Gender & Democracy in Russia, Eurasia & Beyond : Research Strategies & Sources  Tags: slavic russian women_and_politics women_and_media gender_studies  

"Women's Studies International, produced by NISC, covers the core disciplines in Women’s Studies to the latest scholarship in feminist research. Coverage includes more than 586,600 records and spans from 1972 and earlier to present. This database supports curriculum development in the areas of sociology, history, political science & economy, public policy, international relations, arts & humanities, business and education. Nearly 800 essential sources include: journals, newspapers, newsletters, bulletins, books, book chapters, proceedings, reports, theses, dissertations, NGO studies, Web sites & Web documents, and grey literature. Over 2,000 periodical sources are represented. Women’s Studies International includes the following database files: Women Studies Abstracts, Women’s Studies Bibliography Database, Women’s Studies Database, Women Studies Librarian, Women of Color and Southern Women: A Bibliography of Social Science Research, and Women’s Health and Development: An Annotated Bibliography."

Users should note that this database includes very little material published in languages other than English -- less than 25,000 out of the total number of records, or about 4% of the total. Records for items published in Russian number only 517 as of June 11th, 2008. On the other hand, English-language items on most subjects relating to Russian and Eurasian women's studies can usually be found here, as can be seen in the following example (one of ten results of a keyword search for "kyrgyzstan" and "organizatio*" -- i.e., "kyrgyzstan" and all words beginning with "organizatio," i.e. organization, organizations, organizational, etc.). Note the huge number of hyperlinked subject headings and the lengthy abstract.

The University of Illinois Library provides access to a number of other databases that relate to gender studies, but their coverage of Russia and Eurasia is quite limited. These include Contemporary Women's Issues, LGBT Life, Women's Studies Abstracts, and GenderWatch. Others can be reviewed by choosing the "Article Indexes & Abstracts" tab and clicking on "Women & Gender Studies" at the lower right side of the screen on the Library's Online Research Resources page.