RESEARCH/INFORMATION
This section contains links to sites that provide information on issues such as violence against women, and current and historical research material from the Canadian government and other sites. This information is presented in alphabetical order.

African-American Women - On-line Archival Collections (scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/collections/african-american-women.html) is an extensive site dedicated to African-American women's history in the United States. Some primary source documents are analysed on-line, such as the letters of slaves to friends and family, and former owners. There are also good links to other African-American history sites.

The Association for Women's Rights in Development (www.awid.org) (AWID) is an international membership organization connecting, informing and mobilizing people and organizations committed to achieving gender equality, sustainable development and women's human rights. AWID's goal is to cause policy, institutional and individual change that will improve the lives of women and girls everywhere. We do this by facilitating ongoing debates on fundamental and provocative issues as well as by building the individual and organizational capacities of those working for women's empowerment and social justice. Their four areas of interest are feminist organizational development; gender equality and new technologies; women's rights and economic change, and young women and leadership. On this site you will find links, publications, and job opportunities in these areas.

Blackgirl International (www.blackgirl.org) is composed of sites that are suggested by its readership. The site is intended to give black women the opportunity to see World Wide Web pages devoted to, written about, and written by black women. Here you'll find the uplifting, the empowering, the thought-provoking, and even occasionally the controversial. The only criterion for inclusion on these pages is that the content is about black women, contains content of particular importance to black women, or that the authors are black women. On this site you will find links to sites that are rated by Blackgirl International and which refer to a massive range of issues.

The Canadian Council on Social Development (www.ccsd.ca) (CCSD) promotes better social and economic security for all Canadians. A national, self-supporting, non-profit organization, the CCSD's main product is information and its main activity is research, focussing on concerns such as income security, employment, poverty, child welfare, pensions and government social policies.

The Canadian Women's Health Network (www.cwhn.ca) (CWHN) was officially launched in May, 1993 by women representing over 70 organizations from every province and territory in Canada. It is committed to sharing information, resources and strategies to better women's health. On this site, you will find links, statistics and easy-to- search articles about women's health.

The Coalition for the Advancement of Aboriginal Studies (www.edu.yorku.ca/caas) (CAAS) is dedicated to improving what all students learn about Aboriginal Peoples. CAAS works to ensure that all students in Canadian classrooms are exposed to Aboriginal-perspective content throughout their elementary and secondary education. To accomplish this, CAAS helps teachers and others in the education community handle Aboriginal-perspective curriculum and resources. On this site you can find Aboriginal-perspective content, and links to First Nations researchers, activists and political representatives. However, this site does not include a comprehensive list of all Aboriginal organizations and political representatives in Canada.

Frequently updated, CoolWomen (www.coolwomen.org) has a new and interesting (well-researched) story about women's history at least every month. The site has a huge archive of stories about a wide range of women's histories in Canada. The site is easy to navigate and also has chats and bulletin boards.

The Disability Research Information Page (www.ccsd.ca/drip) is supported by the Canadian Council on Social Development and is a good resource for research on disability issues in Canada. Although DAWN Canada (www.dawncanada.net) should perhaps be considered before this page, the Disability Research Information Page is one of the few other organizations producing up-to-date research on the lives of people living with disabilities in Canada. On it you will find reports, statistics, and many useful links.

La Fédération nationale des femmes canadiennes-françaises (w3.franco.ca/fnfcf/faits.cfm) est une organisme nationale avec des membres a chaque province et territoire. Sur ce site on retrouve une méchanisme effective pour chercher l'histoire des femmes francophones au Canada et plusieurs sites representant les organismes francophones par et pour les femmes francophones. De plus, La Fédération nationale des femmes canadiennes-françaises investit concrètement dans l'autonomie financière des femmes par offrir les bourses d'études. Certaines page sont encore en construction.

The Florence Bird Memorial Library (www.swc-cfc.gc.ca/information-e.html) of Status of Women Canada (SWC) is first and foremost a service aiming to enhance the quality and availability of information and research to support SWC's goals and programs. The library specializes in publications by Status of Women Canada. Rather than searching the site, you are able to submit specific reference questions to librarians who assist you in your search.

The FREDA Centre for Violence Against Women and Children (www.harbour.sfu.ca/freda) is one of five violence research centres across the country that were established in 1992 through a five year grant from Health Canada and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). Since its inception, the Centre's mandate has been to facilitate and conduct research on violence against women and children, in order to raise awareness and effect policy. The Centre works with community groups, frontline service providers, and policy-makers to produce research that is relevant and useable. On this site you can download many of their reports for free.

H-Gender-MidEast (www.h-net.msu.edu) is an international electronic network for social scientists and humanists interested in scholarly exchange on issues of gender in the Arabic speaking Middle East & North Africa, Turkey, the Caucasus, Iran, Central Asia, Western Asia, the Mediterranean and sub-Saharan Africa. It aims to build a network in tune with shifting geographical articulations and to bring together gender-focused issues from within a wide range of (inter) disciplinary positions. This list's homepage offers recently published articles of interest and an archive of discussions.

The women's page of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (www.ipu.org/iss-e/women.htm) (IPU) focuses solely on information about women in democratically-elected positions. The IPU is the focal point for world-wide parliamentary dialogue and works for peace and co-operation among peoples and for the firm establishment of representative democracy. On this site you will find statistics, about women's status in parliaments world wide.

The Intersex Society of North America (www.isna.org) (ISNA) is a US based organization devoted to systemic change to end shame, secrecy and unwanted genital surgeries for people born with atypical reproductive anatomies. ISNA works to end the idea that intersexuality is shameful or freakish. On this site you will find information about intersexed people by and for intersexed people and their parents. There is medical information, reading material, and many useful links.

Lesbian.org - promoting lesbian visibility on the Internet (www.lesbian.org) is both an internet campaign and an organization that provides research links to a wide range of sites about lesbian lives, sexualities, organizations that deal with politics, arts and culture, inventories of discussion lists on a huge range of subjects.

Links to Women's History in Canada (www.academicinfo.net/canhistwomen.html) is a searchable listing of thousands of sites related to the topic. It is part of a website called Academic Info that selects, organizes, and reviews quality educational websites to make the increasing avalanche of information on the Internet accessible to students in an easy-to-use online directory. You search the sites using keywords much like you would in a regular library.

The National Library of Canada’s (www.nlc-bnc.ca/digiproj/women/ewomen.htm) site on Celebrating Women’s Achievements is a good archive of information about famous women in Canada and their accomplishments. Short stories about each woman are easy to locate and include those who have excelled in the arts, science and technology, the Olympics, and politics.

The National Women's Reference Group on Labour Market Issues / Le Groupe de référence national des femmes sur la problématique du marché du travail (www.nwrg-grnf.ca) (NWRG / GRNF) comprises representatives from 17 national women's organizations and members at large.. In its nearly ten years of operation, it has developed a unique expertise on labour market issues and gender, and other equity considerations. On this site you will find helpful research links as well as entry points to other women's organizations who implement some aspect of labour activism such as the Native Women's Association of Canada, the Women in Trades and Technology National Network and the Congress of Black Women of Canada.

NetFemmes (netfemmes.cdeacf.ca) est un réseau pour et par les femmes, mis sur pied par le Centre de documentation sur l'éducation des adultes et la condition féminine (CDÉACF), organisme à but non lucratif dont la mission est la démocratisation des savoirs et la promotion des savoirs faire des réseaux de l'éducation des adultes et de la condition féminine, et développé en étroite collaboration avec les regroupements nationaux de groupes de femmes du Québec et le Réseau Québécois de chercheuses féministes.

The Ontario Women’s Justice Network (www.owjn.org) provides an online legal resource for women's organizations and individuals working on issues related to justice and violence against women and children. You will find information about various justice issues, such as sexual assault and partner abuse, a glossary of legal terms and commentary on laws and court cases pertaining to women's experiences, as well as links to other on-line resources. Women's organizations across the province are invited to include announcements in the What's New section. The Take Action section of this site offers a variety of opportunities to respond to violence.

People with a History (www.fordham.edu/halsall/pwh/index-am.html) is an online guide to lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans- history compiled mainly by US based researchers. The site is composed of individual papers assembled to form 'chapters' in lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans-history. Although some pages are a bit sweeping in their reporting, each link takes you to yet another site where different opinions are presented.

The Provincial Association of Transition Houses of Saskatchewan (www.hotpeachpages.org/paths/new.html) (PATHS) is a non-profit organization formed in 1984. Membership is comprised of transition and interval houses throughout Saskatchewan, as well as safe homes and shelters and other agencies that provide services to abused women and children. On this site you will find statistics on domestic violence in rural Canada. It also has links that take you to support agencies all over Canada and many other countries as well. The site has information in forty languages.

Survivor Project (www.survivorproject.org) is a non-profit organization dedicated to addressing the needs of intersex and trans survivors of domestic and sexual violence through caring action, education and expanding access to resources and to opportunities for action. The organization provides presentations, workshops, consultation, materials, information and referrals to many anti-violence organizations and universities mainly in the United States. It also gathers information about issues faced by intersex and trans survivors of domestic and sexual violence. Some information on the website may be dated but this is still an almost unique and very helpful source of information.

Statistics Canada (www.statcan.ca) is a good place to start for any statistics-based research. The site provides many downloadable documents as well as email ordering. On this site you will also find daily updates on the state of the economy, employment rates and many other issues.

Feminist Collections: A Quarterly of Women's Studies Resources (www.library.wisc.edu/libraries/WomensStudies/fcmain.htm) contains news of the latest print and audiovisual resources for research and teaching in women's studies. Recent book reviews have treated such subjects as African American women writers, lesbians in popular culture, and globalization. There are guides to new bibliographies and reference works, film and video critiques, computer updates, and news of out-of-the-way materials -- pamphlets, reports, rare book dealers' catalogs, microforms, and more. Thoughtful articles by experts explore women's publishing, Internet resources, library organization, archives, and other tools for feminist scholarship. New periodicals and special issues of journals in other disciplines are announced in each issue. Can we say anymore? This site is a tiny bit tricky to navigate, but please persist to find some of the best bibliographical collections around.

The purpose of the Women's Human Rights Resources (www.law-lib.utoronto.ca/diana) Web Site is to provide reliable and diverse information on international women's human rights via the Internet. On this site you will find documents helpfully organized under headings such as violence against women, age of marriage, women in Afghanistan, as well as FAQ sheets, case collections and publications.

WomenWatch (www.un.org/womenwatch) acts as an entry point to the work of a variety of United Nations (UN) agencies focused on women and gender at the UN. Use this site as the entry point for UNIFEM and many other divisions within the United Nations who provide statistical updates, position papers and other information about the well-being of women around the world.

Right2bfree (www.right2befree.org) is produced by young women survivors of violence for other women at St. Christopher House, Toronto. It is a site about women and violence and assists the visitor in determining whether she is experiencing an abusive relationship and if so, what she should do about it. Counseling information is interspersed throughout the site.

The Sexuality Education Resource Centre (www.serc.mb.ca), Manitoba (SERC) is a community-based, non-profit, pro-choice organization committed to promoting universal access to comprehensive, reliable information and services about sexuality and reproductive health issues. The organization specializes in doing sexuality and health education work in communities in Manitoba and abroad. The site is remarkable for its stance on anti-racism and anti-homophobia and a sensitively constructed resource page on Female Genital Cutting/Female Genital Mutilation (FGC/FGM).

The Vancouver Rape Relief Shelter (www.rapereliefshelter.bc.ca) in British Columbia provides services directly to women who have experienced rape and other forms of assault. On this site you will find current links to Canadian media about violence against women, information about counseling and some links to other shelters in Canada. The site also has position papers and news articles in the Issues (www.rapereliefshelter.bc.ca/issues/issues.html) page about the Kimberly Nixon human rights case.