Women: A Journal of Liberation was founded in Baltimore, Maryland in 1968 by Dee Ann Mims, Donna Keck, Vicki Pollard, and Carmen Arbona in order to provide a national forum for opinions and expression vital to the growing women's liberation movement. Managed by a collective, the journal published its first issue in the fall of 1969. Each issue of the journal focused on a different theme and consisted of invited contributions including articles, news reports, creative writings, and artwork. Some of the earliest contributors to Women were Alix Shulman, Elsa Gidlow, Tillie Olsen, Rita Mae Brown, and Audre Lorde. Originally the collective published the journal five times a year, but quickly reduced the number of issues contained in each volume to four, and then three, in order to meet deadlines more efficiently and to ensure each issue was given the attention it deserved. The intensity of the greater Women's Movement throughout the United States enabled the Collective to attract a large number of subscribers, but by the late 1970s the number of readers decreased rapidly. As a result, due to financial difficulties the journal folded in 1983.
