Gender and archiving: past, present, future

In: Yearbook of Women's History 37

Abstract

This volume focuses on the meaning and potential of archiving for enhancing gender equality and the position of women worldwide. More than just storehouses of knowledge, archives offer new ways of understanding the past, and make it possible to imagine other ways of living in the present. Focusing on both traditional and non-traditional archival practices, in various parts of the world, the Yearbook explores the meaning of archiving for women and women's history. Besides investigating the feminist potential of the archive, it also examines questions of erasure and forgetting. While archives may have emancipatory or democratizing potential, practices of discarding equally shape the histories that can be written, and the stories that can be told. This volume has been produced by the editorial board of the 'Yearbook of Women?s History' in collaboration with the 'Atria Institute on gender equality and women's history' in Amsterdam, the Netherlands