniels addresses white women's complicity in racial discrimination in the US but also in their unique potential to resist and dismantle the white nationalism that threatens us all.
Gender in cross-cultural perspective by Location: Available OnlinePublication Date: 2025Carefully introduces and responds to changes in anthropological approaches to and perspectives on gender, combining theoretically and ethnographically based essays.
Rethinking gender inequalities in organizations by Location: Available OnlinePublication Date: 2024This accessible and provocative account of the application of social constructionism and post-structuralist thinking to the study of gender inequalities will be an important resource for academics, researchers, and students interested in gender and social justice.
Disciplinary Approaches
The sexual politics of meat : a feminist-vegetarian critical theory by Location: Available OnlinePublication Date: 2025Adams' revolutionary work has engaged, enraged, inspired and challenged readers with its exploration of the interplay between society's ingrained cultural misogyny and its obsession with eating animals and masculinity.
Typical Girls by Location: Available OnlinePublication Date: 2021This impressive, engaging, and timely study illustrates how these comics express the complexities of women's experiences, especially as such experiences were shaped by shifting and often competing notions of womanhood and feminism.
Buy Black by Location: Available OnlinePublication Date: 2022Buy Black examines the role American Black women play in Black consumption in the US and worldwide, with a focus on their pivotal role in packaging Black feminine identity since the 1960s.
Geek girls : inequality and opportunity in Silicon Valley by Location: Available OnlinePublication Date: 2022The culture of gender-blindness and color-blindness makes it difficult for individuals to name the forms of discrimination and or micro-aggressions that they are experiencing.
Invisible Women by Location: Available OnlinePublication Date: 2019Data is fundamental to the modern world. From economic development, to healthcare, to education and public policy, we rely on numbers to allocate resources and make crucial decisions. But because so much data fails to take into account gender, because it treats men as the default and women as atypical, bias and discrimination are baked into our systems.
