American Women's Movement Research Articles

Sisterhood Questioned? Race, Class and Internationalism in the American and British Women's Movements, c.1880s–1970s

Sisterhood Questioned? Race, Class and Internationalism in the American and British Women's Movements, c.1880s–1970s

Harriet Tubman: the life and the life stories

Harriet Tubman's name is known world-wide and her exploits as a self-liberated Underground Railroad heroine are celebrated in children's literature, film, and history books, yet no major biography of Tubman has appeared since 1943. Jean M. Humez's comprehensive Harriet Tubman is both an important biographical overview based on extensive new research and a complete collection of the stories Tubman told about her life-a virtual autobiography culled by Humez from rare early publications and manuscript sources. This book will become a landmark resource for scholars, historians, and general readers interested in slavery, the Underground Railroad, the Civil War, and African American women. Born in slavery in Maryland in or around 1820, Tubman drew upon deep spiritual resources and covert antislavery networks when she escaped to the north in 1849. Vowing to liberate her entire family, she made repeated trips south during the 1850s and successfully guided dozens of fugitives to freedom. During the Civil War she was recruited to act as spy and scout with the Union army. After the war she settled in Auburn, New York, where she worked to support an extended family and in her later years founded a home for the indigent aged. Celebrated by her primarily white antislavery associates in a variety of private and public documents from the 1850s through the 1870s, she was rediscovered as a heroine by woman suffragists and the African American women's club movement in the early twentieth century. Her story was used as a key symbolic resource in education, institutional fundraising, and debates about the meaning of race throughout the twentieth century. Humez includes an extended discussion of Tubman's work as a public performer of her own life history during the nearly sixty years she lived in the North. Drawing upon historiographical and literary discussion of the complex hybrid authorship of slave narrative literature, Humez analyzes the interactive dynamic between Tubman and her interviewers. Humez illustrates how Tubman, though unable to write, made major unrecognized contributions to the shaping of her own heroic myth by early biographers like Sarah Bradford. Selections of key documents illustrate how Tubman appeared to her contemporaries, and a comprehensive list of primary sources represents an important resource for scholars.

Beyond French Feminisms: Debates on Women, Politics and Culture in France, 1981-2001 ed. by Roger Célestin, Eliane Dalmolin, and Isabelle de Courtivron (review)

130Women in French Studies Reviews History, Culture, Language Roger Célestin, Eliane Dalmolin, and Isabelle de Colrtivron, Eds. Beyond French Feminisms: Debates on Women, Politics and Culture in France, 1981-2001. New York-Houndmills, England: palgrave MacMillan, 2003. Pp. 342. ISBN: 0-312-24019-8. (Cloth) $79.95; ISBN: 0-312-24040-6. (Paper) $26.95. There is good news for those eager for an overview of current debates about women and gender in France. The fine essays in Beyond French Feminisms provide several interlocking frameworks in which to situate these issues: the differences between contemporary women's concerns and those ofthe 1970s "new French feminisms;" the varied social, political, and creative arenas in which French women are now active but whose discourses overlap ; and, the vexed relationship between the French and American women's movements, past and present. As the "Introduction" argues eloquently, from the Mitterrand years through the 2002 elections, a crisis in French identity (sparked by events surrounding immigration, racism, anti-Semitism, and economic decline) redefined cultural tensions: universalisme versus différentialisme or communautarisme became the discursive poles that organized discussions of "women's roles and representations" (12). Claiming these philosophical clashes crystallized around the parité debate of the 1990s, the editors look to contemporary women's literary and artistic production as well for evidence of fresh perspectives on sex, sexuality, and gender. The collection is structured around three themes: "Politics and Society"; "Arts and Literature"; and, "France-USA." The essays on parité (Agacinski, Sineau, Fauré, Fraisse) address the positive political and intellectual consequences of reconciling the Republican ideal ofthe abstract "human" with a recognition ofgender differences, and Fraisse in particular pushes for women's economic and domestic parité as well. Another piece looks at how the ethnic and national variables that now constitute France's "gendered mosaic" are destabilizing the concept ofa unified "Frenchness" (Rosello). Several articles examine sexuality from the angles of the symbolic violence "ingrained in women's bodies" (Bourdieu); the PaCS same-sex domestic partnership, which was opposed on "family" grounds but which can, paradoxically, use "universalist " arguments to reframe the notion oífiliation (Fassin); reproductive gains in abortion rights and the "morning-after" pill (Mossuz-Lavau); and, the sexual politics ofGay Pride parades, which erase "ordinary" women's bodies (Nahoum-Grappe). Finally, two essays explore the power of language as expressed through masculinized professional titles (Groult) and the verbal violence aimed at women politicians (Chiennes de Garde manifesto). Book Reviews1 3 1 Part Two is equally rich. If the 1990s fiction of Francophone women writers living in France is involved with transnational and bicultural issues (Cazenave); twenty-first century French women's novels focus on "raw" explorations ofthe body (Cusset); women's poetry is more than ever "out in the world" (Etienne); women's visual and performance art centers on "renegotiat[ing] the materiality and the boundaries of the body" (Chadwick, 112); and, theater engages with diverse forms of boundary transgression (Cixous), it is in film that French women have effected the most visible changes. By "hybridizing" genres, contesting artistic hierarchies, and opening up female roles (Sellier), and by portraying women who violently exercise their sexuality and subjectivity, as epitomized in the works ofCatherine Breillat (Gillain), women are defying cinematic conventions and "reappropriat[ing] a feminine realm in which soul and body are no longer split from one another" (Gillain, 240). All the essays in this section also provide excellent bibliographies and filmographies. Lastly, favorable (Badinter) and scathing (Scott) critiques of Mona Ozouf's controversial Les Mots des femmes, along with Ozouf's response, together with an analysis ofthe totalizing strategies that demonizeAmerican-style feminism as "Other" to "the construct of French internal coherence" underlying nationalist discourse (Mathy), point up trans-Atlantic ideological conflicts regarding the nature of feminist historical inquiry and relations between the sexes. The concluding (and longest) essay (Moses) probes the discrepancy between the narrow theoretical "French feminism" American academics— mostly literary critics drawn to philosophical and psychoanalytic inquiry—"constructed " in the 1970s and the full range of material and empirical problems French women were (and are) in reality struggling with. I have one quibble: the essays within each section are arranged alphabetically by author, with the result that...

"State Feminism" and Women's Movements: The Impact of Chile's Servicio Nacional de la Mujer on Women's Activism

Much of the literature on Latin American women's movements finds that movements have grown weaker since transitions to democracy in part be- cause of the institutionalization of gender policy within states. This article advances an alternative argument drawing on evidence from the Chilean case. Using a historical institutionalist approach and the framework of state feminism, I outline the way Chile's Servicio Nacional de la Mujer (SERNAM) has altered the institutional context in which women's movements act. I show that SERNAM has affected both the shape of the movement (most notably the power relations among its various segments) and the strategies that different segments employ to pursue their interests. I argue that instead of weakening the women's movement, SERNAM actually provides the movement with important resources, most nota- bly a discourse of women's equality and a set of objectives around which to mobi- lize. There is evidence that Chilean women's organizations are responding to this new institutional context by linking up previously dispersed groups, using SERNAM's own discourse to pressure the state to fulfill its commitments to women and, most importantly, to ensure that, in addition to gender, class and ethnicity are also addressed as sources of women's marginalization.

Caroline Healey Dall and the American Women's Movement, 1848-75

Caroline Healey Dall and the American Women's Movement, 1848-75

Women's Networking and Alliance Building in Post-War Central America

Ilja A. Luciak examines the efforts of Central American women, from both the political left and right in El Salvador and Nicaragua, to build alliances across ideological boundaries in order to effectively advocate women's rights during the transition toward political systems rooted in democratic governance and gender equality. He discusses coalition-building in El Salvador and Nicaragua in order to demonstrate the progress that has been made and the key challenges confronting the leaders of the Central American women's movement. He argues that female leaders are playing an increasingly important role in the fight to ensure democratic governance in Central America.

Constructing Global Feminism: Transnational Advocacy Networks and Russian Women's Activism

ecent scholarship on social change emphasizes the importance of transnational advocacy networks and a globalizing civil society, in which borders between states become permeable to international political activism (Keck and Sikkink 1998; Della Porta, Kriesi, and Rucht 1999; Tarrow 1999). Such transnational organizing has blossomed within the women's movement, as elsewhere, and has affected the types of resources and discourses available to activists. Efforts to produce change in gender relations can now rely heavily on elite and expert social networks, in which women's organizing has become increasingly professionalized and NGO-ized (Alvarez 1997; Ray 1999; Silliman 1999). Local feminist activists now participate self-consciously in international forums, share a common discourse, and construct a women's movement understood as being both local and global (Bystydzienski and Sekhon 1999). This change in political activity has occurred at the same time as a global decline in women's mass mobilization and in the use of contentious forms of public protest (Freeman and Johnson 1999). In this article, we examine the nature and meaning of the transnational mobilization of women's movements, using as a specific case study a set of seminars sponsored by U.S. women activists and intended to support women's political activism in Russia. Our main argument is that transnational organizing is not a unidirectional process. At the point of intersection between the local and the global, where these seminars take place, resources and discourses become objects of struggle, which neither the Russian nor the American women's movement activists unilaterally control. Moreover, reciprocal benefits accrue to both local and extralocal

Stanton, Fuller, and the Grammar of Romanticism

M OURNING a loss of intellectual life her move from Boston to western New York and energized by controversy following the 1848 Seneca Falls convention, Elizabeth Cady Stanton launched a weekly discussion group in imitation of Margaret Fuller's Conversationals.' The scene from Stanton's autobiography is often referenced histories of the American women's rights movement, but what it suggests about the relationship between these major theoreticians of American feminist thought at a crucial moment its inception has not been fully explored. On a larger scale, biographical and textual links between the women have remained elusive.

Women's Movements and Nonviolence

and when it is a present reality. More Than a Civil Rights Movement American women's movements have been represented by most scholars as offshoots of civil rights struggles (see, e.g., Freeman 1975; Mansbridge 1986; McGlen and O'Connor 1998). In this article I argue for adjusting that frame to portray women's rights activists as also fundamentally concerned with the advocacy of nonviolence. Although this may, at first, seem to be no more than an academic exercise, since most successful twentieth-century civil rights activists used nonviolence as a primary tactic, I assert that women incorporated calls for peace into their demands for equal rights because the desire to reduce the role of force in society lay at the core of most

One cause, two paths: Militant vs. adjustive strategies in the British and American women's suffrage movements

Although the suffrage movement in Britain and the United States shared a common goal and collaborated in an international effort to enfranchise women, they differed in rhetorical tone and protest tactics. This essay examines the ideological and material conditions that led to the strategic use of militancy by the British suffrage movement and non‐violence by its American counterpart. It further explores the role of class in shaping early women's movement rhetoric.

“Imagine My Surprise”

(1997). “Imagine My Surprise”. Journal of Lesbian Studies: Vol. 1, Classics in Lesbian Studies Part II, pp. 155-176.

The Feminist Poetry Movement.

An exploration of the beneficial interplay of the feminist poetry movement and the American women's movement

The Ambivalence of Agency: Women, Families, and Social Policy in France, Britain, and the United States

Review Essays The Ambivalence of Agency: Women, Families, and Social Policy in France, Britain, and the United States1 Molly Ladd-Taylor. Mother-Work, Women, Child Welfare, and the State, 18901930 . Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994. χ + 211 pp. Susan Pedersen. Family, Dependence, and the Origins of the Welfare State, Britain and France 1914-1945. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993. xv + 478. Seth Koven In 1906, Josephine Conger-Kaneko published an essay in World's Work exploring how "the dominant influence of women" in charity and welfare , education, and culture contributed to "The 'Effeminization' of the United States." "Feminine rule in America" made the U.S. a more democratic country, she conceded. But it also promoted a "less coherent" and less centralized state compared to its European counterparts, one handicapped by extreme "individuatism" and the influence of pubtic opinion whose variabüity reflected the "fickleness of femininity." Far from extolling the achievement of American women, she ended on a note of caution: American men were being consumed and emasculated by their singleminded pursuit of business. American society was "weak" and "unstable ," "a soul without a body." The very strength of American women's social movements, she suggested, was a paradoxical liability in women's pursuit of emancipation because it lent urgency to the mobilization of thefr opponents.2 Conger-Kaneko's quirky essay underscores the connections between issues that historians have begun to explore: the growing power and influence of women in pubtic life in the early twentieth century, the links between gender relations and the state, and the ways in which some women and many more men were alarmed by the prospect of "feminine rule." Her arguments echoed widely in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century as many asked themselves what would be the impact of women's emancipatory movements on relations between the sexes, fam- üy life, citizenship, social politics, and motherhood. Molly Ladd-Taylor's Mother-Work, Women, Child Welfare, and the State, 1890-1930 and Susan Pedersen's Family, Dependence, and the Origins of the Welfare State, Britain and France 1914-1945 intelligently explore these issues. They assess the historical relationship of feminism and maternal- © 1997 Journal of Women's History, Vol. 9 No. ι (Spring) 1997 Review Essay: Seth Koven 165 ism in relationship to the emergence of social welfare programs and policies for children and farrtilies. Ladd-Taylor's work focuses on women's contributions to the provision of welfare for mothers and children through private benevolence, public programs for maternal education, and state-level schemes of mothers' pensions. She probes differences among women activists and analyzes their triumphs as weU as failures in shaping social poticies according to their own tights. Pedersen, by contrast , places family policy within a much broader comparative framework , encompassing detailed but lucid analysis of an astonishingly wide range of factors that affected social poticy: the gendered character of the labor market and wage structures; the influence of trade unionism , socialism and women's movements; the shifting goals and imperatives of parliamentary politics and state bureaucracies; relations between the state and large-scale industry; and the interplay of competing rhetorics and cultural representations of masculinity and motherliness with policy-making. By so doing, Pedersen not only explains the divergent paths of the French and British welfare states but boldly charts the intersecting histories of state and gender formation in modern France and Britain. Recovering women's agency in welfare state formation is fraught with ambivalence for both Ladd-Taylor and Pedersen. On the one hand, they demonstrate that many women developed complex and compassionate visions of their own roles and that of the state in caring for families , mothers, and chüdren that remain cogent today. On the other hand, they demonstrate the ways in which some women's acceptance of prevailing ideas about work, motherhood and manliness, and race and class relations helped to undermine their own emancipatory ambitions. LaddTaylor shows how some white middle-class women exercised their authority as experts in mothercraft and child weUare to promote unabashedly racist and class-based norms of family life and weUare. Mothers' pensions, widely implemented on the state level, provided new employment opportunities for educated middle-class white women...

Companeras: Voices from the Latin American Women's Movement.

Companeras: Voices from the Latin American Women's Movement.

When Waves Collide: Cycles of Protest and the Swiss and American Women's Movements

This article makes two related arguments. First, a rising cycle of protest may influence existing movements by altering their tactics, providing new allies, and altering others' perceptions of the movements. I illustrate these effects with examples drawn from the Swiss women's movement. The Swiss women's movement is unique because the first wave was still pursuing the enfranchisement of women when the second wave mobilized in the 1960s. Second, I argue that a cycle of protest perspective provides new insights into the events surrounding the decline of the American first-wave move ment. The study compares Swiss and American first-wave struggles to achieve an Equal Rights Amendment and increase women's representation in elected office. While the Swiss first wave was aided in these endeavors by the rise of the second wave, the U.S. women's movement after 1920 faced additional problems arising from its ties to the Progressive move ment. These ties exacerbated splits within the movement and engendered a backlash against the women's movement by interests threatened by Pro gressive legislation.

When Waves Collide: Cycles of Protest and the Swiss and American Women's Movements

When Waves Collide: Cycles of Protest and the Swiss and American Women's Movements

Chicanas/Chicanos at the crossroads: social, economic, and political change

Dubbed the decade of the Hispanic, the 1980s was instead a period of retrenchment for Chicanas/os as they continued to confront many of the problems and issues of earlier years in the face of a more conservative political environment. Following a substantial increase in activism in the early 1990s, Chicana/o scholars are now prepared to take stock of the Chicano Movement's accomplishments and shortcomings--and the challenges it yet faces--on the eve of a new millennium. Chicanas/Chicanos at the Crossroads is a state-of-the-art assessment of the most significant developments in the conditions, fortunes, and experiences of Chicanas/os since the late seventies, with an emphasis on the years after 1980, which have thus far received little scholarly attention. Ten essays by leading Chicana and Chicano scholars on economic, social, educational, and political trends in Chicana/o life examine such issues as the rapid population growth of Chicanas/os and other Latinos; the ascendancy of Reaganomics and the turn to the right of American politics; the rise of anti-immigrant sentiment; the launching of new initiatives by the Mexican government toward the Chicano community; and the emergence of a new generation of political activists. The authors have been drawn from a broad array of disciplines, ranging from economics to women's studies, in order to offer a multidisciplinary perspective on Chicana/o developments in the contemporary era. The inclusion of authors from different regions of the United States and from divergent backgrounds enhances the broad perspective of the volume. The editors offer this anthology with the intent of providing timely and useful insights and stimulating reflection and scholarship on a diverse and complex population. A testament to three decades of intense social struggle, Chicanas/Chicanos at the Crossroads is ample evidence that the legacy of the Movimiento is alive and well. Contents- Part One: Demographic and Economic Trends Among Chicanas/os-1. Demographic Trends in the Chicano Population: Policy Implications for the Twenty First Century, Susan Gonzalez-Baker-2. Mexican Immigration in the 1980s and Beyond: Implications for Chicanos/as, Leo R. Chavez and Rebecca Martinez-3. Chicanas/os in the Economy: Issues and Challenges Since 1970, Refugio Rochin and Adela de la Torre- Part Two: Chicano Politics: Trajectories and Consequences-4. The Chicano Movement: Its Legacy for Politics and Policy, John A. Garcia-5. Chicano Organizational Politics and Strategies in the Era of Retrenchment, Isidro D. Ortiz-6. Return to Aztlan: Mexican Policy Design Toward Chicanos, Maria Rosa Garcia-Acevedo- Part Three: Chicana/o Educational Struggles: Dimensions, Accomplishments and Challenges-7. Actors Not Victims: Chicanos in the Struggle for Educational Equality, Guadalupe San Miguel-8. Juncture in the Road: Chincano Studies Since El Plan de Santa Barbara, Ignacio Garcia- Part Four: Gender Feminism and Chicanas/os: Developments and Perspectives-9. Gender and Its Discontinuities in Male/Female Domestic Relations: Mexicans in Cross Cultural Context, Adelaida R. Del Castillo-10. With Quill and Torch: A Chicana Perspective on the American Women's Movement and Feminist Theories, Beatriz Pesquera and Denise A. Segura

Women's Movements and Political Parties

Comparing the orientation of the American and Canadian women's movements toward political parties and electoral politics between 1970 and 1993, the article concludes that the predisposition away from established parties posited by new social movement theorists is present in both movements, but is in tension with the substantive and symbolic benefits that engagement with partisan and electoral politics promises. Within the broad context of these contradictory impulses, opportunity structures have shaped specific movement strategies. The permeable character of American parties, coupled with a two-party system, have facilitated the American movement's engagement with political parties, particularly the Democrats. In contrast to this, the cohesive, impermeable character of Canadian parties and a three-party system have prevented the Canadian movement from developing an exclusive relationship with any one party, and have contributed to the movement's growing apartisan orientation since the mid-1980s.

Book Reviews

Books reviewed in this article:Bray, Warwick (ed. (1994), The Meeting of Two Worlds: Europe and the Americas 1492–1650Marcus, Joyce (1992), Mesoamerican Writing Systems: Propaganda, Myth, and History in Four Ancient CivilizationsCervantes, Fernando (1994), The Devil in the New World: The Impact of Diabolism in New SpainPatch, Robert W. (1993), Maya and Spaniard in Yucatan 1648–1812Melville, Elinor G. K. 1994), A Plague of Sheep: Environmental Consequences of the Conquest of MexicoMinchom, Martin (1994), The People of Quito, 1690–1810: Change and Unrest in the UnderclassWard, Christopher (1994), Imperial Panama: Commerce and Conflict in Isthmian America, 1550–1800Gootenberg, Paul (1994), Imagining Development: Economic Ideas in Peru's ‘Fictitious Prosperity’ of Guano, 1840–1880Jacobsen, Nils (1993) Mirages of Transition: The Peruvian Altiplano, 1780–1930Hales, Charles R. (1994), Resistance and Contradiction: Miskitu Indians and the Nicaraguan State, 1894–1987Silva, Eduardo (trans. Moyra Ashford) (1993), Prince of the People: The Life and Times of a Brazilian Free Man of ColourBarthélémy, Gérard and Girault, Christian (eds) (1993), La République haitienne: etat des lieux et perspectivesLal, Brij V., Munro, Doug and Beechert, Edward D. (eds) (1993), Plantation Workers: Resistance and AccommodationNugent, Stephen (1993), Amazonian Cuboclo Society: an Essay on Invisibility and Peasant EconomyWhitten, Dorothea S. and Whitten, Norman E. (eds) (1993), Imagery and Creativity. Ethnoaesthetics and Art Worlds in the AmericasPeterson, Jeanette Favrot (1993), The Paradise Garden Murals of Malinalco: Utopia and Empire in Sixteenth‐century MexicoBritton, John A. (ed.) (1994), Molding the Hearts and Minds: Education, Communications, and social Change in Latin AmericaMartin, Christopher (1994) Schooling in Mexico, Staying in or Dropping OutSalinas Meza, René (1993), Elideario femenino chileno, entre la tradicióny la modernidad. Siglos XVIII al XXKuppers, Gaby (ed.) (1994), Compañeras: Voices from the Latin American Women's MovementLomnitz‐Adler, Claudio (1993), Exits from the Labyrinth: Culture and Ideology in the Mexican National SpaceLowenthal, Abraham F. and Burgess, Katrina (eds) (1993), The California‐Mexico ConnectionBrowne, Harry (1994), For Richer, For Poorer: Shaping US‐Mexican IntegrationCornelius, Wayne A., Craig, Ann L. and Fox, Jonathan (eds) (1994), Transforming State‐Society Relations in Mexico: the National Solidarity StrategyDe la Peña, Sergio and Wilkie, James (1994), La estadística económica en México. Los orígenesBulmer Thomas, Victor, Craske, Nikki and Serrano, Monica (eds) (1994), Mexico and the North American Free Trade Agreement: Who Will Benefit?Aspe, Pedro (1993), Economic Transformation: The Mexican WaySanchez, Manuel and Corona, Rossana (eds) (1993), Privatisation in Latin AmericaConitrot, Adolfo and Junco, Silva (eds) (1993), Macroeconomic Conditions and Trade LiberalisationBacha, Edmar L. (ed.) (1993), Savings and Investment Requirements for the Resumption of Growth in Latin AmericaBernecker, Walther L. and Tobler, Hans Werner (eds) (1993), Development and Underdevelopment in AmericaBaer, Werner and Tulchin, Joseph S. (eds) (1993), Brazil and the Challenge of Economic ReformPayne, Leigh A. (1994), Brazilian Industrialists and Democratic ChangeFurley, Peter A. (ed.)(1994), The Forest Frontier: Settlement and Change in Brazilian RoraimaRock, David (ed.) (1994), Latin America in the 1940s: War and Postwar TransitionsSelbin, Eric (1993), Modern Latin American RevolutionsMorley, Morris H. (1994), Washington, Somoza and the Sandinistas: State and Regime in US Policy Toward Nicaragua, 1969–1981Liss, Sheldon B. (1994) Fidel! Castro's Political and social ThoughtGills, B., Rocamora, J. and Wilson, R. (eds) (1993), Low Intensity Democracy: Political Power in the New World OrderManzetti, Luigi (1993), Institutions, Parties and Coalitions in Argentine Politics

Companeras: Voices from the Latin American Women's Movement

Companeras: Voices from the Latin American Women's Movement