Texas Through Women's Eyes
Texas Through Women's Eyes
The Twentieth-Century Experience
Winner, Liz Carpenter Award For Research in the History of Women, Texas State Historical Association, 2010
Texas women broke barriers throughout the twentieth century, winning the right to vote, expanding their access to higher education, entering new professions, participating fully in civic and political life, and planning their families. Yet these major achievements have hardly been recognized in histories of twentieth-century Texas. By contrast, Texas Through Women's Eyes offers a fascinating overview of women's experiences and achievements in the twentieth century, with an inclusive focus on rural women, working-class women, and women of color.
McArthur and Smith trace the history of Texas women through four eras. They discuss how women entered the public sphere to work for social reforms and the right to vote during the Progressive era (1900–1920); how they continued working for reform and social justice and for greater opportunities in education and the workforce during the Great Depression and World War II (1920–1945); how African American and Mexican American women fought for labor and civil rights while Anglo women laid the foundation for two-party politics during the postwar years (1945–1965); and how second-wave feminists (1965–2000) promoted diverse and sometimes competing goals, including passage of the Equal Rights Amendment, reproductive freedom, gender equity in sports, and the rise of the New Right and the Republican party.
This is social history at its very best.
Judith N. Mcarthur and Harold L. Smith teach at the University of Houston–Victoria and are the coauthors of Minnie Fisher Cunningham: A Suffragist's Life in Politics, which won the Liz Carpenter Award for Research in the History of Women from the Texas State Historical Association and the T. R. Fehrenbach Book Award from the Texas Historical Commission.
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part One: Social Reform and Suffrage in the Progressive Era, 1900-1920
- Urbanization and Economic Opportunity
- Strikes and Labor Activism
- Education and Professionalism
- Motherhood and Social Housekeeping
- Public Health: Cleaning Up the Food Supply
- Maternalist Legislation: Child Labor, Compulsory Education, and Mothers' Pensions
- Claiming Urban Space: Settlement Houses and Prostitution Districts
- The Boundaries of Race
- Immigration and Revolution in the Borderlands
- Votes for Women
- The Politics of Woman Suffrage
- Suffrage in Black and White
- Suggested References
- Documents
- Part Two: Post-Suffrage Politics, Depression, and War, 1920-1945
- Rural Life
- The New Woman in Politics
- "Female" Politics and the "Petticoat" Lobby
- Athletics: Hoop Dreams and Rodeo Queens
- Education and Work
- Women of Color: Discrimination and Protest
- Surviving the Great Depression
- The New Deal and Women
- Discrimination in the New Deal
- World War II: The Home Front
- Women in Uniform
- Conclusion: New Women, Labor Women, and Race Women
- Suggested References
- Documents
- Part Three: Conformity, Civil Rights, and Social Protest, 1945-1965
- Gender Roles and the Domestic Ideal
- Women at Work
- Civil Rights, Brown: "They Treated Us Like Dumb Mexicans"
- Civil Rights, Black: "You're Not Dirt, No Matter Where They Make You Sit"
- Red Scare Politics and the Minute Women
- Women and the Rise of the Republican Party
- Legal Rights
- Suggested References
- Documents
- Part Four: Feminism, Backlash, and Political Culture, 1965-2000
- Title VII and Civil Rights for Women
- The New Left and Women's Liberation
- Chicana Feminism
- Reproductive Freedom
- The Equal Rights Amendment: For and Against
- Splintered Sisterhood: The 1977 Houston Women's Conference
- Aftermath: Women and the New Right
- Cracking the Glass Ceiling: Women in Electoral Politics
- Title IX and Gender Equity in Sports
- Women in the Workforce
- Family and Personal Life at the End of the Century
- Conclusion: Facing Forward, Looking Back
- Suggested References
- Documents
