"Women's Rights in the USA is a rigorous examination of the intersection of gender roles and public policy and a survey of the feminist debates that complicate and frame U.S. law, statutes, and court decision. The third edition includes updated and expanded information pertaining to recent debates, legislation, and court decisions on affirmative action, equal protection, welfare reform, and sexuality, especially lesbian politics and violence against women."--BOOK JACKET.

This book chronicles the dawn of the global movement for women's rights in the first decades of the twentieth century. The founding mothers of this movement were not based primarily in the United States, however, or in Europe. Instead, Katherine M. Marino introduces readers to a cast of remarkable Latin American and Caribbean women whose deep friendships and intense rivalries forged global feminism out of an era of imperialism, racism, and fascism. Six dynamic activists form the heart of this story: from Brazil, Bertha Lutz; from Cuba, Ofelia Domingez Navarro; from Uruguay, Paulina Luisi; from Panama, Clara Gonzalez; from Chile, Marta Vergara; and from the United States, Doris Stevens. This Pan-American network drove a transnational movement that advocated women's suffrage, equal pay for equal work, maternity rights, and broader self-determination. Their painstaking efforts led to the enshrinement of women's rights in the United Nations Charter and the development of a framework for international human rights. But their work also revealed deep divides, with Latin American activists overcoming U.S. presumptions to feminist superiority. As Marino shows, these early fractures continue to influence divisions among today's activists along class, racial, and national lines. Marino's multinational and multilingual research yields a new narrative for the creation of global feminism. The leading women introduced here were forerunners in understanding the power relations at the heart of international affairs. Their drive to enshrine fundamental rights for women, children, and all people of the world stands as a testament to what can be accomplished when global thinking meets local action.

The 125 historical documents in this unique volume bring to life the triumphs, disappointments, and enduring contributions of women's struggle for equal rights in America. This work also reveals often-surprising sources of opposition, such as Abraham Lincoln and the U.S. Supreme Court. Organized into five chronological periods, the documents provide a flavor for the time period in which they were written. Each period and each document is preceded by an explanatory introduction that puts it in historical context. A chronology of significant dates in the history of American women's rights, a topically organized bibliography, and a list of women's organizations for further information completes the work.

In Women’s Rights in the USA, Fourth Edition, Dorothy E. McBride again examines the policy debates critical to women in politics. Tracing the development of these debates over time in order to illustrate their historical context, McBride shows how these issues have evolved and how they have led to the policies and laws of today. She also examines the evolving attitudes of the feminists and advocacy groups behind these debates as they grapple with the tensions between the themes of equality and sex difference as they relate to women’s rights. The book also looks at women’s place in shaping the policies, statutes, and laws—from "liberal" activists to policy insiders—and how those roles shape the debates and issues that move forward today. In a broader context, by following these debates as they move through government institutions to become policies and laws, this book shows students the law-making process through issues that directly affect their lives. Of crucial significance is the acknowledgement that these debates do not end when court decisions, policies, and laws are made, but continue on to foster further movements, viewpoints, and political change. This fourth edition features updates on the most vital issues concerning women’s rights today: constitutional equality, reproduction, education, family, work, work & family, regulation and intimidation of sexuality, and economic status.

Women's Rights in the United States: A History in Documents uses a diverse collection of documents - including manifestoes, letters, diaries, cartoons, broadsides, legal and court records, poems, satires, advertisements, petitions, photographs, leaflets, maps, posters, autobiographies, andnewspapers - to examine major themes in the history of women's rights and women's rights movements in the U.S. The documents encompass the experiences of women from a wide range of racial, ethnic, class, economic, sexual, marital, and social groups. The book covers such topics as organized social movements; changing definitions of rights and different women's access to rights; divisions among women within women's rights movements; global contexts for women's rights activism; and the question of what it means for women and men to be "equal."Each chapter includes an introductory essay, and each document has a headnote or long caption. A picture essay illuminates how both suffragists and anti-suffragists employed cartooning to articulate their political positions.

The Woman Suffrage Movement in the United States presents important moments and participants in the history of the American suffrage movement, ranging from the mid-nineteenth century through the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. The book highlights the many participants in the suffrage movement, including well-known leaders, lesser-known activists, major national organizations, and local efforts across the country. An array of perspectives is examined: the garment factory worker working for protective labor laws, the wealthy wife hoping to control her inheritance, the Black activist seeking voting power for her community, and the temperance worker wanting to vote for prohibition laws. The volume examines the crucial activism of Black suffragists and other women of color, as well as the fraught nature of the cross-racial coalition in the movement. The broad and accessible approach to this important period in history will enable students to consider questions such as: How could suffragists overcome their differences and build community? Were wealthy women who funded salaries, headquarters, and parades afforded more power? What tactics and strategies did suffragists utilize to lobby legislators and win over the public? How did suffragists and anti-suffragists wield racism as a political tactic both in support of and against the Nineteenth Amendment? How and when did women of color finally achieve the right to vote? Students will also be able to consider lessons from the suffrage movement for an inclusive feminist movement today. This book will be of interest to students and scholars in US women’s history, the history of the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era, and those interested in the histories of social movements.