Inactive membership files containing completed nomination and application forms, biographical and professional files, correspondence pertaining to membership status, yearly summary sheets noting research activities, travel, and fieldwork, printed material, newspaper articles, obituaries and memorial tributes, and photographs. Information about the founding and operation of the society appears in the files of the following members who served on the executive council or as officers of regional chapters: Harriet Chalmers Adams, Dorothy M. Andrews, Mary Hastings Bradley, Berta N. Briggs, Edna Fay Campbell, Frances Carpenter, Mary McRae Colby, Mabel Cook Cole, Elizabeth Derr Davisson, Nordis Adelheid Felland, Alice Foster, Florence Page Jaques, Muna Lee, Florence de L. Lowther, Reba Forbes Morse, Ruth Crosby Noble, Mary A. Nourse, Elizabeth Fagg Olds, Marie Ahnighito Peary, Isabelle F. Story, Helen M. Strong, Helen Damrosch Tee-Van, Mildred G. Uhrbrock, and Mary Chamberlain Vander Pyl.

Other women represented include: geographers Elina Gonzáles Acha de Correa Morales, Elsie May Grosvenor, and Helen B. Smith; anthropolgists and ethnologists Frances Densmore, Theodora Kroeber, Mary D. Leakey, and Margaret Mead; explorers and adventurers Delia J. Akeley, Muriel Agnes Eleanora Talbot Brown, Sally Clark, Hettie Dyhrenfurth, and Annie S. Peck; environmentalists Rachel Carson and Marjorie Stoneman Douglas; aviators Louise Arner Boyd and Amelia Earhart; artist Lucille Sinclair Douglass; archaeologists Margaret Alice Murray and Esther Boise Van Deman; novelists Pearl S. Buck, Bettina Peter Lum Crowe, Alice Tisdale Hobart, and Margaret Landon; journalists and photographers Ruby A. Black, Margaret Bourke-White, Dickey Chapelle, May Craig, Laura Gilpin, Ella Fullmore Harllee, and Rose Wilder Lane; public health specialists Marion Crary Ingersoll and Mary Lee Mills; librarians and archivists Virginia Haviland and Irene Aloha Wright; and historian Mary Ritter Beard, U.S. representative Frances Payne Bingham Bolton, and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt.