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18284 books match the query 'United States' and 882 start with w

cover of Women Strike for Peace: Traditional Motherhood and Radical Politics in the 1960s

Women Strike for Peace

Traditional Motherhood and Radical Politics in the 1960s

Amy Swerdlow

University of Chicago Press, 1993

Women Strike for Peace is the only historical account of this ground-breaking women's movement. Amy Swerdlow, a founding member of WSP, restores to the historical record a significant chapter on American politics and women's studies. Weaving together narrative and analysis, she traces WSP's triumphs, problems, and legacy for the women's movement and American society.

Women Strike for Peace began on November 1, 1961, when thousands of white, middle-class women walked out of their kitchens and off their jobs in a one-day protest against Soviet and American nuclear policies. The protest led to a national organization of women who fought against nuclear arms and U.S. intervention in Vietnam. While maintaining traditional maternal and feminine roles, members of WSP effectively challenged national policies—defeating a proposal for a NATO nuclear fleet, withstanding an investigation by the House Committee on Un-American Activities, and sending one of its leaders to Congress as a peace candidate.

As a study of a dissident group grounded in prescribed female culture, and the struggle of its members to avoid being trapped within that culture, this book adds a crucial new dimension to women's studies. In addition, this account of WSP's success as a grass roots, nonhierarchical movement will be of great interest to historians, political scientists, and anyone interested in peace studies or conflict resolution.

"Swerdlow has re-created a unique piece of American political history, a chapter of the international peace movement, and an origin of the modern feminist movement. No historian, activist, or self-respecting woman should be without Women Strike for Peace. It shows not only how one group of women created change, but also how they inevitably changed themselves."—Gloria Steinem
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cover of Women Take Their Place in State Legislatures: The Creation of Women's Caucuses

Women Take Their Place in State Legislatures

The Creation of Women's Caucuses

Anna Mitchell Mahoney

Temple University Press, 2019

How do women strategically make their mark on state legislatures? Anna Mitchell Mahoney’s book traces the development of women’s state legislative caucuses and the influence both gender and party have on women’s ability to organize collectively. She provides a comprehensive analysis of how and why women organize around their gender identity in state legislatures—or why they do not.

Women Take Their Place in State Legislatures includes a quantitative analysis of institutional-level variables and caucus existence in all 50 states. Case studies of caucus attempts in New Jersey, Colorado, Pennsylvania, and Iowa between 2006 and 2010 examine attempts at creating women’s caucuses that succeeded or failed, and why. Mahoney’s interviews with 180 state legislators and their staff explore the motivations of caucus creators and participants. Ultimately, she finds that women’s organizing is contextual; it demonstrates the dynamic nature of gender. 

Mahoney also provides insights into broad questions regarding gendered institutions, collective action, and political party governance. Women Take Their Place in State Legislatures fills a lacuna in the evaluation of women in government.

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cover of Women Who Stay Behind: Pedagogies of Survival in Rural Transmigrant Mexico

Women Who Stay Behind

Pedagogies of Survival in Rural Transmigrant Mexico

Ruth Trinidad Galván

University of Arizona Press, 2015

Women Who Stay Behind examines the social, educational, and cultural resources rural Mexican women employ to creatively survive the conditions created by the migration of loved ones. Using narrative, research, and theory, Ruth Trinidad Galván presents a hopeful picture of what is traditionally viewed as the abject circumstances of poor and working-class people in Mexico who are forced to migrate to survive. 

The book studies women’s and families’ use of cultural knowledge, community activism, and teaching and learning spaces. Throughout, Trinidad Galván provides answers to these questions: How does the migration of loved ones alter community, familial, and gender dynamics? And what social relations (convivencia), cultural knowledge, and women-centered pedagogies sustain women’s survival (supervivencia)?

Researchers, educators, and students interested in migration studies, gender studies, education, Latin American studies, and Mexican American studies will benefit from the ethnographic approach and theoretical insight of this groundbreaking work.
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cover of Women Working Longer: Increased Employment at Older Ages

Women Working Longer

Increased Employment at Older Ages

Edited by Claudia Goldin and Lawrence F. Katz

University of Chicago Press, 2018

Today, more American women than ever before stay in the workforce into their sixties and seventies. This trend emerged in the 1980s, and has persisted during the past three decades, despite substantial changes in macroeconomic conditions. Why is this so? Today’s older American women work full-time jobs at greater rates than women in other developed countries.
            In Women Working Longer, editors Claudia Goldin and Lawrence F. Katz assemble new research that presents fresh insights on the phenomenon of working longer. Their findings suggest that education and work experience earlier in life are connected to women’s later-in-life work.  Other contributors to the volume investigate additional factors that may play a role in late-life labor supply, such as marital disruption, household finances, and access to retirement benefits.  A pioneering study of recent trends in older women’s labor force participation, this collection offers insights valuable to a wide array of social scientists, employers, and policy makers.
 
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cover of Women Writers of the American West, 1833-1927

Women Writers of the American West, 1833-1927

Nina Baym

University of Illinois Press, 2012

Women Writers of the American West, 1833–1927 recovers the names and works of hundreds of women who wrote about the American West during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, some of them long forgotten and others better known novelists, poets, memoirists, and historians such as Willa Cather and Mary Austin Holley. Nina Baym mined literary and cultural histories, anthologies, scholarly essays, catalogs, advertisements, and online resources to debunk critical assumptions that women did not publish about the West as much as they did about other regions. Elucidating a substantial body of nearly 650 books of all kinds by more than 300 writers, Baym reveals how the authors showed women making lives for themselves in the West, how they represented the diverse region, and how they represented themselves.
 
Baym accounts for a wide range of genres and geographies, affirming that the literature of the West was always more than cowboy tales and dime novels. Nor did the West consist of a single landscape, as women living in the expanses of Texas saw a different world from that seen by women in gold rush California. Although many women writers of the American West accepted domestic agendas crucial to the development of families, farms, and businesses, they also found ways to be forceful agents of change, whether by taking on political positions, deriding male arrogance, or, as their voluminous published works show, speaking out when they were expected to be silent.
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cover of Women Writing the Academy: Audience, Authority, and Transformation

Women Writing the Academy

Audience, Authority, and Transformation

Gesa E. Kirsch. Foreword by John Trimbur

Southern Illinois University Press, 1993

Women Writing the Academy is based on an extensive interview study by Gesa E. Kirsch that investigates how women in different academic disciplines perceive and describe their experiences as writers in the university.

Kirsch’s study focuses on the writing strategies of successful women writers, their ways of establishing authority, and the kinds of audiences they address in different disciplinary settings. Based on multiple interviews with thirty-five women from five different disciplines (anthropology, education, history, nursing, and psychology) and four academic ranks (seniors, graduate students, and faculty before and after tenure), this is the first book to systematically explore the academic context in which women write and publish.

While there are many studies in literary criticism on women as writers of fiction, there has not been parallel scholarship on women as writers of professional discourse, be it inside or outside the academy. Through her research, for example, Kirsch found that women were less likely than their male counterparts to think of their work as sufficiently significant to write up and submit for publication, tended to hold on to their work longer than men before sending it out, and were less likely than men to revise and resubmit manuscripts that had been initially rejected.

This book is significant in that it investigates a new area of research— gender and writing—and in doing so brings together findings on audience, authority, and gender.

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cover of Women against Abortion: Inside the Largest Moral Reform Movement of the Twentieth Century

Women against Abortion

Inside the Largest Moral Reform Movement of the Twentieth Century

Karissa Haugeberg

University of Illinois Press, 2017

Women from remarkably diverse religious, social, and political backgrounds made up the rank-and-file of anti-abortion activism. Empowered by--yet in many cases scared of--the changes wrought by feminism, they founded grassroots groups, developed now-familiar strategies and tactics, and gave voice to the movement's moral and political dimensions. Drawing on oral histories and interviews with prominent figures, Karissa Haugeberg examines American women 's fight against abortion. Beginning in the 1960s, she looks at Marjory Mecklenburg's attempt to shift the attention of anti-abortion leaders from the rights of fetuses to the needs of pregnant women. Moving forward she traces the grassroots work of Catholic women, including Juli Loesch and Joan Andrews, and their encounters with the influx of evangelicals into the movement. She also looks at the activism of evangelical Protestant Shelley Shannon, a prominent pro-life extremist of the 1990s. Throughout, Haugeberg explores important questions such as the ways people fused religious conviction with partisan politics, activists' rationalizations for lethal violence, and how women claimed space within an unshakably patriarchal movement.
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cover of Women and American Socialism, 1870-1920

Women and American Socialism, 1870-1920

Mari Jo Buhle

University of Illinois Press, 1981

Socialist women faced the often thorny dilemma of fitting their concern with women's rights into their commitment to socialism. Mari Jo Buhle examines women's efforts to agitate for suffrage, sexual and economic emancipation, and other issues and the political and intellectual conflicts that arose in response. In particular, she analyzes the clash between a nativist socialism influence by ideas of individual rights and the class-based socialism championed by German American immigrants. As she shows, the two sides diverged, often greatly, in their approaches and their definitions of women's emancipation. Their differing tactics and goals undermined unity and in time cost women their independence within the larger movement.
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cover of Women and Deafness: Double Visions

Women and Deafness

Double Visions

Brenda Jo Brueggemann

Gallaudet University Press, 2006

This new collection bridges two dynamic academic fields: Women’s Studies and Deaf Studies. The 14 contributors to this interdisciplinary volume apply research and methodological approaches from sociology, ethnography, literary/film studies, history, rhetoric, education, and public health to open heretofore unexplored territory.

       Part One: In and Out of the Community addresses female dynamics within deaf schools; Helen Keller’s identity as a deaf woman; deaf women’s role in Deaf organizations; and whether or not the inequity in education and employment opportunities for deaf women is bias against gender or disability. Part Two: (Women’s) Authority and Shaping Deafness explores the life of 19th-century teacher Marcelina Ruis Y Fernandez; the influence of single, hearing female instructors in deaf education; the extent of women’s authority over oralist educational dictates during the 1900s; and a deaf daughter’s relationship with her hearing mother in the late 20th century.

       Part Three: Reading Deaf Women considers two deaf sisters’ exceptional creative freedom from 1885 to 1920; the depictions of deaf or mute women in two popular films; a Deaf woman’s account of blending the public-private, deaf-hearing, and religious-secular worlds; how five Deaf female ASL teachers define “gender,” “feminism,” “sex,” and “patriarchy” in ASL and English; and 20th-century American Deaf beauty pageants that emphasize physicality while denying Deaf identity, yet also challenge mainstream notions of “the perfect body.”


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cover of Women and Health in America, 2nd Ed.: Historical Readings

Women and Health in America, 2nd Ed.

Historical Readings

Judith W. Leavitt

University of Wisconsin Press, 1999

In this thoroughly updated second edition, Judith Walzer Leavitt, a leading authority on the history of women's health issues, has collected thirty-five articles representing important scholarship in this once-neglected field. Timely and fascinating, this volume is organized chronologically and then by topic, covering studies of women and health in the colonial and revolutionary periods and the nineteenth century through the Civil War. The remainder of the book concentrates on the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries and addresses such controversial issues as body image and physical fitness, sexuality, fertility, abortion and birth control, childbirth and motherhood, mental illness, women's health care providers (midwives, nurses, physicians), and health reform and public health.
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cover of Women and Ideas in Engineering: Twelve Stories from Illinois

Women and Ideas in Engineering

Twelve Stories from Illinois

Laura D. Hahn, Angela S. Wolters

University of Illinois Press, 2018

The increasing presence of women within engineering programs is one of today's most dramatic developments in higher education. Long before, however, a group of talented and determined women carved out new paths in the College of Engineering at the University of Illinois. Laura D. Hahn and Angela S. Wolters bring to light the compelling hidden stories of these pioneering figures. When Mary Louisa Page became the College's first female graduate in 1879, she also was the first American woman ever awarded a degree in architecture. Bobbie Johnson's insistence on "a real engineering job" put her on a path to the Apollo and Skylab programs. Grace Wilson, one of the College's first female faculty members, taught and mentored a generation of women. Their stories and many others illuminate the forgotten history of women in engineering. At the same time, the authors offer insights into the experiences of today's women from the College -- a glimpse of a brighter future, one where more women in STEM fields apply their tireless dedication to the innovations that shape a better tomorrow.
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cover of Women and Musical Salons in the Enlightenment:

Women and Musical Salons in the Enlightenment

Rebecca Cypess

University of Chicago Press, 2022

A study of musical salons in Europe and North America between 1760 and 1800 and the salon hostesses who shaped their musical worlds.

In eighteenth-century Europe and America, musical salons—and the women who hosted and made music in them—played a crucial role in shaping their cultural environments. Musical salons served as a testing ground for new styles, genres, and aesthetic ideals, and they acted as a mediating force, bringing together professional musicians and their audiences of patrons, listeners, and performers. For the salonnière, the musical salon offered a space between the public and private spheres that allowed her to exercise cultural agency.

In this book, musicologist and historical keyboardist Rebecca Cypess offers a broad overview of musical salons between 1760 and 1800, placing the figure of the salonnière at its center. Cypess then presents a series of in-depth case studies that meet the salonnière on her own terms. Women such as Anne-Louise Brillon de Jouy in Paris, Marianna Martines in Vienna, Sara Levy in Berlin, Angelica Kauffman in Rome, and Elizabeth Graeme in Philadelphia come to life in multidimensional ways. Crucially, Cypess uses performance as a tool for research, and her interpretations draw on her experience with the instruments and performance practices used in eighteenth-century salons. In this accessible, interdisciplinary book, Cypess explores women’s agency and authorship, reason and sentiment, and the roles of performing, collecting, listening, and conversing in the formation of eighteenth-century musical life.
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cover of Women and New Hollywood: Gender, Creative Labor, and 1970s American Cinema

Women and New Hollywood

Gender, Creative Labor, and 1970s American Cinema

Aaron Hunter

Rutgers University Press, 2023

The 1970s has often been hailed as a great moment for American film, as a generation of “New Hollywood” directors like Scorsese, Coppola, and Altman offered idiosyncratic visions of what movies could be.  Yet the auteurist discourse hailing these directors as the sole authors of their films has obscured the important creative roles women played in the 1970s American film industry. 
 
Women and New Hollywood revises our understanding of this important era in American film by examining the contributions that women made not only as directors, but also as screenwriters, editors, actors, producers, and critics. Including essays on film history, film texts, and the decade’s film theory and criticism, this collection showcases the rich and varied cinematic products of women’s creative labor, as well as the considerable barriers they faced. It considers both women working within and beyond the Hollywood film industry, reconceptualizing New Hollywood by bringing it into dialogue with other American cinemas of the 1970s. By valuing the many forms of creative labor involved in film production, this collection offers exciting alternatives to the auteurist model and new ways of appreciating the themes and aesthetics of 1970s American film. 
 
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cover of Women and Politics in the Age of the Democratic Revolution

Women and Politics in the Age of the Democratic Revolution

Harriet B. Applewhite and Darline G. Levy, Editors

University of Michigan Press, 1993

Women and Politics in the Age of the Democratic Revolution is a groundbreaking collection that challenges traditional narratives of eighteenth-century political upheaval by centering the experience and agency of women across Europe and North America. Edited by Harriet B. Applewhite and Darline G. Levy, this volume gathers leading historians to explore how gender shaped and was shaped by the processes of revolution and democratization from the 1760s through the early nineteenth century.Bridging comparative and interdisciplinary scholarship, the collection examines the diverse ways that women engaged with, contributed to, and contested revolutionary politics in France, England, the Netherlands, Belgium, and the United States. Essays range from analyses of women’s participation in bread riots, neighborhood activism, and political clubs, to their presence in national insurrections and their influence as writers, petitioners, and public intellectuals. The contributors reveal the ways that women negotiated—and sometimes redefined—the boundaries of citizenship, civic virtue, and political rights during times of extraordinary change.The book also interrogates the limitations of the era’s revolutionary ideals, revealing how promises of liberty and equality were often circumscribed by gendered exclusions from formal political life. Yet, even as new constitutions, legislatures, and parties sidelined women as citizens, these essays show how women’s collective and individual actions laid groundwork for later struggles for suffrage, legal equality, and social reform.Richly documented and theoretically innovative, Women and Politics in the Age of the Democratic Revolution is essential reading for anyone interested in gender, democracy, and the ongoing project of political inclusion. It offers a nuanced portrait not just of women’s defeats and exclusions, but of the complex legacies of empowerment, mobilization, and the reimagining of citizenship that continue to shape modern political cultures.
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cover of Women and Politics: An International Perspective

Women and Politics

An International Perspective

Vicky Randall

University of Chicago Press, 1988

Since the 1960s, the increasing involvement of women in mainstream politics and the impact of the "second wave" of feminism have given rise to an enormous volume of writing on women and politics. Drawing on material from a wide range of capitalist, state-socialist, and Third World countries, Women and Politics provides a comprehensive introduction to, summary, and analysis of this body of writing. This second edition has been greatly expanded and revised in light of recent debates and changes in women's political situation in the economic recession of the 1980s. Randall examines the increasingly extensive data available on women's political participation and the chief factors that obstruct or encourage it. An entirely new section on women in the Third World has been added. Finally, Randall provides an up-to-date analysis of contemporary feminism as a political movement, its impact on policy in the 1970s, and the changing prospects for both in the 1980s.
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cover of Women and Regulation: Challenging the Status Quo

Women and Regulation

Challenging the Status Quo

Edited by Sara R. Rinfret and Michelle C. Pautz

Temple University Press, 2026

Are female food safety inspectors treated differently than men? What do women contribute to the creation and implementation of public policy in the United States? The editors of and contributors to Women in Regulation, all experts in public policy and public administration, analyze the role women (and stakeholders) play in bureaucracies in environmental, budgetary, and other sectors of the U.S. federal, state, and local governments, plus relevant examples from around the world.

Women in Regulation examines the impact of regulatory policy delegation, as well as the actors and processes involved in administrative rulemaking, compliance, and implementation. The book considers representative bureaucracy, organizational stereotypes, emotional labor, and advancement barriers to argue why studying women and regulation is of value. Regulatory case studies focus on topics ranging from water and energy to executive leadership. Chapters also include reflective exercises and prompts for classroom engagement that challenge readers to consider implications for regulatory policy in the future.

Amplifying the underheard voices in policy and implementation, Women in Regulation provides a more holistic picture of regulatory practices.

Contributors: Saman Afshan, Ashley English, Katherine Hoener, Nicole Humphrey, Ekaterina Levintova, Li-Yin Liu, Sean McCandless, Bruce D. McDonald III, Denise Scheberle, Natalie L. Smith, Manuel P. Teodoro, and the editors

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cover of Women and Rhetoric between the Wars

Women and Rhetoric between the Wars

Ann George, M. Elizabeth Weiser, and Janet Zepernick

Southern Illinois University Press, 2013


In Women and Rhetoric between the Wars, editors Ann George, M. Elizabeth Weiser, and Janet Zepernick have gathered together insightful essays from major scholars on women whose practices and theories helped shape the field of modern rhetoric. Examining the period between World War I and World War II, this volume sheds light on the forgotten rhetorical work done by the women of that time. It also goes beyond recovery to develop new methodologies for future research in the field.

Collected within are analyses of familiar figures such as Jane Addams, Amelia Earhart, Helen Keller, and Bessie Smith, as well as explorations of less well known, yet nevertheless influential, women such as Zitkala-Ša, Jovita González, and Florence Sabin. Contributors evaluate the forces in the civic, entertainment, and academic scenes that influenced the rhetorical praxis of these women. Each essay presents examples of women’s rhetoric that move us away from the “waves” model toward a more accurate understanding of women’s multiple, diverse rhetorical interventions in public discourse. The collection thus creates a new understanding of historiography, the rise of modern rhetorical theory, and the role of women professionals after suffrage. From celebrities to scientists, suffragettes to academics, the dynamic women of this volume speak eloquently to the field of rhetoric studies today.

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cover of Women and Slavery in America: A Documentary History

Women and Slavery in America

A Documentary History

Catherine M. Lewis

University of Arkansas Press, 2011

Women and Slavery offers readers an opportunity to examine the establishment, growth, and evolution of slavery in the United States as it impacted women-enslaved and free, African American and white, wealthy and poor, northern and southern. The primary documents-including newspaper articles, broadsides, cartoons, pamphlets, speeches, photographs, memoirs, and editorials-are organized thematically and represent cultural, political, religious, economic, and social perspectives on this dark and complex period in American history.
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cover of Women and Sports in the United States: A Documentary Reader

Women and Sports in the United States

A Documentary Reader

Edited by Jaime Schultz, Jean O’Reilly, and Susan K. Cahn

Dartmouth College Press, 2018

A spectacular transformation in women’s sports has occurred over the past century. The assimilation of feminist principles into the broader popular culture solidified the belief that sport plays a positive role in the lives of girls and women. Political activists for women’s rights codified this attitude with the passage of Title IX of the 1972 Federal Education Amendments, a law banning gender discrimination in educational settings, thus guaranteeing women’s legal right to an equitable share of athletic opportunities and resources.  This updated, expanded second edition of Women and Sports in the United States brings together scholarly articles, journalism, political and legal documents, and first-person accounts that collectively explore women’s sports in America, with an emphasis on the new millennium. Topics covered range from the many benefits of physical activity to the successes of aging women athletes, from hijabs on the playing field to the emergence of transgender athletes, from the sexism faced by female athletes to USA Gymnastics and the biggest sex abuse scandal in American history.
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cover of Women and Stepfamilies: Voices of Anger and Love

Women and Stepfamilies

Voices of Anger and Love

edited by Nan Bauer Maglin and Nancy Schniedewind

Temple University Press, 1990

"This text richly captures people making use of and growing with the intricacies of bi-nuclear families." --Journal of Marital and Family Therapy This is the first book to describe the unique and varied experiences and perspectives of women in stepfamilies as told by the women themselves. Through letters, journal entries, poetry, fiction, personal narratives, interviews, and analytic essays, this anthology brings a feminist perspective to the experience of millions of women now involved in stepfamilies. "Women and Stepfamilies confronts these myths head-on. Through political theory, fiction and poetry, a wide range of contributors look at living arrangements that are considered atypical. Particularly moving is the fact that the book includes a variety of perspectives: that of stepmother, stepgrandmother, stepsister and stepdaughter . [The book] helps, both in a personal sense and in terms of analyzing family norms. As the first book to focus on the unique, varied perspectives of women, told in their own words, it goes a long way toward addressing the myriad issues raised when people come together out of love and try to forge cohesive living units out of disparate, non-biologically related parts. Equally important, the editors deserve kudos for the inclusivity of the volume. It is multinational, multiclass and reflects the perspectives of both lesbian and heterosexual stepmothers and stepdaughters.... I read it with glee, putting it down only to answer a call, or break up a fight between siblings not of my loins." --Eleanor J. Bader, New Directions for Women
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cover of Women and Welfare: Theory and Practice in the United States and Europe

Women and Welfare

Theory and Practice in the United States and Europe

Hirschmann, Nancy J

Rutgers University Press, 2001

The social welfare state is believed by many to be one of the great achievements of Western democracy in the twentieth century. It institutionalized for the first time a collective commitment to improving individual life chances and social well-being. However, as we move into a new century, the social welfare state everywhere has come under increasing pressure, raising serious doubts about its survival.

Featuring essays by experts from a variety of fields, including law, comparative politics, sociology, economics, cultural studies, philosophy, and political theory, Women and Welfare represents an interdisciplinary, multimethodological and multicultural feminist approach to recent changes in the welfare system of Western industrialized nations. The broad perspective, from the philosophical to the quantitative, provides an excellent overview of the subject and the most recent scholarly literature. The volume offers a crosscultural  analysis of welfare “reform” in the 1990s, visions of what a “woman-friendly” welfare state requires, and an examination of theoretical and policy questions feminists and concerned others should be asking.

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cover of Women and Workplace Discrimination: Overcoming Barriers to Gender Equality

Women and Workplace Discrimination

Overcoming Barriers to Gender Equality

Gregory, Raymond F

Rutgers University Press, 2002

Attorney Raymond F. Gregory addresses the millions of women who think they might be facing sexual discrimination and explains federal measures enacted to assist workers in contesting unlawful employer conduct. He presents actual court cases to demonstrate the ways that women have challenged their employers. The cases illustrate legal principles in real-life experiences. Many of the cases relate compelling stories of workers caught up in a web of employer discriminatory conduct. Gregory has eliminated legal jargon, ensuring that all concepts are clear to his readers. Individuals will turn to this book again and again to obtain authoritative background on this important topic.

Topics covered include:

  • The increasing incidence of sexual harassment in the workplace
  • Common forms of sex discrimination
  • Discrimination against older women
  • Discrimination against women of color
  • Discrimination against women in the professions
  • Discrimination against pregnant women
  • Discrimination against women with children
  • Sex discrimination in hiring, promotion, termination
  • Employer liability for workplace sexual harassment
  • Employer retaliation against workers
  • Proving sex discrimination in the courtroom
  • Compensatory and punitive damages
  • Back pay, front pay, and other remedies
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cover of Women and Workplace Discrimination: Overcoming Barriers to Gender Equality

Women and Workplace Discrimination

Overcoming Barriers to Gender Equality

Gregory, Raymond F

Rutgers University Press, 2002

Attorney Raymond F. Gregory addresses the millions of women who think they might be facing sexual discrimination and explains federal measures enacted to assist workers in contesting unlawful employer conduct. He presents actual court cases to demonstrate the ways that women have challenged their employers. The cases illustrate legal principles in real-life experiences. Many of the cases relate compelling stories of workers caught up in a web of employer discriminatory conduct. Gregory has eliminated legal jargon, ensuring that all concepts are clear to his readers. Individuals will turn to this book again and again to obtain authoritative background on this important topic.

Topics covered include:

  • The increasing incidence of sexual harassment in the workplace
  • Common forms of sex discrimination
  • Discrimination against older women
  • Discrimination against women of color
  • Discrimination against women in the professions
  • Discrimination against pregnant women
  • Discrimination against women with children
  • Sex discrimination in hiring, promotion, termination
  • Employer liability for workplace sexual harassment
  • Employer retaliation against workers
  • Proving sex discrimination in the courtroom
  • Compensatory and punitive damages
  • Back pay, front pay, and other remedies
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cover of Women and the Conquest of California, 1542-1840: Codes of Silence

Women and the Conquest of California, 1542-1840

Codes of Silence

Virginia M. Bouvier

University of Arizona Press, 2001

Studies of the Spanish conquest in the Americas traditionally have explained European-Indian encounters in terms of such factors as geography, timing, and the charisma of individual conquistadores. Yet by reconsidering this history from the perspective of gender roles and relations, we see that gender ideology was a key ingredient in the glue that held the conquest together and in turn shaped indigenous behavior toward the conquerors.This book tells the hidden story of women during the missionization of California. It shows what it was like for women to live and work on that frontier—and how race, religion, age, and ethnicity shaped female experiences. It explores the suppression of women's experiences and cultural resistance to domination, and reveals the many codes of silence regarding the use of force at the missions, the treatment of women, indigenous ceremonies, sexuality, and dreams.Virginia Bouvier has combed a vast array of sources— including mission records, journals of explorers and missionaries, novels of chivalry, and oral histories— and has discovered that female participation in the colonization of California was greater and earlier than most historians have recognized. Viewing the conquest through the prism of gender, Bouvier gives new meaning to the settling of new lands and attempts to convert indigenous peoples.By analyzing the participation of women— both Hispanic and Indian— in the maintenance of or resistance to the mission system, Bouvier restores them to the narrative of the conquest, colonization, and evangelization of California. And by bringing these voices into the chorus of history, she creates new harmonies and dissonances that alter and enhance our understanding of both the experience and meaning of conquest.
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cover of Women and the Press: The Struggle for Equality

Women and the Press

The Struggle for Equality

Patricia Bradley

Northwestern University Press, 2005

When Abigail Adams made her famous plea to John Adams to "remember the ladies," the role of advocacy on behalf of U.S. gender equality began its rocky and still uncompleted journey. In Women and the Press, Patricia Bradley examines the tensions that have arisen over the course of this journey as they relate to women in journalism. From their first entrance into the commercial press as sentimental writers, to the present day, the call for gender equality has had special meaning for female journalists. Is there a role, a responsibility, for advocacy, even subversion, in a newsroom setting? This is an account of how women in journalism sought to integrate the need for gender equality with the realities of the journalistic workplace.
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cover of Women and the Republican Party, 1854-1924

Women and the Republican Party, 1854-1924

Melanie Susan Gustafson

University of Illinois Press, 2001

Acclaimed as groundbreaking since its publication, Women and the Republican Party, 1854-1924 explores the forces that propelled women to partisan activism in an era of widespread disfranchisement and provides a new perspective on how women fashioned their political strategies and identities before and after 1920. 

Melanie Susan Gustafson examines women's partisan history against the backdrop of women's political culture. Contesting the accepted notion that women were uninvolved in political parties before gaining the vote, Gustafson reveals the length and depth of women's partisan activism between the founding of the Republican Party, whose abolitionist agenda captured the loyalty of many women, and the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. Her account also looks at the complex interplay of partisan and nonpartisan activity; the fierce debates among women about how to best use their influence; the ebb and flow of enthusiasm for women's participation; and the third parties that fused the civic world of reform organizations with the electoral world of voting and legislation.

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cover of Women for President: Media Bias in Eight Campaigns

Women for President

Media Bias in Eight Campaigns

Erika Falk

University of Illinois Press, 2007

When Hillary Clinton announced her 2008 bid for president she was the Democratic front-runner. Despite this, she received less coverage than Barack Obama, who trailed her in the polls. Such a disparity is indicative of the gender bias the media has demonstrated in covering women candidates since the first woman ran for America’s highest office in 1872. Tracing the campaigns of eight women who ran for president through 2004--Victoria Woodhull, Belva Lockwood, Margaret Chase Smith, Shirley Chisholm, Patricia Schroeder, Lenora Fulani, Elizabeth Dole, and Carol Moseley Braun--Erika Falk finds little progress in the fair treatment of women candidates. A thorough comparison of the women’s campaigns to those of their male opponents reveals a worrisome trend of sexism in press coverage--a trend that still persists today.

While women have been elected to the highest offices in countries such as England, Germany, and India, the idea that a woman could be president of the United States provokes scoffs and ridicule. The press portrays female candidates as unviable, unnatural, and incompetent, and often ignores or belittles women instead of reporting their ideas and intent. Since voters learn most details about presidential candidates through media outlets, Falk asserts that this prevailing bias calls into question the modern democratic assumption that men and women have comparable access to positions of power.

[more]
cover of Women for President: Media Bias in Nine Campaigns

Women for President

Media Bias in Nine Campaigns

Erika Falk

University of Illinois Press, 2010

Newly updated to examine Hillary Clinton's formidable 2008 presidential campaign, Women for President analyzes the gender bias the media has demonstrated in covering women candidates since the first woman ran for America's highest office in 1872. Tracing the campaigns of nine women who ran for president through 2008--Victoria Woodhull, Belva Lockwood, Margaret Chase Smith, Shirley Chisholm, Patricia Schroeder, Lenora Fulani, Elizabeth Dole, Carol Moseley Braun, and Hillary Clinton--Erika Falk finds little progress in the fair treatment of women candidates. The press portrays female candidates as unviable, unnatural, and incompetent, and often ignores or belittles women instead of reporting their ideas and intent. This thorough comparison of men's and women's campaigns reveals a worrisome trend of sexism in press coverage--a trend that still persists today.

[more]
cover of Women in 1900: Gateway to the Political Economy of the 20th Century

Women in 1900

Gateway to the Political Economy of the 20th Century

Christine E. Bose

Temple University Press, 2001

This interdisciplinary volume provides a historical and international framework for understanding the changing role of women in the political economy of Latin America and the Caribbean. The contributors challenge the traditional policies, goals, and effects of development, and examine such topics as colonialism and women's subordination; the links to economic, social, and political trends in North America; the gendered division of paid and unpaid work; differing economic structures, cultural and class patterns; women's organized resistance; and the relationship of gender to class, race, and ethnicity/nationality.
[more]
cover of Women in Academe: Progress and Prospects

Women in Academe

Progress and Prospects

Mariam K. Chamberlain

Russell Sage Foundation, 1988

The role of women in higher education, as in many other settings, has undergone dramatic changes during the past two decades. This significant period of progress and transition is definitively assessed in the landmark volume, Women in Academe. Crowded out by returning veterans and pressed by social expectations to marry early and raise children, women in the 1940s and 1950s lost many of the educational gains they had made in previous decades. In the 1960s women began to catch up, and by the 1970s women were taking rapid strides in academic life. As documented in this comprehensive study, the combined impact of the women's movement and increased legislative attention to issues of equality enabled women to make significant advances as students and, to a lesser extent, in teaching and academic administration. Women in Academe traces the phenomenal growth of women's studies programs, the notable gains of women in non-traditional fields, the emergence of campus women's centers and research institutes, and the increasing presence of minority and re-entry women. Also examined are the uncertain future of women's colleges and the disappointingly slow movement of women into faculty and administrative positions. This authoritative volume provides more current and extensive data on its subject than any other study now available. Clearly and objectively, it tells an impressive story of progress achieved—and of important work still to be done.
[more]
cover of Women in American Journalism: A New History

Women in American Journalism

A New History

Jan Whitt

University of Illinois Press, 2007

In this volume, Jan Whitt tells the stories of women who have been overlooked in journalism history, offering an important corrective to scholarship that narrowly focuses on the deeds of men like Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst. She shows how numerous women broadened the editorial scope of newspapers and journals, transformed women’s professional roles, used journalism as a training ground for major literary works, and led breakthroughs in lesbian and alternative presses.

Whitt explores the lives of women reporters who achieved significant historical recognition, such as Ida Tarbell and Ida Wells-Barnett. Investigating the often blurry boundary between journalism and literature, she explains how this fluid distinction has actually limited how many scholars perceive the contributions of authors such as Joan Didion and Susan Orlean. Whitt also highlights the work of important novelists, including Willa Cather, Katherine Anne Porter, and Eudora Welty, to shed light on how their work as journalists informed their highly successful fiction.

This study also offers a survey of contributions women have made to the alternative presses, including the environmental press and civil rights activism. Whitt examines important figures in the early feminist press such as Caroline Churchill, editor and reporter for Denver’s Queen Bee, and Betty Wilkins of Kansas City’s Call. Finally, through newsletters, newspapers, magazines, and journals, she traces the history of the lesbian press and points out the ways in which it indicates that the alternative press is thriving.

[more]
cover of Women in Civil War Texas: Diversity and Dissidence in the Trans-Mississippi

Women in Civil War Texas

Diversity and Dissidence in the Trans-Mississippi

Deborah M. Liles

University of North Texas Press, 2016

[more]
cover of Women in Hollywood's Dream Factory: Tales of Inequality, Abuse, and Resistance

Women in Hollywood's Dream Factory

Tales of Inequality, Abuse, and Resistance

Edited by Karen McNally

University of Illinois Press, 2026

Analyzing and challenging the film industry’s infamous treatment of women

The #MeToo revelations put a twenty-first-century stamp on the age-old story of women’s mistreatment in Hollywood. Karen McNally edits a collection focused on examining and revising film history in the aftermath of the women’s stories, past and present, that have come to light.

The collection begins with essays on the interplay between reality and imagination in narratives and representations of women’s experiences of unequal treatment. In Part 2, contributors discuss how the gendered attitudes of the media’s stories enable inequality in Hollywood and look at the forces that arise whenever women resist these media assaults. The next section addresses the structures that built the inequalities and mistreatment while Part 4 revisits established narratives to challenge, renew, and expand upon our understanding of film history through women’s stories. Essays in the final section address the combination of inequality and resistance that defines women’s experiences in Hollywood.

Piercing and astute, Women in Hollywood’s Dream Factory confronts our perception of Hollywood as a mythological land of dreams.

Contributors: Alicia Byrnes, Anna M. Dempsey, Harriet Fletcher, Amanda Konkle, Tamar Jeffers McDonald, Kerry McElroy, Adrienne L. McLean, Karen McNally, Donna Peberdy, Melanie Piper, Victoria K. Pistivsek, Sarah Polley, Ina C. Seethaler, Gabrielle Stecher, and Jennifer Voss
[more]
cover of Women in Missouri History: In Search of Power and Influence

Women in Missouri History

In Search of Power and Influence

Edited by LeeAnn Whites, Mary C. Neth, & Gary R. Kremer

University of Missouri Press, 2004

Women in Missouri History is an exceptional collection of essays surveying the history of women in the state of Missouri from the period of colonial settlement through the mid-twentieth century. The women featured in these essays come from various ethnic, economic, and racial groups, from both urban and rural areas, and from all over the state. The authors effectively tell these women’s stories through biographies and through techniques of social history, allowing the reader to learn not only about the women’s lives individually, but also about how groups of “ordinary” women shaped the history of the state.

The essays in this collection address questions that are at the center of current developments in the field of women’s history but are written in a manner that makes them accessible to general readers. Providing an excellent general overview of the history of women in Missouri, this collection makes a valuable contribution to a better understanding of the state’s past.

[more]
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Women in Politics in the American City

Myra Holman

Temple University Press, 2014

How do female municipal leaders influence policymaking in American cities? Can gender determine who gets a say in local politics or what programs cities fund? These are some of the questions raised and answered in Mirya Holman's provocative Women in Politics in the American City.
 
This book provides the first comprehensive evaluation of the influence of gender on the behavior of mayors and city council members in the United States. Holman considers the effects of gender in local, urban politics and analyzes how a leader's gender does-and does not-influence policy preferences, processes, behavior, and outcomes.
 
Holman effectively uses original survey data to evaluate policy attitudes, combined with observations of city council meetings and interviews with leaders and community members. In doing so, she demonstrates the importance of considering the gender of leaders in local office.
 
Women in Politics in the American City emphasizes that the involvement of women in local politics does matter and that it has significant consequences for urban policy as well as state and local democracy. 
[more]
cover of Women in Print: Essays on the Print Culture of American Women from the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

Women in Print

Essays on the Print Culture of American Women from the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

Edited by James P. Danky and Wayne A. Wiegand

University of Wisconsin Press, 2006

Women readers, editors, librarians, authors, journalists, booksellers, and others are the subjects in this stimulating new collection on modern print culture. The essays feature women like Marie Mason Potts, editor of Smoke Signals, a mid-twentieth century periodical of the Federated Indians of California; Lois Waisbrooker, publisher of books and journals on female sexuality and women's rights in the decades after the Civil War; and Elizabeth Jordan, author of two novels and editor of Harper's Bazaar from 1900 to 1913.  The volume presents a complex and engaging picture of print culture and of the forces that affected women's lives in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Published in collaboration among the University of Wisconsin Press, the Center for the History of Print Culture in Modern America (a joint program of the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the Wisconsin Historical Society), and the University of Wisconsin–Madison General Library System Office of Scholarly Communication.

[more]
cover of Women in Television News Revisited: Into the Twenty-first Century

Women in Television News Revisited

Into the Twenty-first Century

By Judith Marlane

University of Texas Press, 1999

Women in television news have made great strides in the past twenty-five years. No longer limited to being the token pretty face on the nightly newscast, women have taken their places as working journalists in newsrooms, on the campaign trail, in war zones, and in the highest echelons of network news management. Barbara Walters and Connie Chung have even occupied the coveted network anchor's chair, if only briefly.

In this book, 70 of the foremost women in television news reflect on their professional successes, the personal and professional sacrifices that often bought those successes, and the barriers that still confront women in the news business. Weaving their interviews into a compelling text, Judith Marlane covers a wide range of issues, including looks versus ability and experience, sexual harassment, the resistance to women news anchors, the difficulties of balancing work and family life, women's and men's salaries, and the willingness of women to help other women in the business.

This book builds from Marlane's 1976 work, Women in Television News. Interviews with many of the same women highlight the gains that women have made in broadcast journalism. Simultaneously, Marlane has expanded her range of informants to include fifteen of America's most famous male anchors and correspondents to gather their assessments of the role of women in broadcasting today.

[more]
cover of Women in the Club: Gender and Policy Making in the Senate

Women in the Club

Gender and Policy Making in the Senate

Michele L. Swers

University of Chicago Press, 2013

In the run-up to the 2012 presidential election, Democrats and Republicans were locked in a fierce battle for the female vote. Democrats charged Republicans with waging a “war on women,” while Republicans countered that Democratic policies actually undermined women’s rights. The women of the Senate wielded particular power, planning press conferences, appearing on political programs, and taking to the Senate floor over gender-related issues such as workplace equality and reproductive rights.

The first book to examine the impact of gender differences in the Senate, Women in the Club is an eye-opening exploration of how women are influencing policy and politics in this erstwhile male bastion of power. Gender, Michele L. Swers shows, is a fundamental factor for women in the Senate, interacting with both party affiliation and individual ideology to shape priorities on policy. Women, for example, are more active proponents of social welfare and women’s rights. But the effects of gender extend beyond mere policy preferences. Senators also develop their priorities with an eye to managing voter expectations about their expertise and advancing their party’s position on a given issue. The election of women in increasing numbers has also coincided with the evolution of the Senate as a highly partisan institution. The stark differences between the parties on issues pertaining to gender have meant that Democratic and Republican senators often assume very different roles as they reconcile their policy views on gender issues with the desire to act as members of partisan teams championing or defending their party’s record in an effort to reach various groups of voters.

[more]
cover of Women in the United States, 1830-1945

Women in the United States, 1830-1945

S.J. Kleinberg

Rutgers University Press, 1999

This work investigates women's economic, social, political and cultural history, encompassing all ethnic and racial groups and religions. It provides a general introduction to the history of women in industrializing America. Both a history of women and a history of the United States, its chronology is shaped by economic stages and political events.
[more]
cover of Women in the Vanishing Cloister: Organizational Decline in Catholic Religious Orders in the United States

Women in the Vanishing Cloister

Organizational Decline in Catholic Religious Orders in the United States

Ebaugh, Helen Rose Fuchs

Rutgers University Press, 1993

Religious orders for women have existed for fifteen centuries, but their future in this century is bleak. In 1966, 180,000 women belonged to Catholic orders; by 1986 that number had decreased to 126,000. Helen Rose Ebaugh tells the story of the decline of these orders, set against the back drop of rapid social change and religious reform.
To illustrate the problem, Ebaugh takes us into a declining order, here named the Sisters of Service.  In 1990, only one candidate sought admission to the order, and the median age of members reached 70. While these demographic changes were occurring, the sisters adapted themselves to the reforms of Vatican II. The concept of a cloistered life faded. Nuns sought college degrees, gave up their habits, moved into apartments, and began to identify with the outside world. Vatican II further encouraged the nuns to democratize and decentralize.  Many nuns accepted jobs that paid poorly but were consistent with their goal of social service. They identified with the feminist movement and in turn influenced it.  
Ebaugh shows how declining orders have not followed the sociological model of organizational decline, one typically marked by centralized authority, a fear of risk taking, lack of direction, internal conflicts over turf, and low morale. Rather, they have established democratic structures, reduced internal positions in favor of committing resources to empowering the poor, abandoned security in favor of diversity in jobs and missions, minimized conflicts over scarce resources, and exhibited a sense of freedom rather than poor morale.   
Although Ebaugh is convinced that Catholic orders in the U.S. will not continue for long, non-canonical communities of women and associate programs are growing. Dedicated women can perpetuate the mission and spirit of the order without becoming vowed members.
[more]
cover of Women of Color in U.S. Society

Women of Color in U.S. Society

edited by Maxine Baca Zinn and Bonnie Thornton Dill

Temple University Press, 1993

The theme of race, class, and gender as interlocking systems of oppression unites these original essays about the experience of women of color—African Americans, Latinas, Native Americans, and Asian Americans. The contributing scholars discuss the social conditions that simultaneously oppress women of color and provide sites for opposition.

Though diverse in their focus, the essays uncover similar experiences in the classroom, workplace, family, prison, and other settings. Working-class women, poor women, and professional women alike experience subordination, restricted participation in social institutions, and structural placement in roles with limited opportunities.

How do women survive, resist, and cope with these oppressive structures? Many articles tell how women of color draw upon resources from their culture, family, kin, and community. Others document defenses against cultural assaults by the dominant society—Native American mothers instilling tribal heritage in their children; African American women engaging in community work; and Asian American women opposing the patriarchy of their own communities and the stereotypes imposed by society at large.

These essays challenge some of our basic assumptions about society, revealing that experiences of inequality are not only diverse but relational.

[more]
cover of Women of Color: Mother-Daughter Relationships in 20th-Century Literature

Women of Color

Mother-Daughter Relationships in 20th-Century Literature

Edited by Elizabeth Brown-Guillory

University of Texas Press, 1996

Interest in the mother-daughter relationship has never been greater, yet there are few books specifically devoted to the relationships between daughters and mothers of color. To fill that gap, this collection of original essays explores the mother-daughter relationship as it appears in the works of African, African American, Asian American, Mexican American, Native American, Indian, and Australian Aboriginal women writers.

Prominent among the writers considered here are Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Maxine Hong Kingston, Cherrie Moraga, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Amy Tan. Elizabeth Brown-Guillory and the other essayists examine the myths and reality surrounding the mother-daughter relationship in these writers' works. They show how women writers of color often portray the mother-daughter dyad as a love/hate relationship, in which the mother painstakingly tries to convey knowledge of how to survive in a racist, sexist, and classist world while the daughter rejects her mother's experiences as invalid in changing social times.

This book represents a further opening of the literary canon to twentieth-century women of color. Like the writings it surveys, it celebrates the joys of breaking silence and moving toward reconciliation and growth.

[more]
cover of Women of the Commonwealth: Work, Family, and Social Change in Ninteenth-Century Massachusetts

Women of the Commonwealth

Work, Family, and Social Change in Ninteenth-Century Massachusetts

Susan L. Porter

University of Massachusetts Press, 1996

These essays reflect the complexity and richness of current scholarship in women's history. Informed by a variety of source materials and methodologies, the ten chapters break down a generalized construct of “womanhood” to explore the dynamics between gender, race, ethnicity, and class.

The first section of the book focuses on women's work, paid and unpaid, and the effects of class, ethnicity, and gender on the structure of the job market and on power relations within the family. The second section revisits the concept of “sisterhood” by looking at women in relation to their families, social and cultural networks, and civic and private institutions. The editor's introduction sets the essays in the current historiographical context of women's studies and provides a bibliographical essay for the nonspecialist reader.

[more]
cover of Women of the Far Right: The Mothers' Movement and World War II

Women of the Far Right

The Mothers' Movement and World War II

Glen Jeansonne

University of Chicago Press, 1996

The majority of American women supported the Allied cause during World War II. and made sacrifices on the home front to benefit the war effort. But U.S. intervention was opposed by a movement led by ultraright women whose professed desire to keep their sons out of combat was mixed with militant Christianity, anticommunism, and anti-Semitism. This book is the first history of the self-styled "mothers' movement," so called because among its component groups were the National Legion of Mothers of America, the Mothers of Sons Forum, and the National Blue Star Mothers.

Unlike leftist antiwar movements, the mothers' movement was not pacifist; its members opposed the war on Germany because they regarded Hitler as an ally against the spread of atheistic communism. They also differed from leftist women in their endorsement of patriarchy and nationalism. God, they believed, wanted them to fight the New Deal liberalism that imperiled their values and the internationalists, communists, and Jews, whom they saw as subjugating Christian America.

Jeansonne examines the motivations of these women, the political and social impact of their movement, and their collaborations with men of the far right and also with mainstream isolationists such as Charles Lindbergh. Drawing on files kept by the FBI and other confidential documents, this book sheds light on the history of the war era and on women's place within the far right.
[more]
cover of Women of the New Right

Women of the New Right

Rebecca E. Klatch

Temple University Press, 1988

Although an array of commentary and analyses focus on the New Right, little has been done to tell us who the women are on this side of the political spectrum. Are they social conservatives who call for the reassertion of traditional family values as promulgated by the federal government? Or do they align themselves with laissez-faire conservatives who abhor government intervention yet, like social conservatives, favor increased defense spending, and condemn communism and secular humanism. Rebecca E. Klatch provides the first coherent picture of who joins such movements and how they think.

This book draws upon a rich data source which includes in-depth interviews and field research at right-wing conferences and meetings. Rather than the image of right-wing women as a monolithic group of angry housewives who oppose feminism, the author finds a fundamental division among women of the New Right, with one constituency of women actually supporting part of the feminist vision. Analyzing varying perceptions of women of the New Right, the book examines their beliefs and values, their vision of America, their interpretations of Communism, big government, and feminism, as well as their view of themselves as women and as political actors.


In the series Women in the Political Economy, edited by Ronnie J. Steinberg.

 

[more]
cover of Women of the Storm: Civic Activism after Hurricane Katrina

Women of the Storm

Civic Activism after Hurricane Katrina

Emmanuel David

University of Illinois Press, 2017

Hurricanes Katrina and Rita made landfall less than four weeks apart in 2005. Months later, much of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast remained in tatters. As the region faded from national headlines, its residents faced a dire future. Emmanuel David chronicles how one activist group confronted the crisis. Founded by a few elite white women in New Orleans, Women of the Storm quickly formed a broad coalition that sought to represent Louisiana's diverse population. From its early lobbying of Congress through its response to the 2010 BP oil spill, David shows how members' actions were shaped by gender, race, class, and geography. Drawing on in-depth interviews, ethnographic observation, and archival research, David tells a compelling story of collective action and personal transformation that expands our understanding of the aftermath of an historic American catastrophe.
[more]
cover of Women of the Upper Class

Women of the Upper Class

Susan A. Ostrander

Temple University Press, 1986

In a unique departure from the usual stereotypes, Susan Ostrander gained access to this elite community and interviewed the women in one U.S. region to study their roles, activities, and self-images. Among her conclusions, Ostrander shows that although these women are economically and socially powerful, they are for the most part, unliberated, being subservient to their husbands and to their duty to bear and raise children.


In the series Women in the Political Economy, edited by Ronnie J. Steinberg.
[more]
cover of Women's Activist Organizing in US History: A University of Illinois Press Anthology

Women's Activist Organizing in US History

A University of Illinois Press Anthology

Compiled by Dawn Durante; Introduction by Deborah Gray White

University of Illinois Press, 2022

Women in the United States organized around their own sense of a distinct set of needs, skills, and concerns. And just as significant as women's acting on their own behalf was the fact that race, class, sexuality, and ethnicity shaped their strategies and methods. This authoritative anthology presents some of the powerful work and ideas about activism published in the acclaimed series Women, Gender, and Sexuality in American History. Assembled to commemorate the series' thirty-fifth anniversary, the collection looks at two hundred years of labor, activist, legal, political, and community organizing by women against racism, misogyny, white supremacy, and inequality. The authors confront how the multiple identities of an organization's members presented challenging dilemmas and share the histories of how women created change by working against inequitable social and structural systems.

Insightful and provocative, Women’s Activist Organizing in US History draws on both classic texts and recent bestsellers to reveal the breadth of activism by women in the United States in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Contributors: Daina Ramey Berry, Melinda Chateauvert, Tiffany M. Gill, Nancy A. Hewitt, Treva B. Lindsey, Anne Firor Scott, Charissa J. Threat, Anne M. Valk, Lara Vapnek, and Deborah Gray White

[more]
cover of Women's Camera Work: Self/Body/Other in American Visual Culture

Women's Camera Work

Self/Body/Other in American Visual Culture

Judith Fryer Davidov

Duke University Press, 1998

Women’s Camera Work explores how photographs have been and are used to construct versions of history and examines how photographic representations of otherness often tell stories about the self. In the process, Judith Fryer Davidov focuses on the lives and work of a particular network of artists linked by time, interaction, influence, and friendship—one that included Gertrude Käsebier, Imogen Cunningham, Dorothea Lange, and Laura Gilpin.

Women’s Camera Work ranges from American women’s photographic practices during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to a study of landscape photography. Using contemporary cultural studies discourse to critique influential male-centered historiography and the male-dominated art world, Davidov exhibits the work of these women; tells their absorbing stories; and discusses representations of North American Indians, African Americans, Asian Americans, and the migrant poor. Evaluating these photographers’ distinct contributions to constructions of Americanness and otherness, she helps us to discover the power of reading images closely, and to learn to see through these women’s eyes.

In presenting one of the most important strands of American photography, this richly illustrated book will interest students of American visual culture, women’s studies, and general readers alike.


[more]
cover of Women's Experimental Cinema: Critical Frameworks

Women's Experimental Cinema

Critical Frameworks

Robin Blaetz, ed.

Duke University Press, 2007

Women’s Experimental Cinema provides lively introductions to the work of fifteen avant-garde women filmmakers, some of whom worked as early as the 1950s and many of whom are still working today. In each essay in this collection, a leading film scholar considers a single filmmaker, supplying biographical information, analyzing various influences on her work, examining the development of her corpus, and interpreting a significant number of individual films. The essays rescue the work of critically neglected but influential women filmmakers for teaching, further study, and, hopefully, restoration and preservation. Just as importantly, they enrich the understanding of feminism in cinema and expand the terrain of film history, particularly the history of the American avant-garde.

The contributors examine the work of Marie Menken, Joyce Wieland, Gunvor Nelson, Yvonne Rainer, Carolee Schneemann, Barbara Rubin, Amy Greenfield, Barbara Hammer, Chick Strand, Marjorie Keller, Leslie Thornton, Abigail Child, Peggy Ahwesh, Su Friedrich, and Cheryl Dunye. The essays highlight the diversity in these filmmakers’ forms and methods, covering topics such as how Menken used film as a way to rethink the transition from abstract expressionism to Pop Art in the 1950s and 1960s, how Rubin both objectified the body and investigated the filmic apparatus that enabled that objectification in her film Christmas on Earth (1963), and how Dunye uses film to explore her own identity as a black lesbian artist. At the same time, the essays reveal commonalities, including a tendency toward documentary rather than fiction and a commitment to nonhierarchical, collaborative production practices. The volume’s final essay focuses explicitly on teaching women’s experimental films, addressing logistical concerns (how to acquire the films and secure proper viewing spaces) and extending the range of the book by suggesting alternative films for classroom use.

Contributors. Paul Arthur, Robin Blaetz, Noël Carroll, Janet Cutler, Mary Ann Doane, Robert A. Haller, Chris Holmlund, Chuck Kleinhans, Scott MacDonald, Kathleen McHugh, Ara Osterweil, Maria Pramaggiore, Melissa Ragona, Kathryn Ramey, M. M. Serra, Maureen Turim, William C. Wees

[more]