The women's movement in India has a long and rich history in which millions of ordinary women live, work, and struggle to survive in order to remake their family, home, and social lives. Whether fighting for safe contraception, literacy, water, and electricity or resisting sexual harassment, a vibrant and active women's movement is thriving in many parts of India today. Fields of Protest explores the political and cultural circumstances under which groups of women organize to fight for their rights and self-worth. Starting with Bombay and Calcutta, Raka Ray discusses the creation of "political fields"--structured, unequal, and socially constructed political environments within which organizations exist, flourish, or fail. In other words, women's organizations are not autonomous or free agents; rather, they inherit a "field" and its accompanying social relations, and when they act, they act in response to it and within it. Drawing on the literature of both social movements and feminism, Ray analyzes the striking differences between the movements in these two cities. Using an innovative and comparative perspective, Ray offers a unique look at Indian activist women and adds a new dimension to the study of women's movements on a global level. "Raka Ray's very important and vividly-textured study of women's radical political activism in Bombay and Calcutta between the seventies and the nineties, breaks two of the strongest walls of silence: about Left-radical politics, and about women's self-organization and modes of struggle within as well as against the grain of Left discourses. Written with sparkle, lucidity and affection." Economic and Political Weekly "Drawing on the literature describing social movements and feminism in India, Ray analyzes the differences between the causes that define women's struggles in Bombay and Calcutta and the differences in their style and strategy. She also traces the history of women's movements in India and provides a list of political parties and women's organizations in India." India Abroad "This is one of the most important books about women's movements written in the past decade. An eminently readable book. A rich and compelling account of the vitality and complexity of the contemporary Indian women's movement." American Journal of Sociology "This is a innovative comparative political analysis. Ray's use of personal life stories of activist women helps to create an interesting and lively discussion of local women's movements in a global context." Journal of Women's History "Raka Ray's book is an end-of the-millennium gem in the treasure chest of literature on women's movement in India. Ray gives us an important book. Her historical details regarding the political realities in Bombay and Calcutta are as impressive as the exhaustiveness of her interview-based research. Ray's book offers stylistic and methodological insights that can attract the attention of an India novice as well as prove useful to a seasoned India researcher, interested in local-level politics and local women's movements." Gender and Society "Fields of Protest is an important demonstration of how collective interests and identities are shaped within varying locations." Feminist Collections "Raka Ray's skillful analysis provides an understanding of the regional variations in the issues and agendas of the women's movement through a comparison of women's organizations in two metropolitan cities." Feminist Studies "Fields of Protest is a graceful, smart, careful study. Its central argument is clearly developed and well substantiated through reference to excellent interviews with activists in the two cities. Ray deftly moves back and forth between the local, regional, and national level, the stories of activists and debates among sociologists and women's studies scholars. What Ray does very successfully is to fulfill her promise of moving beyond the simple dichotomy between heroism and victimization to explore the nuanced, complicated ways in which women live, work, and struggle." Journal of Asian Studies "An informative and exciting read for those interested in rethinking feminist activism in India and other countries in relation to its contexts of Left and political activity, and for those interested in re-siting the articulation of political struggle in urban, rather than simply regional and national spaces." Chicago South Asia Newsletter Raka Ray is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley.

After thirty years of military rule and state-sponsored violence, Guatemala reinstated civilian control and began rebuilding democratic institutions in 1986. Responding to these changes, Guatemalan women began organizing to gain an active role in the national body politic and restructure traditional relations of power and gender. This pioneering study examines the formation and evolution of the Guatemalan women's movement and assesses how it has been affected by, and has in turn affected, the forces of democratization and globalization that have transformed much of the developing world.

Susan Berger pursues three hypotheses in her study of the women's movement. She argues that neoliberal democratization has led to the institutionalization of the women's movement and has encouraged it to turn from protest politics to policy work and to helping the state impose its neoliberal agenda. She also asserts that, while the influences of dominant global discourses are apparent, local definitions of femininity, sexuality, and gender equity and rights have been critical to shaping the form, content, and objectives of the women's movement in Guatemala. And she identifies a counter-discourse to globalization that is slowly emerging within the movement. Berger's findings vigorously reveal the manifold complexities that have attended the development of the Guatemalan women's movement.

“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.

What Du Bois noted has gone largely unstudied until now. In this book, Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham gives us our first full account of the crucial role of black women in making the church a powerful institution for social and political change in the black community. Between 1880 and 1920, the black church served as the most effective vehicle by which men and women alike, pushed down by racism and poverty, regrouped and rallied against emotional and physical defeat. Focusing on the National Baptist Convention, the largest religious movement among black Americans, Higginbotham shows us how women were largely responsible for making the church a force for self-help in the black community. In her account, we see how the efforts of women enabled the church to build schools, provide food and clothing to the poor, and offer a host of social welfare services. And we observe the challenges of black women to patriarchal theology. Class, race, and gender dynamics continually interact in Higginbotham’s nuanced history. She depicts the cooperation, tension, and negotiation that characterized the relationship between men and women church leaders as well as the interaction of southern black and northern white women’s groups.

Higginbotham’s history is at once tough-minded and engaging. It portrays the lives of individuals within this movement as lucidly as it delineates feminist thinking and racial politics. She addresses the role of black Baptist women in contesting racism and sexism through a “politics of respectability” and in demanding civil rights, voting rights, equal employment, and educational opportunities.

Righteous Discontent finally assigns women their rightful place in the story of political and social activism in the black church. It is central to an understanding of African American social and cultural life and a critical chapter in the history of religion in America.