This textbook for courses on women and politics thematically integrates two profound historical developments focusing on women's political participation in contemporary public life in the United States. The second wave of women’s rights activism has now spanned a half century producing a revolution in women’s presence and influence in the public realm of American life. Over the course of this same era, however, a second phenomenon of rising economic inequality has also dramatically changed the American landscape. Burrell’s text uniquely examines the effect of the age of inequality on women’s advancement toward economic and political equality and in turn how policy initiatives of the women’s movement have addressed inequality issues. Students will come to better understand what’s at stake in the politics and policy issues from the women’s rights movement to the "war on women" debate. Explaining a diverse set of issues and viewpoints, Burrell brings a fresh approach to the engagement of women in the public realm over the past half century. Framing this activism in the great economic divide of the same time period provides a thought-provoking, challenging, and broad thematic approach to this history. The text chronicles the many diverse types of actions women have taken in the contemporary era to achieve gender equity, empowerment, and a greater public voice. Women—both liberal feminist and conservative— have run for and been elected to positions of leadership at all levels of government. Women have formed organizations to lobby for equity in employment and education, in the military and to promote reproductive rights. They have engaged in unconventional political activities marching against and protesting the actions and policies of economic corporations and governmental institutions. Women with few economic resources have joined together to challenge local power structures. In addition to efforts to improve the lives and status of women in the United States, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have formed to promote global women’s rights. Readers of this text will gain a great appreciation of the multiple political voices of American women and the challenges to continued unequal voices.

There is a gap between politicians and the general public. The current British political class is widely viewed as uniform in who they are, what they think, and how they behave. A more diverse pool of politicians would not only better reflect democratic principles of equality, but may even result in better political outcomes.

Women, Politics, and Change, a compendium of twenty-three original essays by social historians, political scientists, sociologists, psychologists, and anthropologists, examines the political history of American women over the past one hundred years. Taking a broad view of politics, the contributors address voluntarism and collective action, women's entry into party politics through suffrage and temperance groups, the role of nonpartisan organizations and pressure politics, and the politicization of gender. Each chapter provides a telling example of how American women have behaved politically throughout the twentieth century, both in the two great waves of feminist activism and in less highly mobilized periods. "The essays are unusually well integrated, not only through the introductory material but through a similarity of form and extensive cross-references among them....in raising central questions about the forms, bases, and issues of women's politics, as well as change and continuity over time, Tilly, Gurin, and the individual scholars included in this collection have provided us with a survey of the latest research and an agenda for the future." —Contemporary Sociology "This book is a necessary addition to the scholar's bookshelf, and the student's curriculum." —Cynthia Fuchs Epstein, professor of sociology, City University of New York Graduate Center

An edited volume exploring the role women played in California politics in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Women, Politics, and Power: A Global Perspective, Third Edition provides a clear, detailed introduction to women’s political participation and representation across a wide range of countries and regions. Through broad statistical overviews and detailed case-study accounts, authors Pamela Paxton and Melanie M. Hughes document both historical trends and the contemporary state of women’s political strength. Readers see the cultural, structural, political, and international influences on women’s access to political power, and the difference women make once in political office. The text acknowledges differences among women through attention to intersectionality and women from marginalized groups.

This account examines some of the areas of women's political activity in Britain from the Glorious Revolution to the election of the first female Prime Minister in 1979. It shows how women had worked in a variety of arenas and organizations before the suffrage campaign and explores the directions their political activity took afterwards.

First Published in 1986. The modern women's movement has exerted a profound influence upon contemporary political thought, research, and action in Western Europe. Despite important differences within - and cross-national in - the ideological and political orientations of modern feminism, the overall impact of this movement has been pronounced, albeit largely unrecognised and unexplored within the Western European and especially European politics fields. The publication of this volume represents an important step towards bringing research on women and organised feminism, on the one hand, and European politics, on the other, to the attention of area specialists.

A provocative analysis of the new contours of black nationalism and feminism in America.

The Women’s Liberation Movement (WLM) of the late 1960s, 1970s and 1980s emerged out of a particular set of economic and social circumstances in which women were unequally treated in the home, the workplace and in culture and wider society. As part of the WLM, women collected together in disparate groups and contexts to express their dissatisfaction with their role and position in society, making their concerns apparent through consciousness-raising and activism. This important time in women’s history is revisited in this collection, which looks afresh at the diversity of the movement and the ways in which feminism of the time might be reconsidered and historicised. The contributions here cover a range of important issues, including feminist art, local activism, class distinction, racial politics, perceptions of motherhood, girls’ education, feminist print cultures, the recovery of feminist histories and feminist heritage, and they span personal and political concerns in Britain, Canada and the United States. Each contributor considers the impact of the WLM in a different context, reflecting the variety of issues faced by women and helping us to understand the problems of the second wave. This book broadens our understanding of the impact and the implication of the WLM, explores the dynamism of women’s activism and radicalism, and acknowledges the significance of this movement to ongoing contemporary feminisms. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Women’s History Review.