Women's Rights in the United States

A History in Documents

Anne M. Boylan

Pages from History

Women's Rights in the United States: A History in Documents uses a diverse collection of documents--including manifestoes, letters, diaries, cartoons, broadsides, legal and court records, poems, satires, advertisements, petitions, photographs, leaflets, maps, posters, autobiographies, and newspapers--to examine major themes in the history of women's rights and women's rights movements in the U.S. The documents encompass the experiences of women from a wide range of racial, ethnic, class, economic, sexual, marital, and social groups. The book covers such topics as organized social movements; changing definitions of rights and different women's access to rights; divisions among women within women's rights movements; global contexts for women's rights activism; and the question of what it means for women and men to be "equal." Each chapter includes an introductory essay, and each document has a headnote or long caption. A picture essay illuminates how both suffragists and anti-suffragists employed cartooning to articulate their political positions.

Women's Rights in the United States

A History in Documents

Anne M. Boylan

Pages from History

Description

Women's Rights in the United States: A History in Documents uses a diverse collection of documents--including manifestoes, letters, diaries, cartoons, broadsides, legal and court records, poems, satires, advertisements, petitions, photographs, leaflets, maps, posters, autobiographies, and newspapers--to examine major themes in the history of women's rights and women's rights movements in the U.S. The documents encompass the experiences of women from a wide range of racial, ethnic, class, economic, sexual, marital, and social groups. The book covers such topics as organized social movements; changing definitions of rights and different women's access to rights; divisions among women within women's rights movements; global contexts for women's rights activism; and the question of what it means for women and men to be "equal." Each chapter includes an introductory essay, and each document has a headnote or long caption. A picture essay illuminates how both suffragists and anti-suffragists employed cartooning to articulate their political positions.

Women's Rights in the United States

A History in Documents

Anne M. Boylan

Pages from History

Acknowledgements
Introduction

Chapter 1: Law & Custom in the Colonies
Economic and Political Rights
Regulating Marriage, Divorce, and Sexuality
Religion and Education

Chapter 2: Revolutionary Ideals and Realities
Women in Wartime
Women of the Republic: Debates over Women's Rights and Equality
What Difference did the Revolution Make?

Chapter 3: Women's Rights Movements
Discussing/Debating Women's Rights
The Seneca Falls Convention of 1848 in Context
Women's Rights Movements
Gender, Race, and Rights in the Era of Civil War & Reconstruction

Chapter 4: Suffrage and Women's Rights
Seeking Rights: Economic, Educational, Personal
The Suffrage Effort: New Allies, New Alliances, New Strategies
New Women
Suffrage-Winning Strategies

Chapter 5: Cartooning for and against Suffrage

Chapter 6: Women's Citizenship in the Post-Suffrage Era
The Meanings of Citizenship
The Equality Debates
Feminists, Flappers, and their Foes
Women's Rights in an Era of Economic Depression

Chapter 7: The Personal is Political
Women's Rights in the Eras of Wartime and the "Feminine Mystique"
Feminism: Women's Rights
Feminism: Women's Liberation

Chapter 8: Women's Rights after 1970
"Sisterhood" and its Challengers
Naming Wrongs, Seeking Rights
"Equality of Rights under the Law": The ERA Revived
Global Connections

Further Reading
Timeline

Women's Rights in the United States

A History in Documents

Anne M. Boylan

Pages from History

Author Information

Anne M. Boylan is Professor of History and Women and Gender Studies at the University of Delaware. She is the author of The Origins of Women's Activism: New York and Boston, 1797-1840 (2002) and Sunday School: The Formation of An American Institution, 1790-1880 (1988).

Women's Rights in the United States

A History in Documents

Anne M. Boylan

Pages from History

From Our Blog

Hillary Clinton and the "women's vote"

One hundred years ago, in 1916, Montana elected the first woman to serve in Congress: Jeannette Rankin. On Tuesday, the US did not elect its first woman president. Although Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, Donald Trump won the Electoral College. The expectation of a Clinton victory led many to reflect on the long history of women's quest for the right to vote.

Posted on November 19, 2016

Read the blog post