women's history — Bunk History

Latina suffragists Andrea and Teresa Villarreal.

Recovering Histories of Gendered State Violence

And how those with few resources at their disposal found ways to navigate and negotiate even the direst of situations.

by Sonia Hernandez via Process: A Blog for American History on December 19, 2023

Portraits of Isabella Graham and Catherine Ferguson

Where Are the Women? Past Choices That Shaped the Historical Record

When women are missing from the history we tell, sometimes it’s because of how their stories were preserved and told in the past.

by Amanda Bowie Moniz via Perspectives on History on September 1, 2023

A Woman Who Composed the First Draft of History Finds Herself Written Out of the History Books

Prominent institutions, such as the Smithsonian, have historically erased or omitted US women from archival records.

by Allison Gilbert via CNN on August 14, 2023

Victorian women waving from ship

The Glamour and the Terror: Why Women in the Victorian Era Jumped at the Chance to Go to Sea

The daring women whose transatlantic journeys challenged gender roles.

by Siân Evans via Literary Hub on August 12, 2021

Mary Beard and the Beginning of Women's History

She was one half of a powerhouse academic couple and an influential historian in her own right. But she's still often overlooked.

by Matthew Wills via JSTOR Daily on March 15, 2021

Condoleezza Rice

Why Aren’t Conservative Women Recognized During Women’s History Month?

The left regularly dismisses such women as less worthy of recognition.

by Kay C. James via The Washington Times on March 1, 2021

Time magazine covers featuring women.

100 Women of the Year

From Amelia Earhart to Michelle Obama, meet 100 women who defined the last century.

via TIME on March 5, 2020

Women and men sifting for gold

Yes, Women Participated in the Gold Rush

“Conventional wisdom tells us that the gold rush was a male undertaking,” writes the historian Glenda Riley. But women were there, too.

by Erin Blakemore, Glenda Riley via JSTOR Daily on December 19, 2019

Abstract painting depicts faces staring at each other from either end of the canvas.

Bridging the Gap

A new book portrays five American historians who published popular books that sacrificed neither intellectual depth nor political bite.

by Michael Kazin via New York Review of Books on June 5, 2025

Frances Perkins

Frances Perkins, Modern Politics, and Historical Memory

The current political moment is reshaping the narrative about the first woman to serve in a presidential cabinet.

by Rebecca Brenner Graham via Made By History on October 21, 2024

Rows of shelves in a historical archive.

Archival Shouting

Silence and volume in collections and institutions.

by Karin Wulf via Perspectives on History on April 10, 2024

Colorful abstract painting

The New Declaration of Sentiments

Four important court cases that have defined the landscape of women’s rights in the United States.

by Elizabeth L. Silver via Los Angeles Review of Books on January 23, 2024

Gun on the cover of Kellie Carter Jackson's book "Force and Freedom: Black Abolitionists and the Politics of Violence."

Words to Weapons: A History of the Abolition Movement from Persuasion to Force

With "Force and Freedom," Carter Jackson makes a stimulating and insightful debut which will have a major influence on abolition movement scholarship.

by William Morgan Sr. via Commonplace on December 18, 2023

Mary Vanderlight’s Titled Account Book, from the collections of the John Carter Brown Library.

The Brown Brothers Had a Sister

Women’s work is often hidden or marginal within historical records that were meant to show men’s economic and political lives.

by Karin Wulf via Commonplace on December 5, 2023

Madame Restell

‘Hag of Misery’

The abortionist Madame Restell is central to the story of how American women’s reproductive freedom was dismantled in the second half of the nineteenth century.

by Susan Faludi via New York Review of Books on October 12, 2023

Elizabeth Rose Poole's death record.

Invisible Women, Invisible Abortions, Invisible Histories

One La Jolla family’s story illuminates a persistent gap in our collective memory.

by Alicia Gutierrez-Romine via Zócalo Public Square on October 9, 2023

Betty Friedan

The Abandonment of Betty Friedan

What does the academy have against the mother of second-wave feminism?

by Rachel Shteir via The Chronicle of Higher Education on September 11, 2023

Covers of popular history books.

Who Is History For?

What happens when radical historians write for the public.

by David Waldstreicher via Boston Review on July 25, 2023

The Osterizer’s Spin Cookery Blender and Cook Book.

Of Potato Latkes and Pedagogy: Cooking for the History Classroom

A cooking assignment helps illuminate the lives of Jewish women in the past for students.

by Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall via Perspectives on History on May 23, 2023

A poster made by Ghazal Foroutan showing solidarity with the women of Iran

Was She Really Rosie?

The unlikely, true story of the Westinghouse “We Can Do It” work-incentive poster that became an international emblem of women’s empowerment.

by Michelle C. Smith via JSTOR Daily on March 15, 2023

Women's rights activists Lucy Stone, Sojourner Truth, Paulina Kellogg Wright Davis, Lucretia Mott, Harriot Kezia Hunt, and Harriet Martineau.

Why the 1850 Worcester Women's Rights Convention Is a Vital Part of History

Women’s rights activism has shaped America for the better throughout our history, so why should colleges be banned from teaching it?

by Ben Railton via The Saturday Evening Post on March 1, 2023

The Lady of the Rockies statue. Photo by Doug Zwick/Flickr.

The 90-foot Sentinel of Butte, Montana

What does a statue dedicated to mothers reveal about women’s rights?

by Leah Sottile via High Country News on March 1, 2023

Map of Jamaica.

Revisiting Restoration

Women’s economic labor was essential to state function.

by Jonah Estess via Commonplace on March 1, 2023

A cemetery with a dusting of snow.

Safer Than Childbirth

Abortion in the 19th century was widely accepted as a means of avoiding the risks of pregnancy.

by Tamara Dean via The American Scholar on March 4, 2022

Women carry munitions to NVA lines inside South Vietnam, 1970.

The Women Who Won the Vietnam War

The majority-female platoon from North Vietnam that fought against U.S. forces in the Vietnam War.

by Sherry Buchanan via HNN on October 24, 2021

Female photographer standing behind camera, next to man in uniform holding suitcase.

Midwestern Exposure

Zooming in on the places where early women photographers could build a career.

by Kim Biel via Lapham’s Quarterly on September 14, 2021

Collage of women's rights symbolism. Woman outline waving flag.

Who Lost the Sex Wars?

Fissures in the feminist movement should not be buried as signs of failure but worked through as opportunities for insight.

by Amia Srinivasan via The New Yorker on September 3, 2021

Six generations of Black women, portrait taken by R.W. Harrison in Selma, AL, 1893

Black Women and Civil War Pensions

At the intersection of gender and racial discrimination, Black widows struggled to get the compensation they deserved.

by Holly A. Pinheiro Jr. via Black Perspectives on September 1, 2021

Picketers from National Women's Party

She Asked President Woodrow Wilson For 22 Suffrage "Favors." She Got 21.

Wilson became a great supporter of the 19th Amendment, but only because he worked alongside a woman who spoke his language.

by Kimberly A. Hamlin via Study Marry Kill on August 18, 2021

Drawing of 19th century woman in science laboratory

Scientists Understood Physics of Climate Change in the 1800s – Thanks to a Woman Named Eunice Foote

The results of Foote's simple experiments were confirmed through hundreds of tests by scientists in the US and Europe. It happened more than a century ago.

by Sylvia G. Dee via The Conversation on July 22, 2021

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