A novel about first-wave feminists cleverly critiques the movement’s privilege. The first fiction from Nakkiah Lui’s imprint highlights uncomfortable truths. And a debut about teen girls is ‘too naive’.
Protestors at the March 4 Justice in Brisbane, 2021.
Dave Hunt/AAP
We’re used to describing feminism in ‘waves’, from the first in 1848, campaigning for women to vote, to the current fourth wave, in the age of #metoo. But do waves still work to describe feminism?
For decades, women from Munich to Melbourne, from Westminster to Washington, had been campaigning for a voice.
The Wesleyan Chapel in Seneca Falls, N.Y., where on July 19 and 20, 1848, the first women’s rights conventions in the U.S. were held.
Epics/Hulton Archive via Getty Images
Most of the convention’s core organizers were Quakers. The religious movement’s beliefs about men and women’s equality before God has shaped members’ activism for centuries.
Finance is not inherently masculine. Rather, it was long constructed as such by the institutions which sought to exclude women.
Frances Willard stands behind her mother, at left, and Anna B. Gordon, who worked as a secretary and lived in the Willard household.
Library of Congress/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images
A historian highlights the role of Frances Willard, who helped found the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, one of the major social movements of the 19th and 20th centuries.
Palestinian artists draw a mural of hunger striker Hisham Abu Hawash.
MOHAMMED ABED/AFP via Getty Images
Nayan Shah, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
The power of the hunger strike lies in its utter simplicity. Anyone can choose to forego eating, even when living under extremely restricted conditions.
Why did she do all the work while Santa got all the glory? What would happen if she delivered the toys?
Joe Sohm/Visions of America/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
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.
The women’s suffrage movement was one of the most successful political movements in history.
Picryl
This Suffrage Day, September 19, we remember Kate Sheppard as a heroine of the movement. But we should also remember others who paved the way, even if they don’t have a banknote to their name.
A silent protest parade in New York City against the East St. Louis riots in 1917.
Library of Congress
Despite harsh, discriminatory conditions, low pay and lack of appreciation, deaf women have fought with brilliance and dedication for personal and professional recognition, including the right to vote.
Overlooked for decades, the house where the women’s suffrage campaign was launched finally becomes a public landmark.
Congress had very few women members back in 1960, and just one woman of color: Representative Patsy Mink of Hawaii.
Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images)
Mink, the first woman of color in Congress, brought a racially and historically aware brand of feminism into lawmaking and ran for president in 1972. But women’s history largely overlooks her.
A biography about suffragist Vida Goldstein seeks to reveal her strength and endurance. Sadly, it also reveals how little progress women who seek political power on their terms have made.
These boys working in a Georgia cotton mill were photographed in 1909.
Lewis Hine/The National Child Labor Committee Collection via Library of Congress
More than a fifth of US children were working in 1900, and many Americans saw nothing wrong with that. It took decades of activism and court battles plus economic upheaval to change course.
Kate Sheppard (seated at centre) with the National Council of Women in Christchurch. 1896.
In 1911, lesbians led the nation’s largest feminist organization. They promoted a diverse and inclusive women’s rights movement.
Catherine Hay Thomson went undercover as an assistant nurse for her series on conditions at Melbourne Hospital.
A. J. Campbell Collection/National Library of Australia
A passionate crusader for the rights of women and children, Catherine Hay Thomson went undercover to investigate their treatment in public institutions and testified before a Royal Commission.