Women's news clippings http://www.ewomensnews.org

Ingenious Women by Deborah Jaffé http://www.camdennewjournal.co.uk/2004%20archive/080104/r080104_6.htm

General Women’s History http://dir.nodeworks.com/Society/People/Women/History/

Elizabethan Women http://www.elizabethi.org/us/women

Dying to have a baby http://www.neonatology.org/pdf/dyingtohaveababy.pdf - this article gives a quick chronicle of  the dangers which women have faced (and continue to face - see unicef study below) when giving birth. It was only in the last 150 years that the basic hygiene for safe childbirth became recognised. Then in 1879 Pasteur identified streptococcus as the main course of puerperal fever which persisted as a leading cause of maternal mortality right up until the mid 1930's [ see Death in Childbirth: An International Study of Maternal Care and Maternal Mortality 1800-1950 by Irvine Loudon]  

Summary: "Labour" -- the act of giving birth -- is [still] the most dangerous labour in the world. Outside of a small number of privileged and/or conscientious countries that have succeeded in reducing maternal mortality to close to zero, each pregnancy and birth is a risky and potentially fatal experience for hundreds of millions of women worldwide. Some 600,000 die in agony every year   http://www.gendercide.org/case_maternal.html  - based on UNICEF report, 1996