The Iowa Women’s Archives (IWA) has many collections of primary source material. We suggest that you start by looking at the Topical lists of collections: http://collguides.lib.uiowa.edu/search.php

Here are some examples of topics and collections that can be researched in the IWA. Most of the links take you to guides to the collections, called "finding aids." Some of the links take you to collections of documents that are available online, such as the Women's Suffrage Digital Collection.

TOPIC: Take Back the Night

Primary sources: Take Back the Night minutes, flyers, etc.—Iowa

Andrea Dworkin, “Take Back the Night” in Letters from a war zone : writings 1976-1987 (1988)
Main Library HQ1426 .D893 1988
http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/dworkin/WarZoneChaptIb.html

Secondary sources: Susan Brownmiller, In Our Time: Memoir of a Revolution

TOPIC: women taking control of medical care / medical self-help

Primary sources: Our Bodies, Ourselves

Emma Goldman Clinic records, box 53:

Mama Gives Birth Coloring Book - 1978
Emma Goldman Clinic Newsletter and Inside Emma - 1978-1979, 1991-2001
Emma Goldman Clinic records

Secondary sources:

Kathy Davis, The Making of Our Bodies, Ourselves
Wendy Kline, Bodies of knowledge : sexuality, reproduction, and women’s health in the second wave (2012)
"Iowa's Abortion Battles of the Late 1960s and Early 1970s", by James C. Mohr - 1989

TOPIC: women’s liberation front in Iowa City

Primary sources: Ain’t I A Woman periodical

Iowa City Women’s Press records

Secondary sources:

Agatha Beins and Julie R. Ensure, “We Couldn't Get Them Printed,” So We Learned to Print: Ain't I a Woman? and the Iowa City Women's Press

TOPIC: riot grrrl movement

Primary sources: Riot Grrrl zine

Sarah and Jen Wolfe Zines -- Collection of amateur publications arising primarily from the feminist riot grrrl movement of the 1990s, together with numerous zines documenting various independent/underground music scenes. Box 4: Riot Grrrl