Women In USA Research Articles

Hasia R. Diner and Beryl Leiff Benderly. Her Works Praise Her: A History of Jewish Women in America from Colonial Times to the Present. New York: Basic Books, 2002. xvii, 462 pp.

This valuable book is more than a long overdue corrective to the extant one-volume histories of American Jewry whose narratives pivot upon a familiar list of male names. Diner and Benderly offer us all the events and themes of American Jewish social history that we expect to find, but we see them through the actions, motivations, and experiences of women. And because women's experiences often have been entirely different from those of men, we learn more about the topic than can be available in the previous one-volume accounts. Although this book was written for a general audience, it reminds this reader of the more scholarly U.S. History as Women's History (1995) for the new understandings it brings to familiar material.

Reviews of Books:Against Obscenity: Reform and the Politics of Womanhood in America, 1873-1935 Leigh Ann Wheeler

Reviews of Books:Against Obscenity: Reform and the Politics of Womanhood in America, 1873-1935 Leigh Ann Wheeler

Against obscenity: reform and the politics of womanhood in America, 1873-1935

Radio shock jocks, Super Bowl entertainment, music videos, and internet spam-all of these topics inspire passionate disagreements about whether and how to regulate sexually explicit material. But even in the midst of heated debate, most people agree that children should be shielded from exposure to pornographic images. Why are children the focal point of debates over sexually explicit material? And how did a culture rooted in Puritanism and Victorianism become saturated with sex? In Against Obscenity, Leigh Ann Wheeler offers new answers to these questions through a study of women's anti-obscenity activism from 1873 to 1935. This period saw the emergence of an increasingly sexualized popular culture comprised of burlesque shows, risque vaudeville acts, and indecent motion pictures. It also witnessed the enfranchisement of women. These momentous cultural and political developments come together in a story about middle- and upper-class women who mobilized against lewd public amusements and, simultaneously, challenged the men whose work as activists, jurors, and even law enforcement officials, had defined and regulated obscenity for several decades. By the 1920s, women who led the anti-obscenity movement enjoyed the support of millions of American women and the attention of presidents, congressmen, and Hollywood moguls. Today we live in a world profoundly shaped by their work but largely ignorant of their influence. Using primary sources as intimate as private correspondence and as formal as meeting minutes, Against Obscenity tells the story of these all but forgotten women, exploring their passionate disagreements over whether to ban a touring stage show, close a local burlesque theater, disseminate explicit sex education pamphlets, or create a federal agency to regulate Hollywood films. It shows that the rise and fall of women's anti-obscenity leadership shaped American attitudes toward and regulation of sexually explicit material even as it charted a new era in women's politics. In the end, the book argues that essentialist identity politics divided and ultimately disarmed women's anti-obscenity reform, helping us understand the curiously muted impact of woman suffrage. It also cautions against framing debates over sexual material narrowly in terms of harm to children while highlighting the dangers of surrendering discourse about sexuality to the commercial realm.

The Impulse to Jewish Women's History at the Tercentenary

T H E JE W I S H Q UA R T E R LY R E V I E W, Vol. 94, No. 4 (Fall 2004) 637–642 The Impulse to Jewish Women’s History at the Tercentenary PAME LA S . NADE L L We knew about women’s history, long before the revival of modern feminism. Gerda Lerner, Fireweed: A Political Autobiography IN 1954 THE EMMA LAZARUS FEDERATION of Jewish Women’s Clubs presented a musical revue Bread and Roses Too at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. The concert and dramatic presentation, directed by Alice Childress, an African-American actress and playwright, included amateur and professional musicians, dancers, and actors. It was ‘‘billed as a celebration of ‘300 Years of Jewish Life in America’.’’ Its author was Gerda Lerner.1 Historians need no introduction to Gerda Lerner. For those unfamiliar with her life and work, the encyclopedia Jewish Women in America telescopes her career: ‘‘Entering the field of United States history with a freshly minted Ph.D. in 1966, Gerda Lerner blazed a new professional path that led to the establishment of the field of women’s history.’’ Born in Vienna in 1920 and imprisoned by the Nazis after the Anschluss, Lerner escaped to America in 1939. Involved in progressive politics, Lerner also had literary ambitions, which led her, in the late 1950s, to start a novel about the abolitionists Sarah and Angelina Grimké. Her research for that propelled her to her doctorate, and thereafter, in works like The Majority Finds its Past (1979) and The Creation of Feminist Consciousness (1993), she pioneered women’s history in the historical profession.2 By the time Jews began celebrating the 300th anniversary of American Jewish history in 1954, Lerner’s progressive politics and literary designs 1. Gerda Lerner, Fireweed: A Political Autobiography (Philadelphia, 2002), 324. 2. Kathryn Kish Sklar, ‘‘Gerda Lerner,’’ Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, ed. Paula Hyman and Deborah Dash Moore (New York, 1997), 827–29. The Jewish Quarterly Review (Fall 2004) Copyright 䉷 2004 Center for Advanced Judaic Studies. All rights reserved. 638 JQR 94:4 (2004) had already led her to collaborate, with the poet Eve Merriam, on a dramatic revue, Singing of Women. Staged in 1951, it dramatized key moments in the history of the ‘‘woman question’’: for example, girls striking at the Lowell textile mills, Sojourner Truth asking ‘‘Ain’t I a Woman?,’’ union women struggling for better lives, and contemporary women demanding equal pay. Reflecting upon this early feminist work in her 2002 memoir Fireweed, Lerner concluded: ‘‘We knew about women’s history, long before the revival of modern feminism.’’3 After Singing of Women, Lerner came to write the revue Bread and Roses Too. Regrettably, its script is, at the moment, unavailable.4 But in Fireweed, Lerner remarks that, in rereading it, she was ‘‘struck by the well-documented and well-researched historical material’’ she gathered and ‘‘by the inclusion of several female heroines.’’ Although, as Lerner reflected much later, even in 1969, ‘‘the status of Women’s History’’ in the historical profession ‘‘was nonexistent,’’ her involvements with Singing of Women and Bread and Roses Too demonstrate in the early 1950s an impulse, albeit outside the academy, to the writing of women’s history. Moreover, that impulse promised to extend to the history of American Jewish women. That Bread and Roses Too was written for the Emma Lazarus Federation of Jewish Women’s Clubs is not surprising. In an important essay (included in two prominent anthologies of U.S. women’s history), Joyce Antler has analyzed the ‘‘Emmas’’ and demonstrated that their ‘‘new kind of American cultural Jewishness’’ linked their interests in Jewish, feminist , and radical causes. The Emmas set out to promote ‘‘the neglected history of American Jewish women’’ and to feature their contributions to American arts and letters, to the abolition and the trade union movements , and to immigration policy. In the early 1950s the Federation commissioned biographies of the woman’s rights activist Ernestine Rose and of, as one would expect, the poet Emma Lazarus. In fact, like Bread and Roses Too, Eve Merriam’s Emma Lazarus: Woman with a Torch was written to celebrate the tercentenary.5...

Smoking and Hodgkin lymphoma risk in women United States.

Smoking has received little consideration as a risk factor for Hodgkin lymphoma (HL) in women, despite recent significant findings in men and gender differences in HL incidence. We investigated the association of HL with lifetime cigarette smoking and household environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) exposure in women. In data from a population-based case-control study in women ages 19-79, we analyzed HL risk associated with self-reported smoking and household ETS exposure in 312 diagnostically re-reviewed cases and 325 random-digit dialing controls using logistic regression. Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) presence was determined in tumors of 269 cases. In 253 cases compared to 254 controls ages 19-44, risks of HL overall, and of nodular sclerosis and EBV-negative HL, were increased 50% with ETS exposure in childhood; for 11 cases of mixed cellularity (MC) HL, current smoking and adult ETS exposure also increased risk; for 24 cases of EBV-positive HL, risk was elevated for current smoking, greater smoking intensity and duration, and ETS exposure. In 59 cases and 71 controls ages 45-79, most smoking characteristics did not appear to affect risk. Apparent effects of current smoking on risks of MC HL and EBV-positive HL and of household ETS on risk of all HL in young adult females may broaden the evidence implicating tobacco smoke exposures in HL etiology.

Description of a Substance Abuse Relapse Prevention Programme conducted by Occupational Therapy and Psychology Graduate Students in a United States Women's Prison

Prison inmates who have engaged in substance abuse often have decreased functioning in many areas of activities of daily living. This article describes a unique interdisciplinary substance abuse relapse prevention programme conducted by occupational therapy and psychology graduate students under faculty supervision in a northwestern rural United States women's prison. The psychology students taught the inmates the theoretical bases for the programme, trigger identification and coping skills, social support development and assertive communication. The occupational therapy students used activities to help the inmates to identify their values and interests, develop ideas and resources for leisure and jobs, structure and manage their time, practise assertiveness and identify strengths. Although programme effectiveness was not formally measured, it appeared to both the students and the faculty members that the inmates experienced personal growth and that the student therapists gained professional skills in working with another discipline and in leading groups.

Domestic Violence in Hispanics in the Southeastern United States: A Survey and Needs Analysis

Violence is a significant health issue for Latinas in the United States (US), with 54.9% reporting violent victimization. However, little is known about battering among Hispanic women in the southeast. The southeastern corridor, a rural area in search of cheap labor, is a magnet for undocumented agricultural workers. The purpose of this study was to describe domestic violence in Hispanic/Latino women in the southeastern US, including type and frequency of violence experienced, barriers to obtaining treatment, and services needed by women who have been abused. Hispanic women completed questionnaires developed from information from focus groups. Results indicate that domestic violence is a major health problem for women in the southeast, and document previous findings as well as offer new insights about Hispanic women who have experienced domestic violence. Implications are discussed in terms of the need for community partnerships and interventions, as well as routine screening and crisis intervention.

Settling Accounts with Settler Societies: Strategies for Using Australian Women's History in a United States Women's History Class

TRANSNATIONAL AND COMPARATIVE APPROACHES to women's history have started to influence the way instructors teach the United States women's history survey course. Ellen Carol DuBois and Vicki Ruiz, for example, introduce transnationalism as a theme of the third edition of Unequal Sisters: A Multicultural Reader in U. S. Women's History.' Emphasizing the global context of the United States and the movement of people and ideas across national borders, the editors include articles about gender relations across North American frontiers, the international connections and tensions among female reformers, and the lives of immigrant women in the United States.2 To build on developments like these, women's historians need to discuss further the challenges of integrating transnational approaches into the teaching of United States women's history and to exchange teaching ideas that develop overlapping American and global contexts.3 With these goals in mind, this article offers a strategy for using Australian women's history in a United States women's history survey course. Mixing some Australian women's history into a United States women's history survey can be a provocative way to explore gender

The Origins of Women's Activism: New York and Boston, 1797–1840. By Anne M. Boylan. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002. xvi, 343 pp. Cloth, $49.95, isbn 0-8078-2730-4. Paper, $19.95, isbn 0-8078-5404-2.)

On a January day in 1839, Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton, the widow of Alexander Hamilton, walked into the law offices of George Templeton Strong to conduct business on behalf of the New York Orphan Asylum Society. Then eighty-two, Hamilton had served on the society's board for thirty-three years. She would preside for another decade. Exceptional only in the longevity of her participation, Hamilton's career modeled one woman's engagement with a female voluntary association. Numbering in the hundreds, religious, benevolent, charitable, mutual aid, and reform organizations launched America's women into public life. In her analysis of postrevolutionary and antebellum women's associations in New York and Boston, Anne M. Boylan builds upon the earlier scholarship of Dorothy Porter (1936), Mary Ryan (1981), Suzanne Lebsock (1984), Nancy Hewitt (1984), Dorothy Sterling (1984), Lori Ginzberg (1990), and Anne Firor Scott (1991). An exceptional contribution in its own right, The Origins of Women's Activism broadens the angle of vision to include the entire domain of women's collective labors in these cities. In contrast to previous historians, Boylan looks closely at the decades bridging the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Years in which a host of precedents were set, including the shift toward evangelical rhetoric and technique, those decades set the stage for the link forged between religious conversion and organizational participation. Changes also took place in self-representation. Instead of fashioning themselves on the model of the classical Roman matron as their predecessors had, evangelical women celebrated Hannah More. Continuities were equally important, as Boylan shows. For every large and multidimensional project begun in the antebellum years, there was a small-scale, single-focus association that resembled the societies founded in the decades before 1820. Organized benevolence also remained the most popular form of associational activity from 1797 to 1840.

Nota Bene: Spellbound

Changing the Face of Medicine Celebrating America's Women Physicians. Helen S. More and Manon Parry, Curators. National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, MD. Through 2 April 2005. www.nlm.nih.gov/changingthefaceofmedicine The exhibition and its accompanying Web site and DVDs highlight the inspirational stories of women who have influenced and enhanced the practice of medicine in the United States.

Research with, not on, adolescents: community-based participatory research

Research with, not on, adolescents: community-based participatory research

The Routledge Historical Atlas of Women in America

The Routledge Historical Atlas of Women in America

On Their Own Terms: America's Jewish Women, 1954-2004

In the half century since the 1954 tercentenary celebration of Jewish life in America, a sea change has occurred in historical writing. As fresh approaches emerged, first social history and more recently cultural history, scholars of American Jewry eagerly embraced new angles of vision and innovative methodologies. One approach to historical writ ing, which merited only the most cursory attention during the tercente nary celebrations,1 has moved, if not to the center of the writing on the American Jewish experience, then at least firmly within its mainstream. Today's historians take into account women and gender as they construct narratives of the remembered past.2 While scholars once subsumed women. . . in a generalized, unified conception that was represented in the idea of man,3 in recent decades they have attempted to open up the true history of women [which] is the history of their ongoing function ing in that male-defined world, on their own terms.4 Writing about women and gender—that is, the social construction of the relationships between the sexes5—in the context of American Jewish history means writing about Jewish women against the backdrop of U.S. women's history. Not surprisingly, the diversity of America's women precludes a single story. Criticizing some of the early efforts to write women's history, historian Estelle Friedman observed, The most serious of the problems which recent studies manifest is that of excessive generalization—the tendency to write about the American woman, when

Prevalence of dry eye syndrome among US women

Purpose Dry eye syndrome (DES) is believed to be one of the most common ocular problems in the United States (US), particularly among older women. However, there are few studies describing the magnitude of the problem in women and how this may vary with demographic characteristics. Design Cross-sectional prevalence survey. Methods Study population: we surveyed 39,876 US women participating in the Women’s Health Study about a history of diagnosed DES and dry eye symptoms. Main outcome measure: we defined DES as the presence of clinically diagnosed DES or severe symptoms (both dryness and irritation constantly or often). We calculated the age-specific prevalence of DES and adjusted the overall prevalence to the age distribution of women in the US population. We used logistic regression to examine associations between DES and other demographic factors. Results The prevalence of DES increased with age, from 5.7% among women < 50 years old to 9.8% among women aged ≥ 75 years old. The age-adjusted prevalence of DES was 7.8%, or 3.23 million women aged ≥ 50 in the US. Compared with Whites, Hispanic (odds ratio [OR] = 1.81, confidence interval [CI] = 1.18–2.80) and Asian (OR = 1.77, CI = 1.17–2.69) women were more likely to report severe symptoms, but not clinically diagnosed DES. There were no significant differences by income ( P [trend] = .78), but more educated women were less likely to have DES ( P [trend] = .03). Women from the South had the highest prevalence of DES, though the magnitude of geographic differences was modest. Conclusions Dry eye syndrome leading to a clinical diagnosis or severe symptoms is prevalent, affecting over 3.2 million American women middle-aged and older. Although the condition is more prevalent among older women, it also affects many women in their 40s and 50s. Further research is needed to better understand DES and its impact on public health and quality of life.

Women's soccer in the United States: Yet another American ‘Exceptionalism’

Arguably, women's soccer in the United States has been among the best played and extensively watched in the world. Not only has the American national team won more international championships than any other national team, but the WUSA (Women's United States Soccer Association), a professional league, has become the top women's professional league in the world, attracting the best women soccer players from countries such as Germany, Norway, Brazil and China. Furthermore, in terms of female soccer players, the United States – with nearly 10 million registered participants – leads the world by a wide margin. Yet, unlike in many countries of the world, soccer remains a minute feature on the topographical map of American sports space. Why is this the case? This study will consider this fascinating dilemma.

Review: Irish Republican Women in America: Lecture Tours, 1916–1925 Gender, Identity and the Irish Press, 1922–1937: Embodying the Nation

Review: Irish Republican Women in America: Lecture Tours, 1916–1925 Gender, Identity and the Irish Press, 1922–1937: Embodying the Nation

Her Works Praise Her: A History of Jewish Women in America from Colonial Times to the Present

Her Works Praise Her: A History of Jewish Women in America from Colonial Times to the Present

Her Works Praise Her: A History of Jewish Women in America from Colonial Times to the Present (review)

Her Works Praise Her: A History of Jewish Women in America from Colonial Times to the Present (review)

Poverty and Equality

This review essay questions whether the recent focus on moral virtue in poverty reform is true to the history and values of our democracy. Joel Schwartz's FIGHTING POVERTY WITH VIRTUE: MORAL REFORM AND AMERICA'S URBAN POOR (Indiana University Press, 2000) reminds us that current reform welfare efforts, designed to encourage self-virtue, have strong origins. However, while Schwartz describes much of the war on poverty as a historical detour, his account forgets the and conceptual role that equality plays in our democrat system. For example, the heroic efforts of Mary Jones, as described in Elliott J. Gorn's MOTHER JONES: THE MOST DANGEROUS WOMAN IN AMERICA (Hill & Wang, 2001), was inspired by a commitment to the belief that inequality represents a failure of American democracy. Present focus on questions of poverty may more closely track Schwartz's account than Mother Jones', but Mother Jones' vision of the call of American democracy challenges us to aspire not to forget about equality.

Bonnie J. Morris. Lubavitcher Women in America: Identity and Activism in the Postwar Era. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998. x, 186 pp.

Four years ago, when I first read Bonnie Morris' Lubavitcher Women in America, the book was in manuscript form and I was directing a women's studies program at a regional university in Kentucky. As a Jewish feminist educator, I was asked by SUNY Press to review the book and make a recommendation about publication. The ultra-Orthodox represent a closed community: difficult to observe from the outside and rarely reported on from the inside, and I was fascinated by Morris' study of Lubavitcher women's postwar contributions to the spiritual life and growth of their Hasidic community. Along with another reviewer, I recommended publication, and the book came out in late 1998. Just under two years later, I again read Lubavitcher Women in America for the purpose of writing this review. What has changed is not my high regard for this skilled examination of the impact of American feminism on the lives and roles of women within this particular Hasidic community. Rather, it is my proximity to ultra-Orthodoxy.