Fighting for Their Rights: A Comparative Perspective on Twentieth-Century Women's Movements in Australia, Great Britian, and the United States

Abstract

How did women, excluded so blatantly from full political equality in some of the main democracies of the English-speaking world, acquire their basic political rights? Do the similarities and differences among the women's movements in Great Britain, the United States, and Australia reveal a transnational ethos or strategy? And, are there lessons still to be learned from the struggles of these movements, at both their incarnations and their "second waves"? Collectively, the works under consideration here cover the entire twentieth century and offer three distinct national and disciplinary perspectives on modern women's movements in key outposts. One is a historian's biography of the American suffrage leader Harriot Stanton Blatch; another is a study by a professor of communication studies of the rhetorical strategies the early-twentieth-century British Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) employed; and the third is a sociologist's analysis of the last four decades of Australian feminism. Together, they illustrate divergences in the ways in which scholars evaluate the achievements and limits of a truly international movement for social change, and shed light on the core issues of women's movements across national borders. These books also tell us a great deal about the diversity of feminist tactics.