Front cover. Al-‘Ālam al-jadīd [al-niśa'īyah] (The New World [A Ladies Monthly Arabic Magazine]) 3:9 (September 1912) (New York, N.Y.; AP95.A6 A495 Orien Arab). Near Eastern Section, African and Middle Eastern Division. full caption | bibliographic record

The Library's comprehensive collection of foreign-language newspapers and periodicals published abroad constitutes a useful tool for understanding how other peoples view and interpret events in this country bearing on women's history. For instance, on September 20, 1920, the Tokyo-based Japanese newspaper Asahi Shinbun (uncataloged, Orien Japan) spotlighted the success of the women's suffrage movement when it reported that Tennessee, the last state necessary, had ratified the constitutional amendment that gave women the right to vote in the United States. Fu nü tsa chih/Fu nü za zhi (The ladies journal, 6: 3) (HQ1104.F8 Orien China), a monthly periodical published in Shanghai, China, similarly announced to its readers in 1920 that the Nineteenth Amendment granting suffrage to women in the United States had become a law.

Immigrant and ethnic newspapers issued in this country are a fertile source for discerning the varieties of women's experiences and endeavors. al-Hudá (Guidance) (1898-, microfilm 2351 Arab, Near East), a New York Arabic-language newspaper, recorded in its pages the activities of the Syrian Ladies Aid Society of Boston during the 1910s. The New York Yiddish-language newspaper Forverts (Jewish daily forward) (1897 AMED/Hebr Microfilm 10000 [catalog record]) and the Italian-language newspaper Il Progresso Italo-Americano (1880-1989; News MF 2297, N&CPR) headlined on each of their front pages the names of the 146 young Jewish and Italian female garment workers who died tragically in the fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company sweatshop in New York City on March 25, 1911.