Suffrage at 100: Women in American Politics since 1920

by Stacie Taranto (Editor), Leandra Zarnow (Editor)

Overview

Suffrage at 100 looks at women's engagement in US electoral politics and government over the one hundred years since the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment.

In the 2018 midterm elections, 102 women were elected to the House and 14 to the Senate--a record for both bodies. And yet nearly a century after the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, the notion of congressional gender parity by 2020--a stated goal of the National Women's Political Caucus at the time of its founding in 1971--remains a distant ideal. In Suffrage at 100, Stacie Taranto and Leandra Zarnow bring together twenty-two scholars to take stock of women's engagement in electoral politics over the past one hundred years.

This is the first wide-ranging collection to historically examine women's full political engagement in and beyond electoral office since they gained a constitutional right to vote. The book explores why women's access to, and influence on, political power remains frustratingly uneven, particularly for women of color and queer women. Examining how women have acted collectively and individually, both within and outside of electoral and governmental channels, the book moves from the front lines of community organizing to the highest glass ceiling. Essays touch on

- labor and civil rights
- education
- environmentalism
- enfranchisement and voter suppression
- conservatism vs. liberalism
- indigeneity and transnationalism
- LGBTQ and personal politics
- Pan-Asian, Chicana, and black feminisms
- commemoration and public history
- and much more.

Contributors: Melissa Estes Blair, Eileen Boris, Marisela R. Chávez, Claire Delahaye, Nicole Eaton, Liette Gidlow, Holly Miowak Guise (Iñupiaq), Emily Suzanne Johnson, Dean J. Kotlowski, Monica L. Mercado, Johanna Neuman, Kathleen Banks Nutter, Katherine Parkin, Ellen G. Rafshoon, Bianca Rowlett, Sarah B. Rowley, Ana Stevenson, Barbara Winslow, Judy Tzu-Chun Wu, Nancy Beck Young

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781421438689
Publisher:	Johns Hopkins University Press
Publication date:	08/04/2020
Pages:	472
Sales rank:	972,948
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.13(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Stacie Taranto is an associate professor of history at Ramapo College of New Jersey. She is the author of Kitchen Table Politics: Conservative Women and Family Values in New York. Leandra Zarnow is an assistant professor of history and affiliated faculty in the Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program at the University of Houston. She is the author of Battling Bella: The Protest Politics of Bella Abzug.

Table of Contents

Introduction. From Voting Power to Political Power Stacie Taranto Leandra Zarnow 1

1 A History of Women in American Politics and the Enduring Male Political Citizenship Ideal Stacie Taranto Leandra Zarnow 11

Part I Voting Rights Real and Imagined: Women's Political Engagement in the Decades after Suffrage, 1920s-1950s

2 Commemorating the History of the Nineteenth Amendment 59

The National Woman's Party and the Politics of Memory in the 1920s Claire Delahaye

3 After the "Century of Struggle" 75

The Nineteenth Amendment, Southern African American Women, and the Problem of Female Disenfranchisement after 1920 Liette Gidlow

4 "My Money's on the Mare" 91

Lessons from the 1930 US Senate Campaign of Ruth Hanna McCormick Johanna Neuman

5 "A Dead Husband Is a Better Ticket to Congress Than a Log Cabin" 111

The Public Discourse of Widows in Office, 1920-1940 Katherine Parkin

6 Beyond the New Deal Network 127

Mary Elizabeth Switzer at the Federal Security Agency, 1939-1945 Dean J. Kotlowski

7 Elizabeth Peratrovich, the Alaska Native Sisterhood, and Indigenous Women's Activism, 1943-1947 Holly Miowak Guise 147

8 "These Men Have Such Dominant Positions" 165

The Women's Committee for Educational Freedom and the Gendered Battle for Liberalism in the 1940s Nancy Beck Young

9 "I Have Talked to You Not as Women but as American Citizens" 183

The Gender Ideology of Presidential Campaigns, 1940-1956 Melissa Estes Blair

Part II Women's Political Leadership Takes Shape: Reform and Reaction, 1960s-1980s

10 From Suffragist to Congresswoman 201

Celebrating Political Action, Women's History, and Feminist Intellectuals in Ms. Magazine, 1972-1984 Ana Stevenson

11 "You Know Where I Stand" 221

Louise Day Hicks, and the Politics of Race, Class, and Gender, 1963-1975 Kathleen Banks Nutter

12 On the Shirley Chisholm Trail 237

The Legacy of Suffrage and Citizenship Engagement Barbara Winslow

13 Envisioning the National Women's Conference 257

Patsy Takemoto Mink and Pacific Feminism Judy Tzu-Chun Wu

14 Married Congresswomen and the New Breed of Political Husbands in 1970s Political Culture Sarah B. Rowley

15 Madame Ambassador 297

Jeane J. Kirkpatrick and Global Diplomacy Bianca Rowlett

Part III Looking Toward a New Century

Women in Politics, 1990s-2010s

16 Palin versus Clinton 317

Feminism, Womanhood, and the 2008 Presidential Election Emily Suzanne Johnson

17 Tribute Politics 335

How Feminist History Became a Reference Point in the 2016 Election Nicole Eaton

18 Rooted in Community 359

The Scholarship of Chicana Political Leadership and Activism Marisela R. Chávez

19 Pave It Blue 377

Georgia Women and Politics in the Trump Era Ellen G. Rafshoon

20 Putting Women on a Pedestal 395

Monument Debates in the Era of the Suffrage Centennial Monica L. Mercado

21 Toward a New New Deal … and the Women Will Lead Eileen Boris 415

Acknowledgments 435

Contributors 437

Index 443

What People are Saying About This

Kathryn Cramer Brownell

This is the book we need in 2020. For far too long, political history narratives have cast a white and male gaze on the field, relegating women to the sidelines of politics and history. This book shows the intellectual payoff and political necessity of reclaiming women's place in both.

Martha S. Jones

Suffrage at 100 recognizes that no single story can tell the whole of women's rise to power. From battles for the Equal Rights Amendment and against Jim Crow to a woman at the head of the Democratic ticket, this cutting-edge team of researchers and storytellers brings today's tensions between gender and power into sharp and illuminating focus.

Marjorie J. Spruill

Full of interesting and topically varied essays, this impressive book is a welcome start at remedying the serious neglect of women in political history.

Susan Ware

This insightful and wide-ranging collection highlights women's myriad contributions to modern political life since 1920 alongside women's ongoing challenges in their quest for full equality.

From the Publisher

Full of interesting and topically varied essays, this impressive book is a welcome start at remedying the serious neglect of women in political history.
—Marjorie J. Spruill, author of Divided We Stand: The Battle Over Women's Rights and Family Values That Polarized American Politics

This insightful and wide-ranging collection highlights women's myriad contributions to modern political life since 1920 alongside women's ongoing challenges in their quest for full equality.
—Susan Ware, author of Why They Marched: Untold Stories of the Women Who Fought for the Right to Vote

This is the book we need in 2020. For far too long, political history narratives have cast a white and male gaze on the field, relegating women to the sidelines of politics and history. This book shows the intellectual payoff and political necessity of reclaiming women's place in both.
—Kathryn Cramer Brownell, author of Showbiz Politics: Hollywood in American Political Life

Suffrage at 100 recognizes that no single story can tell the whole of women's rise to power. From battles for the Equal Rights Amendment and against Jim Crow to a woman at the head of the Democratic ticket, this cutting-edge team of researchers and storytellers brings today's tensions between gender and power into sharp and illuminating focus.
—Martha S. Jones, Johns Hopkins University, author of Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All