History of

Women in America
• Education b2 MARCH 2019
November 2018
 History of
Women in America

In this study guide you will find:

The course overview, which briefly describes the expected outcomes of
the course and the materials necessary to participate. There is also a weekly
outcome overview, which details the weekly reading assignments.
The textbook review along with review questions, which includes a
compendium of many of the key concepts covered in the course, as they
are presented – chapter by chapter - in the course’s required textbook, A
Concise Women’s History by Buhle, Murphy & Gerhard.
4 History of Women in America

Course Description
This course examines the dynamics of power in the U.S., between women and men and
among women themselves. This history spans from the first cultural contact between
indigenous peoples and Europeans in the 15th century to the new globalism of the 21st
century. The overall purpose is to explore the frame in which how relationships among
women were determined by differences of race, ethnicity, class, age, region, or religion—
keeping diversity as the central factor in the history of women and gender.

COURSE Objectives
After taking this course, students will be able to:
»» Understand the dynamics of power in the U.S between women and men.
»» Explain how relationships among women were determined by differences of
race, ethnicity, class, age, region, or religion.
»» Recognize diversity as the central factor in the history of women and gender.
»» Understand the changing role of women from an historical perspective within the
framework of U.S. history.

Important Information
Textbook: A Concise Women’s History 1st Edition
Mari Jo Buhle, Teresa Murphy, Jane Gerhard 
Pearson, 2014

ISBN-13: 978-0205905935
ISBN-10: 0205905935
Amazon Link

Expectations of this course

History of Women in America is a self-study course of 15 weekly lessons. Students
are expected to complete the weekly readings in the textbook below along with the
textbook review below. The final examination alone determines the student’s grade in
the course.

COURSE DETAILS
EXAMS
   Course Descriptio 5

The course grade is based solely on a final examination that consists of following
sections:

Question Type Quantity Percentage

Multiple Choice 50 75% of grade

Short Answer 10 out of 15 25% of grade

6 History of Women in America

Weekly Course Objectives

DATE WEEKLY READING TOPIC/OBJECTIVES
ASSIGNMENTS

WEEK 1 CHAPTER 1 | WORLDS • What were the different roles of early Native American
APART women?
Pages 1-21 • What was the place of women in the political and
economic order of early modern Europe?
CHAPTER 2 | CONTACT • How was women’s work tied to social organization in
AND CONQUEST Africa in years before contact?
Pages 22-47 • How were different ideas about women and gender
important in the early years of contact among Africans,
Europeans, and North Americans?
• How did women shape the settlement of New Spain?
• How were Native American women central to the
political and economic structure of New France?
• How did patriarchy and slavery emerge together in the
Chesapeake region?
• How did family structure and the status of women
evolve in New England?

WEEK 2 CHAPTER 3 | • How were women affected by the market revolution of

EIGHTEENTH- the eighteenth century?
CENTURY • How did women challenge patriarchal authority in the
REVOLUTIONS eighteenth century?
Pages 48-76 • How did women participate in the American
Revolution?
CHAPTER 4 | • What were the ideals of republican womanhood?
FRONTIERS OF TRADE • How did the power of women within their households
AND EMPIRE change in different Indian groups as a result of trade
Pages 77-103 with the British and Anglo- Americans?
• How were women affected by changing laws of slavery
and freedom as control of the Louisiana Territory
shifted from France to Spain and then to the United
States?
• What were the different ways that women created
households in the western frontiers of Texas, New
Mexico, and California?
   Weekly Course Objective 7

DATE WEEKLY READING TOPIC/OBJECTIVES

ASSIGNMENTS

WEEK 3 CHAPTER 5 | • How were women’s lives affected by industrialization?

DOMESTIC • How did the market create work for women in the
ECONOMIES AND cities and their hinterlands?
NORTHERN LIVES • What did it mean to be a middle-class woman in the
Pages 104-129 antebellum North?
• How did race and ethnicity affect a woman’s home life?
CHAPTER 6 | FAMILY • What were the domestic ideals expressed in popular
BUSINESS: SLAVERY plays and novels?
AND PATRIARCHY • How did slavery shape the life of African American
Pages 130-154 women?
• What issues did white women confront on plantations?
• How did poorer black and white women struggle to
maintain independence?
• How did southern women represent their
experiences?

WEEK 4 CHAPTER 7 | RELIGON • How did women participate in religious activities

AND REFORM during the antebellum period?
Pages 155-183 • How were different religious practices related to
different ideas about women’s authority?
CHAPTER 8 | • What were the debates about the relationship of
POLITICAL POWER: women to property in the antebellum period?
THE MOVEMENT FOR • How was “woman’s sphere” expanding in the
WOMEN’S RIGHTS antebellum period?
Pages 184-211 • What was the nature of the woman’s rights movement
in the 1850s?
8 History of Women in America

DATE WEEKLY READING TOPIC/OBJECTIVES

ASSIGNMENTS

WEEK 5 CHAPTER 9 | • How did women in the North respond to the outbreak
THE CIVIL WAR of the Civil War?
Pages 212-236 • On the battlefront, in what ways did women transgress
the bounds of femininity?
CHAPTER 10 | • What were the particular hardships endured by
IN THE AGE OF SLAVE Confederate women?
EMANCIPATION • How did women help to shape the memory of the Civil
Pages 237-262 War and its place in American history?
• How did Reconstruction policies affect black and white
households in the South?
• What were the major issues facing the post-bellum
woman’s rights movement?
• How did the debates about women’s wage earning
intersect with discussions of marriage?
• In what ways did the temperance campaign challenge
male authority within the family?

WEEK 6 CHAPTER 11 | • How did the skewed sex ratio on the range and mining
THE TRANS- frontier affect the position of women?
MISSISSIPPI WEST • How did gender relations among Mormons differ from
Pages 263-288 those of other settlers?
• What were the effects of incorporation on Spanish-
CHAPTER 12 | speaking women?
NEW WOMEN • How did men and women distribute the work of
Pages 289-313 managing a household on the plains?
• What was the impact of the Dawes Severalty Act on
the status of Indian women?
• How did the increasing pace of industrial growth affect
women’s role in the nation’s cities?
• What factors account for the differing experiences
among new immigrant women?
• How did race and racism affect the working lives of
women in the New South?
• Which professions proved to be the most amenable to
women’s advancement?
• How did new patterns of consumption affect the role
of middle-class women in the home?
   Weekly Course Objective 9

DATE WEEKLY READING TOPIC/OBJECTIVES

ASSIGNMENTS

Week 7 CHAPTER 13 | • What strategies did various women’s organizations

THE WOMAN develop to address the needs of wage-earning
MOVEMENT women?
Pages 314-339 • What federation improve the ability of organized
women to wage their campaigns?
CHAPTER 14 | • Lacking the vote, how did women participate in the
THE NEW MORALITY great political campaigns of the 1890s?
Pages 340-365 • What role did women play in the missionary
movements of the late nineteenth century?
• Why were working-class women at the forefront in
changing sexual relations at the turn of the century?
• What was the relationship between changes in hetero-
and homosocial relations?
• What efforts were advanced to effect new controls on
sexual relationships?
• How and why did women seek to limit their fertility?
• What is the relationship between the new morality and
feminism?

WEEK 8 CHAPTER 15 | • How did women transform their domestic concerns

THE PROGRESSIVE into public issues?
ERA • What role did cross-class alliances play during the
Pages 366-393 Progressive Era?
CHAPTER 16 | • What impact did “maternalism” have on progressive
THE JAZZ AGE reform?
Pages 394-445 • What changes did World War I bring to American
women?
• How did women finally win the right to vote?
• How did courtship, marriage, and family life change in
the 1920s?
• How did women’s work change in the 1920s?
• How did winning the vote affect women’s political
activism?
• What role did consumer culture play in the new ideas
of women in the 1920s?
• In what ways did women’s activism express the
tension between traditional and modern notions of
womanhood?
10 History of Women in America

DATE WEEKLY READING TOPIC/OBJECTIVES

ASSIGNMENTS

WEEK 9 CHAPTER 17 | • How did family life change during the 1930s?
THE GREAT • How did working-class women participate in the labor
DEPRESSION movement?
Pages 420-445 • What impact did women have on the New Deal?
• In what ways did the Depression constitute a crisis of
masculinity?

WEEK 10 CHAPTER 18 | • What effects did World War II have on American

WORLD WAR II HOME women’s work lives?
FRONTS • How did the war change American family life?
Pages 446- 471 • How did minority women experience the war, and what
were their experiences?
• How did women serve in the military during the war?

WEEK 11 CHAPTER 19 | • How did women’s paid work change during the 1950s?
THE FEMININE • How did the Cold War affect domestic life?
MYSTIQUE • How did families change in the 1950s?
Pages 472-494 • How did the experiences of teenage women differ
from those of teenage men?

WEEK 10 CHAPTER 20 | • What role did women play in the civil rights movement?
CIVIL RIGHTS AND • How did women’s role in the civil rights movement
LIBERAL ACTIVISM change?
Pages 495-519 • How did women use the government to promote
equality for them?

WEEK 13 CHAPTER 21 | • What aspects of women’s lives did the sexual

THE PERSONAL IS revolution change?
POLITICAL • What motivated young women into feminism?
Pages 520-546 • What set radical feminism apart from other social
movements?
• How did women’s work change in these year?
   Weekly Course Objective 11

DATE WEEKLY READING TOPIC/OBJECTIVES

ASSIGNMENTS

WEEK 14 CHAPTER 22 | • What role did women play in the conservative

ENDINGS AND movement?
BEGINNINGS • How did anxiety about changing gender roles and
Pages 547-569 sexual morality shape conservative activism?
• How was immigration after 1980 similar to and
different from earlier eras?

WEEK 15 CHAPTER 1-22 | • Understand the dynamics of power in the U.S between
STUDY GUIDE REVIEW women and men.
****EXAM**** • Explain how relationships among women were
determined by differences of race, ethnicity, class, age,
region, or religion.
• Recognize diversity as the central factor in the history
of women and gender.
12 History of Women in America

History of Women in America

This textbook review offers an overview of the textbook with chapter objectives, key
terms, summaries, and review questions.

Chapter 1:
Worlds Apart, to 1700

Chapter Learning Objectives

»» What were the different roles of early Native American women?
»» What was the place of women in the political and economic order of early
modern Europe?
»» How was women’s work tied to social organization in Africa in years before
contact?
»» How were different ideas about women and gender important in the early years
of contact among Africans, Europeans, and North Americans?

Key Terms/Topics
––Polygamy ––Feme covert
––Black death ––Feme sole
––Patriarchal order ––Sovereigns
––Coverture ––Shaman

Chapter Summary
The slave trade, along with the decimation of the Native American populations,
constituted the most devastating results of the contact that began to unfold in the
sixteenth century. As Europeans, Africans, and Native Americans intermingled the
consequences were social as well as physical. Household arrangements, key to the
social organization of societies on all three continents, varied greatly, as did the place
of women within these households. In some Native American societies, women exercised
tremendous power. In both Africa and the Americas, women were often the farmers.
In Europe, their rights to own property varied depending on whether their countries
followed common law or Roman law. In Africa, women could be held as slaves but not
necessarily for their entire lives. When new households were forged in the Americas
   History of Women in America 13

following contact, these different conventions collided and evolved as families continued
to be crucial building blocks of the new frontier. As a result, women were key players in
the age of discovery that was unfolding.

Review Questions
1. Which laws addressed whether or not women could own property in Europe?
Common law or Roman law
2. Who was more important during African slavery—women or men?
Women
3. In Africa, could women be held as slaves their entire lives?
No

Chapter 2:
Contact and Conquest, 1500-1700

Chapter Learning Objectives

»» How did women shape the settlement of New Spain?
»» How were Native American women central to the political and economic
structure of New France?
»» How did patriarchy and slavery emerge together in the Chesapeake region?
»» How did family structure and the status of women evolve in New England?

Key Terms/Topics
––Indenture servants ––Mestizo
––Tobacco brides ––Castas
––Deputy husbands ––Coureurs de bois

Chapter Summary
By the end of the seventeenth century, colonial societies had developed throughout
the New World with the Spanish, French, and British, in particular, facing off against one
another and struggling with the Native American groups who had survived disease and
warfare. In some cases, women were key cultural brokers, uniting different societies
through their marriages and sexual relationships. Their households were expansive, as
14 History of Women in America

they facilitated production and trade as well as providing models of government. These
were forms of social organization that would continue to be vital in the eighteenth
century, though as the colonial political order matured, both the household and the
place of women within it faced reassessment.

Review Questions
1. What religion affected the status of women in the New World?
Christianity
2. Who was so important as cultural go-betweens in the New World?
Women

Chapter 3:
Eighteenth-Century Revolution, 1700-1800

Chapter Learning Objectives

»» How were women affected by the market revolution of the eighteenth century?
»» How did women challenge patriarchal authority in the eighteenth century?
»» How did women participate in the American Revolution?
»» What were the ideals of republican womanhood?

Key Terms/Topics
––Loyalist ––Virtuous Wives

Chapter Summary
The eighteenth century truly had been an age of revolution for women. Consumer
goods and a lively market economy had transformed their lives as both producers and
consumers. Family life had changed as patriarchal authority was challenged on numerous
levels, both small and grand, and a new republic of rights had been established. But,
the tradition of rights for men was different from the one established for women. For
men, the tradition of natural rights had opened the door to political access and debates
about equality. For women, however, rights were rooted in a very different tradition,
one premised on inequality and the need for women to exercise their rights within
   History of Women in America 15

their homes, not in public. This tradition of difference would define the debates about
women’s political status for the next two centuries.

Review Questions
1. What changed the way women lived in the eighteenth century?
Market Revolution
2. What was important to British colonial families?
Challenges to patriarchal authority
3. What period marked an era for the growth of women’s political consciousness?
The Revolutionary period
4. Did women gain power as a result of the Revolution?
No

Chapter 4:
Frontiers of Trade and Empire, 1750-1860

Chapter Learning Objectives

»» How did the power of women within their households change in different Indian
groups as a result of trade with the British and Anglo- Americans?
»» How were women affected by changing laws of slavery and freedom as control
of the Louisiana Territory shifted from France to Spain and then to the United
States?
»» What were the different ways that women created households in the western
frontiers of Texas, New Mexico, and California?

Key Terms/Topics
––Libre ––Bond marriages
––Manumission ––Neophytes
––Coartacion

Chapter Summary
By the early 1850s, the United States spread from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific
Ocean. The process of incorporating territories that had been dominated by the
16 History of Women in America

French and Spanish, as well as many Indian tribes, was fought not only in battles but
negotiated in households as well. The place of the household within the larger political
order mattered, as did a woman’s status within a family, her choice of marriage partners,
and her ability to inherit and control property. Not surprising, then, was the fact that
women in different frontier regions found their places within their homes shifting with
the demands of trade and politics.
Household ideals were important not only on the frontier but also in the lives of all
women in early nineteenth-century America. Women in the North and the South also
had to confront key differences in their household structures. As the new government
of the United States expanded, they also had to confront both the extent and the limits
of their household authority in a world in which democratic political participation was
becoming increasingly important.

Review Questions
1. Which Indian tribe of women confronted the changes to their households as a
result of contact and trade with the British and the Americans?
Seneca, Shawnee, and Cherokee
2. What were African women and Indian women were affected by as control of the
Louisiana Territory shifted from France to Spain and then to the United States?
Changing laws of slavery and freedom
3. What affected women as they settled the frontiers of Texas, New Mexico, and
California?
Spanish laws of property

Chapter 5:
Domestic Economies and Northern Lives, 1800-1860

Chapter Learning Objectives

»» How were women’s lives affected by industrialization?
»» How did the market create work for women in the cities and their hinterlands?
»» What did it mean to be a middle-class woman in the antebellum North?
»» How did race and ethnicity affect a woman’s home life?
»» What were the domestic ideals expressed in popular plays and novels?
   History of Women in America 17

Key Terms/Topics
––War of 1812 ––Antebellum period
––Eric Canal ––Separate sphere
––Family-wage economy ––Pessaries

Chapter Summary
The early stages of the Industrial Revolution, along with the growth of transportation
networks and urban centers, opened up a new world of material goods in the United
States. It also changed the way men and women in the North worked and, consequently,
the way in which they related to one another. The family relationships of the colonial
period, rooted in shared economic as well as social activities, steadily crumbled in the
new world of market relations. Employers looked to women wageworkers for cheap
labor that would boost their profit margins. In some cases, this brought economic
opportunity to young women who had few alternatives on their family farms. For other
women, their earnings were far from sufficient to feed their children without additional
income from other family members. Yet, even as women took on these new forms of wage
work, the very idea of women working came under attack in the domestic literature that
circulated, particularly among the new middle class. The cult of domesticity increasingly
associated women’s virtue with the emotional work of rearing their children. This
ideology of a separate sphere, which was celebrated in the literature of the day, masked
the economic value of the work that many middle-class women did at the same time that
it cast suspicion on the morals of the many women who took on wage work to support
themselves or their families. Yet, the middle-class home and the factory were products
of the same economic transformation that was changing the place of women in northern
society; and in both places women often were asserting themselves, either morally or
economically, in new ways. Some women found independence in their wages while other
women found new power in the moral influence they wielded in their homes.

Review Questions
1. What was limited when women worked for wages?
Their independence
2. Which revolution was shaped the notion of separate spheres?
The Industrial Revolution
3. Which class of people did the cult of domesticity shape?
The middle class
18 History of Women in America

Chapter 6:
Family Business: Slavery and Patriarchy,
1800-1860

Chapter Learning Objectives

»» How did slavery shape the life of African American women?
»» What issues did white women confront on plantations?
»» How did poorer black and white women struggle to maintain independence?
»» How did southern women represent their experiences?

Key Terms/Topics
––The plantation mistress ––Task system
––Belles ––Gang system
––Yeoman farmers ––Trash gangs
––Truancy ––Big House
––Jezebel

Chapter Summary
Women in the antebellum South experienced the early Industrial Revolution and
growing market economy in the United States primarily through agricultural activities
rather than through industrial production and commercial transactions. With their
homes continuing and sometimes expanding traditions of household industry, even
elite women engaged the cult of domesticity differently than did their counterparts in
the North. While celebrating their roles as nurturers, they did not fully embrace their
homes as “separate spheres.” A planter’s wife needed to recognize her husband as
master of a household that extended beyond the big house and into the slave quarters.
Women in the more modest dwellings of yeoman farmers believed the well-being of
their families lay in economic independence and the productivity of their land, so this
was where they focused their energies. Slave women, of course, provided the antithesis:
lives without land; without legal control of their bodies, children, or families; and without
the same protection of the law that was afforded white women. Working within these
constraints, slave women constructed social networks to protect their families as best
they could and, in fashioning their domestic worlds, demonstrated both resourcefulness
and independence. Whether slave or free, black or white, southern women experienced
   History of Women in America 19

gender in ways that were different from women in the North, and these differences
were central to the ways in which the two regions increasingly defined their societies as
different from one another.

Review Questions
1. Where did slavery affect ideals of womanhood? The North or the South?
The South
2. What type of control did patriarchy operate as a system of?
Racial control and sexual control
3. What TWO things did women in the more modest dwellings of yeoman farmers
believe the well-being of their families lie in?
Economic independence and the productivity of their land

Chapter 7:
Religion and Reform, 1800-1860

Chapter Learning Objectives

»» How did women participate in religious activities during the antebellum period?
»» How were different religious practices related to different ideas about women’s
authority?

Key Terms/Topics
––Guerrilla Warfare ––Woman Combatants and Spies
––Official Confederate Attitudes ––Nurses
––Southern Refugees ––Female Employment
––Westward Emigration ––Changing Status of Women

Chapter Summary
Many of the different strands of social activism that had been created in the 1830s
and 1840s would reconfigure around demands for women’s rights in the 1850s. While
many women had taken up moral reform activities with the intention of saving souls
and maintaining a stable family life, they, like other activist women, created a variety
of public roles for themselves. The ideals of republican womanhood that developed
20 History of Women in America

in the wake of the Revolution had assumed that women would demonstrate their civic
consciousness within their homes by influencing their sons and husbands, and the cult
of domesticity had reinforced that belief. However, through their participation in a wide
variety of religious and reform movements in the antebellum period, women had be-
gun to directly and collectively address a wide range of social, political, and economic
issues. These activities necessarily provoked questions and debates about their “natural
sphere,” debates that were central to the emerging women’s movement.

Review Questions
1. Did religion empower women?
Yes
2. Which religious group of women exercised some form of power?
Catholic women, Jewish women, and Protestant women
3. What TWO things were affected by reshaping sexual practices, drinking, and
eating?
Family structure and household authority
4. What of movement were women involved in?
Social and political

Chapter 8:
Politics and Power:
The Movement for Woman’s Rights, 1800-1860

Chapter Learning Objectives

»» What were the debates about the relationship of women to property in the
antebellum period?
»» How was “woman’s sphere” expanding in the antebellum period?
»» What was the nature of the woman’s rights movement in the 1850s?

Key Terms/Topics
––Communitarian experiences ––Phalanxes
––Owenites ––Socialist
––Fourierists ––Panic of 1837
   History of Women in America 21

Chapter Summary
The woman’s rights movement of the 1850s challenged fundamental beliefs about
the household as the basic political unit of government, stirring bitter debate about
how women could be citizens in the democratic government that had developed in the
United States. Proponents of woman’s influence had pushed the limits of the domestic
sphere to encompass a broad range of educational and economic demands, even as they
shunned agitation for the vote. Proponents of woman’s rights, although acknowledging
the differences between men and women, had struggled with a more radical agenda
that would allow women autonomy in the control of their property, their education,
and their political representation. But even among woman’s rights activists, there were
differences, most particularly around the issue of marriage and divorce. With the coming
of the Civil War, woman’s rights activists postponed these pressing discussions about
the legal rights of women in both the state and the family.

Review Questions
1. What were demands for woman’s rights tied to?
A changing economy
2. What was tied to debates about woman’s rights?
Education
3. What was a more controversial issue than suffrage in the woman’s right debates?
Divorce
4. What period did the “woman’s sphere” expand?
The antebellum period

Chapter 9:
The Civil War, 1861-1865

Chapter Learning Objectives

»» How did women in the North respond to the outbreak of the Civil War?
»» On the battlefront, in what ways did women transgress the bounds of femininity?
»» What were the particular hardships endured by Confederate women?
»» How did women help to shape the memory of the Civil War and its place in
American history?
22 History of Women in America

Key Terms/Topics
––Woman’s Central Relief Association ––Ladies Industrial Aid Association of
(WCRA) Union Hall
––Contrabands of war ––Working Women’s Protective Union
––Freedmen’s Bureau

Chapter Summary
Shortly after the beginning of the Civil War, Julia Le Grand pined: “I wish I had a field
for my energies. I hate common life, a life of visiting, dressing and tattling, which seems to
devolve on women, and now that there is better work to do, real tragedy, real romance
and history weaving every day, I suffer, suffer, leading the life I do.” Ultimately, the war
that emancipated four million slaves put new demands on this otherwise privileged
southern woman as well as nearly everyone living in its path. Barred from combat,
women took on untried roles, availed themselves of new opportunities, and gained
unprecedented access to power.
At the same time, for both Northern and Southern women, the specter of suffering
and death hung over them—for good reason. The Civil War was the most devastating
war in American history. At least 50,000 civilians died, and military casualties
topped 500,000. Approximately 360,000 Union soldiers lost their lives. The toll was
proportionately greater in the South, where an estimated one in four Confederate
soldiers— approximately 258,000—were killed. Of the men who managed to survive the
carnage, a large number returned home maimed or psychologically scarred.
Despite bearing the weight of personal tragedy, many men and women emerged
from their wartime experiences with new perspectives on the roles of men and women.
“During the war, and as a result of my own observations,” Mary Livermore wrote, “I
became aware that a large portion of the nation’s work was badly done, or not done at all,
because woman was not recognized as a factor in the political world.” She nevertheless
anticipated that with the return of peace women would eagerly resume their domestic
roles. Such was not to be because, she later noted, “during those days of hardship and
struggle, the ordinary tenor of woman’s life had changed. She had developed potencies
and possibilities of whose existence she had not been aware, and which surprised her,
as it did those who witnessed her marvelous achievements.” Like so many women of
her generation, Liver- more believed that the Civil War had wrought revolutionary
changes, perhaps not least in a “great awakening of women.” Those women involved
in the woman’s rights movement came to a similar conclusion, claiming that the Civil
   History of Women in America 23

War “created a revolution in woman herself, as important in its results as the changed
condition of the former slaves.”

Review Questions
1. What affected the ways women responded to the Civil War?
Notions of womanliness
2. What were the major regional differences in the ways women experienced the
Civil War?
Suffering, Death toll
3. What did women’s experience in antebellum voluntary societies prepare them
for?
A new role in the Civil War
4. Who responded to the outbreak of the war?
Enslaved women
5. What war did many women writers view as a turning point in American women’s
history?
The Civil War

Chapter 10:
In the Age of Slave Emancipation, 1865-1877

Chapter Learning Objectives

»» How did Reconstruction policies affect black and white households in the South?
»» What were the major issues facing the post-bellum woman’s rights movement?
»» How did the debates about women’s wage earning intersect with discussions of
marriage?
»» In what ways did the temperance campaign challenge male authority within the
family?

Key Terms/Topics
––National Woman Suffrage Association ––American Woman Suffrage Association
(NWSA) (AWSA)
––Minor v. Happersett
24 History of Women in America

––“Susan B. Anthony” amendment ––Daughters of St. Crispin

––Family wage ––Woman’s crusade
––Association for the Advancement of ––Woman’s Christian Temperance Union
Women (AAW) (WCTU)
––National Labor Union

Chapter Summary
The era between 1865 and 1877, when federal troops withdrew from the South and
Reconstruction formally ended, defined the civil rights of African Americans, although
not with absolute clarity or with the genuine force of law. Nevertheless, for the first time,
former slaves gained the right to own their own person, including the right to sell their
labor on the free market and to marry and establish a household. The Reconstruction
amendments to the Constitution, along with other legislation, marked out the meaning
of freedom and the privileges of citizenship.
At the same time, Reconstruction also provided a new context for the struggle for
woman’s rights. The woman’s rights movement, which had suspended its activities during
the Civil War, revived in its aftermath and immediately began to demand the rights
and privileges of citizenship as guaranteed to former male slaves. Women demanded
the right to sell their labor and own property on the same terms as men; to preserve
their autonomy as individuals even when married; and to participate in the affairs
of government on the same basis as men. Woman’s rights activists such as Victoria
Woodhull thus protested the laws governing the marriage relationship and at the same
time tested the provisions of the Reconstruction amendments by insisting on the right
to vote. Other activists demanded “equal wages for equal work” and promoted pro-
grams to assist women who aspired to support themselves by their own labors. They
disputed the principle of the “family wage” and demanded the right to negotiate labor
contracts in their own names. They also organized to protect their families from men’s
abuse of their privileges, particularly in the realm of alcohol consumption.
Victories were few. By the mid-1870s, the Supreme Court had ruled in Minor v.
Happersett that voting is a privilege and not a right of citizenship, and that woman’s
“natural” sphere was the home. Despite these setbacks, groups of women had formed
scores of organizations to struggle for their rights as citizens. They had created a nascent
woman suffrage movement, numerous clubs and associations to advance women’s
interest in the labor market, and a network of organizations—the powerful WCTU—that
would increase women’s power within the home and over the family.
   History of Women in America 25

Review Questions
1. What did the woman’s rights movement focus on in the years following the Civil
War?
The ballot
2. Which amendments affected women’s strategy for gaining women’s political
rights?
Fourteenth and Fifteenth
3. What kinds of organizations did women create to ease their entry into wage labor?
WCTU, nascent woman suffrage movement, numerous clubs, etc.
4. What affected women’s right to earn a livelihood?
Marriage
5. When did the temperance movement revive?
1873 and 1874
6. What did temperance agitation challenge within the household?
Men’s authority

Chapter 11:
The Trans-Mississippi West, 1860-1900

Chapter Learning Objectives

»» How did the skewed sex ratio on the range and mining frontier affect the
position of women?
»» How did gender relations among Mormons differ from those of other settlers?
»» What were the effects of incorporation on Spanish-speaking women?
»» How did men and women distribute the work of managing a household on the
plains?
»» What was the impact of the Dawes Severalty Act on the status of Indian women?

Key Terms/Topics
––Plural marriage ––Edmunds-Tucker Act
––Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act ––La familia
––Cullom Bill ––Homestead Act of 1862
26 History of Women in America

––Exodusters ––Dawes Severalty Act

––Women’s National Indian Association
(WNIA)

Chapter Summary
In 1890, the director of the U.S. Census declared that the nation’s “unsettled area has
been so broken into by isolated bodies of settlement that there can hardly be said to be a
frontier line.” The trans-Mississippi West had been incorporated into the United States.
Americans had brought to this region their political, legal, and economic systems, as well
as their cultural and social institutions. For women, this transformation had pivoted on
the doctrine of separate spheres, foremost the tenets of domesticity.
Even as the federal government marked the closing of the frontier, the trans-
Mississippi West served as home to more and more women whose cultures intersected,
often clashed, and encouraged new meanings for traditional practices. They found
themselves enmeshed in a continuous struggle that would define ethnic, racial, and
class hierarchies in this region while they simultaneously reconsidered established
practices of women’s work and markers of women’s status within their families and their
communities. In other words, domesticity served as a major site of contest, an arena for
asserting power and establishing identity, and a measure of civilization over wilderness.

Review Questions
1. What aspect came first for women in the western territories and states?
Suffrage
2. Who did the incorporation of Mexican lands into the United States affect?
The lives of Spanish-speaking women
3. Where did men and women manage their households?
On the plains and prairies
4. Which did women in Utah gain the right to vote?
1870
5. What year did the Women’s Crusade begin?
1873
   History of Women in America 27

Chapter 12:
New Women, 1857-1915

Chapter Learning Objectives

»» How did the increasing pace of industrial growth affect women’s role in the
nation’s cities?
»» What factors account for the differing experiences among new immigrant
women?
»» How did race and racism affect the working lives of women in the New South?
»» Which professions proved to be the most amenable to women’s advancement?
»» How did new patterns of consumption affect the role of middle-class women in
the home?

Key Terms/Topics
––The Second Industrial Revolution ––Family System of labor
––Sweatshop ––Women’s Convention
––Antimiscegenation laws ––Home economics

Chapter Summary
“The destiny of the world today lies in the hearts and brains of her women,” pronounced
Mary Seymour Howell in 1887. “The world can not travel upward faster than the feet of
her women are climbing the paths of progress.” Seymour’s prognosis was shared by
many of her contemporaries who had witnessed significant changes in women’s work
since the Civil War. Whether women now earned a small pittance in the nation’s factories
or fields, or commanded a sizable salary as the first generation to make a significant
inroad into the professions, the most optimistic believed women were breaking sharply
with the circumscribed life of the past. Nevertheless, the majority eventually withdrew
from the world of work to marry and care for a family. But even then, their activities
within the home bore only a superficial resemblance to their mothers’. The ideology of
separate spheres, still resilient, had begun to break down under the challenge of the
New Woman.

Review Questions
1. What type of job did women prefer over those jobs in domestic service?
Manufacturing
28 History of Women in America

2. What did the rise of the southern textile industry affect?

Race relations between women
3. What did women often rely on/ create separate institutions to pursue careers in
the professions?
Their own networks
4. When did child care change?
At the turn of the century

Chapter 13:
The Woman Movement, 1860-1900

Chapter Learning Objectives

»» 1. What strategies did various women’s organizations develop to address the
needs of wage-earning women?
»» 2. What federation improve the ability of organized women to wage their
campaigns?
»» 3. Lacking the vote, how did women participate in the great political campaigns of
the 1890s?
»» 4. What role did women play in the missionary movements of the late nineteenth
century?

Key Terms/Topics
––International Council of Women
––National League for the Protection of
Colored Women
––Women’s Educational and Industrial
Union
––Cross-class alliance
––Illinois Woman’s Alliance
––Ladies’ Federal Labor Union
––National Women’s Suffrage Association

Chapter Summary
“The cruel kindness of the old doctrine that women should be worked for, and should
not work, that their influence should be felt, but not recognized, that they should
hear and see, but neither appear nor speak,” wrote Julia Ward Howe in 1891, “—all
this belongs now to the record of things which, once measurably true, have become
   History of Women in America 29

fabulous.” The many women who had joined Howe in activism would have agreed with
her statement, measuring their accomplishments in terms of the massive national and
international organizations that made up the woman movement. They would have
shared her optimism about the future, anticipating a prominent role in the massive
protest and political movements of the 1890s. If their success was cut short during
the tumultuous decade, they could take solace in having built a foundation that would
blossom into social activism during the Progressive Era that lay ahead. However, the
majority of these activists— white, native-born, and Protestants—had yet to deal with the
reality that along with power came responsibility. The increasing racism of their society,
fueled in part by imperialist ventures, dimmed the prospects for the “sisterhood” they
so fervently extolled.

Review Questions
1. What TWO aspects affected various campaigns waged by the late-nineteenth-
century woman movement?
Racial tensions and animosities
2. What played a role in shaping the programs of women activists?
Imperialism
3. 
What effectively provided women access to power outside the realms of
government and business controlled by men?
Volunteerism

Chapter 14:
The New Morality, 1880-1920

Chapter Learning Objectives

»» Why were working-class women at the forefront in changing sexual relations at
the turn of the century?
»» What was the relationship between changes in hetero- and homosocial
relations?
»» What efforts were advanced to effect new controls on sexual relationships?
»» How and why did women seek to limit their fertility?
»» What is the relationship between the new morality and feminism?
30 History of Women in America

Key Terms/Topics
––Woman adrift ––National Birth Control League
––Charity girls ––American Birth Control League
––Social purity ––Open marriage
––Age of consent ––Heterodoxy
––Domestic feminism ––Feminism

Chapter Summary
By the turn of the century, a new morality had swept much of urban America, pushing
aside the remaining vestiges of “female passionlessness” and affirming not only the
existence but the merits of the female sexual drive. Working-class women played
a large role in this process, providing an inspiration to many other women who were
attempting to break away from the middle-class mores of their parents. At the same
time, the era ushered in a new “heterosociality,” signifying a companionship between
men and women that superseded the old ideology of “separate spheres.” In sum, the era
heralded a great change in the relations between the sexes, one that was bringing men
and women closer together in all aspects of life, including sexual companionship.
Yet, these monumental changes, which one historian has grouped together under the
heading of the “first sexual revolution,” did not come easily or without the introduction
of new restrictions on sexual behavior. To the contrary, sexuality became subject to
increasing scrutiny, as medical and other experts codified behavior into “normal” and
“deviant,” as legislators outlawed interracial relationships, and as large sectors of the
public attempted to bring men into the fold of the presumably pure. Indeed, what would
become known as “sexual modernism” would prove to be a highly contested arena.

Review Questions
1. What changed with the decline of “female passionlessness?”
Middle-class marriage
2. Was the birth control movement successful in reaching its goals?
Yes
3. What did sexuality become subjected to?
Scrutiny
4. What year was “Voluntary Motherhood” discussed as a means to control fertility?
1870
5. What year was the Feminist Alliance formed?
1913
   History of Women in America 31

Chapter 15:
The Progressive Era, 1890-1920

Chapter Learning Objectives

»» How did women transform their domestic concerns into public issues?
»» What role did cross-class alliances play during the Progressive Era?
»» What impact did “maternalism” have on progressive reform?
»» What changes did World War I bring to American women?
»» How did women finally win the right to vote?

Key Terms/Topics
––Neighborhood Union ––Women’s Health Protective Association
––Municipal housekeeping ––National Women’s Trade Union
––Women’s Convention of the Black ––Women’s International League for
Baptist Church Peace and Freedom

Chapter Summary
The woman suffrage victory marked the ebbing of women’s separate political culture.
Women’s organizations, such as women’s clubs, the WCTU, and the WTUL, continued
well into the twentieth century, but these organizations could make little headway by
claiming that women’s domestic and maternal roles provided either the imperative or
the justification for their involvement in public affairs. Having learned to work with
men in effecting major legislation and in shaping the foundational institutions of the
welfare state, the women who spearheaded Progressive Era reform could no longer
rally women by appealing to them to become “municipal housekeepers.” They had
successfully relinquished, for better or worse, a large chunk of those responsibilities to
the government. If women were to continue on the path of reform, they would have to
find a niche within the halls of government and mainstream politics.

Review Questions
1. What notion was so powerful and effective during the Progressive Era?
“Mother-work”
2. During which war did the experiences of women vary?
World War I
3. Which amendment affected women’s role in politics and reform?
19th Amendment
32 History of Women in America

Chapter 16:
The Jazz Age, 1920-1930

Chapter Learning Objectives

»» How did courtship, marriage, and family life change in the 1920s?
»» How did women’s work change in the 1920s?
»» How did winning the vote affect women’s political activism?
»» What role did consumer culture play in the new ideas of women in the 1920s?
»» In what ways did women’s activism express the tension between traditional and
modern notions of womanhood?

Key Terms/Topics
––Heterosociality ––International Council for Women of the
––Compassionate marriage Darker Races of the World
––Pink-collar jobs ––Association of Southern Women to
––Sexual inversion Prevent Lynching
––Equal Rights Admendment

Chapter Summary
Whether or not the notorious flapper of the 1920s was as new as critics made out
or represented a new age of equality between the sexes as her supporters argued,
she nevertheless represented a change in many young women’s sense of themselves
and their place in society. Young working-class girls, department store clerks, rural
newcomers to cities, and college students insisted that they were different from their
mothers and grandmothers, that the world was new, and that they were at the forefront
of the twentieth century. While the Jazz Age’s celebration of modernity and youth and,
in particular, its emphasis on individual pleasures changed the ways that Americans
entertained themselves, the Jazz Age weakened the Progressive reform impulse of
the prewar years. Consumption of a new array of products like cars and radios rose
in importance, while anti-immigrant feelings and ongoing Jim Crow segregation spoke
the nation’s conservative turn in the 1920s. Women activists face apathy from younger
women and reform fatigue from former suffragists. The culmination of the nineteenth-
century suffrage movement, the pas- sage of the Nineteenth Amendment giving
   History of Women in America 33

women the right to vote, did not bring about lasting change in the nature of politics that
suffragists had imagined.
One of the most important and far-reaching changes of the 1920s was the rising
numbers of working women in the fast-growing pink-collar sector of the economy.
As consumer spending and service work grew into major engines of economic growth,
women found their dual roles as primary shopper and pink-collar worker to be at the
heart of modern America.

Review Questions
1. 
What class of insisted that they were different from their mothers and
grandmothers?
Young working-class girls, department store clerks, rural newcomers to
cities, college students…
2. What period weakened the Progressive reform impulse of the prewar years?
The Jazz age
3. What was one of the most important and far-reaching changes of the 1920s?
The rising numbers of working women in the pink-collar sector.

Chapter 17:
The Great Depression, 1930-1940

Chapter Objective
»» How did family life change during the 1930s?
»» How did working-class women participate in the labor movement?
»» What impact did women have on the New Deal?
»» In what ways did the Depression constitute a crisis of masculinity?

Key Terms/Topics
––Women’s Division of the Democratic
National Committee
––National Youth Administration (Mary
Mcleod Bethune)
––National Council of Negro Women
34 History of Women in America

Chapter Summary
American women in the 1930s faced the difficult tasks of keeping home intact
and family healthy as the country suffered through the long years of economic crisis.
They greeted President Roosevelt’s New Deal with a mix of gratitude and skepticism.
Even though millions of Americans benefited from the alphabet soup of agencies and
programs, the New Deal did not end the Depression. It did, however, expand the reach
of the federal government and placed it squarely in the daily lives of ordinary Americans.
Women who had long been active in reform politics achieved on the national level
many of the social welfare programs they had established on the state level. Their
presence in the federal government proved important to the generations of political
women who followed them. Similarly, working women established a place for them-
selves in male-dominated labor unions. As leaders, organizers, and members, women
participated in the surge of labor activism that profoundly shaped the era and its legacy.
As the country anxiously watched the gathering storm of war, women were posed to do
what was necessary to face the next national crisis

Review Questions
1. What difficult tasks did women face as the country faced suffrage during the long
years of economic crisis?
Keep the home in tact and the family healthy
2. Did President Roosevelt’s New Deal end the Depression?
No
3. What did women who had long been active in reform politics achieve on a state
and national level?
Social welfare programs

Chapter 18:
World War II Home Fronts, 1940-1945

Chapter Learning Objectives

»» What effects did World War II have on American women’s work lives?
»» How did the war change American family life?
»» How did minority women experience the war, and what were their experiences?
   History of Women in America 35

»» How did women serve in the military during the war?

Key Terms/Topics
––All American Girls Baseball League ––War bonds

Chapter Summary
Months before peace broke out, U.S. industries that had been converted to military
production began preparing for reconversion to domestic and civilian production.
Labor leaders optimistically assumed women workers would voluntarily leave their jobs.
Women’s exit from industrial work, however, was far too important to be left to the
individual worker. Federal law required employers to rehire veterans to their former or
similar positions even when this meant letting go workers with more seniority. Women’s
low seniority combined with employers’ preferences toward hiring men resulted in a
nearly universal replacement of women workers with men.
“Mother blaming” proved a useful tool in the efforts to ease women out of the
workforce to make room for returning veterans. In the wake of the wartime expansion
of women’s wage work for the duration, journalist Philip Wylie introduced the term
momism to explain the myriad ways mothers undermined their sons’ confidence and
independence. Wylie’s wartime definition of dangerous mothers joined gender anxieties
of the 1930s to those of the postwar years. Psychological care of children, which now
demanded mothers to be neither overinvolved nor rejecting of children’s budding
development, became a science that required full-time devotion from mothers. With its
stress on maternal failure, Wylie set the stage for the high-stakes domesticity that came
to characterize the United States in the 1950

Review Questions
1. Who was did the government target when mobilizing the country for war?
Women
2. When did the representation of women change?
During the war years
3. Who optimistically assumed women workers would voluntarily leave their jobs?
Labor leaders
36 History of Women in America

Chapter 19:
The Feminine Mystique, 1945-1965

Chapter Objective
»» How did women’s paid work change during the 1950s?
»» How did the Cold War affect domestic life?
»» How did families change in the 1950s?
»» How did the experiences of teenage women differ from those of teenage men?

Key Terms/Topics
––War brides ––Daughters of Bilitis
––Illegal abortions

Chapter Summary
In the summer of 1947, Life magazine ran a thirteen-page essay, “The American
Woman’s Dilemma,” that introduced readers to what would become a dominant motif
of the post–World War II years—the centrality of motherhood to the health of the
family and the nation. Eleven years later, Look magazine articulated a new problem
of adjustment when it asked “The American Male: Why Is He Afraid to Be Different?”
The writer described the problem starkly: “One dark morning this winter, Gary Gray
awakened and realized he had forgotten how to say the word ‘I’. . . . He had lost his
individuality.” As the decade came to a close, the gendered pillars of the Cold War came
under question—foremost, the construction of femininity through motherhood and
home- making and masculinity through conformity and work. It led many to wonder if a
generation of men had lost its ability to be bold, to act independently, and to break away
from the “gray flannel” pack mentality and if a generation of women suffered from “the
feminine mystique.”
The consensus about gender roles that had created a baby boom, a new national
family life, and protection from Communism frayed and collapsed by the mid- 1960s.
No longer able to contain the fears of a rapidly changing world, traditional definitions
of men, women, and family would become the focal point for liberal reform and radical
social protest movements. Women’s roles both in social change and as bearers of
tradition and continuity became the grounds on which a new style of politics emerged.
   History of Women in America 37

Review Questions
1. What TWO aspects were different in the 1950s from other periods of U.S. history?
Motherhood and domesticity
2. What discipline played a role in U.S. Cold War family life?
Psychology
3. What became the grounds on which a new style of politics emerged?
Women’s roles both in social change and as bearers of tradition

Chapter 20:
Civil Rights and Liberal Activism, 1945-1975

Chapter Learning Objectives

»» What role did women play in the civil rights movement?
»» How did women’s role in the civil rights movement change?
»» How did women use the government to promote equality for them?

Key Terms/Topics
––Second-wave feminism ––Equal Pay Act of 1963
––President’s Commission on the Status ––National Women’s Political Caucus
of Women

Chapter Summary
Women’s activism in the years following World War II profoundly changed U.S. society.
The civil rights movement challenged the long-standing view that segregation could
exist in a democratic society. Civil rights activists argued that segregation, be it based
on race or gender, created inequality, and they called on the federal government to use
its force to uphold basic rights and equal opportunity for all Americans. The generation
of activists who directly confronted Jim Crow segregation at schools, at lunch counters,
and on buses discredited, at last, the legal doctrine of separate but equal.
The movement to end racial discrimination started a wave of reform movements,
including liberal feminism that reinvigorated debates about equality, opportunity, and
democracy for all citizens. Liberal feminists forged political organizations that pressured
the government to outlaw gender discrimination, while a generation of women entered
38 History of Women in America

state, local, and federal government and the political parties themselves to en- sure that
change would come. The movement for women’s equality spread out from its activist
and reformist roots to reshape all aspects of U.S. life, from work and politics to television
shows and athletics. Liberal women, from the civil rights, labor, and women’s movements,
watched as a new cohort of activists took the ideas of equality and citizenship they had
so effectively promoted to a new moment of political engagement and conflict.

Review Questions
1. Did women to participate in the civil rights movement?
Yes
2. Why did women petition the federal government?
To promote gender equality
3. In the years following World War II, what movement profoundly changed U.S.
society?
Women’s activism

Chapter 21:
The Personal Is Political, 1960-1980

Chapter Learning Objectives

»» What motivated young women into feminism?
»» What set radical feminism apart from other social movements?
»» How did women’s work change in these years?

Key Terms/Topics
––Women’s Liberation Movement ––Women’s Health Movement
––Black Power Movement ––Second Shift
––Consciousness raising ––Feminization of Poverty

Chapter Summary
The 1960s and 1970s brought a consolidation of gains made by women since World
War II and were particularly visible in the realms of politics and education. The age of
liberal reform and social protest came to an end by the 1970s, having achieved historic
   History of Women in America 39

legislation, including the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the legalization of abortion in the
Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade, and Title IX. A generation of young Americans rewrote
the rules of political engagement. The antiwar movement helped to end the United
States’ unpopular involvement in Vietnam in 1975. A new analysis of the connections
between public power and private life created a radical feminism. Yet the same years
marked the first stirring of changes that would threaten the very gains women achieved.
Women’s economic vulnerability, masked by post–World War II affluence, was laid bare
by the end of the 1970s.

Review Questions
1. What movement or ideal did younger American women become active in?
Feminism
2. Which group of women changed feminism in the United States?
Radical women
3. When did the age of liberal reform and social protest come to an end?
1970s

Chapter 22:
Ends and Beginnings, 1980-2011

Chapter Learning Objectives

»» What role did women play in the conservative movement?
»» How was immigration after 1980 similar to and different from earlier eras?

Key Terms/Topics
––The Child Support Enforcement ––Hyde Amendment
Amendment ––Glass Ceiling
––Family Violence Prevention Services

Chapter Summary
Today’s young women are quite likely to be daughters and granddaughters of baby-
boomer women. Even if they are not, they are without doubt heirs to the unfinished
revolution that women in the 1960s helped bring about. The lives of women are
40 History of Women in America

very different in 2006 than what they were several decades ago. Most women are
breadwinners. Women have become largely independent of husbands and children
for long parts of their days. More women finish college. Changes in the roles of women
have affected every institution, from the family to the workplace to politics and the
marketplace.
While such significant change has altered the experiences of women, ongoing
prejudice against women continues to shape their daily lives. Women’s second shift of
domes- tic and child-care tasks at the end of an already long workday continues to be
one of the most pressing aspects of the unfinished transformation of U.S. society. Poor
women as well as professional women face high expectations for making their families
healthy and happy, with little help by way of childcare, or health care. Hostility toward
immigration leaves too many women vulnerable and with little recourse to improve
their lives. Long- standing women’s issues like racism and access to abortion continue.
Women’s activism at the start of the twenty-first century remains an important way for
U.S. women to bring about the promise of equality and to enhance their place in society.

Review Questions
1. What did conservative women get motivated to do the 1980-2011 era?
Political activism
2. Who did the globalizing economy affect?
Women/feminist
3. What has women become largely independent of in the years closer to 2006?
Husband and children

References
Buhle, Murphy & Gerhard, D. E. (2014). A Concise Women’s History. Upper Saddle River,
NJ: Pearson.