Women's Federation Research Articles

DIFFERENTIATED CITIZENSHIP: The Everyday Politics of the Urban Poor in Kathmandu, Nepal

AbstractThis article explores the everyday politics through which citizenship is negotiated by diverse residents, analysing the case of Bansighat, an informal settlement in Kathmandu, Nepal. It focuses on both the collective tactics of the Nepali women's federation of the urban poor—Nepal Mahila Ekata Samaj—as well as the quotidian practices of diverse residents around water and sanitation. This analysis reveals the variegated politics through which citizenship plays out—reflecting complex interactions between wider processes of urban transformation in Kathmandu, localized socio‐spatial conditions of Bansighat and long‐standing social relations in Nepali society. The empirical findings help to make more explicit the politics through which some residents are able to capitalize and transform diverse tenure and infrastructural practices into a broader sense of legitimacy or belonging in the city, while simultaneously engendering exclusions for others. This article accordingly reflects on how broader class and ethnic power relations play out through everyday citizenship negotiations, generating differentiated experiences of citizenship for diverse individuals.

The White Nuns: Cistercian Abbeys for Women in Medieval France by Constance Hoffman Berman

Reviewed by: The White Nuns: Cistercian Abbeys for Women in Medieval France by Constance Hoffman Berman Bruce L. Venarde The White Nuns: Cistercian Abbeys for Women in Medieval France. By Constance Hoffman Berman. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 2018. Pp. xvi, 345. $89.95. ISBN 9780812250107.) With her excellent The White Nuns, Constance Hoffman Berman completes a trilogy of revisionist books on medieval Cistercians. Medieval Agriculture, the Southern French Countryside, and the Early Cistercians (1986), conclusively demonstrated that the standard account of early Cistercians as rural pioneers who settled in and cleared waste wilderness is a myth; The Cistercian Evolution (2000) showed that the Cistercian Order was not a spontaneous institution fully formed in its first decades but was invented gradually across the twelfth century. Here Berman expands upon her article-length work about Cistercian women going back thirty years. Part I asks, "Were There Cistercian Nuns in Medieval Europe?" The answer, debunking more myths of Cistercian history and historiography and looking across Europe, is a resounding "Yes." Berman's examination of official Cistercian statutes and evidence ranging from papal bulls to the nuns' own records means the burden of proof will hereafter be on scholars whose answers to the question have been "Maybe" or even "No." Part II, [End Page 620] almost four times as long, tightens the geographical focus. It decisively demonstrates the "economic success" (p. xi) of Cistercian nunneries in the Archdiocese of Sens—which reached from Champagne in the east to the Ile-de-France in the north and as far west as Chartrain in the west and the middle Loire Valley in the south—from the late twelfth to late thirteenth centuries. Berman examines some 3,000 charters, about half of them published, the others housed in fifteen repositories in four countries. In addition, an account book of ca. 1250 from the abbey of Maubuisson is beautifully analyzed. These documents demonstrate that patrons from bourgeois men and women to Blanche of Castile worked patiently and painstakingly, alone and in concert, to build and endow houses for Cistercian nuns. Subsequently, there is a repeated pattern in which, to quote the description of Cour-Notre-Dame, "charters … show abbesses acquiring lands at a variety of places and carefully consolidating these acquisitions into larger holdings" (p. 208). Cistercian nuns, then, relied on immense entrepreneurial skills to create agricultural and viticultural conglomerates, amass urban patrimonies, and acquire ownership and rights to mills and the industries they underpinned. The emphasis varied according to locale: houses in Champagne, for example, concentrated on vineyards, whereas Saint-Antoine-des-Champs, just outside the twelfth-century walls of Paris, owned scores of properties in the city. In addition to the general conclusions of Parts I and II that "Cistercian nuns were part of the order, and … they were rarely poor or ephemeral" (p. 30), Berman finds "considerable evidence about the activities of the great feudal dominae … of the thirteenth century, who were founders, patrons, and even occasionally abbesses of these communities of nuns" and furthermore that the patrons of Cistercian nuns considered these women's prayers highly effective (p. 223). Part III, "Comparisons and Conclusions," is comprised of one brief chapter, "Cistercian Nuns and Their Predecessors." Here Berman juxtaposes thirteenth-century Cistercian nuns to twelfth-century women's monastic federations, finding a great deal of similarity in both management of properties and recruitment of nuns. In conclusion, Berman notes that all too often, modern historians have taken at face value frequently misogynist medieval accounts of nuns, Cistercian and otherwise. That points to the immense value of this study: it examines thousands of records that show what these women actually did, as opposed to what men said they did (or didn't do). If you are interested in medieval monasticism, the Cistercian Order, or medieval women in general, please read The White Nuns. This long-awaited book does not disappoint. [End Page 621] Bruce L. Venarde University of Pittsburgh Copyright © 2021 The Catholic University of America Press

Benevolence, Moral Reform, Equality: Women's Activism in Kansas City, 1870 to 1940 by K. David Hanzlick

Reviewed by: Benevolence, Moral Reform, Equality: Women's Activism in Kansas City, 1870 to 1940 by K. David Hanzlick Sara Egge K. David Hanzlick, Benevolence, Moral Reform, Equality: Women's Activism in Kansas City, 1870 to 1940. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2018. 316 pp. $50.00 (cloth). K. David Hanzlick examines how women in Kansas City claimed the public sphere and became political agents between 1870 and 1940 in his book Benevolence, Moral Reform, Equality. As the title suggests, these women did so by organizing for charity, agitating to combat evils in society, and campaigning for political rights like suffrage. While they approached this tripartite process in ways that resembled their eastern counterparts' strategies, Kansas City's women diverged in how they engaged in this activism. Hanzlick argues that Kansas City's location at the intersection of the Kansas and Missouri Rivers and along the border of one slave and one free state helped its development as a western commercial metropolis and fueled a potent political mix. Business and agricultural promise lured people to a place rife with simmering sectional antagonisms. It was this context that made unification among reformers paramount. It also encouraged women to build public reputations as reformers and leaders in their community. [End Page 190] Civic engagement and shared desire for economic growth healed divisions and established bonds of loyalty. Along with an introduction and conclusion, the book contains five chapters that detail the civic engagement that politicized women and earned them public reputations. Hanzlick's reliance upon newspapers, census records, city directories, and other primary sources in Kansas City–based archives to tell his story allows him to delve deeply into the details. Hanzlick follows "consistent Kansas Citians" and newcomers; the latter typically hailed from the northeast, came from Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish religious backgrounds, and supported economic development amid dense social networks. Chapter 2 explains how many of these upper-class women joined a single relief agency, the Women's Christian Association (WCA), in the 1870s. While benevolence to the poor seemed the primary focus of the WCA, Hanzlick notes that members pursued a variety of reform activities to end other social ills like prostitution and to secure the right to vote. Over time, the membership became increasingly elite and focused solely on benevolence until a general relief agency, led by men, appeared in 1880. Kansas City's male leaders adopted an ambivalent approach to the poor from 1880 to World War I in the wake of dramatic population growth and unfettered corporate capitalism in the city. The regional hub attracted transient workers, and disagreements emerged about how to contend with such a large population of poor people. Hanzlick places these debates in a broader context in which reformers wrestled with questions about individual or structural blame. In chapter 3, he examines the male-led Board of Public Welfare, a Progressive-Era entity begun in 1910, telling the story of how these reformers struggled to discard notions that character building, rather than major structural change, was the key to eliminating poverty. Chapter 4 takes up the narrative from chapter 2, locating reform in a variety of local chapters of national organizations like the Women's Christian Temperance Union, General Federation of Women's Clubs, National Association of Colored Women's Clubs, Young Women's Christian Association, and Catholic Ladies' Aid Society. While these groups embraced similar reforms—such as prohibition, woman suffrage, and consent laws—they worked separately. Chapter 5 carries the narrative to the eve of World War II, finding that unlike the divisions that plagued women at the national level, women in Kansas City remained united. They sought political participation in local governance by supporting campaigns for municipal reform, engaging in party politics, and running for local offi ce. [End Page 191] Benevolence, Moral Reform, Equality not only successfully traces the history of women's activism in Kansas City, but it also speaks to histories of social welfare and municipal reform that included men. Some chapters, like chapter 3, pursue questions about the development of midwestern metropolitanism more so than women's activism. Hanzlick also rightly argues that his work opens doors to further investigations and that scholars should treat his...

A formative assessment of gender awareness and ability of staff based on the service programs of the All-China Women's Federation: The case of the “3861 My Home” program

In order to achieve “gender mainstreaming” which is a global strategy to promote the development of women, it has in recent years been a major task for the All-China Women's Federation (ACWF) to improve the gender awareness and ability of policy makers and implementers. Thus, researchers should constantly propose and evaluate various possible attempts to improve gender awareness and the ability of individuals. There are few empirical studies on the assessment of gender awareness and the improvement of the ability of staff who have been trained and educated. Research studies focusing on the promotion of gender-sensitive awareness and ability of staff by participating in programs are even rarer.This study presents a specific case, namely the evaluation of promoting social service workers’ gender awareness and ability within the implementation of the “3861 My Home” program. Based on this case, this study examines how to promote gender awareness and ability of social service workers through the implementation of the service program of Women's Federation, and also assesses the quality of the results of this implementation. Moreover, this study also contributes to the literature pertaining to assessing the development of social service workers’ gender awareness and ability. In addition, the study provides an option for enhancing the gender awareness and ability of social service workers in addition to training: The participatory learning or action pertaining to gender awareness and ability based on the Women's Federation programs are able to effectively improve the gender awareness and ability of staff.

‘Brightening their leisure hours’? The experiment of BBC Women's Hour, 1923–1925

ABSTRACTOn 2 May 1923, the newly established BBC, launched Women's Hour, a daily bespoke programme aimed at its female audience produced by Ella Fitzgerald, a former Fleet Street journalist. In December 1923 a Women's Advisory Committee (WAC) was established to represent women's interests at the BBC with eminent members who included the Chairman of the National Federation of Women's’ Institutes, Lady Denman; the actress Dorothea Baird and the physician Elizabeth Sloan Chesser. The WAC, working with Fitzgerald and other BBC officials, introduced into Women's Hour an innovative range of programme ideas. It also prompted a debate about the premise of the programme, whether it should be about domesticity or provide escapism from the ‘common task’ of housework. In addition the WAC challenged the Women's Hour name. Through a consideration of the programme and the WAC, both of which were short-lived, this article explores how the BBC sought to address its female audience in the early 1920s.

Learning to “Play the Game as Men Do”: How the General Federation of Women’s Clubs Brought Political Science to Women

ABSTRACTMuch has been written about efforts to expand women’s social, cultural, and political representation, roles, and opportunities. However, as political scientists, we have done little to document the early history of incorporating women into the discipline. This article illustrates how the General Federation of Women’s Clubs (GFWC) established the study of politics as an acceptable course of baccalaureate study for women: first, by crafting a model curriculum; second, by advocating for the creation of endowed chairs in political science at women’s colleges; and, third, by publishing in scholarly outlets. The GFWC’s efforts can be viewed as the first steps to the incorporation of women into the discipline—a question that continues to be the subject of much analysis and consternation by professional associations and the academic community.

English Women Doctors, Contraception and Family Planning in Transnational Perspective (1930s-70s).

This paper explores the influence of English female doctors on the creation of the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) and the production and circulation of contraceptive knowledge in England and, to a lesser extent in France, between 1930 and 1970. By drawing on the writings of female doctors and proceedings of international conferences as well as the archives of the British Medical Women's Federation (MWF) and Family Planning Association (FPA), on the one hand, and Mouvement Français pour le Planning Familial (MFPF), on the other, this paperexplores the agency of English female doctors at the national and transnational level. I recover their pioneering work and argue that they were pivotal in legitimising family planning within medical circles. I then turn to their influence on French doctors after World WarII. Not only were English medical women active and experienced agents in the family planning movement in England; they also represented a conduit of information and training crucial for French doctors. Transfer of knowledge across the channel was thus a decisive tool for implementing family planning services in France.

Women in Australian Politics: Maintaining the Rage against the Political Machine

Women in Australian Politics: Maintaining the Rage against the Political Machine

Finding Women in the State: A Socialist Feminist Revolution in the People's Republic of China, 1949–1964 by Zheng Wang

Reviewed by: Finding Women in the State: A Socialist Feminist Revolution in the People's Republic of China, 1949–1964 by Zheng Wang Aminda Smith Finding Women in the State: A Socialist Feminist Revolution in the People's Republic of China, 1949–1964 by Zheng Wang. Oakland: University of California Press, 2017. Pp. xv + 380. $85.00 cloth, $34.95 paper, $34.95 e-book. I recently attended a lecture by a well-known China watcher who is often cited for her expertise on Chinese Communist Party (CCP) policies related to women and gender equality. When an audience member asked whether there were contestations, over antifeminist policies, between the Party leadership and officials in the Women's Federation (Funü lianhehui 妇女联合会, or Fulian), the speaker responded by claiming that the Fulian cannot be considered a feminist organization as it is simply an arm of the Party. While this claim is not entirely false, it is misleading. Moreover, such a position is all too common in the reportage and scholarship on the People's Republic of China (PRC): the CCP is often portrayed as a thoroughly patriarchal, Borg-like monolith, just as masculinist and oppressive to women as any other modern state power, despite its early claims to the contrary. Thus, Zheng Wang's forceful and convincing argument to the contrary makes her new book a crucial intervention in the fields of PRC history and the history of Chinese feminism. As her title suggests, among [End Page 408] Party members and PRC state leaders, Wang finds committed feminist women, who truly endeavored to bring about a socialist feminist revolution. Finding Women in the State, organized into two parts and eight chapters, considers the work of Chinese Communist feminists through a series of cases. Because Wang's argument requires the close reading and unpacking of extremely rich and detailed source materials, her chapters are quite dense. And her discussion is so wide-ranging that one sometimes senses at least two different books in this one volume. But in the end, all of the pieces coalesce around Wang's answer to an important historiographical question: how do we evaluate the CCP's famous claim to have liberated women, epitomized in Mao Zedong's all-too-oft-quoted pronouncement that "women hold up half the sky"? The research conducted over the past several decades suggests one answer: Chinese women were, and remain, partially liberated—thanks to the whims of a male-dominated and patriarchal Communist Party that nevertheless maintained its rhetoric supporting gender equality and thus sporadically promoted women's rights when doing so did not undermine other Party goals. Wang shows, however, that what appears to be a series of half-hearted and superficial concessions made by a masculinist state are actually evidence of hard-won victories achieved by women working in the Women's Federation and other Party-state units; these feminists were truly committed to the Maoist claim that women's liberation was central to China's socialist revolution. Wang does not deny that the sites in which state feminists worked, such as the Women's Federation, were inseparable parts of the Communist Party. Indeed, it was enthusiasm for socialism's liberatory promise that led these women to join the revolution. Those feminists who held positions within the PRC state certainly demonstrated their loyalty to the Party. Crucially, however, Wang shows that cadres and leaders who did women's work (funü gongzuo 妇女工作) also saw themselves as quasi-independent actors, dedicated to opposing patriarchy in Chinese society and in the Communist state. And their pursuit of a bona fide feminist agenda caused repeated clashes between state feminists and other Party members, including those in the central leadership. This book traces the histories of those state feminists committed to women's work. It demonstrates that while their battles were all uphill and against strong opposition from many Party men, [End Page 409] state feminists fought hard and sometimes successfully fomented real change for Chinese women. Wang reveals that the effects of state feminism can be seen everywhere during the socialist period, even in high-level Party policy and propaganda. She also argues, however, that historians must search for feminism in PRC history because it...

La Federación de Mujeres Cubanas y su labor con las familias

Este artículo responde a una investigación sobre el surgimiento de la Federación de Mujeres Cubanas (fmc) como una organización que incluye a las mujeres en el proyecto político de la revolución. La fmc promueve la igualdad de derechos y oportunidades de las mujeres, trabaja por el bienestar familiar desplegando labores comunitarias para la ejecución de sus acciones de concienciación, mediante actividades educativas, orientadoras, preventivas y de atención social, con el fin de revertir las desigualdades de género. Actualmente, la organización se enfrenta al desafío de responder de manera acertada a las dinámicas de la nueva sociedad cubana.

‘Mystery at the Lilacs’ (1938): Elizabeth Bowen's Thriller Serial for Home and Country

This article introduces a rediscovered 1938 serial by Elizabeth Bowen ‘specially written’ for Home and Country, the monthly organ of the National Federation of Women's Institutes. It situates ‘Mystery at the Lilacs’ within the periodical culture of ‘ Home and Country’, paying particular attention to Bowen's engagement with the social and cultural debates that played out across its pages, and considers how Bowen's serial compares with her other contemporary literary projects. Far from being an aberration or curiosity, this serial overlaps thematically with Bowen's other interwar short stories. Self-reflexively concerned with the status of the writer in the community and preoccupied with the relationship between ‘high’ and popular culture, ‘Mystery at the Lilacs’ has much to tell us about Bowen's thinking about politics and culture in the interwar period.

Prison as a Space to Heal: Women Federal Prisoners in Canada and the Role of the Healthcare Professional

Women incarcerated in federal prisons are a small but growing proportion of Canada’s penal institutions and have needs, challenges, and health issues vastly different from those of incarcerated men. Women that come into conflict with the law often have experienced sexual abuse, utilize drugs and alcohol, and have poor health. Healthcare professionals in prison should be aware of these health markers and the associated difficulties of treating patients in prison. This article aims to catalyze conversation and further inquiry into the potential role of the carceral reality as a healing space, and the health professionals within it as healers.

Bringing the Revolution Home: Filipino Urban Poor Women, "Neoliberal Imperial Feminisms," and a Social Movements Approach to Domestic Abuse

Urban poor women in Metro Manila, Philippines, have developed social movement strategies toward domestic abuse. I consider how these synergize with and diverge from U.S. women of color feminist calls for "community accountability." "Survivor-organizers" in the women's federation GABRIELA influence place-based social networks to shift power relations, while organizing whole communities into a broader Left movement. I argue that their community organizing principles and survivor-centered ethics have served as vehicles to transcend carceral remedies. Entangling reformist, prefigurative, and revolutionary politics, they contradictorily invoke (and reify) carceral feminist logics and legal reforms—yet have fostered transformations that surpass possibilities offered by what I call "neoliberal imperial feminist" frameworks for punitive state action. I propose a protest politics grounded in how GABRIELA's and U.S. feminist of color political traditions speak to and expand upon one another.

Unloosened Forms, Untranslatable Concerns and Unformed: The Limits of American Notions of Race in Amitav Ghosh's Sea of Poppies

Unloosened Forms, Untranslatable Concerns and UnformedThe Limits of American Notions of Race in Amitav Ghosh's Sea of Poppies Nandini Dhar In an interview with CNN conducted after the conclusion of his eight year presidency, Barack Obama, the first black President of the US, claimed that his reception among certain sections of the American society—especially Southern whites—was mediated through racism.1 A few months later, his wife, Michelle Obama, made the same allegation. "Knowing that after eight years of working really hard for this country," she asserted in an interview with Lauren Casteel, the President of the Women's Federation of Colorado, "there are still people who won't see me for what I am because of my skin color."2 Even a cursory web search reveals the Obamas were the targets of vicious anti-black racism, of the sort one would think the First Family of United States of America would be exempt from. Within digital popular culture, Obama's visual representations often recycled age-old stereotypes of apes and thugs.3 In keeping with contemporary global Islamophobia, Obama's images have also been juxtaposed with Osama bin Laden, thus signifying him as a Muslim terrorist. Scholars invested in studying the media iconography of the Obamas, have commented, "… Obama images must be read as indelibly racialized representations that, for some readers, express and reflect a discourse of sometimes explicit, sometimes coded twenty-first century anti-Black racism" (Joseph 391). Within the broader public culture, this form of anti-black racism did not go unnoticed by left-liberal cultural and political interlocutors.4 Many commentators couched their critique of it using the rhetoric of exceptionality. Such commentaries point out how Obama's blackness not only singles him out from other Presidents of the United States, but also how that blackness makes him an easy target of the white supremacist ideologies that form part and parcel of American culture. To be precise, blackness in such discussions often read as a deterrent that sets limits to Obama's authority as the President. An appraisal of the cultural productions of the era of Obama presidency would thus reveal the emergence of a very specific narrative genre which can be termed as literary Obamaphilia. This genre attempts to give Obama back some of the authority lost by his association with blackness. Its literary form involves the creation of a specific kind of consumable personhood [End Page 6] for the first black President of the US. Foremost in this genre is African American memoirist Ta-Nehisi Coates' essay "My President Was Black." Celebrating the election of a black man for the first time to a political office that has hitherto been exclusively masculine and white, the essay is built on a rhetoric of liberal racial uplift which avoids any ideological interrogation of the implications of being the President of United States, a nation which has often been dubbed an "imperialist, white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy" (hooks 46) by earlier generations of black scholars and critics. This essay contends that one of the unarticulated understandings of literary Obamaphilia is the assumption that Obama's blackness was enough to insulate him from the structural imperatives and the ideological implications of the imperialism, white supremacism, capitalism and patriarchal politics which his office entailed. Meanwhile, even a quick look into Obama's policies would prove that, within a year of his assuming power in his office, Afghanistan—rather than Iraq—had become the focal point of renewed military action. Political scientist Perry Anderson observes, "Within a year of taking office, US troops had been doubled to 100,000 and Special Forces operations increased six-fold, in a bid to repeat the military success in Iraq" (Anderson).5 Concurrently, the Obama years also witnessed a consolidation and escalation of war in Pakistan. In other words, Obama's ascendance to the Presidency also marked an unprecedented series of imperial-military interventions in South Asia whose political and cultural implications remain as yet largely unexplored, thus enabling the creation of a culture of silence over Obama's imperial missions in the Middle East and South Asia. Cultural critic Sunaina Maira writes, "What was clear in the Obamania that swept the...

"Completely Sold on Birth Control": Rural Extension Work of the Kentucky Birth Control League, 1933–1942

"Completely Sold on Birth Control":Rural Extension Work of the Kentucky Birth Control League, 1933–1942 Courtney Kisat (bio) In August 1939, after years of seeking birth control for her rural patients, community health nurse Lutrella Baker from the Line Fork Settlement in southeastern Kentucky wrote to Jean Tachau, president of the Kentucky Birth Control League (KBCL) in Louisville. "At last I have some grand news to report," she exclaimed, "There is a new doctor at Pine Mountain Settlement School … [and] he is completely sold on birth control, especially as he sees conditions here."1 Tachau and Baker went on to organize supplies for the clinic at Line Fork, a successful outcome of rural extension work from the KBCL. The birth control movement grew throughout the 1930s, and state affiliates of the American Birth Control League (ABCL) operated clinics that served thousands of women.2 The KBCL was the fifteenth state affiliate of the ABCL and like other state leagues, they successfully established birth control clinics in urban areas such as Louisville and Lexington. But unlike other states, the Kentucky State Board of Health did not support birth control as a public health initiative, so county clinics offered no form of contraception. The KBCL filled that void with state extension work in rural counties. The initiative [End Page 303] came from Tachau, an experienced social worker who drew from her networking skills and experience to build collaborative committees in rural communities. Rural Kentucky women who received birth control access in the late 1930s and early 1940s benefitted from this collaboration. Central to the state extension work of KBCL was the creation of community committees, which included ministers, teachers, librarians, nurses, and women's church groups. The KBCL was willing to recruit any person interested in establishing birth control services for the women of their county.3 Participants included a first-grade teacher in Edmonton, a USDA Home Demonstration Agent in Franklin, and a county health nurse in Daviess County, all of whom wrote the KBCL for information.4 Successful extension work was especially evident in Bell and Breathitt Counties, where the KBCL helped create community committees; in Madison County, where their efforts contributed to a strong local birth control initiative; and in Letcher County, site of the Line Fork Settlement. This study is a contribution to the growing literature of state-level birth control initiatives in the interwar period.5 It shows that despite the lack of support from the state, the KBCL impacted rural women in places where they were able to draw from social work methods to collaborate with people in those communities. Between 1880 and 1930, progressive women's groups drove social, political, and economic changes in the Commonwealth. This included such initiatives as the Kentucky Equal Rights Association, founded by women in 1888, and the Kentucky Federation of Women's Clubs in [End Page 304] Click for larger view View full resolution Map of KBCL extension work. Counties in light gray represent places where birth control clinics were established. Those in dark gray represent places in correspondence with KBCL. Map by author, all rights reserved. 1894. Women's clubs helped create the first county health department in Mason County in 1914, and by the late 1920s, health departments in every county of Kentucky. When Congress passed the Sheppard-Towner Act in 1922 to provide funding for health programs to benefit women and children, Kentucky legislators responded to women's advocacy and approved a measure to create a Bureau of Maternal and Child Health. The birth control movement in Kentucky was not the first reform driven by women, but rather a link in a long chain of maternalist policies in state reforms.6 From their first meeting in 1933, the KBCL worked to "help mothers have healthier babies, check the practice of induced abortions, and establish clinics in all sections of the state."7 They gained public support by promoting birth control [End Page 305] to improve maternal and child health and as an economic measure for poor families. The KBCL was especially visible throughout the state, first in the cities of Louisville and Lexington, and gradually in over forty rural eastern Kentucky counties. Early professional social...

Association between supporting child and elder abuse in China

Objective: To examine the association between child-supporting from their folks and elder abuse in China so as to provide evidence for prevention and control of elder abuse. Methods: Based on the third survey on the Status of Chinese women, organized by the All-China Women's Federation and the National Bureau of Statistics, 7 159 residents aged 65 and older were included and general information on supporting child and elder abuse were gathered. Chi-square test and logistic regression were used to investigate the association between supporting child from elderly and elder abuse. Results: The overall prevalence of elder abuse was 6.71%. Risks of elder people being abused by family numbers varied from different supporting child situations. After adjusting for potential confounding factors, ORs for the elderly appeared as follows: OR=1.99 (95%CI: 1.56-2.54) for those who only providing support to male children; OR=2.07 (95%CI: 1.51-3.79) for those only providing support to the female offspring and OR=2.32 (95% CI: 1.72-3.13) for those who did not support their children regardless of their sex identity. Elderly who provided support to their children on both sexes were exposed to lower risk of being abused than those who only supporting their male offspring. There was no significant difference appearing on the risk of elder abuse between those elderly who only supporting the male (OR=1.00) or the female offspring (OR=1.04, 95% CI: 0.63-1.71), among all the participants in our study. However, such associations were different in urban and rural areas. Conclusions: High prevalence of abuse was seen in China. The pattern of supporting child was associated with risk of elder abuse. Elderly who showed poor support to their children were under higher risk of being abused by their family members.

Establishing an Institution: The Public Library Movement in Iowa 1900 - 1920

As the world becomes increasingly digitally-oriented it is important for public libraries to reexamine their history as they formulate strategies to secure their place as an irreplaceable community institution. The situation today is similar to the beginnings of the public library movement when libraries had to create their place in society and market that idea so that citizens and towns would support that effort. The ‘golden age’ of Iowa’s public library movement was from 1900-1920. During that period the work of Iowa’s Federation of Women’s Clubs, the Iowa Library Association, the Iowa Library Commission, and Andrew Carnegie’s library grants made it possible for Iowa towns to establish permanent free public libraries. Iowa was awarded 99 Carnegie library grants totaling $1,495,706 for 101 buildings. A case study of thirteen different Iowa towns, who applied for and received Carnegie library grants, helped to identify the common challenges that communities faced such as the location of the library, population size, tax requirements, and the final grant amount. It also highlighted the importance of community involvement and the support of political figures to overcome the challenges that towns faced. It was only through the requirements of the Carnegie library grants, and the community-driven nature of the grants, that permanent free public libraries were established throughout Iowa cementing the place of the free public library as a community institution.

The Political Activities of Detroit Clubwomen in the 1920s: A Challenge and a Promise by Jayne Morris-Crowther

Reviewed by: The Political Activities of Detroit Clubwomen in the 1920s: A Challenge and a Promise by Jayne Morris-Crowther Lindsey Peterson Jayne Morris-Crowther, The Political Activities of Detroit Clubwomen in the 1920s: A Challenge and a Promise. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2013. 264pp. $44.95. Numerous women’s history scholars have rejected the once popular notion that women’s political activities were dormant between suffrage and the 1960s women’s movement. These historians, including Catherine E. Rymph and Amy Swerdlow among several others, have begun documenting the diverse political activities of women between the 1920s and 1950s. However, few have considered regionalism in their analysis, with the notable exception of Kathleen A. Laughlin’s analysis of Minnesota’s Federation of Business and Professional Women’s Clubs. Similar to Laughlin, Jayne Morris-Crowther’s [End Page 116] local study of 1920s Detroit women’s clubs resists a universal history of women’s clubs. During the 1920s, as Detroit rapidly industrialized and urbanized, over fifty thousand women in 107 clubs formed the Detroit Federation of Women’s Clubs. Morris-Crowther finds that white and black clubwomen confronted male-dominated politics by challenging notions of who should participate in public life and which issues should be advocated. After gaining the right to vote Detroit women continued to pursue political participation through club membership. Prior to suffrage, women’s clubs offered women an opportunity to participate in civic activism. Morris-Crowther finds that after suffrage Detroit clubwomen carried on club work as a means of establishing their place in male-dominated Detroit politics. They continued to employ grassroots methods, such as letter writing, speeches, and door-to-door campaigns; however, they now utilized the vote to make political demands on the city, county, and state. Clubwomen encouraged women to vote with get-out-the-vote campaigns, hosted lectures and debates in order to educate women voters on the issues, and worked to guarantee voting rights, especially for black women. Although clubwomen encouraged Detroit women to vote, they seldom advocated for women holding office. Rather than persuade women to pursue public office, Detroit clubwomen adopted traditional gender roles. Like many American women, they linked their participation in public life to the private sphere. During the 1920s Detroit immigration boomed, and the city quickly urbanized and industrialized. According to Morris-Crowther, clubwomen threatened by these changes seized this opportunity to expand their public activity. They pursued “womanly” politics and engaged in municipal housekeeping by advocating city sanitation, prison reform, Americanization, and changes in law enforcement, among other issues. Emphasizing the connection between family life and the community, they advocated for school board reform and child welfare. Clubwomen believed women’s main responsibility was raising good citizens, and as educated and elite white women, they were best suited for determining how to raise Detroit’s children. Morris-Crowther argues that by narrowly defining middle class morality according to white clubwomen’s beliefs, they failed to recognize that they did not speak for all women. Most often white Detroit clubwomen could not speak for black women. The Great Migration brought high numbers of southern black migrants into industrial midwestern cities. This resulted in racial tensions in Detroit, which was already overcrowded by immigrants. Upper middle class black [End Page 117] women formed clubs to advocate for issues important to Detroit’s black community, including voting rights and an anti-lynching campaign, but black clubwomen were more focused on gaining the white communities’ respect. Black clubwomen sought to earn society’s approval by adhering to white clubwomen’s notions of middle class morality, which alienated lower class black women from the club movement. Similar to white clubwomen, Morris-Crowther suggests that Detroit’s black clubwomen inaccurately believed they spoke for all black women. Detroit clubwomen often met with limited success. Their inability to appeal to all women, white and black clubwomen’s reluctance to work together, and their failure to gain men’s respect hindered their efforts. Furthermore, Morris-Crowther finds that Detroit clubwomen’s choice to pursue public policies stemming from private needs further limited women’s political involvement. She concludes, “Detroit women both black and white emerged from the 1920s as influential, but seldom...

Filipino Elite Women and Public Health in the American Colonial Era, 1906–1940

ABSTRACTThis article is the first step in the process of writing Filipino elite women into the history of public health by focusing on those who were not health practitioners (not doctors, nurses or midwives), but who were heavily involved in the campaign against infant mortality in the American colonial period. It argues that Filipino elite women fulfilled the extremely important role of administrators of organizations that addressed infant care and maternal and child health, in the distribution of milk and the dissemination of information about maternal and children's health. Using hitherto unused sources from the archives of La Protección de la Infancia, the periodicals of the National Federation of Women's Clubs, and colonial records, this study reveals how the public health movement in the Philippines was gendered, and analyzes the contributions made by Filipino elite women that have to date not yet been acknowledged in the scholarship.

Adele Briscoe Looscan: Daughter of the Republic by Laura Lyons McLemore

Reviewed by: Adele Briscoe Looscan: Daughter of the Republic by Laura Lyons McLemore Paula Mitchell Marks Adele Briscoe Looscan: Daughter of the Republic. By Laura Lyons McLemore. (Fort Worth: TCU Press, 2016. Pp. 265. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index.) In this fine addition to TCU’s Texas Biography Series, the author demonstrates that Adele Briscoe Looscan was indeed “literally and figuratively, a daughter of the Republic of Texas” (6). Her father fought in the Texas Revolution, and her mother’s family, the Harrises, numbered among Austin’s Old Three Hundred. To her mother, Mary Jane, and to Adele, both left fatherless at a young age, honoring Anglo pioneer days in Texas became a significant endeavor. Born in 1848, Adele had a childhood and youth that were not without financial worries for her widowed mother, but she nonetheless attended Mary B. Brown’s Young Ladies’ Seminary in Houston and after her graduation in 1866 made extended visits to California and the Northeast. Further formal education was not an option, but by 1881, when she married attorney Michael Looscan, Adele was entering into “the burgeoning women’s club movement in Houston” (11). She would remain active in this movement until her death in 1935. Mary Jane and Adele were key figures in the formation of the “Ladies’ [End Page 401] History Class” in Houston in 1885. Soon reconstituted as the “Ladies’ Reading Club,” this organization would become an active force for civic projects and a charter member of the Texas Federation of Women’s Clubs, formed in 1897. Mother and daughter were also indefatigable in support of the Texas Veterans Association in its quest to make the San Jacinto battleground a state park. In the 1880s and 1890s, Adele, now financially comfortable and childless, established herself as an expert in nineteenth-century pioneer Texas. She published numerous articles in newspapers and literary magazines in the state. When the Daughters of the Lone Star Republic, soon renamed the Daughters of the Republic of Texas (DRT), was formed in 1891, Adele became the organization’s first elected historian. Adele demonstrated an admirable commitment to the DRT through the stormy period in which Adina de Zavala and Clara Driscoll battled over preservation and interpretation of the Alamo site. The author provides a full and enlightening discussion of this division within the DRT, with Adele supporting Adina de Zavala through court battles and painful power shifts. By 1914, “she never again associated with the organization she had helped to found” (163). In 1915, Adele learned from a Houston newspaper that she had been appointed president of the eighteen-year-old Texas State Historical Association. Her selection, unusual in an era when men still assumed leadership of those organizations in which they participated, was based upon her connections and “demonstrated devotion to Texas history” (1), as well as her well-honed organizational skills. Adele would serve a decade in this role, working valiantly to address the need for more members, more money, and more scholarship to keep the organization moving forward. McLemore expertly addresses the ways in which Adele navigated and modeled public roles for women in late-nineteenth and early twentieth-century Texas. The author also shows that Adele approached the era she was commemorating with a more thoughtful, nuanced perspective than did many of her contemporaries, seeking out and sharing valuable primary sources in the process. Paula Mitchell Marks St. Edward’s University Copyright © 2015 The Texas State Historical Association