Feminism has changed the United States -- but not to universal applause. The defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment in 1982 not only suggested the extent of anti-feminism in our nation; it also triggered a remarkable range of emotions. To its supporters, the amendment meant equal opportunity and individual freedom; it was the logical extension of the highest American ideals. To opponents, however, it meant the destruction of "womanhood"; it was "a dangerous virus cultured in the pathology of American life," an insidious outgrowth of the sixties. Partisans were shocked that a debate about equality should become a debate about gender, and that the ERA should become a symbol of impurity and danger. Sex, Gender, and the Politics of ERA is the most profound and sensitive discussion to date of the way in which women responded to feminism. Drawing on extensive research and interviews, Mathews and De Hart explore the fate of the ERA in North Carolina--one of the three states targeted by both sides as essential to ratification--to reveal the dynamics that stunned supporters across America. The authors insightfully link public discourse and private feelings, placing arguments used throughout the nation in the personal contexts of women who pleaded their cases for and against equality. Beginning with a study of woman suffrage, the book shows how issues of sex, gender, race, and power remained potent weapons on the ERA battlefield. The ideas of such vocal opponents as Phyllis Schlafly and Senator Sam Ervin set the perfect stage for mothers to confess their terror at the violation of their daughters in a post-ERA world, while the prospect of losing ratification to this terror impelled supporters to shed the white gloves of genteel lobbying for the combat boots of political in-fighting. In the end, however, the efforts of ERA supporters could neither outweigh the symbolic actions of its opponents--who reassured male legislators with gifts of homemade bread tagged "To the breadwinners from the breadbakers"--nor weaken the resistance of those same legislators to further federal guarantees of equality. Ultimately, opponents succeeded in making equality for women seem dangerous. In thus explaining the ERA controversy, the authors brilliantly illuminate the many meanings of feminism for the American people.

Sex, Gender, and the Politics of ERA: A State and the Nation

Politics & Social Sciences

De Hart, Jane Sherron

Mathews, Donald G.

Philosophy

Oxford University Press

Women's America: Refocusing the Past

The fourth edition of this widely-acclaimed anthology integrates the best of recent scholarship in women's history with American history as a whole. Now updated to include many more selections on ethnicity, as well as work on the frontier, the Civil War and Reconstruction, Vietnam, prostitution and sex workers, and the problem of eating disorders, Women's America is more timely than ever, providing a comprehensive and insightful analysis of women's American history from colonial times to the present. Over seventy-five essays and documents--ranging from a letter written by a slave woman to an analysis of contemporary feminism--guide the student to an understanding of the interaction of race, ethnicity, class, and gender throughout American history. With its wealth of primary and secondary source material, concise headnotes, and clear, chronological organization, this new edition of Women's America shows with new force and vigor why gender has become a powerful analytical device for understanding the history of the United States.

Social Sciences

Featuring a mix of primary source documents, articles, and illustrations, Women's America: Refocusing the Past has long been an invaluable resource. Now in its sixth edition, the book has been extensively revised and updated to cover recent events in American women's history. It provides many new selections from leading theorists and historians and restores several readings that were cut from the fifth edition. Successfully classroom-tested, these new essays offer more material on the impact of ethnicity in American culture, the roles that women have played in the creation of male-dominated structures, and the international dimensions of women's lives. The book covers such diverse groups as Christian Indian women in colonial America, African-American women in post-Civil War Atlanta, young Jewish labor organizers in turn-of-the-century New York, new arrivals to San Francisco's Chinatown, Japanese-American women during World War II, and Chicana feminists. The introductory essay has been revised and the bibliography has been updated to take into account the growing body of contemporary literature in the field. Women's America is an essential text for courses in women's history and an ideal supplement for more general survey courses on American history.

History

Kerber, Linda K.

Americas

Featuring a mix of primary source documents, articles, and illustrations, Women's America: Refocusing the Past has long been an invaluable resource. Now in its seventh edition, the book has been extensively revised and updated to cover recent events in American women's history.

Women's America, Volume 2: Refocusing the Past

Dayton, Cornelia H.

Featuring a mix of primary source documents, articles, and illustrations, Women's America: Refocusing the Past has long been an invaluable resource. Now in its eighth edition, the book has been extensively revised and updated to cover recent developments in U.S. women's history.

Dayton, Cornelia Hughes

Wu, Judy Tzu-Chun

Women's America: Refocusing the Past, Volume One

Women's America: Refocusing the Past, Volume Two

The first full life—private, public, legal, philosophical—of the 107th Supreme Court Justice, one of the most profound and profoundly transformative legal minds of our time; a book fifteen years in work, written with the cooperation of Ruth Bader Ginsburg herself and based on many interviews with the justice, her husband, her children, her friends, and her associates. In this large, comprehensive, revelatory biography, Jane De Hart explores the central experiences that crucially shaped Ginsburg’s passion for justice, her advocacy for gender equality, her meticulous jurisprudence: her desire to make We the People more united and our union more perfect. At the heart of her story and abiding beliefs—her Jewish background. Tikkun olam, the Hebrew injunction to “repair the world,” with its profound meaning for a young girl who grew up during the Holocaust and World War II. We see the influence of her mother, Celia Amster Bader, whose intellect inspired her daughter’s feminism, insisting that Ruth become independent, as she witnessed her mother coping with terminal cervical cancer (Celia died the day before Ruth, at seventeen, graduated from high school). From Ruth’s days as a baton twirler at Brooklyn’s James Madison High School, to Cornell University, Harvard and Columbia Law Schools (first in her class), to being a law professor at Rutgers University (one of the few women in the field and fighting pay discrimination), hiding her second pregnancy so as not to risk losing her job; founding the Women's Rights Law Reporter, writing the brief for the first case that persuaded the Supreme Court to strike down a sex-discriminatory state law, then at Columbia (the law school’s first tenured female professor); becoming the director of the women’s rights project of the ACLU, persuading the Supreme Court in a series of decisions to ban laws that denied women full citizenship status with men. Her years on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, deciding cases the way she played golf, as she, left-handed, played with right-handed clubs—aiming left, swinging right, hitting down the middle. Her years on the Supreme Court . . . A pioneering life and legal career whose profound mark on American jurisprudence, on American society, on our American character and spirit, will reverberate deep into the twenty-first century and beyond.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg: A Life

Biographies & Memoirs

Professionals & Academics

KNOPF

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by De Hart, Jane Sherron. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by De Hart, Jane Sherron

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by De Hart, Jane Sherron. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Sex, Gender, and the Politics of ERA: A State and the Nation

Women's America: Refocusing the Past

Women's America: Refocusing the Past

Women's America, Volume 2: Refocusing the Past

Women's America: Refocusing the Past

Women's America: Refocusing the Past, Volume One

Women's America: Refocusing the Past, Volume Two

Ruth Bader Ginsburg: A Life