Equity vs. Equality: Emerging Concepts of Women's Political Status in the Age of Jackson

Abstract

One of the hallmarks of scholarship in women's history has been the quest to understand women on their own terms and in their own words to see history through women's eyes. The quest has revolutionized the formulation of questions, the choice of sources, and the contours of periodization. It has yielded rich results for the period traditionally designated the Age of Jackson, the heyday of the cult of domesticity, when women were largely excluded from the extravagantly egalitarian political rhetoric of the era. Clearly Jacksonian politics, narrowly defined, were not part of woman's sphere.1 But while emphasis on the separate, private, domestic world of white middle and upper class women has given us profound insights into their personal lives and even into their quasipolitical activities, it has also diverted us from exploring emerging