womens rights

Throwing Away the “Electability” Argument

by Matthew Crawford

There is no historical basis for the idea that women and minority candidates aren’t electable.

Historians Raise Concerns Over Central Park’s Suffragist Monument

“If Sojourner Truth is added,” the letter reads, “it could obscure the substantial differences between white and black suffrage activists, and would be misleading.”

The U.S. Constitution Doesn’t Guarantee Equal Rights for Women. Here’s Why

Here’s what to know about Equal Rights Amendment history, what could happen to it next and how it could change American society.

10 Things To Check Out At the Library of Congress’s New Exhibit on Women’s Suffrage

by Andrew Fletcher

Highlights from the exhibit on women's suffrage at the Library of Congress. 

Women Have Fought to Legalize Reproductive Rights for Nearly Two Centuries

by Lauren MacIvor Thompson

The efforts of the second-wave feminist movement transformed older ideas of voluntary motherhood, which asserted that women both didn’t have to have sex or be pregnant, into the more radical notion that women could enjoy sex without fear of becoming pregnant.  

American Women Fought for Suffrage for 70 Years. It Took WWI to Finally Achieve It

World War I helped women around the world get the vote.

How racism almost killed women’s right to vote

by Kimberly A. Hamlin

Women’s suffrage required two constitutional amendments, not one.

19th Amendment guaranteeing women the right to vote was passed 100 years ago today

Since the 19th Amendment's passage, women have helped inaugurate a new era of American politics.

Women of color were cut out of the suffragist story. Historians say it’s time for a reckoning.

The story we remember this week — celebrating the 100th anniversary of Congress passing the suffrage amendment — ignores women of color and their contribution to the movement’s success.

What the Fugitive Slave Law Can Teach Us About Anti-Abortion Legislation

by Ed Simon

As the Fugitive Slave Act was motivated by an inhuman racism, so are these new laws mandating forced pregnancy defined by hideous misogyny.

It’s time to stop viewing pregnant women as threats to their babies

by Kathleen Crowther

How Georgia is continuing a centuries-long tradition, and why it must stop.

It’s time to return black women to the center of the history of women’s suffrage

by Susan Ware

Erased by white suffragists, black women’s work was vital to the fight for women’s rights.

Immigration, Race, and Women’s Rights, 1919 and Today

by Arnold R. Isaacs

The comparison couldn’t, in many ways, be grimmer or more telling. 

Women in Ancient Rome Didn’t Have Equal Rights. They Still Changed History

by Barry Strauss

If we look hard at the history, we discover some women who made their mark, either working within their prescribed gender roles as wives, lovers, mothers, sisters or daughters, or exercising so much political, religious or, even in a few cases, military power that they smashed those roles altogether and struck out on their own. 

Long before #MeToo, women in many parts of the world organized successful campaigns against sexual violence

by Alka Kurian

Women in countries such as India, Pakistan and others have long organized successful campaigns against sexual harassment.

What the Hell Is Going on With the Women’s March?

Tablet magazine has published a 10,000-plus-word investigation detailing allegations of antisemitism against Women’s March organizers.

Lots of People Won New Rights in the 1960s, but Not College Women Athletes

by John Thelin

Although the 1960s has been celebrated as a period of concern for equity and social justice, colleges showed scant concern for women as student-athletes.

What this graph shows about women's suffrage

And why it's so shocking. 

Hillary Clinton to executive produce TV drama on women’s suffrage with Spielberg

"The Woman's Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote," by Elaine Weiss, which its publisher calls an "inspiring story of activists winning their own freedom in one of the last campaigns forged in the shadow of the Civil War, and the beginning of the great twentieth-century battles for civil rights" - will be adapted into either a TV movie or a limited series.

How the devastating 1918 flu pandemic helped advance US women’s rights

by Christine Crudo Blackburn, Gerald W. Parker and Morten Wendelbo

By disproportionately affecting young men, the virus,  in combination with World War I, created a shortage of labor  –  filled by women.