The most inclusive book to date on U.S. women's collective history! A landmark work, The Reader's Companion to U.S. Women's History, gathers together more than 400 articles to offer a diverse, rich, and often neglected panorama of the nation's past. Written by more than 300 contributors, drawn from various areas of expertise, these narrative and interpretive entries "effectively cover five centuries of women's experiences" (Bloomsbury Review). Here are articles on cowgirls and child care, on the daily lives of single women and the changing notions of motherhood, on the artistic contributions of women of color and the history of Jewish feminism. Wide-ranging in scope and wonderfully accessible, this unique resource reexamines with fresh clarity and brio the issues and concerns that color the lives of all women. Articles and their contributors include: African American Women, Darlene Clark Hine; Cult of Domesticity, Carroll Smith-Rosenberg; Fashion and Style, Lynn Yaeger; Jazz and Blues, Daphne Duval Harrison; Lesbians, Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy; Native American Cultures, Clara Sue Kidwell; Picture Brides, Judy Yung; Salem Witchcraft Trials, Mary Beth Norton; Vietnam Era, Sara M. Evans.

The Reader's Companion to U.S. Women's History

History

Navarro, Marysa

Mink, Gwendolyn

Steinem, Gloria, editor

Americas

HarperOne

Why have American politics developed differently from politics in Europe? In this innovative and insightful book, Gwendolyn Mink approaches this question from a new angle: she asks what determined union labor's political interests and how those interests influenced the political role forged by the American Federation of Labor.

Old Labor and New Immigrants in American Political Development: Union, Party, and State, 1875-1920

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Cornell Univ Pr

The Wages of Motherhood: Inequality in the Welfare State, 1917–1942

Entering the vigorous debate about the nature of the American welfare state, The Wages of Motherhood illuminates ways in which a "maternalist" social policy emerged from the crucible of gender and racial politics between the world wars. Gwendolyn Mink here examines the cultural dynamics of maternalist social policy, which have often been overlooked by institutional and class analyses of the welfare state.
Mink maintains that the movement for welfare provisions, while resulting in important gains, reinforced existing patterns of gender and racial inequality. She explores how Anglo-American women reformers, as they gained increasing political recognition, promoted an ideology of domesticity that became the core of maternalist social policy. Focusing on reformers such as Jane Addams, Grace Abbott, Katherine Lenroot, and Frances Perkins, Mink shows how they helped shape a social policy premised on moral character and cultural conformity rather than universal entitlement.
According to Mink, commitments to a gendered and racialized ideology of virtuous citizenship led women's reform organizations in the United States to support welfare policies that were designed to uplift and regulate motherhood and thus to reform the cultural character of citizens. The upshot was a welfare agenda that linked maternity with dependency, poverty with cultural weakness, and need with moral failing. Relegating poor women and racial minorities to dependent status, maternalist policy had the effect of stengthening ideological and institutional forms of subordination. In Mink's view, the legacy of this benevolent―and invidious―policy contimies to inflect thinking about welfare reform today.

Cornell University Press

With her analysis of the thirty-year campaign to reform and ultimately to end welfare, Gwendolyn Mink levels a searing indictment of anti-welfare politicians' assault on poor mothers. She charges that the basic elements of the new welfare policy subordinate poor single mothers in a separate system of law. Mink points to the racial, class, and gender biases of both liberals and conservatives to explain the odd but sturdy consensus behind welfare reforms that force the poor single mother to relinquish basic rights and compel her to find economic security in work outside the home. 
Mink explores how and why we should cure the unique inequality of poor single mothers by reorienting the emphasis of welfare policy away from regulating mothers to rewarding the work they do. Every mother is a working mother, the bumper sticker proclaims, but the work mothers do pays no wages. Mink argues that women's equality depends on economic support for caregivers' work. 
Welfare's End challenges the ways in which policymakers define the problem they seek to cure. While legislators assume that something is wrong with poor single mothers, Mink insists that something is wrong with a system that invades their rights and negates their work. Showing how welfare reform harms women, Mink invites the design of policies to promote gender justice.

Welfare's End

According to some of President Clinton's feminist supporters, his alleged behavior toward Paula Jones did not constitute sexual harassment because he had taken "no" for an answer. Others insisted that Jones could not have been harassed because the president did not punish her for refusing him. During the impeachment debate, many feminists defended the president on the grounds that his alleged lies in the Jones case were "just about sex" and therefore insignificant. In the most publicized sexual harassment case to date, longtime proponents of sexual harassment law raised the political and legal thresholds for taking sexual harassment seriously.
In a passionate defense of the rights of sexually harassed women, Gwendolyn Mink warns that the president's supporters have undermined our sexual harassment laws. Hostile Environment is her provocative account of the harm being done to these laws and her warning that the laws themselves are worthless if few women dare to use them.
Correcting many common misapprehensions, Mink explains sexual harassment as a legal concept and charts its judicial and legislative history. She shows the many important contributions feminists have made to the development of sexual harassment law. She also, however, develops a stringent critique of feminist responses to the president's lies in the Jones case. 
Sometimes scathing, Hostile Environment provides a fresh perspective on the recent politics of sexual harassment. It also provides a highly personal perspective. First-hand knowledge of the injuries caused by sexual harassment and its aftermath has left Mink with an abiding interest in this volatile issue and with a desire to safeguard the rights of sexually harassed women―especially the most economically vulnerable among them.

Hostile Environment: The Political Betrayal of Sexually Harassed Women

With her analysis of the thirty-year campaign to reform and ultimately to end welfare, Gwendolyn Mink levels a searing indictment of anti-welfare politicians'assault on poor mothers. She charges that the basic elements of the new welfare policy subordinate poor single mothers in a separate system of law. Mink points to the racial, class, and gender biases of both liberals and conservatives to explain the odd but sturdy consensus behind welfare reforms that force the poor single mother to relinquish basic rights and compel her to find economic security in work outside the home. 
Mink explores how and why we should cure the unique inequality of poor single mothers by reorienting the emphasis of welfare policy away from regulating mothers to rewarding the work they do. Every mother is a working mother, the bumper sticker proclaims, but the work mothers do pays no wages. Mink argues that women's equality depends on economic support for caregivers'work.
Welfare's End challenges the ways in which policymakers define the problem they seek to cure. While legislators assume that something is wrong with poor single mothers, Mink insists that something is wrong with a system that invades their rights and negates their work. Showing how welfare reform harms women, Mink invites the design of policies to promote gender justice.

Welfare's End (Cornell Paperbacks)

Old Labor and New Immigrants in American Political Development: Union, Party and State, 1875-1920

In Ensuring Poverty, Felicia Kornbluh and Gwendolyn Mink assess the gendered history of welfare reform. They foreground arguments advanced by feminists for a welfare policy that would respect single mothers' rights while advancing their opportunities and assuring economic security for their families. Kornbluh and Mink consider welfare policy in the broad intersectional context of gender, race, poverty, and inequality. They argue that the subject of welfare reform always has been single mothers, the animus always has been race, and the currency always has been inequality. Yet public conversations about poverty and welfare, even today, rarely acknowledge the nexus between racialized gender inequality and the economic vulnerability of single-mother families.
Since passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) by a Republican Congress and the Clinton administration, the gendered dimensions of antipoverty policy have receded from debate. Mink and Kornbluh explore the narrowing of discussion that has occurred in recent decades and the path charted by social justice feminists in the 1990s and early 2000s, a course rejected by policy makers. They advocate a return to the social justice approach built on the equality of mothers, especially mothers of color, in policies aimed at poor families.

Ensuring Poverty: Welfare Reform in Feminist Perspective

Kornbluh, Felicia

University of Pennsylvania Press

Review\n"Challenging myths of equal opportunity and equal treatment, Fierce and Fearless chronicles Patsy Takemoto Mink’s transformative leadership as she fought for ethnic, racial, gender, and environmental justice―and an end to war―even as she encountered systemic discrimination, physical and psychological abuse, and betrayal by her party. This gripping narrative illuminates the extraordinary policy accomplishments and the astounding personal costs of a principled and pathbreaking life in U.S. politics." -- Mary Hawkesworth, author of Gender and Political Theory: Feminist Reckonings\n"This is an exquisite biography of Patsy T. Mink, an extraordinary woman, legislator, and the force behind the passage of Title IX. The collaboration between Judy Tzu-Chun Wu and Patsy Mink’s daughter, Gwendolyn Mink, is rich, productive, and compelling. They produce a subtly textured blend of personal anecdotes and memories, biography, and post-WWII historical change. Fierce and Fearless demonstrates that Congresswoman Patsy T. Mink is a singular example of politics and policy driven by vision, ethics, and values. This inside look into the Mink family is a powerful read into the fierce, egalitarian values of Patsy T. Mink. Beautifully written, inspiring, and poignant." -- Dana Y. Takagi, author of The Retreat from Race: Asian-American Admissions and Racial Politics\n"Wu and Mink celebrate the incredible life of this feminist advocate from Hawai’i, showing us why Congress renamed Title IX the Patsy T. Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act in 2002. This thoroughly researched and beautifully crafted narrative highlights Mink’s environmental, civil rights, peace, and anti-poverty work, how she bridged electoral politics and grassroots advocacy, and how she challenged the establishment from within to widen the arc of social justice." ― Eileen Boris, author of Making the Woman Worker: Precarious Labor and the Fight for Global Standards, 1919-2019\n"Mink’s imprint on so many important moments―supporting the 1965 Voting Rights Act, ending the Vietnam War, introducing Title IX―have been overlooked for far too long. We need to return to her example of intersectional legislative feminism to better bridge grassroots concerns and political action today." ― Leandra Ruth Zarnow, author of Battling Bella: The Protest Politics of Bella Abzug\nThe first biography of trailblazing legislator Patsy Takemoto Mink, best known as the legislative champion of Title IX\n“Every girl in Little League, every woman playing college sports, and every parent―including Michelle and myself―who watches their daughter on a field or in the classroom is forever grateful to the late Patsy Takemoto Mink.”―President Barack Obama, on posthumously awarding Mink the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2014\nPatsy Takemoto Mink was the first woman of color and the first Asian American woman elected to Congress. Fierce and Fearless is the first biography of this remarkable woman, who first won election to Congress in 1964 and went on to serve in the House for twenty-four years, her final term ending with her death in 2002. Mink was an advocate for girls and women, best known for her work shepherding and defending Title IX, the legislation that changed the face of education in America, making it possible for girls and women to participate in school sports, and in education more broadly, at the same level as boys and men.\nMink’s life is wonderfully chronicled by eminent historian Judy Tzu-Chun Wu and Gwendolyn Mink, Patsy’s daughter, a noted political science scholar and first-hand witness to the many political struggles that her mother had to overcome. Featuring family anecdotes, vignettes, and photographs, Fierce and Fearless offers new insight into who Mink was, and the progressive principles that fueled her mission. Wu and Mink provide readers with an up-close understanding of her life as a third-generation Japanese American from Hawaii―from her childhood on Maui to he

Fierce and Fearless: Patsy Takemoto Mink, First Woman of Color in Congress

Biographies & Memoirs

Wu, Judy Tzu-Chun

Community & Culture

NYU Press

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

Books by Mink, Gwendolyn

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

The Reader's Companion to U.S. Women's History

Old Labor and New Immigrants in American Political Development: Union, Party, and State, 1875-1920

The Wages of Motherhood: Inequality in the Welfare State, 1917–1942

Welfare's End

Hostile Environment: The Political Betrayal of Sexually Harassed Women

Welfare's End (Cornell Paperbacks)

The Wages of Motherhood: Inequality in the Welfare State, 1917–1942

Old Labor and New Immigrants in American Political Development: Union, Party and State, 1875-1920

Ensuring Poverty: Welfare Reform in Feminist Perspective

Fierce and Fearless: Patsy Takemoto Mink, First Woman of Color in Congress