In the summer of 2019 the hackathon „Coding Gender – Women in Cultural Data“ took place in the Berlin State Library. During this three-day event, interdisciplinary teams of computer scientists, designers and humanities scholars developed innovative projects using digitized historical documents and addressing questions such as the visibility of women in cultural data, the construction and representation of gender roles and the relation between today’s socio-political debates and historical gender stereotypes.
The topic datasets created from the Digitized Collections of the SBB for this hackathon are accessible here.
Data sets
Description:
Gender roles are constructed, discussed and set as normative concepts not only in scientific, but also in literary, educational and entertaining works by connecting specific qualities and modes of conduct with them. Furthermore, some works are specially dedicated to an audience defined by gender, e.g. almanacs for women.
Materials:
Historical prints (monographs, illustrations, leaflets) from the period 1613-1920 in German and English with reference to all subjects
Scope:
84 works / METS files; a fraction of the relevant SBB stock
Specifics:
full texts of 30 works
Licenses:
Public Domain Mark 1.0
Links:
Contact persons:
Description:
This data set contains early works concerning the social and legal position of women and documents from the women’s movement in the second half of the 19th century. In this time, women conquered a new freedom of action and challengend traditional gender roles, in political and socioeconomic contexts as well as in everyday life, e.g. by leisure activites like cycling or girl scout hiking.
Materials:
Historical prints (monographs, portraits, pamphlets, leaflets) from the period 1792-1920 in German and English with reference to all subjects
Scope:
29 works / METS files; a fraction of the relevant SBB stock
Specifics:
full texts of 14 works
Licenses:
Public Domain Mark 1.0
Links:
Contact persons:
Description:
The construction of gender roles often implies specific ways of life. Documents in this data set contain ideas and rules on how to lead a “good” female life. By and by, alternative lifestyles emerge in addition to the traditional ideal of women as wives and mothers, including academic studies, wagework and artistic activities.
Materials:
Historical prints (monographs, leaflets, illustrations) and manuscripts (handwritten letters) from the period 1757-1920 in German, French and English with reference to all subjects
Scope:
61 works / METS files; a fraction of the relevant SBB stock
Specifics:
full texts of 29 works
Licenses:
Public Domain Mark 1.0
Links:
Contact persons:
Description:
Historical scientific works about sex and gender often connect medical and psychological observations with judgements and regulations, and thus pathologize or even criminalize deviations from the heteronormative standard. Furthermore, sex education books show that access to knowledge about sexuality was shaped according to gender stereotypes.
Materials:
Historical prints (monographs, leaflets) and manuscripts (handwritten letters) from the period 1518-1920 in German and Latin with reference to all subjects.
Scope:
56 works / METS files; a fraction of the relevant SBB stock
Specifics:
full texts of 34 works
Licenses:
Public Domain Mark 1.0
Links:
Contact persons:
Description:
For centuries, the discourse about gender has been based on the concept of two clearly distinct and opposed categories, “woman” and “man”. This data set contains documents which set out and consolidate this view in medical, psychological, and social perspectives, but also some works that challenge gender binarity by discussing alternative concepts.
Materials:
Historical prints (monographs, illustrations) and manuscripts (handwritten letters) from the period 1531-1920 in German, English and Latin with reference to all subjects
Scope:
92 works / METS files; a fraction of the relevant SBB stock
Specifics:
full texts of 44 works
Licenses:
Public Domain Mark 1.0
Links:
Contact persons:
Description:
Discrimination against women is often combined with other forms of discrimination, e.g. for social or ethnic reasons, a phenomenon called intersectionality. This data set contains mainly documents from colonial contexts.
Materials:
Historical prints (monographs, picture books, sheet of pictures) from the period 1757-1917 in German with reference to all subjects
Scope:
17 works / METS files; a fraction of the relevant SBB stock
Specifics:
full texts of 10 works
Licenses:
Public Domain Mark 1.0
Links:
Contact persons:
Description:
The state of emergency during the first world war had a great impact on gender roles. On the one hand, an increasing number of women did wagework and assumed responsibilites formerly reserved to men; on the other hand, in the patriotic war propaganda, women mainly appeared as loving mothers and weak beings in need of male protection.
Materials:
Historical prints (monographs, picture books, leaflets), photographs, handwritten material form the period 1870-1919 in German and English with reference to all subjects
Scope:
44 works / METS files; a fraction of the relevant SBB stock
Specifics:
full texts of 31 works
Licenses:
Public Domain Mark 1.0
Links:
Contact persons:
Description:
This data set contains documents about the personal lives of artists, e.g. the composer Luise Adolpha Le Beau and the writers Madame de Staël and Lou Andreas-Salomé, as well as scientists, like Elsa Neumann and Magnus Hirschfeld.
Materials:
Historical prints (monographs, portraits), manuscripts (handwritten letters), newspaper excerpts from the period 1752-1920 in German and French with reference to all subjects
Scope:
111 works / METS files; a fraction of the relevant SBB stock
Specifics:
no full texts
Licenses:
Public Domain Mark 1.0
Links:
Contact persons:
Description:
Even today, the classification pink and blue, princess and pirate, passive and active for girls and boys respectively is still ubiquitous and forces children to assume binary gender roles at a very early stage of life. This data set contains historical precursors of this phenomenon.
Materials:
Historical prints (monographs, portraits, picture books, sheets of pictures) from the period 1562-1920 in German, French, and Dutch with reference to all subjects
Scope:
71 works / METS files; a fraction of the relevant SBB stock
Specifics:
full texts of 40 works
Licenses:
Public Domain Mark 1.0
Links:
Contact persons:
Description:
Pictures often show implicit gender concepts by the way of representing persons or the choice of the scene in which they are represented.
Materials:
Historical prints (monographs, engravings, sheets of pictures), photographs and paintings from the period 1518-1920 in German, French and English with reference to all subjects
Scope:
153 works / METS files; a fraction of the relevant SBB stock
Specifics:
full texts of 25 works
Licenses:
Public Domain Mark 1.0
Links:
Contact persons:
Stand: 23.06.2020
