womens history

• 
• 6/4/2023
  

  The Power of Dependency in Women's Legal Petitions in Revolutionary America (Excerpt)

  by Jacqueline Beatty

  It's anachronistic thinking to ask whether the American revolution improved women's status; a legal historian's new book seeks to understand change and continuity in women's status through those women's own worldview, which often involved leveraging their dependent status in specific claims. 

• 
• 6/4/2023
  

  Recovering the Story of the Empress Messalina After a Roman Cancellation

  by Honor Cargill-Martin

  After the empress Valeria Messalina's fatal fall from favor with her husband Claudius, her name and image were stricken from public and private spheres, an episode that reveals the tightly-regulated dissemination of imperial women's images (and puts current "cancel culture" panic and whisper networks into perspective). 

• 
• 5/28/2023
  

  What We Can Learn From—and Through—Historical Fiction

  by Carol K. Kammen

  "I have written this to praise historical fiction when it respects the line between our times and the past, when it adheres to the known-truth and does not pervert it for excitement—or for book sales."

• 
• SOURCE: The Nation
  5/17/2023
  

  A Biography of Writer Lydia Marie Child Exemplifies a Revisitation of 19th Century Women

  by Susan Cheever

  A biography of the writer seeks to rectify a widespread phenomenon: women influential in their own time whose significance has been obscured in later histories. 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  5/12/2023
  

  A Servicemember in My Family was Never the Same after WWII—My Mother

  As part of the Clubmobile service of the Red Cross, Phyllis McLaughlin was an indirect witness to the traumas of the soldiers she served with hospitality, even before the jeep accident that ended her own service after nearly killing her. 

• 
• 5/14/2023
  

  Mary Wollstonecraft's Diagnosis of the Prejudices Holding Back Girls' Education Remains Relevant Today

  by Victoria Bateman

  Since Wollstonecraft's 1792 condemnation of the strictures of modesty and sexual purity as unjust impediments to the education of girls and women, they remain principal justifications for keeping girls out of school. 

• 
• SOURCE: History Workshop
  5/11/2023
  

  Ayahs, Amahs and Empire: The History of Domestic Care Work under Colonialism

  by Julia Laite

  The history of domestic and child care work has become increasingly robust, but museums and public exhibitions have struggled to find ways to represent the work and experiences of women, many from south Asia, who traveled with white colonial families to perform this labor, putting marginalized people in charge of the empire's children. 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  5/2/2023
  

  How to Get Americans To Embrace Constitutional Amendments Again

  by Kate Shaw and Julie K. Suk

  As recent Supreme Court decisions on guns and abortion rights have made many Americans fear the loss of basic rights, reviving the effort to pass the Equal Rights Amendment can remind Americans that nine people in robes don't have to be the final authority on the Constitution. 

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  4/27/2023
  

  Authors Call for a Rethink of Birth and Motherhood

  Peggy O'Donnell Heffington makes an assertive argument that the United States has a long history of official involvement in motherhood, from making reproduction near-compulsory for white women on one side of the color line to eugenics and sterilization on the other. 

• 
• SOURCE: Mother Jones
  4/21/2023
  

  Black Mothers Bet on Themselves and Changed Las Vegas—Can Their Ideas Still Change America?

  by Annelise Orleck

  A courageous and politically imaginative group of women challenged the most powerful interests in Las Vegas to win better public aid and build an organization for community service and empowerment. A historian explains who they were, how she came to tell their story, and what it means today.

• 
• SOURCE: Nature
  4/17/2023
  

  Medical Drawings of Pregnancy Have Centered Fetuses and Uteruses—While Erasing Women

  Early depictions of the fetus in utero—imaginative as much as descriptive—were a boon to obstetric medicine, but also placed the fetus above the mother in terms of the medical system's concern, contends medical historian Rebecca Whiteley

• 
• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  4/10/2023
  

  After Dobbs, Women Have Been Pushed Out of the Legal Debate on Abortion

  by Felicia Kornbluh

  Federal Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk's recent ruling focused on his interpretation of the rights of fetuses and physicians, while ignoring the real-world health and reproductive concerns of women. Reproductive freedom advocates can learn from earlier generations of women who stressed the rights of women before Roe. 

• 
• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  3/24/2023
  

  Rep. Patricia Schroeder's Career Shows Real Effects of Electing More Women

  by Sarah B. Rowley

  Policymakers have too often ignored women's lived experiences in many areas when legislating. The late Congresswoman from Colorado showed how those experiences could be represented. 

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  3/25/2023
  

  Florida Legislation Recalls the Tragic History behind Fights for Sex Education

  Legislation that would bar discussion of menstruation in Florida schools will likely put girls at risk of emotional distress when their periods begin. Historians stress that women have always sought this information despite stigmas against providing it. 

• 
• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  3/22/2023
  

  Nikki Haley's Campaign May Capitalize on Gender Stereotypes, but at a Cost to Women

  by Jacqueline Beatty

  The former South Carolina governor and UN Ambassador is seeking to separate herself from other conservatives by leaning into certain gendered stereotypes; this reinforces the idea that women leaders are fundamentally different, which has historically kept women from equal political footing. 

• 
• SOURCE: Nursing Clio
  3/22/2023
  

  History of Reproductive Law Shows Women in Power aren't the Solution

  by Lara Friedenfelds

  The end of Roe v. Wade makes difficult pregnancies and miscarriages potentially legaly perilous for women. The history of how the law determines fault in a lost pregnancy shows that women are as capable as men of participating in a regime that punishes other women for the ends of their pregnancies. 

• 
• SOURCE: NPR
  3/22/2023
  

  The Women of the Montgomery Bus Boycott

  "It felt like Harriet Tubman's hands were pushing me down on one shoulder and Sojourner Truth's hand on me pushed me down on another one. History had me glued to the seat." – Claudette Colvin

• 
• SOURCE: Nursing Clio
  3/15/2023
  

  "If they were White and Insured, Would they have Died?"

  by Udodiri R. Okwandu

  Texas's new maternal mortality report shows that historical patterns of medical racism are continuing, and the state plans to do little but blame Black women for the inadequate care they receive. 

• 
• SOURCE: Slate
  3/14/2023
  

  Texas's Abortion Ban Can Never be Made Humane

  by Mary Ziegler

  When abortion access depends on establishing that a pregnant woman deserves an exception to a ban, the law will inevitably prevent doctors from serving patients with problem pregnancies. 

• 
• SOURCE: WNYC
  3/14/2023
  

  Anastasia Curwood on Shirley Chisholm's Childhood Heroes

  Born in Barbados, Shirley Chisholm moved to Brooklyn as a child. Her biographer discusses how her childhood heroes shaped her political worldview.