Social History Women

When we talk about motherhood and politics together, we usually talk about isolated moments - the policing of breastfeeding, or the cost of childcare. But this is not enough: we need to understand motherhood itself as an inherently political state, one that has the potential to pose a serious challenge to the status quo. In Mother State, Helen Charman uses this provocative insight to write a new history of Britain and Northern Ireland. Beginning with Women's Liberation and ending with austerity, the book follows mothers' fights for an alternative future.

Carve Her Name with Pride is the inspiring story of the half-French Violette Szabo who was born in Paris in 1921 to an English motorcar dealer, and a French Mother. She met and married Etienne Szabo, a Captain in the French Foreign Legion in 1940. Shortly after the birth of her daughter, Tania, her husband died at El Alamein. She became a FANY (First Aid Nursing Yeomanry) and was recruited into the SOE and underwent secret agent training. Her first trip to France was completed successfully even though she was arrested and then released by the French Police.

Prostitution, gambling, and saloons were a vital, if not universally welcome, part of life in frontier boomtowns. In Saloons, Prostitutes, and Temperance in Alaska Territory, Catherine Holder Spude explores the rise and fall of these enterprises in Skagway, Alaska, between the gold rush of 1897 and the enactment of Prohibition in 1918. Her gritty account offers a case study in the clash between working-class men and middle-class women, and in the growth of women’s political and economic power in the West.

Adventurous Women Throughout History is full of examples of remarkable women who inspire and who fought to break down barriers. By listening to the stories of their can-do attitudes, you'll feel empowered to carry on, no matter what obstacles you face.

On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama. She was not trying to start a movement. She was simply tired of the social injustice. Yet her simple act of courage started a chain of events that forever shaped the landscape of American race relations. Now, decades after her quiet defiance inspired the modern civil rights movement, Mrs. Parks' own words tell of her courageous life, her passion for freedom and equality, and her strong faith.

African American women have always played an important role in molding our country's history, and this book aims to highlight their contributions. A pair of award-winning historians are attempting to both inspire African American women and convince their allies that Black women's unique capacity to construct their own communities while battling centuries of oppression is a crucial component in our ongoing resistance to systemic racism and sexism. For those who want to learn more about Black women's history, this book serves as a beginning point.

Having found fame and success as a model, Christine's short affair with the minister for war, John Profumo, led to his downfall at the end of Harold Macmillan's Conservative government, and was at the heart of the social and political earthquake that followed. She became the subject of scandal, intrigue and gossip and was tried for perjury and briefly jailed following the death of Stephen Ward, the socialite who had introduced her to Profumo.

Doing It All is a personal quest for empowerment, a fierce critique of the systems that leave single moms marginalized and exhausted, and a call to reclaim mothering as the life force of sustainable, connected, and radically responsible communities.

In the annals of World War II history, few figures emerge with the legendary status of Lyudmila Pavlichenko, the Soviet sniper whose extraordinary skill and indomitable spirit made her one of the deadliest snipers in history. "Lyudmila Pavlichenko" delves into the life of this remarkable woman who changed the course of the war and became a symbol of courage and resilience.

Though the female fighter is often seen as an anomaly, women make up nearly 30 percent of militant movements worldwide. Historically, these women - viewed as victims, weak-willed wives, and prey to Stockholm Syndrome - have been deeply misunderstood. Radicalizing Her holds the female fighter up in all her complexity as a kind of mirror to contemporary conversations on gender, violence, and power.

The women's rights movement grew out of the women's suffrage movement of the mid-1800s and also addressed other women's legal rights issues. The second wave of the movement, which promoted economic, political, and social equality, gained momentum in the 1960s and '70s, when such groups as the National Organization for Women fought for equal pay and laws banning employment discrimination.

From the New York Times best-selling author of The Last Castle and The Girls of Atomic City comes the fascinating story of America’s national day of thanks and of the tenacious and inspiring Sarah Josepha Hale, a 19th-century woman who made establishing this holiday her life’s mission - one brought to fruition by the wise support of Abraham Lincoln.

When Ohio newspapers published the story of Alice Chenoweth's affair with a married man, she changed her name to Helen Hamilton Gardener, moved to New York, and devoted her life to championing women's rights and decrying the sexual double standard. She became one of the most sought-after speakers on the 19th-century lecture circuit, published seven books and countless essays, supported herself, hobnobbed with the most interesting thinkers of her era, visited 22 countries, and was celebrated for her audacious ideas and keen wit.

The Essence of Liberty blends social, political, and economic history to analyze black women’s experience in both the North and the South, from the colonial period through emancipation. Focusing on class and familial relationships, King examines the myriad sources of freedom for black women to show the many factors that, along with time spent in slavery before emancipation, shaped the meaning of freedom. Her book also raises questions about whether free women were bound to or liberated from gender conventions of their day.

Great Britain's forced transportation of convicts to colonial Australia is well known. Less widely known is Britain's earlier program of sending convicts - including women - to North America. Many of these women were assigned as servants in Maryland. Contemporary readers and scholars will be fascinated by Ziegler's explanation of how gender-influenced punishments were meted out to women and often ensnared them in Britain's system of convict labor.

¡México es el mejor país del mundo…! O eso dijo en marzo de 2024 la entonces candidata presidencial Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo. Pero ahora, como presidenta, le tocará reducir la cantidad récord de homicidios con que cerró el sexenio de Andrés Manuel López Obrador; dar solidez a las finanzas públicas y manejar la deuda, así como contener la aún presente corrupción. También deberá revertir el derrumbe en la expectativa de vida de los mexicanos y la caída de los niveles educativos y de salud del país, así como crear condiciones para acabar con décadas de un comportamiento mediocre.

These days, swimming may seem like the most egalitarian of pastimes, open to anyone with a swimsuit - but this wasn't always the case. In the 19th century, swimming was exclusively the domain of men, and access to pools was a luxury limited by class. Women were (barely) allowed to swim in the sea, as long as no men were around, but even into the 20th century they could be arrested and fined if they dared dive into a lake. It wasn't until the 1930s that women were finally granted equal access.

On a hot and dusty December day in 1980, the bodies of four American women - three of them Catholic nuns - were pulled from a hastily dug grave in a field outside San Salvador. They had been murdered two nights before by the US-trained El Salvadoran military. News of the killing shocked the American public and set off a decade of debate over Cold War policy in Latin America. The women themselves became symbols and martyrs, shorn of context and background.

Writer, activist and journalist Joan Smith has worked for years to raise awareness of violence against women and girls, and has been instrumental in bringing the innate misogyny of the police to public attention. Unfortunately, She Was a Nymphomaniac reinterprets the bloody, violent story of twenty-three women closely associated with the Julio-Claudian emperors of Rome. Fewer than half a dozen of them can be said with any confidence to have died of natural causes.

Born into slavery in 1862, Ida Bell Wells was freed as a result of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1865. Yet she could see just how unjust the world she was living in was. This drove her to become a journalist and activist. Throughout her life, she fought against prejudice and for equality for African Americans. Ida B. Wells would go on to co-own a newspaper, write several books, help cofound the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and fight for women's right to vote.