The New Woman’s Survival

Originally published in 1973, The New Woman’s Survival Catalog is a seminal survey of the second-wave feminist effort across the US. Edited by Kirsten Grimstad and Susan Rennie in just five months, The New Woman’s Survival Catalog makes a nod to Stewart Brand’s influential Whole Earth Catalog, mapping a vast network of feminist alternative cultural activity in the 1970s. Grimstad and Rennie set out on a two-month road trip in the summer of 1973, meeting and interviewing a range of organizations and individuals, and gathering vital information on everything from arts groups to bookstores and independent presses, health, parenting and rape crisis centers and educational, legal and financial resources. “These projects express a rejection of the values of existing institutional structures,” Grimstad and Rennie wrote, “and, unlike the hip male counterculture, represent an active attempt to reshape culture through changing values and consciousness.” Arranged in themed sections on art, communications, work and money, child care, self-help, self-defense and activism, The New Woman’s Survival Catalog provides crucial insight into feminist initiatives and activism nationwide during the Women’s Movement. It includes a “Making the Book” section that details the publication’s production.