The future of women’s and gender research?

Swedish archival institutions today are confronted with a number of important challenges. Many of these are connected to the digitization of society, a shift that changes what an archive is and undermines long-standing archival traditions, not least for personal archives and social movements. At the same time, current expressions of activism exist in new forms and formats. A substantial part of today’s activism happens online, in social media and other digital channels, a fact that challenges past paper-based archival standards and practices. These shifts have a profound impact on how activists work, for the documentation they produce, and for how this information can be handled. Given this set of changes, it is enormously important for current archival institutions to improve their understanding of their field, as well as constructing routines for the collection, preservation, and creation of access for digital material.

For institutions focused on women’s and gender history, this situation is even more complicated. Anna Nordenstam’s study “Gender and archives” (2008), financed by the Swedish Scientific Council, worked to prepare the ground for the development of tools for collecting, describing, and making accessible archives important to women’s and gender history. But since this study was published, no follow-ups to Nordenstam’s proposals – new archival portals, a network, and principles for cataloguing and sorting materials – have been financed. In the meantime, scholars and archivists have become increasingly awareness of the need to problematize ”the obtuse concept woman” (Pihl Skog 2022). All institutions that work with material related to women’s and gender history must thoroughly consider a number of important, existential questions. How can archives adapt to developments in women’s and gender history that highlight the importance of inclusivity and queer perspectives? Which donations should be prioritized, in order to ensure the future of archives-based women’s and gender research? How should acquisitions work, given that activism increasingly is visible via and exists on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter/X? This data is owned by commercial actors, at the same time that it seems to clearly be an important part of women’s and gender history.

The goal of this project was to create a network composed of researchers and cultural heritage workers, with a focus on framing women’s and gender history as a whole, in order to get at questions of future collection and preservation of women’s and gender historical materials. A network of this kind will generate knowledge useful to all Swedish archival institutions, given that all these institutions must work now to lay the bed for future research. The project’s base was KvinnSam, the National Library for Gender Studies and University-wide Research Infrastructure. KvinnSam has a unique position in Sweden, as well as internationally. The institution has a multifaceted mission that includes primary support for Swedish women’s and gender research as well as the collection, preservation, and provision of access for the country’s only women’s and gender-based archival collections.

The project has concluded and is now maintained through the network The Future of Women’s and Gender History Research. Read more about the network here.

Rachel Pierce (rachel.pierce@ub.gu.se)

Maria Cavallin-Aijmer (maria.cavallin@history.gu.se)

• Project period: 2024-2025
• Organizational home: KvinnSam
• Funding: Riksarkivet, Stiftelsen Riksarkivarie Ingvar Anderssons fond
• Collaboration partners: Kvinnohistoriskt museum, Stockholms kvinnohistoriska, Queerrörelsens arkiv och bibliotek