Scholarly articles are written by professors, scholars, or other experts in a field and are written for other experts. They are published in scholarly/academic/peer-reviewed journals. They are evaluated by other experts before they are published to ensure that they are of high quality.
Database searching is good for looking for materials on a specific topic in many different journals at the same time. These databases don't use phrase searching, so be sure to break your searches into the main ideas or keywords.
Newspapers can be good sources for information about current situations. Lexis-Nexis provides international coverage, but be aware it comes primarily from a Western focus.
Women's eNews is an award-winning nonprofit news service covering issues of particular concern to women and providing women's perspectives on public policy.