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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
Santa Claus, Mrs. Claus, and snowman.

How Mrs. Claus Embodied 19th-Century Debates About Women's Rights

Many early stories praise her work ethic and devotion. But with Mrs. Claus usually hitting the North Pole’s glass ceiling, some writers started to push back.
by Maura Ives via The Conversation on December 15, 2021
The author's great-grandparents, Ida Brown and Nathan “Jack” Dashow, in their 1920 wedding photo.

How My Great-Grandmother Lost Her U.S. Citizenship The Year Women Got The Right to Vote

In 1920, my American-born great-grandmother, Ida Brown, married a Russian immigrant in New York City.
by Jayne Orenstein via Retropolis on August 13, 2020
Female medics during the 1918 pandemic.

How the Devastating 1918 Flu Pandemic Helped Advance US Women's Rights

With many men 'missing' from the population in the aftermath of the 1918 flu, women stepped into public roles that hadn't previously been open to them.
by Christine Crudo Blackburn, Gerald W. Parker, Morten Wendelbo via The Conversation on March 1, 2018

How the Women of Los Angeles Protected Their Rights to Drive

In the 1920s, women's love of driving in auto-obsessed Los Angeles created traffic jams and a battle over women’s rightful place.
by Erin Blakemore, Virginia Scharff via JSTOR Daily on October 23, 2016
Supporters and opponents of the Equal Rights Amendment observing as the Georgia Senate voted on it, January 21, 1980.

The Equal Rights Amendment

A primary source set and teaching guide created by educators.
by Samantha Gibson, Franky Abbott via Digital Public Library of America on April 7, 2016

My Freedom, My Choice

A new book illuminates how freedom became associated with choice and questions whether that has been a good thing—for women in particular.
by David A. Bell via New York Review of Books on June 5, 2025
Drawings of women authors

How Margaret Fuller Set Minds on Fire

High-minded and scandal-prone, a foe of marriage who dreamed of domesticity, Fuller radiated a charisma that helped ignite the fight for women’s rights.
by James Marcus via The New Yorker on June 2, 2025
A drawing of human eyes behind a variety of consumer goods, including milk, shoes, and toothpaste.

The Surprising History of the Ideology of Choice

How endless options became our only option.
by Andrew Lanham via The New Republic on April 11, 2025
Birth control devices in different shapes and forms.

The Battle for Birth Control Could Have Gone Differently

Margaret Sanger and Mary Ware Dennett each had a different vision of reproductive freedom. Would reproductive rights be more secure if Dennett’s had prevailed?
by Joanna Scutts via The New Republic on January 3, 2025
Handcuff cuffed around wedding ring

“Marital Rape” Was Legal Longer Than You Think

In 1984, only 18 American states denied that wives were the sexual property of their husbands.
by Eleanor Johnson via Dame Magazine on December 20, 2024
Illustration of sex workers behind waving American flag.

How the United States Tried to Get on Top of the Sex Trade

Why should American exceptionalism end at the red-light district?
by Rebecca Mead via The New Yorker on December 9, 2024
Collage of Matilda Gage and good and bad witches from "The Wizard of Oz" and "Wicked."

The Feminist Who Inspired the Witches of Oz

The story of suffragist Matilda Gage, the woman behind the curtain whose life story captivated her son-in-law L. Frank Baum as he wrote his classic novel.
by Evan I. Schwartz via Smithsonian on November 18, 2024

How Woodrow Wilson’s Privileged Southern Upbringing Influenced His Love Life

In Wilson’s chivalric framework, women were required to be submissive precisely so that men could protect the weaker sex.
by Christopher Cox via Literary Hub on November 8, 2024
Crystal Eastman
partner

Crystal Eastman Plans for After the Election

A reading from 1920 on the fights that follow the 19th Amendment: “Now at last we can begin.”
by Crystal Eastman, Bruce W. Dearstyne via HNN on October 29, 2024
A sketch of a woman praying outside.

“To Eat This Big Universe as Her Oyster”

Margaret Fuller and the first major work of American feminism.
by Randall Fuller via The Public Domain Review on October 29, 2024
A 1923 General Electric advertisement of a women standing over a light switch.

Using Women’s Suffrage to Sell Soup and Cereal

In the 1920s, advertisers tried to convince women to exercise their political power not only at the ballot box but also in the store.
by Einav Rabinovitch-Fox via The Saturday Evening Post on October 29, 2024
Jane Addams.

‘Childless Cat Ladies’ Have Long Contributed to the Welfare of American Children − and the Nation

Criticisms of women without biological children define motherhood too narrowly, as history reveals the many forms of motherhood.
by Anya Jabour via The Conversation on October 21, 2024
Governor Philip La Follette signing the old-age pension bill in Madison, Wisconsin in 1931.

The Golden Age of Wisconsin Socialism

At its peak in the 1920s and early ’30s, the Socialist Party in Wisconsin used confrontational tactics and nonsocialists alliances to make legislative advances.
by Joshua Kluever via Jacobin on September 12, 2024
A crowd of Feminist protestors marching in New York.

A New Look at the Feminist Earthquake

How women's liberation transformed America and why our understanding of 1963-1973 needs to include more voices.
by Sara Bhatia via Washington Monthly on August 25, 2024
People on a porch in Fort Verde, Arizona, 1886.

Arizona’s 1864 Abortion Law Was Made in a Women’s Rights Desert – Here’s What Life Was Like Then

Abortions happened in Arizona, despite a near-complete abortion ban enacted in 1864. But people also faced penalties for them, including a female doctor who went to prison.
by Calvin Schermerhorn via The Conversation on April 25, 2024
Women's suffrage march

When Feminism Was ‘Sexist’—and Anti-Suffrage

The women who opposed their own enfranchisement in the Victorian era have little in common with the “Repeal the 19th” fringe of today.
by Mary Harrington via The American Conservative on April 15, 2024
The First Women’s Rights Convention, Seneca Falls, 1848.

What American Divorces Tell Us About American Marriages

On the inseparable histories of matrimony and disunion in the United States.
by Lyz Lenz via Literary Hub on February 22, 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
Members of the National Woman's Party prepare to lobby their senators and congressmen to vote for the Equal Rights Amendment, ca. 1923.

Equal Rights Amendment Was Introduced 100 Years Ago — and Still Waits

America’s feminists felt confident when the Equal Rights Amendment was put before Congress 100 years ago this week. For a century, it’s failed to be enacted.
by Frederic J. Frommer via Retropolis on December 12, 2023
A diagram of the parts of a flintlock pistol.

Bad Facts, Bad Law

In a recent Supreme Court oral argument about disarming domestic abusers, originalism itself was put to the test.
by Duncan Hosie via New York Review of Books on November 25, 2023
Ruth Ehrlich and Aileen Hernandez sitting next to each other at a National Organization for Women event.

Labor Union Radicals Built the US Feminist Movement

Labor radicals played a crucial role in organizing the struggles to topple gender hierarchies, and should serve as an inspiration for labor feminists today.
by Katherine Turk via Jacobin on August 9, 2023
John Hart Ely.

The Liberal Giant Who Doomed Roe

His works underpins the Dobbs decision. His legacy matters enormously to what's next for constitutional law.
by Caitlin B. Tully via Slate on June 25, 2023
Artwork of Sojourner Truth, against a background of newspaper articles for women's rights.

The Truth About Sojourner Truth

She was a woman, but she was not the author of the speech attributed to her in popular lore.
by Mary Cuff via Law & Liberty on May 26, 2023
A woman behind bars, and hands writing.

A History of Incarceration by Women Who Have Lived Through It

The members of the Indiana Women’s Prison History Project scrutinize official records not only for what they reveal, but also for what they omit.
by Rachael Bedard via The New Yorker on May 22, 2023
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