Topic: Gender
“A very small number of men control all the money and the ideas”: Women Revolutionize Population Programs in the 1970s
Women and technocratic elites clashed at the 1974 World Population Conference. At stake was women’s control over their own bodies.
Centering Women’s Rights in the Population Field: The Ford Foundation and Sexual Health in the 1990s
A 1994 meeting moved women’s empowerment front and center for grantmaking in global population.
Sex Problems as Social Problems: The Bureau of Social Hygiene, 1911-1934
When Dr. Katherine Bement Davis was named general secretary of the Bureau in 1917, her appointment transformed the organization to take into deeper account women’s sexuality.
The Women Pioneers of Global Nursing Education Who Built the Rockefeller Foundation Program
A massive program in nursing education extended to 53 schools across the globe. But it never became a top priority of the foundation that supported it.
A “Constructive and Important Failure”: A Foundation Funds Job Training in the 1970s and 1980s
Prompted by Reagan-era budget cuts, a new program serving low-income single parents receiving public aid failed to meet its constituents’ needs.
The Fairy Godmothers of Women’s Studies
Moving scholarship by and about women from margin to center.
In Brief: “Manels” Before #MeToo
A foundation’s early criticism of the all-male conference panel, before #nomoremanels
In Brief: The 1995 Beijing Women’s Conference
The global conversation about women’s issues takes a big step forward.
Programming for the People: Diversity in Early Public Television
Philanthropy helped carve out a public space for the expression of race, culture, and critical perspectives.
In Brief: James Baldwin’s Creative Writer’s Fellowship
How a foundation provided the final ingredient to an era-defining novel.