Women's History Month: Home

In Constructive Feminism, Daphne Spain examines the deliberate and unintended spatial consequences of feminism's second wave, a social movement dedicated to reconfiguring power relations between women and men.

View the Author''s website! Seely, the youngest elected president of California''s chapter of the National Organization for Women, combines her own story of third-wave feminism with an overview of the feminist movement and words to guide others.

Beginning in 1963 with the publication of Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique and reaching a high pitch ten years later with the televised mega-event of the Battle of the Sexes-the tennis match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs-the mass media were intimately involved with both the distribution and the understanding of the feminist message.

This collection examines the ways in which women have used political rhetoric and political discourse to provide leadership, or assert their right to leadership, at the national level. While over the years women have broken through traditional roles, they are still underrepresented in political leadership.

Movement into academic science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields has been slow for women and minorities. Not only are women and minorities underrepresented in STEM careers, there is strong evidence that many academic departments are resistant to addressing the concerns that keep them from entering careers in these fields.

Contrary to clichés about the end of feminism, Deborah Siegel argues that younger women are not abandoning the movement but reinventing it. After forty years, is feminism today a culture, or a cause? A movement for personal empowerment, or broad-scale social change? Have women achieved equality, or do we still have a long way to go?

From theoretical analysis to practical teaching tools, an indispensable guide for educators seeking to link feminist theory and activism to their teaching. Included are web sites, videos, recommended texts, and additional course outlines.

The Daughter's Return offers a close analysis of an emerging genre in African-American and Caribbean fiction produced by women writers who make imaginative returns to their ancestral pasts. Considering some of the defining texts of contemporary fiction--Toni Morrison's Beloved, Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea, and Michelle Cliff's No Telephone to Heaven--Rody discusses their common inclusion of a daughter who returns to the site of her people's founding trauma of slavery through memory or magic.

The Politics of State Feminism addresses essential questions of women's movement activism and political change in western democracies. The authors--top gender and politics scholars--provide a comparative analysis of the effectiveness of government agencies and women's movements regarding women's policy issues--if, how, and why they form a kind of state feminism.

By allowing the reader to draw comparisons between women's movements in Canada and the United States, Challenging Times shows that certain political and theoretical issues transcend international borders, ebbing and flowing between the two countries symbiotically.

American feminism has always been about more than the struggle for individual rights and equal treatment with men. There's also a vital and continuing tradition of women's reform that sought social as well as individual rights and argued for the dismantling of the masculine standard.

Drawing on original research, Kristin A. Goss examines how women's civic place has changed over the span of more than 120 years, how public policy has driven these changes, and why these changes matter for women and American democracy.

Although more women than men participate in higher education in the United States, the same is not true when it comes to pursuing careers in science and engineering. To Recruit and Advance: Women Students and Faculty in Science and Engineering identifies and discusses better practices for recruitment, retention, and promotion for women scientists and engineers in academia.

Good Catholics tells the story of the remarkable individuals who have engaged in a nearly fifty-year struggle to assert the moral legitimacy of a pro-choice position in the Catholic Church, as well as the concurrent efforts of the Catholic hierarchy to suppress abortion dissent and to translate Catholic doctrine on sexuality into law.

The rate of women entering prison has increased nearly 400 percent since 1980, with African American women constituting the largest percentage of this population.

Dominant history would have us believe that colonialism belongs to a previous era that has long come to an end. But as Native people become mobile, reservation lands become overcrowded and the state seeks to enforce means of containment, closing its borders to incoming, often indigenous, immigrants.

One of a small group of feminist pioneers in the historical profession, Estelle B. Freedman teaches and writes about women's history with a passion informed by her feminist values. Over the past thirty years, she has produced a body of work in which scholarship and politics have never been mutually exclusive.

No Permanent Waves boldly enters the ongoing debates over the utility of the "wave" metaphor for capturing the complex history of women's rights by offering fresh perspectives on the diverse movements that comprise U.S. feminism, past and present. Seventeen essays--both original and reprinted--address continuities, conflicts, and transformations among women's movements in the United States from the early nineteenth century through today.

With the increasing demand for midwives, activists are lobbying to loosen restrictions that deny legal access to homebirth options. In Pushing for Midwives, Christa Craven presents a nuanced history of women's reproductive rights activism in the U.S.

The Ruptures of American Capital examines women of color feminism and racialized immigrant women's culture in order to argue that race and gender are contradictions within the history of U.S. capital that should be understood as marked by its crises. Interweaving discussion of U.S. political economy with literary analyses, Grace Kyungwon Hong challenges the fetishization of difference that is one of the markers of globalization.

"'I never got a chance to be a girl,' Kate O'Hare Palmer lamented, thirty-four years after her tour as an army nurse in Vietnam. Although proud of having served, she felt that the war she never understood had robbed her of her innocence and forced her to grow up too quickly. As depicted in a photograph taken late in her tour, long hours in the operating room exhausted her both physically and mentally.

Although born to a life of privilege and married to the President of the United States, Eleanor Roosevelt was a staunch and lifelong advocate for workers and, for more than twenty-five years, a proud member of the AFL-CIO's Newspaper Guild.

Foreword by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg In Belva Lockwood: The Woman Who Would Be President, prize-winning legal historian Jill Norgren recounts, for the first time, the life story of one of the nineteenth century's most surprising and accomplished advocates for women's rights. As Norgren shows, Lockwood was fearless in confronting the male establishment, commanding the attention of presidents, members of Congress, influential writers, and everyday Americans.

More so than any war in history, World War II was a woman s war. Women, motivated by patriotism, the opportunity for new experiences, and the desire to serve, participated widely in the global conflict. Within the Allied countries, women of all ages proved to be invaluable in the fight for victory. Rosie the Riveter became the most enduring image of women s involvement in World War II.

Pioneering African American journalist Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1862-1931) is widely remembered for her courageous antilynching crusade in the 1890s; the full range of her struggles against injustice is not as well known. With this book, Patricia Schechter restores Wells-Barnett to her central, if embattled, place in the early reform movements for civil rights, women's suffrage, and Progressivism in the United States and abroad. Schechter's comprehensive treatment makes vivid the scope of Wells-Barnett's contributions and examines why the political philosophy and leadership of this extraordinary activist eventually became marginalized.

The historian and author of Lillian Gilbreth examines the "Great Man" myth of science with profiles of women scientists from Marie Curie to Jane Goodall.   Why is science still considered to be predominantly male profession? In The Madame Curie Complex, Julie Des Jardin dismantles the myth of the lone male genius, reframing the history of science with revelations about women's substantial contributions to the field.  

Providing new insights into women's struggle for equality, this historical study shows the true story of the women of old Montana. With few career options available in the 19th century, many of the most independent and enterprising women turned to the world's oldest profession for a lucrative source of income.

A rhetorical analysis of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's feminist jurisprudence Ruth Bader Ginsburg's lifelong effort to reshape the language of American law has had profound consequences: she has shifted the rhetorical boundaries of jurisprudence on a wide range of fundamental issues from equal protection to reproductive rights.

The United States economy relies on the productivity, entrepreneurship, and creativity of its people. To maintain its scientific and engineering leadership amid increasing economic and educational globalization, the United States must aggressively pursue the innovative capacity of all its people

This illustrated encyclopedia examines the unique influence and contributions of women in every era of American history, from the colonial period to the present. It not only covers the issues that have had an impact on women, but also traces the influence of women's achievements on society as a whole.

The field of black women's history gained recognition as a legitimate field of study only late in the twentieth century. Collecting stories that are both deeply personal and powerfully political, Telling Histories compiles seventeen personal narratives by leading black women historians at various stages in their careers.

More than a generation after the rise of women's history alongside the feminist movement, it is still difficult, observes Catherine Brekus, to locate women in histories of American religion. Mary Dyer, a Quaker who was hanged for heresy; Lizzie Robinson, a former slave and laundress who sold Bibles door to door; Sally Priesand, a Reform rabbi; Estela Ruiz, who saw a vision of the Virgin Mary--how do these women's stories change our understanding of American religious history and American women's history?

This book departs from familiar accounts of high-profile woman suffrage activists whose main concern was a federal constitutional amendment. It tells the story of woman suffrage as one involving the diverse politics of women across the country as well as the incentives of the men with the primary political authority to grant new voting rights - those in state legislatures.

Unfriendly Witnesses: Gender, Theater, and Film in the McCarthy Era examines the experiences of seven prominent women of stage and screen whose lives and careers were damaged by the McCarthy-era "witch hunts" for Communists and Communist sympathizers in the entertainment industry: Judy Holliday, Anne Revere, Lillian Hellman, Dorothy Parker, Margaret Webster, Mady Christians, and Kim Hunter.

Classic African American Women's Narratives offers teachers, students, and general readers a one-volume collection of the most memorable and important prose written by African American women before 1865.

This perceptive, lively study explores U.S. women's sport through historical "points of change": particular products or trends that dramatically influenced both women's participation in sport and cultural responses to women athletes. nbsp; Beginning with the seemingly innocent ponytail, the subject of the Introduction, scholar Jaime Schultz challenges the reader to look at the historical and sociological significance of now-common items such as sports bras and tampons and ideas such as sex testing and competitive cheerleading. Tennis wear, tampons, and sports bras all facilitated women’s participation in physical culture, while physical educators, the aesthetic fitness movement, and Title IX encouraged women to challenge (or confront) policy, financial, and cultural obstacles. nbsp;

With sharp wit and keen insight, Bonnie J. Morris opens new perspectives on the gender and generation gaps on campus, exploring the negative stereotypes that keep many students from taking women's studies courses. Since 1993, the George Washington University women's history professor has traveled the globe with her one-woman play, "Revenge of the Women's Studies Professor," engaging audiences from New Zealand to New York in a frank conversation about the backlash against feminism and women's studies.

Here Christina Wolbrecht boldly demonstrates how the Republican and Democratic parties have helped transform, and have been transformed by, American public debate and policy on women's rights. She begins by showing the evolution of the positions of both parties on women's rights over the past five decades.

In the last several decades, U.S. women's history has come of age. Not only have historians challenged the national narrative on the basis of their rich explorations of the personal, the social, the economic, and the political, but they have also entered into dialogues with each other over the meaning of women's history itself.

This fascinating biography tells the story of nineteenth-century America through the life of one of its most charismatic and influential characters: Sojourner Truth. In an in-depth account of this amazing activist, Margaret Washington unravels Sojourner Truth's world within the broader panorama of African American slavery and the nation's most significant reform era.   Born into bondage among the Hudson Valley Dutch in Ulster County, New York, Isabella was sold several times, married, and bore five children before fleeing in 1826 with her infant daughter one year before New York slavery was abolished. In 1829, she moved to New York City, where she worked as a domestic, preached, joined a religious commune, and then in 1843 had an epiphany.

The number of women practicing medicine in the United States has grown steadily since the late 1960s, with women now roughly at parity with men among entering medical students. Why did so many women enter American medicine? How are women faring, professionally and personally, once they become physicians? Are women transforming the way medicine is practiced? To answer these questions, The Changing Face of Medicine draws on a wide array of sources, including interviews with women physicians and surveys of medical students and practitioners.

The most important collection of essays on American Women's History This collection incorporates the most influential and groundbreaking scholarship in the area of American women's history, featuring twenty-three original essays on critical themes and topics. It assesses the past thirty years of scholarship, capturing the ways that women's historians confront issues of race, class, gender, and sexuality.

What elements of American political and rhetorical culture block the imaginingOCoand thus, the electingOCoof a woman as president? Examining both major-party and third-party campaigns by women, including the 2008 campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin, the authors of "Woman President: Confronting Postfeminist Political Culture" identify the factors that limit electoral possibilities for women.

An essential examination of the woman suffrage movement In recent decades, the woman suffrage movement has taken on new significance for women's history. Ellen Carol DuBois has been a central figure in spurring renewed interest in woman suffrage and in realigning the debates which surround it.

What do we know about women, politics, and democracy in the United States? The last thirty years have witnessed a remarkable increase in women's participation in American politics and an explosion of research on female political actors, and the transformations effected by them, during the same period.

Includes coverage of women on the congressional level, women officeholders of color, and analysis of women parliamentarians worldwide. This book offers a comprehensive look at the experiences and influence of women politicians, while considering women's prospects for political leadership in the twenty-first century.

A spectacular transformation in women's sports has occurred over the past century in colleges, high schools, and recreational leagues across the nation. Gradual changes during the late 1950s and 1960s within the fields of women's physical education and amateur sport provided the initial energy for this transformation.

In Women and the Historical Enterprise in America, Julie Des Jardins explores American women's participation in the practice of history from the late nineteenth century through the end of World War II, a period in which history became professionalized as an increasingly masculine field of scientific inquiry. Des Jardins shows how women nevertheless transformed the profession during these years in their roles as writers, preservationists, educators, archivists, government workers, and social activists.

A compelling look at the crisis of disadvantaged women This powerful document takes a sobering look at the phenomenon of marginalized women pushed to the edges of society, holding on with the barest of hope and extraordinary bravery. Handicapped by the increasing societal inequality they face as an everyday fact of life, these women (and in many cases, their children) have been disconnected from the mainstream for reasons of age, race, gender, health, incarceration, domestic abuse, unwanted pregnancy, unemployment, and economic circumstance.

This book provides a much-needed survey of the discrimination and violence against women in developing countries, and identifies the literature and resources available about this topic.

This engaging narrative synthesizes more than 20 years of historical writing on the history of women in the American West. * Includes a chronology of major historical events in the history of the American West from the early 1800s to the present, and explores their connection to the women highlighted in the book .

Women's participation in the U.S. Armed Forces has grown over time in response to the national need for their services. Throughout each era of American history, patriotic women volunteered to serve their country in a wide variety of official and unofficially sanctioned capacities.

Talks about the role of circumstance, accomplishments, and personality in the development of various twentieth-century women of vision. This book helps in understanding female leaders and gives insight into the lives of such imminent women as: Isadora Duncan; Georgia O'Keefe; Anna Eleanor Roosevelt; Alice Paul; Ella Fitzgerald; and others.

Women Writers in the United States is a celebration of the many forms of work--written and social, tangible and intangible--produced by American women. Davis and West document the variety and volume of women's work in the U.S. in a clear and accessible timeline format.

Women, Crime, and Justice: Balancing the Scales presents a comprehensive analysis of the role of women in the criminal justice system, providing important new insight to their position as offenders, victims, and practitioners.

"Devaki Jain opens the doors of the United Nations and shows how it has changed the female half of the world--and vice versa. Women, Development, and the UN is a book that every global citizen, government leader, journalist, academic, and self-respecting woman should read." --Gloria Steinem "Devaki Jain's book nurtures your optimism in this terrible war-torn decade by describing how women succeeded in empowering both themselves and the United Nations to work toward a global leadership inspired by human dignity." --Fatema Mernissi In Women, Development, and the UN, internationally noted development economist and activist Devaki Jain traces the ways in which women have enriched the work of the United Nations from the time of its founding in 1945.

As paid work becomes increasingly central in women's lives, the history of their labor struggles assumes more and more importance. This volume represents the best of the new feminist scholarship in twentieth-century U.S. women's labor history. Fourteen original essays illuminate the complex relationship between gender, consciousness and working-class activism, and deepen historical understanding of the contradictory legacy of trade unionism for women workers.

This history explores the nature of postwar advocacy for women's higher education, acknowledging its unique relationship to the expectations of the era and recognizing its particular type of adaptive activism.

Latinas in the United States: A Historical Encyclopedia records the contribution of women of Latin American birth or heritage to the economic and cultural development of the United States. The encyclopedia, edited by Vicki L. Ruiz and Virginia Sánchez-Korrol, is the first comprehensive gathering of scholarship on Latinas.

We Are a College at War weaves together the individual World War II experiences of students and faculty at the all-female Rockford College (now Rockford University) in Rockford, Illinois, to draw a broader picture of the role American women and college students played during this defining period in U.S. history.  It uses the Rockford community's letters, speeches, newspaper stories, and personal recollections to demonstrate how American women during the Second World War claimed the right to be everywhere--in factories and other traditionally male workplaces, and even on the front lines--and links their efforts to the rise of feminism and the fight for women's rights in the 1960s and 1970s.