gender 
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
1/22/2021
White Americans have Weaponized the Idea of Girlhood
by Crystal Webster
The concept of childhood has elastic boundaries; in a racist society, those boundaries stretch to portray whites as innocents deserving protection and Black youth as dangerous and susceptible to punishment.
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SOURCE: Perspectives on History
12/15/2020
Working With Death: The Experience of Feeling in the Archive
by Ruth Lawlor
A researcher of sexual assault against women by American troops in World War II confronted the problem that the archive captures only a traumatic event and leaves the human being affected in the shadows.
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SOURCE: New York Times
12/9/2020
Jill Biden Is a Teacher. And She’s Not About to Change That
Cultural historians Stephanie Coontz, Betty Boyd Caroli and Katherine Jellison discuss the historical roles occupied by First Ladies and the ways the position has and will change.
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SOURCE: War on The Rocks
11/30/2020
Musing on Gender Integration in the Military with Simone de Beauvoir
by Bill Bray
For those engaged in the military gender integration debate today, de Beauvoir’s writing offers an additional reminder — those arguing against more integration may be no less intelligent and sincere than those championing change. But they still may be wrong.
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SOURCE: New York Times
11/17/2020
When Schools Closed, Americans Turned to Their Usual Backup Plan: Mothers
"Mothers are the fallback plan in the United States in part because of persistent beliefs that they are ultimately responsible for homemaking and child rearing, and because of the lack of policies to help parents manage the load."
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SOURCE: New York Times
11/13/2020
‘Women’s Work’ Can No Longer Be Taken for Granted
New Zealand is pursuing a century-old idea to close the gender pay gap: not equal pay for equal work, but equal pay for work of equal value.
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10/25/2020
The Queen's Two Bodies
by Ed Simon
Queen Elizabeth's speech to English soliders in anticipation of the Spanish invasion of 1588 rallied the troops for a battle that never happened. But it anticipated today's cultural battle over the stability of gender categories.
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SOURCE: Washington Post
10/15/2020
Trump, Biden and Masculinity in the Age of Coronavirus
Trump and Biden both seek to embody a masculine ideal on the campaign trail, but the differences in each candidate's vision of what manliness is show that the idea is changing.
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10/11/2020
Fear of the "Pussification" of America: A Short Cultural History
by Gregory A. Daddis
The bizarre idea that COVID-19 can be defeated through manliness is one of the stranger cultural themes of our time, but it connects to a long history of anxiety about masculinity in a changing America that encourages violent and even self-destructive actions in the name of proving virility.
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SOURCE: Made By History at The Washington Post
9/4/2020
A Forgotten Campaign To Support ‘Displaced Homemakers’ May Help Women Today
by Suzanne Kahn
A 1970s initiative by feminist Tish Sommers for legislation to help women who had worked at home as caregivers to more easily reenter the paid workforce. Her preferred term "displaced homemaker" emphasized the economic importance of domestic care work most often performed by women and women's vulnerability to economic disruption and provides a useful way to think about solutions to the problems caused by COVID today.
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SOURCE: Nursing Clio
9/8/2020
“All the World’s a Harem”: Perceptions of Masked Women during the 1918–1919 Flu Pandemic
by Jessica Brabble, Ariel Ludwig and E. Thomas Ewing
Contemporary sources show that women's mask-wearing practices during the 1918 flu pandemic could be viewed through a sexist lens, but women adapted the practice to claim independence and found examples in popular culture.
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SOURCE: Boston Review
8/28/2020
Whose Anger Counts?
by Whitney Phillips
Many complaints about "cancel culture" depend on a false equivalency between left and right forms of internet argument that ignores the nature of far-right online harassment as a tool of power.
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SOURCE: The New York Times
8/17/2020
The ‘Rage Moms’ Democrats Are Counting On
“Women are mobilized on a bigger scale than we’ve seen in a generation at least,” said historian Annelise Orleck.
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SOURCE: Washington Post
8/5/2020
The Revealing and Disturbing Story of America, Told Through 20 Years of Reality Dating Shows
Reality dating shows, for better or worse, have focused a lens on the state of love, sex and relationships in American society. Here is a list of shows that define each of the 20 years of the genre (and might be historical documents someday?)
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SOURCE: Washington Post
7/17/2020
History Shows That We Can Solve The Child-Care Crisis — If We Want To
by Lisa Levenstein
Today, in nearly two-thirds of households with children, the parents are employed. In 3 out of 5 states, the cost of day care for one infant is more than tuition and fees at four-year public universities.
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SOURCE: Washington Post
6/26/2020
With Schools and Daycare Closed, the Coronavirus is Worsening Women’s Inequality
by Lisa Levenstein
The paucity of policy support for childbirth and care work are the result of a system that still envisions the ideal worker as a man.
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SOURCE: Washington Post
5/29/2020
Women’s Household Labor Is Essential. Why Isn’t It Valued?
by Alexandra Finley
Covid-19 has exposed enduring inequality in domestic divisions of labor.
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5/31/2020
Little Richard: Bold, Pioneering, Complex, and Unapologetic
by Elwood Watson
Little Richard left a lasting musical and cultural legacy because of his talent and his willingness to be more boldly black and sexual than other artists dared.
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
5/23/2020
The Many Faces of the ‘Wine Mom’
Historian Lisa Jacobson explains that the "Wine Mom" meme is rooted in gender and middle class norms regulating women's obligations to their children (and women's desire for freedom from them).
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SOURCE: Jezebel
5/20/2020
Get in Shape Girl: A Century of Working Out from Home
by Natalia Mehlman Petrzela
The home fitness industry grew by creating and addressing gendered insecurities about masculine strength and feminine attractiveness.