WOMEN'S STUDIES - WOMEN'S MOVEMENT - FEMINISM

[Bentley, Group Founder, Leader, Chief]

This thread will focus on the advances that the women's movement has made in its ability to gain equality. It has not been a walk in the park for this minority either; in fact it took the struggles of many fine women to achieve the breakthroughs that have been obtained to date.

This thread will be a place to discuss these struggles, the continued striving for equal pay and the right of women everywhere to have access to the highest paid jobs in corporations. The focus will also be on the successes that the movement has had to date and of course "feminism".

Specifically, this thread will focus on Women's Studies as well.

Please feel free to discuss any of the above right here on this thread.

[Alisa]

Men and women and their respective rights have been addressed differently by the law. This book examines not rights but obligations, how those have differed, and examines the impact of that. I have not read this book but looks worth the read and including the goodreads review as well.

byLinda K. Kerber
In the second half of the 20th century, "rights talk," characteristic of political and legal discourse in the United States, has been forcefully invoked by minorities and women in their respective quests for equal treatment under the law. In No Constitutional Right to Be Ladies, University of Iowa history professor Linda K. Kerber looks at the other side of the rights equation: the issue of obligations. Kerber argues that while men's rights have been bought by their obligations to public service, for women the obligations were to family. Absolution from public service--the constitutional right to be "ladies"--has clear roots in the principle of coverture, by which a woman's legal identity is absorbed by a man's, be it her father, husband, or other protector. This, Kerber writes, is not a boon for women. Women have always had obligations, she notes, it is merely "the forms and objects of demand" that have differed, and disparities between the obligations of men and women have affected women's qualitative ability to exercise rights, such as trial by a jury of one's peers. Kerber presents a series of narratives focusing on particular women whose situations became catalysts for political and legal change and the women, like Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who helped effect those transformations. No Constitutional Right to Be Ladies is engrossing reading for layperson and scholar alike.

[Alisa]

No examination of the women's movement is complete without mentioning Gloria Steinem. She has and continues to be one of the most vocal advocates for women's equality. A few selections ~
byCaroline Evensen Lazo
by Patricia Cronin Marcello
and and by Gloria Steinem
Carolyn G. Heilbrun
bySydney Ladensohn Stern

[Bentley, Group Founder, Leader, Chief]

Who can forget Gloria Steinem?

[Alisa]

The Women's Museum in Dallas is, to my knowledge, the first and so far only museum in the U.S. devoted to women, their place in history, and influence on society. They have just started an exhibit that will run through the end of the year Changing Face of Power: Women in the US Senate. The description is below, and more information can be located on the museum's website, http://www.thewomensmuseum.org.

"Beginning November 3, 2010, The Women’s Museum: An Institute for the Future will present Changing the Face of Power: Women in the U.S. Senate, an exhibition by the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, The University of Texas at Austin, presented in partnership with Humanities Texas, the state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Changing the Face of Power: Women in the U.S. Senate is an exhibition of photographs by Melina Mara, whom began photographing the thirteen women in the U.S. Senate in 2001, continuing as their number grew to fourteen in 2003. At a time when access to national politicians is increasingly controlled, Mara persuaded a majority of the senators to allow her to document the unprecedented role of women in the Senate, both behind the scenes and before microphones.

This exhibition, which opened at the Smithsonian Institution in 2003, includes informative text provided by the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. Veteran White House journalist Helen Thomas conducted interviews with ten of the senators, which have been distilled into two audio presentations. A photography-based video presentation portrays exhibition images with narration by Melina Mara.

The exhibition will be available to the public from November 3, 2010 to December 31, 2010. For more information about viewing hours or to arrange group visits, contact Emily Embry at 214-915-0862 or Emily.Embry@thewomensmuseum.org."

[Alisa]

The feminist movement in the '60s and '70s had more than Gloria Steinem as a voice. There were several women authors who put a stake in the ground with their writing. Susan Brownmiller, Susan Faludi, and Marilyn French all authored what were considered landmark works. Has the state of thinking about feminism evolved? Everyone has their own perspective on that question, but these authors all give us something to ponder through their works.


"The most comrpehensive study of rape ever offered to the public... It forces readers to take a fresh look at their own attitudes toward this devastating crime." - NEWSWEEK
As powerful and timely now as when it was first published, Against Our Will stands as a unique document of the history of politics, the sociology of rape and the inherent and ingrained inequality of men and women under the law.
In lucid, persuasive prose, Susan Brownmiller has created a definitive, devastating work of lasting social importance.

all by Susan Brownmiller
Susan Brownmiller was a Gucci-clad, 33-year-old writer grappling privately with the decidedly masculine preserve of feature journalism when she attended her first consciousness-raising session in 1968. Her first impression? Oh, brother! But as other women around the room told their stories, they resonated with something deep in Brownmiller's psyche, and when it was time to tell her own--"I've had three illegal abortions"--the ambitious reporter experienced something akin to a road-to-Damascus conversion.
Brownmiller's 1975 classic, Against Our Will, changed the nation's perception of rape and turned her into a feminist icon overnight. In Our Time, though, is less an argument for transformation than an encyclopedic look at the forces that shaped the social movement of late-20th-century feminism, from occasional clashes of colorful personalities like Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, and Germaine Greer (who, 30 years later, have a tendency to seem larger than life) to the methodical, often unexciting, day-by-day planning behind the landmark sit-ins, lawsuits, and other headline events. Sisterhood's call to arms was most persuasive when the enemy was economic oppression and the battle cry "equal pay for equal work!" Solidarity was harder to muster, Brownmiller reports, when it came to targeting social injustices, particularly those pertaining to sex. Were Clarence Thomas's raunchy remarks to Anita Hill business as usual or a type of harassment? Was pornography a male counterreaction intended to degrade newly liberated women or an effort to make sexual pleasure available to fantasists of all persuasions? These arguments persist today--and In Our Time reminds us that they must be viewed in historical context.


by Susan Faludi
A Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for The Wall Street Journal, Faludi lays out a two-fold thesis in this aggressive work: First, despite the opinions of pop-psychologists and the mainstream media, career-minded women are generally not husband-starved loners on the verge of nervous breakdowns. Secondly, such beliefs are nothing more than anti-feminist propaganda pumped out by conservative research organizations with clear-cut ulterior motives. This backlash against the women's movement, she writes, "stands the truth boldly on its head and proclaims that the very steps that have elevated women's positions have actually led to their downfall." Meticulously researched, Faludi's contribution to this tumultuous debate is monumental and it earned the 1991 National Book Critics Circle Award for General Nonfiction.

by Marilyn French
The bestselling feminist novel that awakened both women and men, The Women's Room follows the transformation of Mira Ward and her circle as the women's movement begins to have an impact on their lives.

by Erica Jong
Originally published in 1973, this uninhibited story of Isadora Wing was a national sensation: fueling fantasies, igniting debates, and even introducing a notorious new phrase to the English language. In The New York Times, Henry Miller compared it to his own classic Tropic of Cancer, predicting, "This book will make literary history, that because of it women are going to find their own voice and give us great sagas of sex, life, joy, and adventure." It went on to sell more than twelve million copies. Today, Fear of Flying is a classic--a timeless tale of self-discovery, liberation, and womanhood.

[Alisa]

The likeness of Geraldine Doyle, widely known as Rosie the Riveter, became the symbol of american women's fortitude and strength for generations, yet she never knew it until later in her life. Brief story today on the event of her passing.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/...

[Alisa]

A book on the early history of women's suffrage.

byRebecca J. Mead
description from Amazon ~
Product Description
By the end of 1914, almost every Western state and territory had enfranchised its female citizens in the greatest innovation in participatory democracy since Reconstruction. These Western successes stand in profound contrast to the East, where few women voted until after the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, and the South, where African-American men were systematically disenfranchised. How did the frontier West leap ahead of the rest of the nation in the enfranchisement of the majority of its citizens?
In this provocative new study, Rebecca J. Mead shows that Western suffrage came about as the result of the unsettled state of regional politics, the complex nature of Western race relations, broad alliances between suffragists and farmer-labor-progressive reformers, and sophisticated activism by Western women. She highlights suffrage racism and elitism as major problems for the movement, and places special emphasis on the political adaptability of Western suffragists whose improvisational tactics earned them progress.

A fascinating story, previously ignored, How the Vote was Won reintegrates this important region into national suffrage history and helps explain the ultimate success of this radical reform.

[Elizabeth (Alaska)]

As an observer, and sometimes participant, of the later women's movement in the US, this earlier period is of more interest to me.

Rebecca J. Mead

Thanks for this, Alisa! Have you read this author? How readable do you think this is?

[Elizabeth (Alaska)]

While we're at this period of women's history, what of

Margaret Sanger would you consider essential?

[Alisa]

I have not read the Rebecca Mead book yet but recently saw it referenced in an article (somewhere) and it sounded quite good.

I too am intrigued by this era and want to read more - including about Margaret Sanger. I find her fascinating, and have been curious to know more about her ever since my college days when I took a course in women's studies and she was of course part of what we covered. (that awas awhile ago. . . .) I don't recall reading any books about her specifically then, but these look interesting:



byEllen Chesler
From Publishers Weekly
Former Columbia University Faculty Fellow Chesler succeeds admirably in bringing the extraordinary career and controversial personality of Margaret Sanger (1879-1966) to life in this skillfully researched and objective biography. Sanger, a political radical, devoted herself to ensuring women's access to contraception after observing the plight of the poor as a public health nurse. An astute organizer, she fought against the opposition of a conservative political and religious male establishment, building a national and international birth control movement. Chesler explores the negative as well as the positive aspects of Sanger's character, noting that she was known to manipulate people and sometimes modified her views to achieve her ends. A strong believer in her own right to a fulfilled sex life, Sanger married twice and took many lovers, including Havelock Ellis and H. G. Wells. This is an outstanding biography of a feminist reformer whose achievements changed the lives of women forever. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal
The contemporary social debate over women's reproductive rights provides a timely backdrop for this major new biography of Margaret Sanger and her struggle for birth control. Sanger spent 50 years organizing a movement and advocating for birth control rights that are taken for granted in today's Western world. Chesler believes that Sanger's impact on women's lives has not been adequately appreciated or documented. This biography succeeds admirably in filling the gap with a new look at Sanger's private and public life. Interwoven in this account are discussions of the sweeping social and political developments of the 20th century. Chesler presents a Margaret who rejected the conventional restrictive female role and, while living a hidden and unconventional private life, worked publicly to push society into accepting new rights for women. This work is carefully documented and, while not as breezy a read as some biographies, is a major contribution to women's history.

My own view is that you can never go wrong hearing from the subject directly, but that is my personal bias.
by Margaret Sanger
Product Description
A pioneer in the battle to establish birth control as a basic human right and a founder of the International Planned Parenthood Federation, Sanger — a nurse who witnessed first-hand the devastating effects of unwanted pregancy — triumphed over arrest, indictment, and exile. Her autobiography is a classic of women's studies.

[Elizabeth (Alaska)]

Thanks, Alisa. I came to learn about Sanger from a PBS documentary several years ago - maybe even 30 years ago - I don't know if it's still available. She was quite a feisty woman and refused to take no for an answer!

[Alisa]

Feisty indeed, she was quite a gal. She would have had to be to make her voice heard on what was a very controversial topic at the time.

[Alisa]

One of the central written works important to the women's movement in the 1970's is by Betty Friedan. This is considered a classic.
by Betty Friedan


(excerpted from Wikipedia):
A leading figure in the Women's Movement in the United States, her 1963 book The Feminine Mystique is often credited with sparking the "second wave" of American feminism in the twentieth century. In 1966, Friedan founded and was elected the first president of the National Organization for Women, which aimed to bring women "into the mainstream of American society now [in] fully equal partnership with men".


The Feminine Mystique
For her 15th college reunion in 1957, Friedan conducted a survey of College graduates, focusing on their education, their subsequent experiences and satisfaction with their current lives. She started publishing articles about what she called "the problem that has no name," and got passionate responses from many housewives grateful that they were not alone in experiencing this problem.

Friedan then decided to rework and expand this topic into a book, The Feminine Mystique. Published in 1963, it depicted the roles of women in industrial societies, especially the full-time homemaker role, which Friedan deemed stifling. Friedan speaks of her own 'terror' at being alone, and observes in her life never once seeing a positive female role-model who worked and also kept a family. She provides numerous accounts of housewives who feel similarly trapped. With her psychology background, Friedan offers a critique of Freud's penis envy theory, noting a lot of paradoxes in his work. And she attempts to offer some answers to women who wish to pursue an education.

The "Problem That Has No Name" was described by Friedan in the beginning of the book:

"The problem lay buried, unspoken, for many years in the minds of American women. It was a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning [that is, a longing] that women suffered in the middle of the 20th century in the United States. Each suburban wife struggled with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries … she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question — 'Is this all?"

Friedan noted that women are as capable as men to do any type of work or follow any career path, and the mass media, educators, and psychologists argued to the contrary. The restrictions of the 1950s, and the trapped, imprisoned, feeling of many women forced into these roles, spoke to American women who soon began attending consciousness-raising sessions and lobbying for the reform of oppressive laws and social views that restricted women.

The book became a bestseller, which many historians believe was the impetus for the "second wave" of the Women's Movement, and significantly shaped national and world events.

[Alisa]

BETTY FRIEDAN(February 4, 1921 - February 4, 2006) was an American writer, activist, and feminist.

In 1970, after stepping down as NOW's first president, Friedan organized the nation-wide Women's Strike for Equality on August 26, the 50th anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution granting women the right to vote. The national strike was successful beyond expectations in broadening the feminist movement; the march led by Friedan in New York City alone attracted over 50,000 women and men. In 1971, Friedan joined other leading feminists to establish the National Women's Political Caucus. Friedan was also a strong supporter of the proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the United States Constitution that passed the United States House of Representatives (by a vote of 354-24) and Senate (84-8) following intense pressure by women's groups led by NOW in the early 1970s. Following Congressional passage of the amendment Friedan advocated for ratification of the amendment in the states and supported other women's rights reforms. Friedan was a strong proponent of the repeal of abortion laws, founding the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws but was later critical of the abortion-centered, politicized tactics of many liberal and radical feminists.

Regarded as an influential author and intellectual in the United States, Friedan remained active in politics and advocacy for the rest of her life, authoring six books. As early as the 1960s Friedan was critical of polarized and extreme factions of feminism that attacked groups such as men and homemakers. One of her later books, The Second Stage, critiqued what Friedan saw as the extremist excesses of some feminists who could be broadly classified as gender feminists.

Early life
Freidan was born Betty Naomi Goldstein on February 4, 1921 in Peoria, Illinois,to Harry and Miriam Goldstein. Harry owned a jewelry store in Peoria, and Miriam wrote for the society page of a newspaper when Friedan's father fell ill. Her mother's new life outside the home seemed much more gratifying.

As a young girl, Friedan was active in Marxist and Jewish circles; she later wrote how she felt isolated from the community at times, and felt her "passion against injustice...originated from my feelings of the injustice of anti-Semitism". She attended Peoria High School where she became involved in the school newspaper. When she was turned down for a column, she and six other friends launched a literary magazine called Tide. In this magazine, Friedan and her friends talked about home life as opposed to school life.

She attended the all-female Smith College in 1938. She won a scholarship prize in her first year for outstanding academic performance. In her second year, she became interested in poetry, and had many poems published in campus publications. In 1941, she became editor-in-chief of the college newspaper. The editorials became more political under her leadership, taking a strong anti-war stance and occasionally causing controversy. She graduated summa cum laude in 1942, majoring in psychology.

In 1943, she spent a year at the University of California, Berkeley having won a fellowship to undertake graduate work in psychology with Erik Erikson. She became more politically active, continuing to mix with Marxists (many of her friends were investigated by the FBI). Friedan claims in her memoirs that her boyfriend at the time pressured her into turning down a Ph.D fellowship for further study and abandoning her academic career.


Activism in the Women's Movement
National Organization for WomenIn 1966 Friedan co-founded, and became the first president of, the National Organization for Women. She, with Pauli Murray, the first black female Episcopal priest, wrote its mission statement. Friedan stepped down as president in 1969.

Under Friedan, NOW advocated fiercely for the legal equality of women and men. They lobbied for enforcement of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Equal Pay Act of 1963, the first two major legislative victories of the movement, and forced the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to stop ignoring, and start treating with dignity and urgency, claims filed involving sex discrimination. They successfully campaigned for a 1967 Executive Order extending the same Affirmative Action granted to blacks to women and a 1968 EEOC decision ruling illegal sex-segregated help want ads, later upheld by the Supreme Court. NOW was vocal in support of the legalization of abortion, something that divided some feminists. Also divisive in the 1960s among women was the Equal Rights Amendment, which NOW fully endorsed; by the 1970s the women and labor unions opposed to ERA warmed up to it and began to fully support it. NOW also lobbied for national day-care.

Women's Strike for Equality
In 1970, NOW, with Friedan leading the cause, was instrumental in bringing down the nomination of G. Harrold Carswell, who had opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act which granted women and men workplace equality, to the Supreme Court. On August 26, 1970, the 50th anniversary of the Women's Suffrage Amendment to the Constitution, Friedan organized the national Women's Strike for Equality, and led a march of 50,000 women in New York City. Unbelievably successful, the march expanded the movement widely, to Friedan's delight.

Friedan spoke about the Strike for Equality:

"All kinds of women's groups all over the country will be using this week on August 26 particularly, to point out those areas in women's life which are still not addressed. For example, a question of equality before the law; we are interested in the equal rights amendment. The question of child care centers which are totally inadequate in the society, and which women require, if they are going to assume their rightful position in terms of helping in decisions of the society. The question of a women's right to control her own reproductive processes, that is, laws prohibiting abortion in the state or putting them into criminal statutes; I think that would be a statute that we would addressing ourselves to.

"So I think individual women will react differently; some will not cook that day, some will engage in dialog with their husband, some will be out at the rallies and demonstrations that will be taking place all over the country. Others will be writing things that will help them to define where they want to go. Some will be pressuring their Senators and their Congressmen to pass legislations that affect women. I don't think you can come up with any one point, women will be doing their own thing in their own way."

Friedan founded the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws, renamed National Abortion Rights Action League after the Supreme Court legalized abortion in 1973.

Politics
In 1971 Friedan, along with countless other leading women's movement leaders, including Gloria Steinem, with whom she had a legendary rivalry, founded the National Women's Political Caucus.

In 1970 Friedan led other feminists in derailing the nomination of Supreme Court nominee G. Harold Carswell whose record of racial discrimination and antifeminism made him unacceptable and unfit to sit on the highest court in the land to many in the civil rights and feminist movements. Friedan's empassioned testimony before the Senate helped sink Carswell's nomination.

In 1972, Friedan unsuccessfully ran as a delegate to the 1972 Democratic National Convention in support of Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm. That year at the DNC Friedan played a very prominent role and addressed the convention, though she clashed with other women, notably Steinem, on what should be done there, and how.

One of the most influential feminists of 20th century, Friedan opposed equating feminism with lesbianism. As early as 1964, very early in the movement, and only a year after the publication of The Feminine Mystique, Friedan appeared on television to address the fact the media was, at that point, trying to dismiss the movement as a joke and centering argument and debate around whether or not to wear bras and other issues considered ridiculous. In 1982, during the second wave, she wrote a book for the post-feminist 1980s called The Second Stage, about family life, premised on women having conquered social and legal obstacles.

She pushed the feminist movement to focus on economic issues, especially equality in employment and business and provision for child care and other means by which women and men could balance family and work. She tried to lessen the focus on abortion, as an issue already won, and rape and pornography, which she believed most women did not consider to be high priorities.

Abortion choice
She supported the concept that abortion is a woman's choice, that it shouldn't be a crime or exclusively a doctor's choice, and helped form NARAL (now NARAL Pro-Choice America) at a time when Planned Parenthood wasn't yet in support. Death threats against her speaking on abortion led to two events being canceled, although subsequently one of the host institutions, Loyola College, invited her back to speak on abortion and other issues and she spoke then. Her draft of NOW's first statement of purpose included an abortion plank but NOW didn't include it until the next year. In 1980, she believed abortion should be in the context of "'the choice to have children'", a formulation supported by the Roman Catholic priest organizing Catholic participation in the White House Conference on Families of that year, although perhaps not by the bishops above him. A resolution embodying the formulation passed at the conference by 460 to 114, whereas a resolution addressing abortion, ERA, and "'sexual preference'" passed by only 292–291 and that only after 50 anti-abortion advocates had walked out and so hadn't voted on it. She disagreed with a resolution that framed abortion in more feminist terms that was introduced in the Minneapolis regional conference of the same White House Conference on Families, believing it to be more polarizing, while the drafters apparently thought Friedan's formulation too conservative. As of 2000, she wrote, referring to "NOW and the other women's organizations" as seeming to be in a "time warp", "To my mind, there is far too much focus on abortion. . . . [I]n recent years I've gotten a little uneasy about the movement's narrow focus on abortion as if it were the single, all-important issue for women when it's not" She asked, "Why don't we join forces with all who have true reverence for life, including Catholics who oppose abortion, and fight for the choice to have children?"

Personal life
She married Carl Friedan, a theatre-producer, in 1947 while working at UE News. Friedan continued to work after marriage, first as a paid employee and, after 1952, as a freelance journalist. The couple divorced in May 1969. Betty claimed in her memoir, Life So Far (2000), that Carl had beaten her during their marriage; friends such as Dolores Alexander recalled having to cover up black eyes from Carl's abuse in time for press conferences. Carl Friedan denied abusing her in an interview with Time magazine shortly after the book was published, describing the claim as a "complete fabrication". She later said, on Good Morning America, "I almost wish I hadn't even written about it, because it's been sensationalized out of context. My husband was not a wife-beater, and I was no passive victim of a wife-beater. We fought a lot, and he was bigger than me." Carl Friedan died in December 2005.

The Friedans had three children: Emily, Daniel and Jonathan. One of their sons, Daniel Friedan, is a noted theoretical physicist.

Friedan died of congestive heart failure at her home in Washington, D.C., on February 4, 2006, her 85th birthday.

(the above excerpted from Wikipedia)

[Alisa]

Other books by Betty Friedan


"It Changed My Life." That's what Betty Friedan heard over and over from women throughout the United States, after the publication of her radical best-seller, The Feminine Mystique, sparked the beginning of contemporary feminism. The first stirring and uncertain years of the women's movement helped many women put a name to the sense of invisibility, powerlessness, and depression that Friedan famously called "the problem that has no name."

First published in 1976, "It Changed My Life" is a compellingly readable collection of reports from the front, back in the days less than a generation ago when women were routinely shut out of the professions and higher education, underpaid, condescended to, and harassed without consequences to the harassers. The book describes the political campaigns for equal pay and job opportunities, for the outlawing of sex discrimination, for the Equal Rights Amendment, and for legalized abortion, the creation of National Organization for Women, the National Abortion Rights Action League, and the National Women's Political Caucus, and analyzes the antifeminist backlashes. Encounters with Simone de Beauvoir and Indira Gandhi are juxtaposed with moving and vivid personal struggles of many ordinary women. Among those women was Friedan herself, who frankly recorded her astonishment, gratification, and anger as the movement she helped create grew beyond all her hopes, and then raced beyond her control into a sexual politics she found disturbing.

A classic of modern feminism, "It Changed My Life" brings back years of struggle for those who were there, and recreates the past for the readers of today who were not yet born during these struggles for the opportunities and respect to which women can now feel entitled. In changing women's lives, the women's movement has changed everything.



First published in 1981, The Second Stage is eerily prescient and timely, a reminder that much of what is called new thinking in feminism has been eloquently observed and argued before. Warning the women's movement against dissolving into factionalism, male-bashing, and preoccupation with sexual and identity politics rather than bottom-line political and economic inequalities, Friedan argues that once past the initial phases of describing and working against political and economic injustices, the women's movement should focus on working with men to remake private and public arrangements that work against full lives with children for women and men both. Friedan's agenda to preserve families is far more radical than it appears, for she argues that a truly equitable preservation of marriage and family may require a reorganization of many aspects of conventional middle-class life, from the greater use of flex time and job-sharing, to company-sponsored daycare, to new home designs to permit communal housekeeping and cooking arrangements.

Called "utopian" fifteen years ago, when it seemed unbelievable that women had enough power in the workplace to make effective demands, or that men would join them, some of these visions are slowly but steadily coming to pass even now. The problem Friedan identifies is as real now as it was years ago: "how to live the equality we fought for," and continue to fight for, with "the family as new feminist frontier." She writes not only for women's liberation but for human liberation.


From Publishers Weekly
Friedan's ( The Feminine Mystique ) wise, empowering book on aging should be read by everyone who equates growing old with being lonely, powerless, unattractive or dependent. She distills interviews with scores of women and men in middle or old age who lead dynamic, creative lives, having broken through the conventional expectation that aging inevitably means decline. She also makes accessible a wealth of findings from gerontologists, social scientists and psychologists. We learn, for example, that the "empty nest syndrome" hits many men more acutely than women, and that recent research contradicts the notion that the brain inevitably deteriorates physically with age. Friedan combines political savvy and empathetic insight in chapters on health care, retirement communities, the "right to die" movement, menopause, nursing homes (which she calls "death sentences"), the search for intimacy and meaningful work, and how women and men age differently. This marvelous, inspiring book approaches aging as an adventure, and is itself one.


Amazon Review
In 1963, The Feminine Mystique blew the cap off the frustration many American women felt over their role in a society that espoused democracy but smugly discriminated against the female half of its populace. More than 30 years later, in Beyond Gender, Betty Friedan acknowledges that she was never quite comfortable with the rage uncorked by loosing the genie of sexual politics, and wonders aloud if pitting women against men, "the oppressed against oppressors," serves to open up most women's lives. Gathering a group of scholars, policy experts, media mavens, and business and labor leaders, Friedan explores a meandering collection of ideas intended to replace the zero-sum game in which women gain only as men lose. This "paradigm shift," she hopes, could bring people together around life-enhancing work, family, and community issues. For example, the vast job cuts of corporate downsizing could be realigned to allow people to stay employed if they agreed to work--and be paid for--fewer hours. Supporters argue that one benefit of such a policy to families would be more parental supervision. Critics side with Joyce Miller of the U.S. Labor Department, who notes vehemently that "Part-time work and work sharing are fine for those people who can afford it, but you don't share going to a grocery and buying a loaf of bread." Although Beyond Gender offers its share of naive or overly familiar solutions to major social problems, it's refreshing to see Friedan back in the fray tossing out good and bad ideas like so many pitches for the rest of us to take a whack at.


From Publishers Weekly
Sisterhood may be powerful, but it's always nice to have the last word--or at least to try. Viewed by many as the logical leader of the women's movement ushered in by the publication of her bestseller The Feminine Mystique, Friedan became a controversial figure as her often conservative positions led to clashes with other feminists. Her impetus for penning her memoirs is to "correct" the "mistakes" of two biographies that were published last year (Judith Hennessee's Betty Friedan: Her Life and Daniel Horowitz's Betty Friedan and the Making of the Feminine Mystique). Writing in a chatty style that rambles all over the place (she is apt to detail room decor in less focused moments), she is sometimes insightful, as when explaining her early attraction to Marxism in Freudian and Jewish theological terms. Unfortunately, Friedan is fighting old battles in much of the memoir, occasionally sounding bitter or paranoid: in her view, the discussions of lesbianism at the 1977 NOW conference in Houston were promoted and funded by "enemies of the women's movement"; La Leche is a fringe group that makes a "fetish of breast-feeding"; the FBI and CIA may have been behind moves to replace Friedan as president of NOW; and Kate Millett's feminist classic Sexual Politics "has a lot of warped stuff" in it. Friedan also minimizes or ignores her biographers' criticisms of her personal life or style, including criticism of her views on race, her drinking habit and what some contend is a tendency toward character assassination of other feminists. While it's important to hear Friedan's version of her history, readers will be well aware that hers is a one-sided view of the women's movement.

All of the above books authored by Betty Friedan

[Alisa]

In honor of Women's History Month, thought I would post the proclamation signed by Pres. Barack Obama today.

Presidential Proclamation--Women's History Month, 2011 WOMEN'S HISTORY MONTH, 2011

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

A PROCLAMATION

During Women's History Month, we reflect on the extraordinary accomplishments of women and honor their role in shaping the course of our Nation's history. Today, women have reached heights their mothers and grandmothers might only have imagined. Women now comprise nearly half of our workforce and the majority of students in our colleges and universities. They scale the skies as astronauts, expand our economy as entrepreneurs and business leaders, and serve our country at the highest levels of government and our Armed Forces. In honor of the pioneering women who came before us, and in recognition of those who will come after us, this month, we recommit to erasing the remaining inequities facing women in our day.

This year, we commemorate the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day, a global celebration of the economic, political, and social achievements of women past, present, and future. International Women's Day is a chance to pay tribute to ordinary women throughout the world and is rooted in women's centuries-old struggle to participate in society on an equal footing with men. This day reminds us that, while enormous progress has been made, there is still work to be done before women achieve true parity.

My Administration has elevated the rights of women and girls abroad as a critical aspect of our foreign and national security policy. Empowering women across the globe is not simply the right thing to do, it is also smart foreign policy. This knowledge is reflected in the National Security Strategy of the United States, which recognizes that countries are more peaceful and prosperous when their female citizens enjoy equal rights, equal voices, and equal opportunities. Today, we are integrating a focus on women and girls in all our diplomatic efforts, and incorporating gender considerations in every aspect of our development assistance. We are working to build the participation of women into all aspects of conflict prevention and resolution, and we are continuing to lead in combating the scourge of conflict related sexual violence, both bilaterally and at the United Nations.

In America, we must lead by example in protecting women's rights and supporting their empowerment. Despite our progress, too many women continue to be paid less than male workers, and women are significantly underrepresented in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. By tapping into the potential and talents of all our citizens, we can utilize an enormous source of economic growth and prosperity. The White House Council on Women and Girls has continued to remove obstacles to achievement by addressing the rate of violence against women, supporting female entrepreneurs, and prioritizing the economic security of women. American families depend largely on the financial stability of women, and my Administration continues to prioritize policies that promote workplace flexibility, access to affordable, quality health care and child care, support for family caregivers, and the enforcement of equal pay laws. I have also called on every agency in the Federal Government to be part of the solution to ending violence against women, and they have responded with unprecedented cooperation to protect victims of domestic and sexual violence and enable survivors to break the cycle of abuse.

As we reflect on the triumphs of the past, we must also look to the limitless potential that lies ahead. To win the future, we must equip the young women of today with the knowledge, skills, and equal access to reach for the promise of tomorrow. My Administration is making unprecedented investments in education and is working to expand opportunities for women and girls in the STEM fields critical for growth in the 21st century economy.

As we prepare to write the next chapter of women's history, let us resolve to build on the progress won by the trailblazers of the past. We must carry forward the work of the women who came before us and ensure our daughters have no limits on their dreams, no obstacles to their achievements, and no remaining ceilings to shatter.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim March 2011 as Women's History Month. I call upon all Americans to observe this month and to celebrate International Women's Day on March 8, 2011 with appropriate programs, ceremonies, and activities that honor the history, accomplishments, and contributions of American women. I also invite all Americans to visit www.WomensHistoryMonth.gov to learn more about the generations of women who have shaped our history.


IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this twenty-eighth day of February, in the year of our Lord two thousand eleven, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-fifth.

BARACK OBAMA

Presidential Proclamation--Women's History Month, 2011

[Alisa]

The voice of women of color in the feminist movement has not been popularized much, but certainly is a voice to be heard. I'm always interested in hearing the perspective offered by someone who has an experience different from my own, and perhaps you are too? Or maybe you are just plain interested to hear what she has to say.

by bell hooks
hooks suggests that feminists have not succeeded in creating a mass movement against sexist oppression because the very foundation of women's liberation has not accounted for the complexity and diversity of female experience.

[Alisa]

A collection of essays by various women on the modern day feminist movement.
by Barbara Findlen
Publishers Weekly
Third-wave feminists are less angry, more realistic and deal with more subtle obstacles than their foremothers. These and other popular conceptions of young feminists are explored, questioned and sometimes blown to bits in the revised and expanded edition of Listen Up: Voices from the Next Feminist Generation, edited by Barbara Findlen. According to these undefeated and impressive young women, violence, rape, shame and self-hate still rear their ugly heads in the lives of girls and women. And, they attest, young feminists are as angry, self-expressive, political and interested in claiming their due as their predecessors.

[Alisa]

Looks like a great anthology.
by Linda K. Kerber
Reviews
"Yet another priceless contribution to our collective knowledge about women's past. The essays and documents in Women's America give a sweeping chronicle of women's lives in all their diversity and complexity. Brilliantly framed and carefully compiled, this text remains a classic for U.S. women's history."--Barbara Ransby, University of Illinois at Chicago

"The sixth edition is more indispensable than ever as a resource for teaching and learning. With new first-person accounts and interpretative essays on social networks and movements, cross-cultural experiences, the dilemmas of citizenship, and many other critical areas, this marvelous collection continues to shape our understanding of the complex dimensions of women's history."-Joyce Antler, Brandeis University

"This sixth edition of Women's America is the best yet. It is the most expansive and comprehensive text on women, their special roles in American history, the making of American culture, and the defining of American citizenship. Must reading for all those who seek to understand American society and history at the intersection of gender, race, and work."--James Oliver Horton, George Washington University

"The great virtue of this book is that it has enabled me to broach the most sophisticated themes of women's history and gender studies in my classroom in a way that is both accessible and challenging for my students. Deft editing of this 6th edition has created another diverse and engaging collection of scholarly articles and primary documents perfect for the discussion-centered classroom. My students appreciate the opportunity to weigh in on the most current debates in the field and are motivated by the editors' 'not the usual suspects' approach to women's history."--Colleen MegAnne Coffey, Moorpark Community College

"This anthology, now in its sixth edition, is the gold standard of U.S. women's history. Kerber and De Hart have retained the classic articles of the field while incorporating the latest and most innovative of the new research."--Elizabeth H. Pleck, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Product Description
Featuring a mix of primary source documents, articles, and illustrations, Women's America: Refocusing the Past has long been an invaluable resource. Now in its sixth edition, the book has been extensively revised and updated to cover recent events in American women's history. It provides many new selections from leading theorists and historians and restores several readings that were cut from the fifth edition. Successfully classroom-tested, these new essays offer more material on the impact of ethnicity in American culture, the roles that women have played in the creation of male-dominated structures, and the international dimensions of women's lives. The book covers such diverse groups as Christian Indian women in colonial America, African-American women in post-Civil War Atlanta, young Jewish labor organizers in turn-of-the-century New York, new arrivals to San Francisco's Chinatown, Japanese-American women during World War II, and Chicana feminists. The introductory essay has been revised and the bibliography has been updated to take into account the growing body of contemporary literature in the field. Women's America is an essential text for courses in women's history and an ideal supplement for more general survey courses on American history.

[Alisa]

Iconic author.
by Angela Y. Davis
Amazon Review
Longtime activist, author and political figure Angela Davis brings us this expose of the women's movement in the context of the fight for civil rights and working class issues. She uncovers a side of the fight for suffrage many of us have not heard: the intimate tie between the anti-slavery campaign and the struggle for women's suffrage. She shows how the racist and classist bias of some in the women's movement have divided its own membership. Davis' message is clear: If we ever want equality, we're gonna have to fight for it together.
Review
"As useful an exposition of the current dilemmas of the women's movement as one could hope for. -- Los Angeles Times Book Review

[Alisa]

An offering on the women's suffrage movement, a turning point in American history.
by Doris Stevens
From Publishers Weekly
American women fought hard, and many paid dearly, to win the right to vote. Stevens saw action in the front lines of the battle and was one of the dozens of women imprisoned for picketing the White House. First published in 1920, this long-out-of-print book offers Stevens's firsthand account of the women who endured the indifference of Congress and President Woodrow Wilson, the abuse by the press and the police, beatings at the hands of mobs and forced feedings in foul workhouses to force passage of the 19th Amendment. Although Jailed for Freedom was conceived as a history of the National Woman's Party (NWP), O'Hare has edited out the "minute detail of legislative politics, author bias, and verbiage," leaving a vivid partisan account that clearly conveys the excitement of both battle and victory.

[Alisa]

Another book on women and the right to vote. This is on my to-read list.
by Rebecca J. Mead
By the end of 1914, almost every Western state and territory had enfranchised its female citizens in the greatest innovation in participatory democracy since Reconstruction. These Western successes stand in profound contrast to the East, where few women voted until after the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, and the South, where African-American men were systematically disenfranchised. How did the frontier West leap ahead of the rest of the nation in the enfranchisement of the majority of its citizens?

In this provocative new study, Rebecca J. Mead shows that Western suffrage came about as the result of the unsettled state of regional politics, the complex nature of Western race relations, broad alliances between suffragists and farmer-labor-progressive reformers, and sophisticated activism by Western women. She highlights suffrage racism and elitism as major problems for the movement, and places special emphasis on the political adaptability of Western suffragists whose improvisational tactics earned them progress.

A fascinating story, previously ignored, How the Vote was Won reintegrates this important region into national suffrage history and helps explain the ultimate success of this radical reform.

[Alisa]

Did you know that Jane Addams was the first American woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize? A book about this iconic woman:
by Louise W. Knight
In this landmark biography, Jane Addams becomes America's most admired and most hated woman—and wins the Nobel Peace Prize.

Jane Addams (1860-1935) was a leading statesperson in an era when few imagined such possibilities for women. In this fresh interpretation, the first full biography of Addams in nearly forty years, Louise W. Knight shows Addams's boldness, creativity, and tenacity as she sought ways to put the ideals of democracy into action. Starting in Chicago as a co-founder of the nation's first settlement house, Hull House—a community center where people of all classes and ethnicities could gather—Addams became a grassroots organizer and a partner of trade unionists, women, immigrants, and African Americans seeking social justice. In time she emerged as a progressive political force; an advocate for women's suffrage; an advisor to presidents; a co-founder of civil rights organizations, including the NAACP; and a leader for international peace. Written as a fast-paced narrative, Jane Addams traces how one woman worked with others to make a difference in the world.

[Alisa]

A book highlighting the contributions of nine women:

by Karenna Gore Schiff

Karenna Gore Schiff’s nationally bestselling narrative tells the fascinating stories of nine influential women, who each in her own way, tackled inequity and advocated change throughout the turbulent twentieth century.
Ida B. Wells-Barnett, who was born a slave and fought against lynching; Mother Jones, an Irish immigrant who organized coal miners and campaigned against child labor; Alice Hamilton, who pushed for regulation of industrial toxins; Frances Perkins, who developed key New Deal legislation; Virginia Durr, who fought the poll tax and segregation; Septima Clark, who helped to register black voters; Dolores Huerta, who organized farm workers; Dr. Helen Rodriguez-Trias, an activist for reproductive rights; and Gretchen Buchenholz, one of the nation’s leading child advocates.

Gore Schiff delivers an intimate and accessible account of the nine trail-blazing women who deserve not only to be honored but to have their example serve as beacons.

[Alisa]

Too often we think of the women's movement as a fixture and invention of the 60's and 70's without acknowledging the contributions of women in earlier decades. Another book about an oft-overlooked trailblazer: Frances Perkins

by Kirstin Downey
One of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s closest friends and the first female secretary of labor, Perkins capitalized on the president’s political savvy and popularity to enact most of the Depression-era programs that are today considered essential parts of the country’s social safety network.

Frances Perkins is no longer a household name, yet she was one of the most influential women of the twentieth century. Based on eight years of research, extensive archival materials, new documents, and exclusive access to Perkins’s family members and friends, this biography is the first complete portrait of a devoted public servant with a passionate personal life, a mother who changed the landscape of American business and society.

Frances Perkins was named Secretary of Labor by Franklin Roosevelt in 1933. As the first female cabinet secretary, she spearheaded the fight to improve the lives of America’s working people while juggling her own complex family responsibilities. Show More Perkins’s ideas became the cornerstones of the most important social welfare and legislation in the nation’s history, including unemployment compensation, child labor laws, and the forty-hour work week.

Arriving in Washington at the height of the Great Depression, Perkins pushed for massive public works projects that created millions of jobs for unemployed workers. She breathed life back into the nation’s labor movement, boosting living standards across the country. As head of the Immigration Service, she fought to bring European refugees to safety in the United States. Her greatest triumph was creating Social Security.

Written with a wit that echoes Frances Perkins’s own, award-winning journalist Kirstin Downey gives us a riveting exploration of how and why Perkins slipped into historical oblivion, and restores Perkins to her proper place in history.

[Alisa]

I had never heard of this woman until yesterday, and now I am fascinated. These select excerpts in this and the next post are courtesy of our friends at wikipedia:

Victoria Claflin Woodhull (September 23, 1838 – June 9, 1927) was a 19th century American who was described by Gilded Age newspapers as a leader of the American woman's suffrage movement. She went from rags to riches twice, her first fortune being made on the road as a highly successful magnetic healer before she joined the spiritualist movement in the 1870s. Woodhull became a colorful and notorious symbol for women's rights, free love, and spiritualism as she fought against corruption and for labor reforms. While authorship of many of her articles is disputed (many of her speeches on these topics were collaborations between Woodhull, her backers and her husband), her controversial role as a representative of these movements was nonetheless powerful. Although she was the first woman, along with her sister, to operate a brokerage firm in Wall Street, as well as a weekly newspaper, she is most famous for her sensational 1872 campaign to run as the first female candidate for the Presidency of the United States. Many of the reforms and ideals she espoused for the common working class against what she saw as the corrupt capitalist elite were extremely controversial in her time, though generations later many of them have been implemented and are now taken for granted. Other ideas and reforms are still debated today.

Early life
Conceived during a Methodist revival meeting, Woodhull was born Victoria California Claflin, the seventh of ten children, in the rural frontier town of Homer, Licking County, Ohio. Her illiterate and illegitimate mother was a follower of the Austrian mystic Franz Mesmer and the new spiritualist movement. Her father was a con man, arsonist, and snake oil salesman, who came from an impoverished branch of the Massachusetts-based Scottish American Claflin family, semi-distant cousins to the philanthropist Governor William Claflin. For most of her life Victoria was closely associated with her sister Tennessee Celeste Claflin, seven years her junior and the last child born to the family.

Victoria described herself as "a child without a childhood," as her parents hired her out as a menial. Her own connection to spiritiualism began at an early age; Woodhull recounted that when the work was overwhelming, heavy objects seemed to be lifted by unseen hands and "...when walking it seemed my feet did not touch the ground." By age 11, she had only three years of formal education, but her teachers found her to be extremely intelligent. She was forced to leave not only school, but Homer itself when her father's act of arson and attempted insurance fraud on the family's rotting gristmill resulted in his being run off by a group of town vigilantes. The town paid for the family to follow him to Pennsylvania.

When she was just 14, Victoria met 28-year-old Canning Woodhull (listed as "Channing" in some records), a doctor from a town outside of Rochester, New York. Woodhull practiced medicine in Ohio at a time when the state did not require formal medical education and licensing. He met Victoria around June or July of 1853 when her family consulted him to treat her for a chronic illness. According to some accounts, Canning Woodhull claimed to be the nephew of Caleb Smith Woodhull, mayor of New York City from 1849 to 1851, when in fact he was a distant cousin. Their marriage certificate is filed in Cleveland on November 23, 1853, when Victoria was two months past her 15th birthday. She soon learned that her new husband was an alcoholic and a womanizer, and that she would often be required to work outside the home to support the family. She and Canning had two children, Byron and Zulu (later Zula) Maude. According to one account, Byron was born with an intellectual disability in 1854, a condition Victoria believed was caused by her husband's alcoholism. Another story says his disability resulted from a fall from a window. In 1872 she started a relationship with the anarchist Benjamin Tucker, which lasted for 3 years.

Woodhull's support of free love probably originated at the time of her first marriage. Women who married in the United States during the 19th century were bound into the unions, whether loveless or not, with few options to escape. Divorce, where possible, was scandalous, and women who divorced were stigmatized and often ostracized by society. Victoria Woodhull concluded women should have the choice to leave unbearable marriages, and she railed against the hypocrisy of tacitly tolerating married men who had mistresses and engaged in other sexual dalliances. Victoria believed in monogamous relationships, although she did state she had the right also to love someone else "exclusively" if she desired. She said: “To woman, by nature, belongs the right of sexual determination. When the instinct is aroused in her, then and then only should commerce follow. When woman rises from sexual slavery to sexual freedom, into the ownership and control of her sexual organs, and man is obliged to respect this freedom, then will this instinct become pure and holy; then will woman be raised from the iniquity and morbidness in which she now wallows for existence, and the intensity and glory of her creative functions be increased a hundred-fold . . .”

The Woodhull Freedom Foundation & Federation, which works through research, advocacy, and public education to affirm sexual freedom as a fundamental human right, is a global sexual freedom advocacy organization named in honor of Victoria Woodhull.

Female broker
She made a fortune on the New York Stock Exchange with her sister Tennessee, as the first female Wall Street brokers. Woodhull, Claflin & Company opened in 1870 with the assistance of a wealthy benefactor, Cornelius Vanderbilt, an admirer of Victoria's mediumistic skills and rumored to have been a lover of Tennessee's. Newspapers such as the New York Herald hailed Woodhull & Claflin as "the Queens of Finance" and "the Bewitching Brokers." Many contemporary men's journals (e.g., The Days' Doings) published sexualized images of the pair running their firm (although they did not participate in the day-to-day business of the firm themselves), linking the concept of publicly-minded, un-chaperoned women with ideas of "sexual immorality" and prostitution.

Newspaper editor
On May 14, 1870, she and Tennessee used the money they had made in their brokerage days to found a paper, Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly, which stayed in publication for the next six years. It became notorious for publishing controversial opinions on taboo topics, advocating among other things sex education, free love, women's suffrage, short skirts, spiritualism, vegetarianism, and licensed prostitution. It is commonly stated that the paper also advocated birth control, but some historians disagree. The paper is now known primarily for printing the first English version of Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto in its December 30, 1871 edition.

In 1872 the Weekly published a story that set off a national scandal that preoccupied the public for months. One of the most renowned ministers of the day, Henry Ward Beecher of Brooklyn's Plymouth Church, had condemned Woodhull's free love philosophy in his sermons. But a member of his church, Theodore Tilton, disclosed to Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a colleague of Woodhull, that his wife had confessed to him that Beecher was committing adultery with her, and this hypocrisy provoked Woodhull to expose Beecher. Ultimately Beecher stood trial for adultery in an 1875 legal proceeding that proved to be one of the most sensational legal episodes of the era, holding the attention of hundreds of thousands of Americans. The verdict was ultimately a hung jury.

George Francis Train once defended her. Other feminists of her time, including Susan B. Anthony, disagreed with her tactics in pushing for women's equality. Some characterized her as opportunistic and unpredictable: in one notable incident, she had a run-in with Anthony during a meeting of the NWSA. (The radical NWSA later merged with the conservative AWSA to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association).

Women's rights advocate
Woodhull's experiences taught her how to penetrate the all-male domain of national politics. A year after she set up shop in Wall Street, she preempted the opening of the 1871 National Woman Suffrage Association's third annual convention in Washington. Suffrage leaders postponed their meeting to listen to the female broker address the House Judiciary Committee. Woodhull argued that women already had the right to vote — all they had to do was use it — since the 14th and 15th Amendments granted that right to all citizens. The simple but powerful logic of her argument impressed some committee members. Suffragists, including Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Isabella Beecher Hooker, saw her as their newest champion. They applauded her statement: "women are the equals of men before the law, and are equal in all their rights."

Woodhull catapulted to the leadership circle of the suffrage movement with her first public appearance as a woman's rights advocate. Although her Constitutional argument was not original, she focused unprecedented public attention on suffrage. Following Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Woodhull was the second woman to petition Congress in person. Newspapers reported her appearance before Congress. Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper printed a full-page engraving of Woodhull, surrounded by prominent suffragists, delivering her argument.

Life in England
In October 1876, Woodhull divorced her second husband, Colonel Blood. Less than a year later, exhausted and possibly depressed, she left for England to start a new life. She made her first public appearance as a lecturer at St. James's Hall in London on December 4, 1877. Her lecture was called "The Human Body, the Temple of God," a lecture that was previously presented in the United States. Present at one of her lectures was banker John Biddulph Martin, the man who would become her third and last husband on October 31, 1883 (though his family disagreed with the marriage). From then on, she was known as Victoria Woodhull Martin. Under that name, she published a magazine with help from her daughter Zula, called The Humanitarian from 1892 to 1901. As a widow, Woodhull gave up the publication of her magazine and retired to the country, establishing residence at Bredon's Norton.

Views on abortion and eugenics
Woodhull stated that :"[t]he rights of children as individuals begin while yet they remain the foetus".
In an 1875 speech in Wheeling, West Virginia, she spoke to a large audience on the subject of "Social Evil," including her views on unwanted pregnancy:
"Every woman knows that if she were free, she would never bear an unwished-for child, nor think of murdering one before its birth. It is because she is not free that these prevail. It is the children who are conceived in enforced commerce, and those whom mothers fail to kill before birth, who recruit the ranks of the vicious and criminal classes. No child conceived in love and born in hope was yet a criminal."

[Alisa]

Victoria Claflin Woodhull

Presidential candidate
Woodhull was nominated for President of the United States by the newly formed Equal Rights Party on May 10, 1872, at Apollo Hall, New York City. A year earlier, she had announced her intention to run. Also in 1871, she spoke publicly against the government being composed only of men and proposed there be a new constitution and a new government a year thence. Her nomination was ratified at convention on June 6, 1872. Former slave Frederick Douglass was nominated for Vice President. Douglass never acknowledged this nomination. Instead, he served as a presidential elector in the United States Electoral College for the State of New York.

While many historians and authors agree that Woodhull was the first woman to run for President of the United States, some people have questioned the legality of her run, usually citing one of the following reasons:

The government declined to print her name on the ballot.
This criticism is not valid as the government was not responsible for printing ballots. In 1872, political parties were responsible. This practice changed in the United States between the years 1888-1892 with the adoption of the Australian ballot. The Washington Post, about fifty years after the election, claimed that the Equal Rights Party published ballots bearing her name and that they were handed out at the polls. Because no Equal Rights Party ballot for 1872 has been preserved, this claim cannot be confirmed. The first woman to appear on a presidential ballot printed by the government was Charlene Mitchell in 1968.

She was under the constitutionally mandated age of 35.
This is the most cited criticism in the 20th and 21st centuries, but was hardly noticed in the 19th. The presidential inauguration was in March 1873. Woodhull's 35th birthday was in September 1873. Some contend attorney Belva Lockwood was the first woman to run for President, because she was over the age of 35 when she ran in 1884 and 1888. However, some of the other criticisms about the legality of Woodhull's run also apply to Lockwood. There also is no legal primary evidence that Woodhull was born in 1838. Ohio did not require the registration of births until 1867. The probate court in Licking County, Ohio, burned down in 1875, destroying all previously recorded records except land records.

She did not receive any electoral and/or popular votes.
While it is true that Woodhull received no electoral votes, there's evidence that Woodhull did receive popular votes that were not counted. Official election returns also show about 2,000 "scattering votes." it is unknown whether any of those scattering votes were cast for her. Supporters contend that her popular votes were not counted because of gender discrimination and prejudice against her views, while critics contend the votes were not counted because they had other legal defects besides gender. The first woman to receive an electoral vote was Libertarian Tonie Nathan, who received a vote for Vice President in 1972.

Women could not legally vote until August 1920.
Although it is true that most women could not legally vote until 1920, some women did legally vote and hold public office prior to 1920. The Wyoming Territory granted women the vote in 1869. Susanna M. Salter was elected Mayor of Argonia, Kansas, in 1887, and Jeannette Rankin of Montana was elected to Congress in 1916. In New York, Woodhull's state of residency, the state took away the right of propertied women to vote in 1777. In 1871, Woodhull went to the polls for a local election in New York and was allowed to register, but when she returned to vote, her ballot was refused by election officials. Some believe that when the 19th amendment passed giving women the right to vote, it implicitly gave women the right to run for President. For that reason, they contend Senator Margaret Chase Smith was the first woman to run for President in 1964 when she was put forward as a possible nominee at the Republican Party San Francisco convention. Smith is often called the first woman to be nominated for President by a major party, but the July 6, 1920 issue of the Bridgeport Connecticut Telegram reported that Laura Clay and Cora Wilson Stewart of Kentucky were put forward as possible Presidential nominees at the Democratic Party San Francisco convention and received "the first vote cast for a woman in the convention of either of the two great parties."

She was a woman.
This was the most cited legal impediment in the 19th century. Some of Woodhull's contemporaries believed that because she was a woman she was not a citizen and, therefore, not entitled to vote. Since the Constitution required that the President be a citizen, she would also be excluded from holding the office of President. Others believed women were citizens, but that the states had the right to limit the franchise to males only. Some Woodhull supporters believed that even if Woodhull herself could not vote legally, that would not have excluded others from voting for her. United States law has its roots in English common law, and under English common law, there was an established precedent of women holding public office.

It was not just her gender that made Woodhull's campaign notable; her association with Frederick Douglass stirred up controversy about the mixing of whites and blacks and fears of miscegenation. The Equal Rights Party hoped to use these nominations to reunite suffragists with civil rights activists, as the exclusion of female suffrage from the Fifteenth Amendment two years earlier had caused a substantial rift. The circumstances leading up to Woodhull's nomination had also created a rift between Woodhull and her former supporter Susan B. Anthony, and almost ended the collaboration of Anthony with Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Stanton, who had unsuccessfully run for Congress in New York in 1868, was more sympathetic to Woodhull. When Anthony cast her vote in the presidential election, she voted for Grant.

Like many of Woodhull's protests, this was first and foremost a media performance, designed to shake up the prejudices of the day. Vilified in the media for her support of free love, Woodhull devoted an issue of Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly (November 2, 1872) to a rumored affair. She alleged an affair between Elizabeth Tilton and Reverend Henry Ward Beecher, a prominent Protestant figure (who incidentally was a supporter of female suffrage). She published this article to highlight what she saw as a sexual double-standard between men and women.

On Saturday, November 2, 1872, just days before the presidential election, U.S. Federal Marshals arrested Woodhull, her second husband Colonel James Blood, and her sister Tennie C. Claflin on charges of "publishing an obscene newspaper." The sisters were held in the Ludlow Street Jail for the next month, a place normally reserved for civil offenses, but which contained more hardened criminals as well. The arrest was arranged by Anthony Comstock, the self-appointed moral defender of the nation at the time, and the event incited questions about censorship and government persecution. Woodhull, Claflin, and Blood were acquitted on a technicality six months later, but the arrest prevented Victoria from attempting to vote during the 1872 presidential election. The publication of the Beecher-Tilton scandal led Theodore Tilton, husband of Elizabeth Tilton, to sue Beecher for "alienation of affection" in 1875. The trial was sensationalized across the nation, eventually resulting in a hung jury.

Woodhull attempted to secure nominations for the presidency again in 1884 and 1892. The newspapers in 1892 reported that she was nominated by the "National Woman Suffragists' Nominating Convention" on September 21 at Willard's hotel in Boonville, New York presided over by Anna M. Parker, President of the convention. Mary L. Stowe of California was nominated as the vice presidential candidate, but some woman's suffrage organizations repudiated the nominations, stating the nominating committee was not authorized. Her 1892 campaign was probably taken less seriously because newspapers quoted her as saying she was "destined" by "prophecy" to be elected President of the United States in 1892.

[Alisa]

Books about Victoria Claflin Woodhull:

by Barbara Goldsmith
by Mary Gabriel
Lois Beachy Underhill
Amanda Frisken Kate Havelin
Marion Meade

[Alisa]

An examination of women's history over time ~
by Christine Stansell
Stansell largely blames the breaks in the long narrative of women's struggle for equality in America on "historical amnesia" that erased a sense that "the past was backing them up" and left each generation to forge new approaches without a record of prior feminist thought and action. Stansell's comprehensive history tracks major and minor moments that highlight promise both realized and unmet. Beginning with the release of Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman and concluding with the connection of modern American feminism to global human rights, Stansell constructs a sweeping narrative that puts the accomplishments of specific players, such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and the oft-overlooked Maria Stewart, into a larger historical context, and also chronicles leaders, organizations, and acts of protest that defined feminism in the 20th century. She examines the partnership between abolition and suffrage that led to respective political victories and indentifies the missteps (like an early partnership with white supremacists) that compromised progress, creating a truly balanced history for future generations. The volume's breadth means some details and individuals are lost, but in plotting the points of a long overdue narrative, Stansell fulfills her promise.

the above review mentions this book:
by Mary Wollstonecraft

and also mentions
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Susan B. Anthony
Maria Stewart

[Alisa]

The more I learn about this woman the more intrigued I become. Frances Perkins was the first woman to become a member of the Presidential cabinet. She was appointed to FDR's cabinet and had a distinguished career for many years. The following biographical information is courtesy of wikipedia:


Frances Perkins (April 10, 1880 – May 14, 1965), born Fannie Coralie Perkins, was the U.S. Secretary of Labor from 1933 to 1945, and the first woman appointed to the U.S. Cabinet. As a loyal supporter of her friend, Franklin D. Roosevelt, she helped pull the labor movement into the New Deal coalition. She and Interior Secretary Harold Ickes were the only original members of the Roosevelt cabinet who remained in offices for his entire presidency.

During her term as Secretary of Labor, Perkins championed many aspects of the New Deal, including the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Public Works Administration and its successor the Federal Works Agency, and the labor portion of the National Industrial Recovery Act. With The Social Security Act she established unemployment benefits, pensions for the many uncovered elderly Americans, and welfare for the poorest Americans. She pushed to reduce workplace accidents and helped craft laws against child labor. Through the Fair Labor Standards Act, she established the first minimum wage and overtime laws for American workers, and defined the standard 40-hour work week. She formed governmental policy for working with labor unions and helped to alleviate strikes by way of the United States Conciliation Service, Perkins resisted having American women be drafted to serve the military in World War II so that they could enter the civilian workforce in greatly expanded numbers.

Early life and education
Perkins was born in Boston, Massachusetts, to Susan Bean Perkins and Frederick W. Perkins, the owner of a stationer's business (both of her parents originally were from Maine). She spent much of her childhood in Worcester. She was christened Fannie Coralie Perkins, but later changed her name to Frances.

Perkins attended Worcester's Classical High School and was graduated from Mount Holyoke College with a BA degree in chemistry and physics in 1902, and from Columbia University with a master's degree in political science in 1910. In the interim, she held a variety of teaching positions including a position teaching chemistry from 1904-06 at Ferry Hall School, now Lake Forest Academy, in Lake Forest, Illinois. In Chicago, she volunteered at settlement houses, including Hull House. In 1918 she began her years of study in economics and sociology at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School.

Life and Career before the Cabinet
She achieved statewide prominence as head of the New York Consumers League in 1910 and in that position she lobbied with vigor for better working hours and conditions. During this time Perkins also taught as a professor of sociology at Adelphi College. The next year, she witnessed the tragic Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, a pivotal event in her life.

Frances Perkins married Paul Caldwell Wilson in 1913. She kept her birth name, defending her right to do so in court. The couple had a daughter, Susanna. Both father and daughter were described by biographer Kirstin Downey as having "manic-depressive symptoms." Wilson was frequently institutionalized for mental illness. She was the sole support for her household.

Prior to going to Washington D.C., Perkins held various positions in New York State government. In 1929 the newly-elected New York governor, Franklin D. Roosevelt, appointed Perkins as the state industrial commissioner. Having earned the cooperation and respect of various political factions, Perkins ably helped put New York in the forefront of progressive reform. She expanded factory investigations, reduced the workweek for women to 48 hours, and championed minimum wage and unemployment insurance laws.

Cabinet career
In 1933 Roosevelt appointed Perkins as Secretary of the Department of Labor, a position she held for twelve years, longer than any other Secretary of Labor. She became the first woman to hold a cabinet position in the United States and thus, became the first woman to enter the presidential line of succession.

With few exceptions, President Roosevelt consistently supported the goals and programs of Secretary Perkins. In an administration filled with compromise, the president's support for the agenda of Frances Perkins was unusually constant.

As Secretary of Labor, Perkins played a key role in the cabinet by writing New Deal legislation, including minimum-wage laws. Her most important contribution, however, came in 1934 as chairwoman of the President's Committee on Economic Security. In this post, she was involved in all aspects of the reports and hearings that ultimately resulted in the Social Security Act of 1935. On the day that bill was signed into law, her husband escaped from a mental institution.[11][12]

In 1939, she came under fire from some members of Congress for refusing to deport the Communist head of the west coast International Longshore and Warehouse Union, Harry Bridges. Ultimately, Bridges was vindicated by the Supreme Court.

Al Smith, a machine politician from the old school, was an early social reformer with whom Frances Perkins made common cause. At Smith's funeral in 1944 two of his former Tammany Hall political cronies were overheard to speculate on why Smith had become a social crusader. One of them summed the matter up this way: "I'll tell you. Al Smith read a book. That book was a person, and her name was Frances Perkins. She told him all these things, and he believed her."

Following her tenure as Secretary of Labor, in 1945 Perkins was asked by President Harry Truman to serve on the United States Civil Service Commission, which she did until 1952, when her husband died and she resigned from federal service. During this period, she also published a memoir of her time in FDR's administration called The Roosevelt I Knew, which offered a sympathetic view of the president.

After the Cabinet
Following her government service career, Perkins remained active as a teacher and lecturer at the New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University until her death in 1965 at age 85. She is buried in the Newcastle Cemetery in Newcastle, Maine.

Legacy
Perkins overseeing the signing of the National Labor Relations Act by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. It is a a 1935 United States federal law that limits the means with which employers may react to workers in the private sector who create labor unions, engage in collective bargaining, and take part in strikes and other forms of concerted activity in support of their demands. Apparently, the Act does/did not apply to workers who are covered by the Railway Labor Act, agricultural employees, domestic employees, supervisors, federal, state or local government workers, independent contractors and some close relatives of individual employers.

Frances Perkins, the first female member of the Presidential cabinet, had an unenviable challenge: she had to be as capable, as fearless, as tactful, as politically astute as the other Washington politicians, in order to make it possible for other women to be accepted into the halls of power after her.

Perkins would have been famous simply by being the first woman cabinet member, but her legacy stems from her accomplishments. She was largely responsible for the U.S. adoption of social security, unemployment insurance, federal laws regulating child labor, and adoption of the federal minimum wage.

Perkins had a cool personality, which held her aloof from the crowd. Although her results indicate her great love of workers and lower-class groups, her Boston upbringing held her back from mingling freely and exhibiting personal affection. She was well-suited for the high-level efforts to effect sweeping reforms, but never caught the public's eye or its affection.

The Frances Perkins Building that is the headquarters of the United States Department of Labor in Washington, D.C. was named in her honor in 1980.

Perkins is honored with a feast day on the liturgical calendar of the Episcopal Church (USA) on May 13.

Having graduated from Mount Holyoke College, Francis Perkins remains a prominent figure in the school's current existence. The Francis Perkins scholars were named after her, dedicated to educating women older than the usual college student.

Perkins is depicted in a mural displayed in the Maine Department of Labor headquarters. Maine's Republican governor, Paul LePage, has ordered the removal of the mural. A spokesperson for the governor said they received complaints about the mural from state business officials and from an anonymous fax charging that it was reminiscent of “communist North Korea where they use these murals to brainwash the masses.” Paul LePage also ordered that the names of seven conference rooms in the Department of Labor, including one named after Perkins, be changed.



Books about:
by Penny Colman
by Naomi Pasachoff
Madam Secretary, Frances Perkins(no cover photo) by George Whitney Martin

[Alisa]

March is Women's History month so thought I would add tribute to women, famous and not as well known, who have made their own unique contribution to the world. What better place to start than with a publisher - Katharine Graham. Her name may not be the first that comes to mind when thinking of the women's movement, but there is no doubt she moved many to act in important ways. Trailblazers like her pave the way for others to follow, and we can all learn from her journey.

The following is from our friends at Wikipedia: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katharin...)


Katharine Meyer Graham (June 16, 1917 – July 17, 2001) was an American publisher. She led her family's newspaper, The Washington Post, for more than two decades, overseeing its most famous period, the Watergate coverage that eventually led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon. Her memoir, Personal History, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1998.

Early life
Katharine Graham was born in 1917 into a privileged family in New York City.

Graham's father, Eugene Meyer, was a financier and, later, a public official. He bought The Washington Post in 1933 at a bankruptcy auction. Her mother, Agnes Elizabeth Ernst, was a bohemian intellectual, art lover, and political activist in the Republican Party, who shared friendships with people as diverse as Auguste Rodin, Marie Curie, Albert Einstein and Eleanor Roosevelt, and worked as a newspaper reporter at a time when journalism was an uncommon profession among women.

Graham's parents owned several homes across the country, but primarily lived between a veritable 'castle' in Mount Kisco, New York, and a smaller home in Washington, D.C. Graham often did not see much of her parents during her childhood, as both traveled and socialized extensively, and was raised in part by nannies, governesses and tutors. Katharine endured a strained relationship with her mother. Agnes Meyer was reportedly very negative and condescending towards Katharine, which had a negative impact on Katharine's self confidence.

Her elder sister Florence Meyer (1911–1962) was a successful photographer and wife of actor Oscar Homolka.

Graham was an alumna of The Madeira School (to which her father had donated much land) and attended Vassar College before transferring to the University of Chicago. In Chicago, she became quite interested in labor issues and shared friendships with people from walks of life very different from her own. After graduation, she worked for a short period at a San Francisco newspaper where, among other things, she helped cover a major strike by wharf workers.

Her father's sister, Florence Meyer Blumenthal founded the Prix Blumenthal, given to painters, sculptors, decorators, engravers, writers, and musicians during the period of 1919-1954.

Graham began working for the Post in 1938. While in Washington, D.C., she met a former schoolmate, Will Lang Jr. The two dated, but broke off the relationship due to conflicting interests.

Family
On June 5, 1940, she married Philip Graham, a graduate of Harvard Law School and a clerk for Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter. They had a daughter, Lally Morris Weymouth (born 1943), and three sons: Donald Edward Graham (born 1945), William Welsh Graham (born 1948) and Stephen Meyer Graham (born 1952).

Leadership of The Washington Post
Philip Graham became publisher of the Post in 1946, when Meyer handed over the newspaper to his son-in-law. Katharine recounts in her autobiography, Personal History, how she didn't feel slighted by the fact her father gave the Post to Phillip rather than her, "Far from troubling me that my father thought of my husband and not me, it pleased me ,In fact, it never crossed my mind that he might have viewed me as someone to take on an important job at the paper."[2]< Meyer went on to became the head of the World Bank. Meyer left that position only six months later; he was Chairman of the Washington Post Company until his death in 1959, when Philip Graham took that position and the company expanded with the purchases of television stations and Newsweek magazine.

Social life and friends
The Grahams were important members of the Washington social scene, becoming friends with John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Robert F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, Henry Kissinger, Ronald Reagan, and Nancy Reagan among many others.

In her 1997 autobiography, Graham comments several times about how close her husband was to politicians of his day (he was instrumental, for example, in getting Johnson to be the Democratic Vice Presidential nominee in 1960), and how such personal closeness with politicians later became unacceptable in journalism.

Graham is also known for a long time friendship with Warren Buffett whose Berkshire Hathaway owns a substantial stake in Washington Post.

Philip Graham's illness and death
Phillip dealt with alcoholism and mental illness throughout his marriage to Katharine. He had mood swings and often belittled her, calling her horrible names. On Christmas Eve in 1962, Katharine found out her husband was having an affair with Robin Webb, an Australian stringer for Newsweek Graham declared that he would divorce his wife for Robin and he made motions to divide up the couple's assets.

At a newspaper conference in Phoenix, Arizona, Graham apparently had a nervous breakdown. Graham was sedated and flown back to Washington. where he would end up in the Chestnut Lodge psychiatric facility near Washington, D.C. During a weekend release from Chestnut Lodge on August 3, 1963, Graham committed suicide with a 28-gauge shotgun at the couple's Glen Welby home.

Ascension to power
Katharine Graham assumed the reins of the company, and of the Post, after Philip Graham's suicide. Graham was de facto publisher of the newspaper from 1963 onward, formally assuming the title in 1979, and chairman of the board from 1973 to 1991. As the only woman to be in such a high position at a publishing company, she had no female role models and had difficulty being taken seriously by a many of her male colleagues and employees. Graham outlined in her memoir her lack of confidence and distrust in her own knowledge. The convergence of the women's movement with Graham's ascension to power at the Post brought about changes in Graham's attitude, and also led her to promote gender equality within her company.

Graham hired Benjamin Bradlee as editor and cultivated Warren Buffett for his financial advice; he became a major shareholder and something of an eminence grise in the company. Her son Donald was publisher from 1979 to 2000.

Watergate
Graham presided over the Post at a crucial time in its history. The Post played an integral role in unveiling the Watergate conspiracy, and ultimately led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon.

Graham and editor Bradlee first experienced challenges when they published the content of the Pentagon Papers. When Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein brought the Watergate story to Bradlee, Graham supported their investigative reporting, and Bradlee ran stories about Watergate when few other news outlets were reporting on the matter.

In conjunction with the Watergate scandal, Graham was the subject of one of the best-known threats in American journalistic history. It occurred in 1972, when Nixon's attorney general, John Mitchell, warned reporter Carl Bernstein about a forthcoming article: "Katie Graham's gonna get her tit caught in a big fat wringer if that's published." The two words "her tit" were cut on publication.

CIA speech
In 1988, Graham gave a speech at the CIA's headquarters in Langley, Virginia:

"We live in a dirty and dangerous world...There are some things the general public does not need to know and shouldn't. I believe democracy flourishes when the government can take legitimate steps to keep its secrets and when the press can decide whether to print what it knows.”

Other accomplishments and recognition
Graham had strong links to the Rockefeller family, serving both as a member of the Rockefeller University council and as a close friend of the Museum of Modern Art, where she was honored as a recipient of the David Rockefeller Award for enlightened generosity and advocacy of cultural and civic endeavors.

In 1973, Graham received the Elijah Parish Lovejoy Award as well as an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Colby College.

Graham published her memoirs, Personal History, in 1997. The book was praised for its honest portrayal of Philip Graham's mental illness, and received rave reviews for her depiction of her life, as well as a glimpse into how the roles of women have changed over the course of Graham's life. The book won the Pulitzer Prize in 1998.

In 2000, Graham was named as one of the International Press Institute's 50 World Press Freedom Heroes of the past 50 years.

In 2002, Katharine Graham was presented, posthumously, with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George W. Bush.

Death
In 2001, Graham fell while visiting Sun Valley, Idaho. She died three days after the fall due to trauma resulting from the ensuing head injury. Her funeral took place at the Washington National Cathedral. Graham is buried in historic Oak Hill Cemetery, across the street from her former home in Georgetown.

Her autobiography:
by Katharine Graham

[Jill H.]

Rosa Parks

Her contribution to women's history is both in the areas of civil rights and women's rights. She is an icon in the struggle for equality.

Rosa Louise McCauley Parks (February 4, 1913 – October 24, 2005) was an African-American civil rights activist, whom the U.S. Congress called "the first lady of civil rights", and "the mother of the freedom movement".[1]

On December 1, 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, Parks refused to obey bus driver James F. Blake's order that she give up her seat to make room for a white passenger. Parks' action was not the first of its kind to impact the civil rights issue. Others had taken similar steps, including Lizzie Jennings in 1854, Homer Plessy in 1892, Irene Morgan in 1946, Sarah Louise Keys in 1955, and Claudette Colvin on the same bus system nine months before Parks, but Parks' civil disobedience had the effect of sparking the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

Parks' act of defiance became an important symbol of the modern Civil Rights Movement and Parks became an international icon of resistance to racial segregation. She organized and collaborated with civil rights leaders, including boycott leader Martin Luther King, Jr., helping to launch him to national prominence in the civil rights movement.

At the time of her action, Parks was secretary of the Montgomery chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and had recently attended the Highlander Folk School, a Tennessee center for workers' rights and racial equality. Nonetheless, she took her action as a private citizen "tired of giving in". Although widely honored in later years for her action, she suffered for it, losing her job as a seamstress in a local department store. Eventually, she moved to Detroit, Michigan, where she found similar work. From 1965 to 1988 she served as secretary and receptionist to African-American U.S. Representative John Conyers. After retirement from this position, she wrote an autobiography and lived a largely private life in Detroit. In her final years she suffered from dementia, and became involved in a lawsuit filed on her behalf against American hip-hop duo OutKast.

Parks eventually received many honors ranging from the 1979 Spingarn Medal to the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Congressional Gold Medal and a posthumous statue in the United States Capitol's National Statuary Hall. Upon her death in 2005, she was the first woman and second non-U.S. government official granted the posthumous honor of lying in honor at the Capitol Rotunda. She was inducted into the Alabama Women's Hall of Fame in 2008.

Her book:

by Rosa Parks

[Alisa]

Jill, thanks for the post. I think Rosa Parks is synonymous with civil rights yet not mentioned nearly as often in discussions regarding the women's movement. An obvious oversight as she was an icon for working women of color at the time.

[Jill H.]

She is one of my heroines.....an amazing woman.

[Scott]

Rosa Parks represents non-violent civil disobedience which respects the rule of law. Rosa was put in jail, her husband came and paid the fine and she was released. She took the high road.

[Alisa]

Even non-violent civil disobedience was sometimes met with violence at the time. It took nerve to do what she did, not knowing what the consequences might be. You are right Scott, she certainly was one to take the high road.

[Alisa]

Looks intense.
by Judith Butler
Since its publication in 1990, Gender Trouble has become one of the key works of contemporary feminist theory, and an essential work for anyone interested in the study of gender, queer theory, or the politics of sexuality in culture. This is the text where Judith Butler began to advance the ideas that would go on to take life as "performativity theory," as well as some of the first articulations of the possibility for subversive gender practices, and she writes in her preface to the 10th anniversary edition released in 1999 that one point of Gender Trouble was "not to prescribe a new gendered way of life [...] but to open up the field of possibility for gender [...]" Widely taught, and widely debated, Gender Trouble continues to offer a powerful critique of heteronormativity and of the function of gender in the modern world.

[Bentley, Group Founder, Leader, Chief]

Great adds, thanks Alisa, Jill, and Scott.

[Alisa]

A new book by and about Madeleine Albright that looks very interesting. The background of women trailblazers like Madeleine Albright can be fascinating and this looks very interesting from the former Secretary of State.

by Madeleine Albright
Before Madeleine Albright turned twelve, her life was shaken by the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia—the country where she was born—the Battle of Britain, the near total destruction of European Jewry, the Allied victory in World War II, the rise of communism, and the onset of the Cold War.

Albright's experiences, and those of her family, provide a lens through which to view the most tumultuous dozen years in modern history. Drawing on her memory, her parents' written reflections, interviews with contemporaries, and newly available documents, Albright recounts a tale that is by turns harrowing and inspiring. Prague Winter is an exploration of the past with timeless dilemmas in mind and, simultaneously, a journey with universal lessons that is intensely personal.

The book takes readers from the Bohemian capital's thousand-year-old castle to the bomb shelters of London, from the desolate prison ghetto of Terezín to the highest councils of European and American government. Albright reflects on her discovery of her family's Jewish heritage many decades after the war, on her Czech homeland's tangled history, and on the stark moral choices faced by her parents and their generation. Often relying on eyewitness descriptions, she tells the story of how millions of ordinary citizens were ripped from familiar surroundings and forced into new roles as exiled leaders and freedom fighters, resistance organizers and collaborators, victims and killers. These events of enormous complexity are never-theless shaped by concepts familiar to any growing child: fear, trust, adaptation, the search for identity, the pressure to conform, the quest for independence, and the difference between right and wrong.

"No one who lived through the years of 1937 to 1948," Albright writes, "was a stranger to profound sadness. Millions of innocents did not survive, and their deaths must never be forgotten. Today we lack the power to reclaim lost lives, but we have a duty to learn all that we can about what happened and why." At once a deeply personal memoir and an incisive work of history, Prague Winter serves as a guide to the future through the lessons of the past—as seen through the eyes of one of the international community's most respected and fascinating figures.

[Alisa]

This year marks the 40th anniversary of Title IX, which provided for equal access to women most notably in collegiate programs including sports. It is largely due to Title IX that athletic programs for women and girls are available and fostered in public education. More information:

Title IX is a portion of the Education Amendments of 1972, U.S. legislation also identified using the name of its principal author as the Patsy T. Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act. It states that


No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance...

—Title 20 U.S.C. Sections 1681-1688

History
Although the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was written in order to end discrimination based on religion, race, color, or national origin, the act also energized the women's rights movement, which had somewhat slowed after women's suffrage in 1920. While Title IX is best known for its impact on high school and collegiate athletics, the original statute made no explicit mention of sports.

In 1967, President Johnson issued a series of executive orders in order to make some clarifications. Before these clarifications were made, the National Organization for Women (NOW) persuaded President Johnson to include women in his executive orders. Most notable is Executive Order 11375, which required all entities receiving federal contracts to end discrimination on the basis of sex in hiring and employment.

In 1969, Bernice Sandler used the executive order to help her fight for her job at the University of Maryland. She used university statistics showing how female employment at the university had plummeted as qualified women were replaced by men. Sandler brought her grievance to the Department of Labor's Office for Federal Fair Contracts Compliance where she was encouraged to file a formal complaint. Citing inequalities in pay, rank, admissions and much more, Sandler began to file complaints not only against the University of Maryland but numerous other colleges as well. Working in conjunction with NOW and Women's Equity Action League (WEAL), Sandler filed 250 complaints against colleges and universities.

In 1970, Sandler joined Representative Edith Green's Subcommittee on Higher Education and sat in on the congressional hearings where women's rights were discussed. It was in the congressional hearings that Green and Sandler first proposed Title IX. Title IX was drafted and introduced by Congresswoman Patsy T. Mink, with the assistance of Congresswoman Green. In the hearing there was very little mention of athletics. Their focus was more specifically on the hiring and employment practices of federally financed institutions. The proposed Title IX created much buzz and gained a lot of support.

Title IX became law on June 23, 1972.

Applicability and compliance
The legislation covers all educational activities, and complaints under Title IX alleging sex discrimination in fields such as science or math education, or in other aspects of academic life such as access to health care and dormitory facilities, are not unheard of. It also applies to non-sport activities such as school band and clubs; however, social fraternities and sororities, sex-specific youth clubs such as Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts, and Girls State and Boys State are specifically exempt from Title IX requirements.

Title IX applies to an entire school or institution if any part of that school receives federal funds; hence, athletic programs are subject to Title IX, even though there is very little direct federal funding of school sports.

The regulations implementing Title IX require all universities receiving federal funds to perform self-evaluations of whether they offer equal opportunities based on sex and to provide written assurances to the Dept. of Education that the institution is in compliance for the period that the federally funded equipment or facilities remain in use. With respect to athletic programs, the Dept. of Education evaluates the following factors in determining whether equal treatment exists:

1.Whether the selection of sports and levels of competition effectively accommodate the interests and abilities of members of both sexes;
2.The provision of equipment and supplies;
3.Scheduling of games and practice time;
4.Travel and per diem allowance;
5.Opportunity to receive coaching and academic tutoring on mathematics only;
6.Assignment and compensation of coaches and tutors;
7.Provision of locker rooms, practice and competitive facilities;
8.Provision of medical and training facilities and services;
9.Provision of housing and dining facilities and services;
10.Publicity.

Unequal aggregate expenditures for members of each sex or unequal expenditures for male and female teams if a recipient operates or sponsors separate teams will not constitute noncompliance with this section, but the Assistant Secretary [of Education for Civil Rights] may consider the failure to provide necessary funds for teams for one sex in assessing equality of opportunity for members of each sex.

Although the most well-known application of Title IX regards athletics, there are several protections the law specifically delineates. Section 106.40 protects pregnant and parenting students from discrimination based on pregnant status, marital status, or parenthood. Their condition must be treated as any other medical condition. Students may not be excluded from any activity based on their condition of pregnancy, parenthood, or marital status. If they attend a separate facility, they must elect to do so voluntarily, and the facility must provide comparable programs.

excerpted from wikipedia. more information can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_IX

books about:
by Deborah Brake
by Karen Blumenthal by Jessica Gavora

[Alisa]

This looks good. (The typ-o in the book cover title is a goodreads listing error.)

Womenas Movements in the United States: Woman Suffrage, Equal Rights, and Beyond
by Steven M. Buechler

Synopsis
Steven Buechler has written a comparative sociological analysis of the woman suffrage movement (1840-1920)and the contemporary women's movement (1960s to the present). His identification of similarities and differences between these movements reveals persistent feminist issues over time as well as the distinctive concerns of each movement in its sociohistorical context. Buechler compares these two movements in terms of their origins, organizations, ideologies, class and racial diversities, countermovements, and outcomes. He uses resource mobilization theory to understand and compare these movements, but also uses these movements to call for a critical reformulation of resource mobilization theory. Steven M. Buechler is an associate professor of sociology at Mankato State University in Minnesota and the author of The Transformation of the Woman Suffrage Movement: The Case of Illinois, 1850-1920.

also by the same author:
The Transformation of the Woman Suffrage Movement: The Case of Illinois, 1850-1920(no cover photo) by Steven M. Buechler

[Peter]

And now, for something completely different, there's who is out to prove that you can be a strident feminist and still be very funny. In and both by she does just that.

[Alisa]

Variety is the spice of life! Don't forget the author links. Thanks for the addition, Peter.

and both by Caitlin Moran

[Alisa]

Gender equality a persistent topic of interest for many:

Women, Work, and Politics: The Political Economy of Gender Inequality
by Torben Iversen
Synopsis
Looking at women's power in the home, in the workplace, and in politics from a political economy perspective, Torben Iversen and Frances Rosenbluth demonstrate that equality is tied to demand for women's labour outside the home, which is a function of structural, political, and institutional conditions. They go on to explain several anomalies of modern gender politics: why women vote differently from men; why women are better represented in the workforce in the United States than in other countries but less well represented in politics; why men share more of the household work in some countries than in others; and, why some countries have such low fertility rates. The first book to integrate the micro-level of families with the macro-level of national institutions, "Women, Work, and Politics" presents an original and groundbreaking approach to gender inequality.

[Alisa]

Great article today in The Daily Beast. Reposting it here in full with the link to the article, which includes some good snapshots and the mentioned magazine covers published at the time.

When Newsweek's Women Said 'No'
by Eleanor Clift

The revolution changed America. It also rocked the newsroom.

On a Monday morning in March 1970, Newsweek’s cover on “Women in Revolt” hit the newsstands. It was the first serious treatment of the women’s movement by a major newsmagazine. Ms. magazine, the bible of the movement, would not be launched until the following year. But any satisfaction the male editors might have enjoyed about their enterprising journalism was dispelled by a press conference held that same morning by the women of Newsweek to announce they were suing the magazine for gender discrimination.

The fallout from that lawsuit, which the women won, chipped away at the “Mad Men” culture that had reigned for so long, bringing women into the conversation and changing the way Newsweek reported on a broad array of issues that would over the decades transform life as I had known it.

Attitudes about women were pretty primitive back then. Before becoming a reporter, I was a girl Friday in the Atlanta bureau; when Katharine Graham, Newsweek’s publisher, visited, we had to take her up the back stairs to the room we had reserved for lunch at the stodgy Commerce Club because women weren’t allowed. We laughed at the absurdity of it even as changing the system didn’t yet seem an option. In New York, Peter Goldman, the magazine’s premiere writer, remembers Mrs. Graham talking about how, after her husband, Phil, died, she was thrust into the leadership of Newsweek and The Washington Post, and the lone woman on numerous corporate boards; when board members were polled on some company policy, he recalls her saying, they would go around the table and skip right over her.

The gender-discrimination suit against ­Newsweek opened the door for me to become a reporter at a time when the barriers were coming down for ­women, and the magazine, like the country, was catching up with half the population’s ambitions, talents, and skills. From where I stood, every step forward seemed like a small miracle.

I was a new White House correspondent in the spring of 1977 when Jody Powell, President Carter’s press secretary, tapped me on the shoulder in the press room and said the president wanted to see me. We were doing a cover on Rosalynn Carter, pegged to the president’s decision to send his wife to represent him on a visit to Latin America. A first lady traveling alone in an official capacity proved surprisingly controversial. There were cries of “Who elected her?” and Newsweek commissioned a poll to survey public opinion. As I entered the Oval Office, Carter exclaimed, “You’ve come to talk about my Eleanor.” It was clearly a play on Eleanor Roosevelt, the gold standard for first-lady activism, but it turns out Eleanor is also Rosalynn’s first name. Carter was ahead of his time in declaring his wife an equal partner, and he didn’t back down in the face of public pressure. (As for me, I figured this is what being a White House reporter is about—you get called in to chat with the president every so often. For the record, it never happened again.)

Consciousness raising was needed in the editorial offices of Newsweek, just as it was in Washington, D.C., and in the kitchens and bedrooms of Middle America. When Gloria Steinem, the avatar of the women’s movement, was featured on an August 1971 cover, the text called her “The New Woman: Liberated Despite Beauty, Chic, and Success” (emphasis mine). Mrs. Graham, initially wary of feminism, gave Steinem $20,000 seed money to found Ms. magazine.

In 1975 bylines were added, giving writers and reporters recognition and making it easier to see how many women were rising in the editorial ranks. The magazine was eager to show off the strides that had been made. Merrill McLoughlin, an education writer, remembers being asked if she would use her nickname, Mimi, on a story she had written to run in the National Affairs section about the International Women’s Conference in Houston in 1977. The male editor was proud that the story was reported by women and written by a woman, and felt her name was ambiguous. She declined, explaining Merrill was her professional name. There were awkward moments when editors realized at the last minute they needed a woman to fill out the table at a luncheon at Top of the Week, Newsweek’s dining room. That’s how McLoughlin once found herself seated next to Steve Jobs, “excruciatingly aware I was the only female and I knew nothing about him except what I’d hurriedly read before. I was the wrong person to be seated next to him.”

I don’t think many men would think they were wrongly seated, but these were the growing pains as men and women adjusted to changing roles. In 1978, Lynn Povich—one of the women who spearheaded the Newsweek suit and who became Newsweek’s first female senior editor—suggested a cover on “How Men Are Changing” in a cover conference. The other editors mocked her, saying she must be having 
difficulty finding a date in her newly single status after a divorce. “I argued how can you change 50 percent of the population without affecting the other 50 percent?” She prevailed, and the cover drawing showed a man wearing an apron stirring a pot on the stove and looking down at a little girl holding a doll. Reflecting on the coverage in those days, Povich wonders, “Were we ahead of the times or just reflecting the times?” Either way, the times were changing.

Medicine and health stories flourished, many of them written by Jeanie Seligmann, who was promoted to writer after the suit, and those stories often broke new ground. Women’s issues were in the news—breast cancer, the pill, the Dalkon Shield and what was wrong with it—and she covered them, prompting a male friend to tell her, “Your beat is from the ovary to the thigh.” Seligmann did the first real story in a major magazine, in the early ’70s, on anorexia and its prevalence. She reviewed Our Bodies, Ourselves for Newsweek, and a top editor had her change the word “rape” to “attack.” But the male editors loved women’s health stories. “Anything with the word ‘breast’ in it,” says Seligmann, “and we got to run pictures, even if it was just drawings.”

There was solidarity among women in those years that crossed political lines. In Congress, Democratic Rep. Patricia Schroeder co-chaired the Women’s Caucus with Republican Rep. Olympia Snowe, and they counted on the media to neutralize and challenge the hysteria that accompanied the push for the Equal Rights Amendment—which failed largely over concerns about women in combat and unisex ­bathrooms—and the passage of Title IX, which equalized sports for women and girls. Schroeder recounts being assailed by lawmakers furious that funding for men’s sports could be compromised; one Ohio congressman told her that if he voted for the measure he would never again get complimentary tickets to his favorite sports events.

The experience of sisterhood was powerful. When women who benefited from Title IX won Olympic gold in 1984 and came to Capitol Hill to thank the brave members who had voted for it, South Carolina Sen. Strom Thurmond showed up wanting his picture taken with the young women. “I like you girls,” he said, smiling. They refused, smiling back, saying it would confuse people since he had not supported the legislation. That same year, when Geraldine Ferraro was nominated for vice president, I was on the floor of the Democratic convention, along with a lot of women. Many of the male delegates and journalists had given up their floor passes to women because it was such a special moment; we all had tears in our eyes. In 1992, the Year of the Woman, when a record number of women were elected to Congress, a congressman was quoted saying there were so many women on Capitol Hill, the place reminded him of a shopping mall. “I remember asking him, ‘Where do you shop?’ ” Schroeder recalled, noting that women were still only 10 percent of the lawmakers.

Schroeder, always quick with a quip, found her words frequently featured on Newsweek’s Perspectives page, which made its appearance in the ’80s as part of a redesign. Calling President Reagan “the Teflon president” was one of her most memorable quotes. But when she ran for president in 1988, she couldn’t have been more serious. And when she ended her run, giving in to tears, she was criticized for reinforcing the stereotype of the emotional female. “Newsweek covered it kind of straight up,” she recalled, but others weren’t so kind. One young woman, an editorial writer, said how “ashamed she was and it would set women back for centuries.” For years afterward, Schroeder kept a “crying folder” of all the men who were applauded for tearing up in public, saying if she ran again, “I should get Kleenex as my corporate sponsor.”

When Hillary Clinton came to Washington as first lady, it was as though some switch had been turned. Suddenly covering the president’s wife was a hot beat. Here was a woman who epitomized the cultural battles of the ’70s. She was as educated and ambitious as her husband, and had for a time even kept her own name before surrendering to tradition. “Buy one, get one free,” was the Clinton mantra. Hillary would bring the country health care, a goal that set her at odds with Congress and prompted the same cries of “Who elected her?” that had dogged Rosa­lynn Carter a generation earlier. As Hillary’s reform efforts stalled on Capitol Hill, I was summoned to an off-the-record session with the first lady in her second floor office in the West Wing. It was just the two of us, no aides. She talked about the private commitments she had from Democrats and Republicans alike, and how lawmakers wouldn’t “dare” vote against health coverage for all Americans. What if she didn’t prevail, I asked. With a wave of her arm, she said, “I can always travel.” And that’s what she did, turning her efforts away from policymaking into making a difference in other ways, declaring at the Beijing Conference on Women in 1995, “Women’s rights are human rights.”

By then, after the 1994 election, a whole new breed of lawmakers had taken control of Congress in a backlash to the Clintons. The new female members had cut their teeth in the pro-life movement, and their bringing their conservative ideas to Washington did away with the once easy assumption that if you were a woman, you were pro-choice and liberal when it came to women’s issues. But the women’s movement is not over. A majority of women (55 percent) identified as a feminist in a Ms. magazine exit poll in 2012. And as this election showed, those women are still engaging on issues of abortion, equal pay, violence against women, and access to birth control—with fiery passion. They know that this is about power, and when it’s about power, you can never let up.

source: http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek...

book and authors mentioned in the above article:
Our Bodies, Ourselves (no photo) by Boston Women's Health Book Collective
Katharine Graham
Steve Jobs
Pat Schroeder

[Alisa]

Speaking of Pat Schroeder, her book looks interesting.

Just added this to my to-read list (always growing) and thought others might be interested.

24 Years of House Work-- And the Place Is Still a Mess: My Life in Politics
by Pat Schroeder
Synopsis
When Democrats in Colorado's First District were looking for a candidate to run against the Republican incumbent in 1972, no one saw Pat Schroeder as a viable candidate-least of all Schroeder herself. A lawyer by training and the mother of two, she was shocked at her triumph in the primary and further astonished when she actually won the election. But in an era when voters were calling for change, Schroeder rose to the challenge.Pat Schroeder's autobiography, 24 Years of House Work ... and the Place Is Still a Mess, details her struggle to find a place and a voice in the male-dominated world of politics. The book is a fascinating look at how the longest-serving woman in congressional history balanced politics and power with family and children.

This candid autobiography begins with politics as they were when Schroeder first turned the political scene on its ear twenty-five years ago and continues to the present day. The book traces her controversial fight for the Equal Rights Amendment and her passionate advocacy for social justice, equal opportunity, and children's welfare. Sprinkled throughout are humorous and amazing tales from her years on Capitol Hill, stories of how she kicked open doors for women and tried to level the playing field, and her views on politics -- and the politicians -- of the present day. And, just as in the days when she was the most quotable person in Washington, Schroeder doesn't think twice about sharing her views throughout 24 Years of House Work.

"Many things are much better than they were when I arrived in Congress in 1973. But before we all join hands and sing, 'Kumbaya, the autocracy is dead, ' let me tell you about Newt Gingrich".

Some peoplelove her. Some people revile her. But everyone responds to her.

In 24 Years of House Work, Schroeder dusts off dozens of fascinating stories, polishes her stances on a spectrum of controversial political issues, and even cleans a few clocks of her past and present political colleagues.

[Alisa]

In President Obama's inaugural address today he mentioned Seneca Falls, the site of the first convention on women's rights in 1848. It spurred on the events that led to the women's right to vote. Here is a book about the ladies who were pivotal to that movement.

Sisters: The Lives of America's Suffragists
by Jean H. Baker
Synopsis
They forever changed America: Lucy Stone, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Frances Willard, Alice Paul. At their revolution's start in the 1840s, a woman's right to speak in public was questioned. By its conclusion in 1920, the victory in woman's suffrage had also encompassed the most fundamental rights of citizenship: the right to control wages, hold property, to contract, to sue, to testify in court. Their struggle was confrontational (women were the first to picket the White House for a political cause) and violent (women were arrested, jailed, and force-fed in prisons). And like every revolutionary before them, their struggle was personal.

For the first time, the eminent historian Jean H. Baker tellingly interweaves these women's private lives with their public achievements, presenting these revolutionary women in three dimensions, humanized, and marvelously approachable.

[Alisa]

Women, Power, and Political Change

by Bonnie G. Mani
Synopsis
Contemporary women face barriers as they try to balance family and careers, choose the most promising education and employment options, and run for elected office. Women, Power, and Political Change analyzes the lives of sixteen American women who facilitated social and political changes in the seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. These women were entrepreneurs a small group advocating policies that imposed costs on some Americans but generated benefits for women. Using qualitative and quantitative data, Bonnie G. Mani describes the social and political context of the times when each of the women lived and worked. What she uncovers regarding the similarities and differences between these women demonstrates how women can influence public policy without holding elected office and without personal wealth. This is a must-read book for anyone interested in the evolution of women's political roles in American history.

[Alisa]

A book on the Seneca Falls Convention.

Seneca Falls and the Origins of the Women's Rights Movement

by Sally McMillen

Synopsis
In a quiet town of Seneca Falls, New York, over the course of two days in July, 1848, a small group of women and men, led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, held a convention that would launch the woman's rights movement and change the course of history. The implications of that remarkable convention would be felt around the world and indeed are still being felt today.
In Seneca Falls and the Origins of the Woman's Rights Movement, the latest contribution to Oxford's acclaimed Pivotal Moments in American History series, Sally McMillen unpacks, for the first time, the full significance of that revolutionary convention and the enormous changes it produced. The book covers 50 years of women's activism, from 1840-1890, focusing on four extraordinary figures--Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone, and Susan B. Anthony. McMillen tells the stories of their lives, how they came to take up the cause of women's rights, the astonishing advances they made during their lifetimes, and the lasting and transformative effects of the work they did. At the convention they asserted full equality with men, argued for greater legal rights, greater professional and education opportunities, and the right to vote--ideas considered wildly radical at the time. Indeed, looking back at the convention two years later, Anthony called it "the grandest and greatest reform of all time--and destined to be thus regarded by the future historian." In this lively and warmly written study, Sally McMillen may well be the future historian Anthony was hoping to find.
A vibrant portrait of a major turning point in American women's history, and in human history, this book is essential reading for anyone wishing to fully understand the origins of the woman's rights movement.