HIST 144 – Readings – Flashcards
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"Some Could Suckle Over Their Shoulder: European Depictions of Indigenous Women" by Jennifer L. Morgan
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-Evaluates and describes the sexualization of African and Native American women's bodies by European men -Compared them to European women -Described African women as cannibalistic sexual beasts who experienced no pain during child labor -Used their depictions as reasoning and justification for their enslavement and use for manual labor -Saw production and reproduction in their bodies, did not see them as women -Depictions made them seem un-human, exaggerated their features and compared them to animals -There were exceptions as some men recognized the beauty of some women
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"Three Inventories, Three Households" by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
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-Drew conclusions based on what was left in their houses -Compared and analyzed the difference in housework performed by 3 women of different social and economic statuses -The middle-class woman handled the preparation of all the food, harvested the vegetables and grains, maintained fires, milked cows, made butter, slaughtered pigs, and kept the house clean. -The lower-class woman worked in her husband's shop, and worked as a housewife. This family did not have the same of livestock or a large inventory of good that would sustain them for long periods of time because their livelihood depended much more on trade. -The last woman had the majority of their value of the estate in the land. This woman was a frontier women and her daily life revolved around harvesting and tending to all aspects inside and outside the home. Her children helped by doing the household chores.
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"Letter from Abigail Adams to John Adams" by Abigail Adams
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-During the Antebellum Period -Told John to "remember the ladies" when shaping the new nation, but he didn't. -Abigail informed her husband of the state of their town while he was away. -She pointed out that much of the reason for coming to America was to escape the tyranny of the monarch, but men are imposing tyrannical behavior by oppressing women .
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"Pastoralization of Housework" by Jeanne Boydston
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-Outlined the monetary value of the work that women do on a daily basis in the household -Showed how much the work women do is devalued and made it seem as it if women enjoy it -"If a man meant to get ahead in life, they should get married." -"Males and females existed as creatures of naturally and essentially different capacities" -The work that women did in the household allowed the family to forgo paying for so many tasks that provided an extra $250-500 per year based on services they did not have to pay for and funds that they stretched.
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"Of Husband and Wife" by Sir William Blackstone
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-Outlined the laws that are set in place as guidelines for the duties of man and woman during marriage -States that once a woman is married, she obtains the status of a child/dependent and everything she owns becomes under the ownership of her husband and it is his duty to provide for and protect her. -These laws also gave men the right to discipline their wives in what means they seemed fit (comparable to how they would discipline their children)
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"Mistress in the Making" by Stephanie Jones-Rogers
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-Outlined the shaping of young white daughters to become effective slave owners and mistresses -Girls were shaped for roles of mistresses who demand respect and educated forceful punishments -Indirect lessons - girls would watch their parents interact with slaves around them -Slaves were given to children as gifts -Slave ownership became an important element of identity
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"Women in Slavery" by Thavolia Glymph
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-Stereotypical gentle southern lady and the nurturing black "mammy" have been a long part of American stories and folklore, but the actual experiences rarely matched the stereotype. -Privileged white women were perpetrators of violence, and girls learned how to be powerful mistresses. -Violence took place in the household and came from the hands of women. -Mistresses often used harder and crueler punishments than masters, using both physical and psychological violence.
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"Maria Perkins Writes to Her Husband on the Eve of Being Sold" by Maria Perkins
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-Maria hopes that her husband can convince her master to buy her before she is sold to someone else -Displays the desperation that is present in the lives of slaves to do anything to keep their families together because they know that separation is most likely permanent -Slaves were rarely taught to read and write, because masters knew the connection between literacy and rebelliousness
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"Signatures of Citizenship: Debating Women's Antislavery Petitions" by Susan Zaeske
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-Women petitioned legislators, governors, town governments, etc. as a strategy to articulate a grievance or ask for relief. -The mass petition effort was motivated by the desire some women felt to end slavery. -Having encouraged women's involvement in national politics and women's antislavery petitioning created an appetite for further political participation and more rights. -Although petitioning was less direct than voting, it was not necessarily considered less powerful. Petitioning was seen as a pure expression of individual moral conscience, and voting was viewed as gained with personal interest and party spirit.
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"Declaration of Sentiments" by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony & Matilda Joslyn Gage
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-Written during the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848 -Modeled after the Declaration of Independence -Aimed to get equal rights for women -Challenged many elements of American law and social practice -Omitted voting rights for women because the idea was too radical at the time
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"Testimony on Working Conditions in Early Factories" (1845) by Elizabeth R. Hemmingway & Sarah Bagley
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-Women were a major part of the first new workforce that emerged in the mid-19th century with the first wave of industrialization -Women were subject to long, uninterrupted hours of labor in mechanized factories -Works was strictly segregated by sex - men were supervisors and skilled mechanics, women tended to spinning and weaving machinery -Women's earnings depended on their output, and their wages were only a fraction of men's -Working women often lived in boarding houses which fostered strong support networks and encouraged women to come together in some of the nation's earliest industrialized strikes -Lowell, Massachusetts - one of the earliest mill towns where factory owners began recruiting young, unmarried women to work in textile mills -In January 1845, led by Sarah Bagley, the Female Labor Reform Association organized a petition drive throughout the region, which forced Massachusetts legislature to hold the first public hearings on industrial working conditions ever in the United States
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"When Women Get Her Rights Man Will Be Right" by Sojourner Truth
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-14th Amendment had just been passed -Truth and other women's rights activists are upset that for the first time women have been purposely excluded from some part of the law -Truth makes a speech as a call for equality for all people to be treated equally in an unequal society
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"Forging Interracial Links in the Jim Crow South" by Glenda Gilmore
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-A group of African American women's activists, who belonged to the small but growing black middle class in the South, allied with elite white women to advance their cause -Charlotte Hawkins Brown: North Carolinian who crafted the political alliance -Black women encouraged interracial cooperation in issues like suffrage, lynching, and equal rights
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"Brandeis Brief" by Louis D. Brandeis
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-Presented during Supreme Court case Muller v. Oregon -Argued that women should not be working long hours -Believed that since their main role was motherhood, they should not be on their feet all day and should have healthy bodies to be able to birth healthy babies and be a good mother -Women were given more rights on the basis on inequality -Reinforced their secondary role in society -Emphasized that women were weak -First time sociological evidence was allowed in a legal brief
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"Florence Kelley & Women's Activism in the Progressive Era" by Katherine Kish Sklar
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-Florence Kelley was known as a leading champion of social justice. -For most of the 1890s, she lived in the Hull House, a settlement house founded by Jane Addams -Served as the head of the National Consumers' League in New York City between 1899-1932 -Fought for labor reforms, like minimum wage, 10-hour work limits with women, child labor laws, etc. -Challenged traditions of limited government -Her reform exemplified four significant features of women's power in the Progressive era: access to higher education, prominence in early social science, political autonomy of separate institutions, and ability to challenge American traditions of limited government
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"I Resolved that Women Should Have Knowledge of Contraception" by Margaret Sanger
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-Nurse who opened up an illegal contraception clinic (first contraception clinic) -Founded the American Birth Control League in 1921 (renamed Planned Parenthood) -Proponent for birth control -In the early 1950s, Katherine McCormick provided funds for experiments that led to the development of the birth control pill, that became available to the public in 1960.
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"President's Annual Address to National American Women Suffrage Association" by Carrie Chapman Catt
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-Catt largely excluded women from her address, and mainly touched on the idea that voting rights in general are messed up -Men who are illiterate are governing the country while women who are literate have no say in their government -Men believed that if women are given the right to be involved in politics, they will know too much and men will lost some of their control -One main issue is that politicians see the underprivileged vote (African Americans, citizens in lower socioeconomic classes, and illiterate citizens) as being a purchasable vote
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"When Abortion Was A Crime: Reproduction in the Great Depression" by Leslie J. Reagan
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-Women began more readily seeking abortions because they did not have the funds to support another child financially -Deaths from wrongly performed abortions became more prevalent -More professional type abortion clinics appeared and doctors began actually referring patients to these nicer abortion clinics -Despite the law, millions of abortions were still performed, not all by "back-alley butchers" but many by practiced physicians.
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"Disorderly Women: Gender & Labor Militancy in the Appalachian South by Jacqueline Dowd Hall
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-By the 1920s, unionization had not taken hold in the former states of the Confederacy as it had in heavily industrialized states. -Working conditions worsened as factory workers introduced new innovations designed to improve productivity -Textile mills were vulnerable to strikes and were typically all white workers. -Jacqueline focused on one of the many strikes in the South, exploring female activism. She illuminates the distinctive style of collective action that the women of Elizabethton, TN employed, and the self-concepts and family networks on which that style relied.
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"Mexican Women in Strike in 1933: The Structure of Memory" by Devra Anne Weber
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-Analyzed the oral history accounts of Mexican American women who engaged in a cotton strike in California in the 1930s -Evaluates the reasoning behind women striking (what is most important in their life) -Oral histories are shaped by two simultaneous dialogues - one occurs between the individual and his or her own memory, and the other occurs with the interviewer.
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"Politically Desperate Housewives in Southern California" by Michelle M. Nickerson
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-Cold War era (1950s-80s) -Tend to be religious and conservative -Used women's presumed morality -Saw them as protectors of the family - an extension of their household duties -Emphasized differences between men and women -Combined patriotism and spirituality -Battled bureaucrats for the sake of family, community, and God
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"The Second Sex" (1949) by Simone de Beauvoir
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-Very philosophical writing -Civilization was created by men -Men fundamentally oppress women by characterizing them as the other sex -Women are always secondary and inferior -No sense of community/unity among women -Female - biology, Womanhood - social -Men are "subjects" of their own lives, and women are the "objects" that are acted upon -Optimistic about the future - with modern technology, women could overcome their physical disadvantages
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"The Feminine Mystique" by Betty Friedan
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-Middle-class American women are unhappy in the 1960s -Written after Friedan's college reunion after intensely questioning her former classmates, asking about problem and satisfactions with their lives -Women could only achieve happiness through motherhood and marriage -Pressure to always be feminine/ look a certain way
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Goesaert v. Cleary (1948)
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-In Michigan, women were not allowed to be licensed bartenders unless they were the wife or daughter of the male owner -Two female bartenders challenged the law, saying it violated the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment -Court concluded that the Constitution "does not preclude the States from drawing a sharp line between the sexes"
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"Gender at Work: The Sexual Division of Labor During World War II" by Ruth Milkman
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-During the war, women were hired because of the shortage of workers -Women were able to perform more industrial jobs, had more opportunities for different jobs -Job within an industry are segregated by gender -Women's jobs were temporary, as men returned to their jobs after the war
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"Prescriptions for Penelope" by Susan M. Hartmann
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-World War II prescriptive literature -Women were expected to adjust to all the changes caused by war - morale, psychological trauma, etc. -War presented an opportunity to redefine gender roles -Women were supposed to be submissive yet mothering to husbands - accept infidelity -Women's employment impacted marriage
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"A Short History of the ERA" by Phyllis Schlafly
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-Opposed the ERA -Claimed women were already equal and the ERA would cause women to lose rights -The ERA would expand the federal government, give more power to federal courts, integrate single sex institutions, put abortion funding into the Constitution, legalize gay marriage, eliminate veteran benefits, etc. -Disrespectful of traditional roles
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"Patterns of Discrimination and Discouragement in Higher Education" by Bernice Sandler
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-One of the worst shortcomings about Title VII was the exclusion of educational institutions from the law's provisions. -Female graduates were discriminated against - made less money, were promoted slower -More women became professors in late 1800s/early 1900s -Statistics to back up the problems -Women are rarely in high up positions
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"Kinder, Küche, Kirche as Scientific Law: Psychology Constructs the Female" (1968) by Naomi Weisstein
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-In the 1960s, psychologists believed that social roles of women originated from women's deep biological urge telling them to serve men and be mothers - Weisstein opposed this because those psychologists ignored data that showed that behavior is dictated by societal expectations instead of gender -"Psychology has nothing to say about what women are like because psychology does not know." -Psychology has been dominated by men -Stereotypes have impacted researched - confirmation bias -Psychology over relied on the theory without evidence -Focused on sexuality -Context is crucial - people behave the way you want them to behave
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"Combahee River Collective"
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-Membership in racial and sexual castes that are opposed -Sexual and racial identity, oppression -Black women are inherently valuable -Solidarity with progressive black men
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"Pornography: Men Possessing Women" by Andrea Dworkin
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-Laws banning explicit sexual content were not widespread in the US until the late 19th century -During the 60/70s, pornography became popular -To Dworkin, pornography is a prime way that men asset their power over women -Through reading Dworkin, many women came to understand pornography for the first time as an agent in oppression of women -The major theme of pornography as a genre is male power, its nature, its magnitude, its use and its meaning. -Power of self, physical power over and against others, power of terror, power or naming, power of owning, power of money, and power of sex
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"Redstockings Manifesto" (1968)
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-Play on the term "bluestockings" -Radical feminists who saw male supremacy as the oldest, most basic form of oppression of one human being by another -"We cannot rely on existing ideologies as they are products of male supremacist culture" -Sought liberation from male supremacy -All forms of oppression stem from male supremacy -Personal experience were the only valid starting point for feminist analysis -Institutions are tools of the oppressor -Any man can renounce his position
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"Our Bodies, Ourselves" by Boston Women's Health Group Collective
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-A response to the dissatisfaction with healthcare -Goal: For women to reclaim the power to define their own physical needs and wishes -How-to manual, political action memo, textbook, inspirational literature -Presented down-to-earth information on heterosexuality, lesbian experience, nutrition, sports and exercise, disease, birth control, abortion, childbearing, and menopause -Discussed overcoming low self-esteem, rediscovering anger, living in a marriage and as a single woman -Gave advice on how to maneuver the American healthcare system -Women's concerns were not taken seriously
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"A Kind of Memo from Casey Hayden and Mary King to A Number of Other Women in the Peace and Freedom Movement" by Casey Hayden & Mary King
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-Women played a prominent role in the Civil Rights movement (Ex: Rosa Parks, Ella Baker, Fannie Lou Hamer) -King & Hayden worked with SNCC -Many parallels can be drawn between the treatment of blacks and women in our society -Women are held back from full participation -Problems with relationships between white women and black women -Lack of communication for discussion
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"NOW Statement of Purpose" (1966)
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-Movement toward true equality for all women and toward a fully equal partnership between the sexes -Goal: to bring women into full participation in society -Women are human begins are should be part of the challenges and responsibilities that come with it -Home and children no longer consumer women's lives -Want to partner with men
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"American Women" (1963) by President's Commission on the Status of Women
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-Because of less family support, there is a need for more childcare facilities (for both single and married mothers) -Gender discrimination in the job market - women are still working mostly low wage jobs, pay gap, higher rates of sickness/absenteeism -Women are underrepresented in politics - both in elected and appointed positions