A study of the Women's Liberation Movement and the development of feminism during the latter half of the twentieth century. It is written by the author of AGAINST OUR WILL: MEN, WOMEN AND RAPE.

This is the first book in a two-part collection of 264 primary source documents from the Enlightenment to 1950 chronicling the public debate that raged in Europe and America over the role of women in Western society. The present volume looks at the period from 1750 to 1880. The central issues—motherhood, women's legal position in the family, equality of the sexes, the effect on social stability of women's education and labor—extended to women the struggle by men for personal and political liberty. These issues were political, economic, and religious dynamite. They exploded in debates of philosophers, political theorists, scientists, novelists, and religious and political leaders. This collection emphasizes the debate by juxtaposing prevailing and dissenting points of view at given historical moments (e.g. Madame de Staël vs. Rousseau, Eleanor Marx vs. Pope Leo XIII, Strindberg vs. Ibsen, Simone de Beauvoir vs. Margaret Mead). Each section is preceded by a contextual headnote pinpointing the documents significance. Many of the documents have been translated into English for the first time.

"Explores the subject of menstruation, from toxic historic and religious roots to how young activists are challenging the silence and shame that can erode self-esteem and even threaten lives ..."--Page 4 of cover

An unprecedented and definitive collection of rabble-rousing writings on women’s health, Voices of the Women’s Health Movement explores a range of provocative topics from reproductive rights to sexuality to motherhood. Trail-blazing advocate Barbara Seaman and health activist Laura Eldridge bring the revolutionary ideas of several generations together in this powerful new book celebrating women’s bodies, and women’s voices. The more than two hundred contributors include Jennifer Baumgardner, Susan Brownmiller, Phyllis Chesler, Angela Y. Davis, Barbara Ehrenreich, Germaine Greer, Shulamith Firestone, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Erica Jong, Molly Haskell, Shere Hite, Susie Orbach, Judith Rossner, Alix Kates Shulman, Gloria Steinem, Sojourner Truth, Rebecca Walker, Naomi Wolf, and many others. With Voices of the Women’s Health Movement , for the first time, every woman and girl can experience in one place the powerful history of stirring words and strong female perspectives that have inspired countless women to take control of their health and their lives. Volume Two highlights include influential writings on sex, rape and violence against women, body image, informed consent, self-help gynecology, patient advocacy, and the mind-body connection.

Lauded for its contribution to the theory and conceptualization of the field of women's history and for its sensitivity to the differences of class, ethnicity, race, and culture among women, The Majority Finds Its Past became a classic volume in wo

"The first of Aletta Jacobs's major works available in English, Memories introduces American readers to a remarkable woman-a key Dutch feminist who herself broke new ground, and who worked alongside world-renowned leaders in the progressive movements of the early twentieth century. Aletta Jacobs learned to lvoe the medical profession from her physician father, who took her on his rounds. Despite a sex-segregated education system, she became the nations's first woman to earn a medical degree. Jacobs's experiences as a doctor led her to pioneering health care reforms for prostitutes and saleswomen, as well as campaigns for the acceptance and availability of reliable birth control. Aletta Jacob's career included equally remarkable achievements in the international woman's suffrage and peace movements, where she worked closely with U.S. activists Jane Addams and Carrie Chapman Catt. Jacobs and Catt made frequent lecture tours together, culminating in a tour of Africa and Asia that combined avid sightseeing with speaking engagements in every country they visited. In Memories, Jacobs recounts all of these experiences, and spiritedly imparts her opinions-such as her disdain for the customs that restricted women to theater balcony seats and chastised them for walking alone at night. By turns witty, impassioned, and poignant, Memories brings to life a time of enormous changes for women-and one of the women who helped bring about the changes."--Book desc. via amazon.ca.

On the Front Lines of the Women's Movement When Michele Landsberg's first column for the Toronto Star hit newsstands in May 1978 it was the first time a feminist interpretation of the news had made it into daily circulation in a Canadian newspaper. While not sure initially if she wanted to be the Star's "woman columnist," Michele tried to use her column as a voice for those who had none. The hundreds of letters that poured in - both those in support of what she was writing and those outraged by it - let her know that what she was doing not only mattered, it was badly needed. For twenty-five years, Michele Landsberg chronicled the lives of women, their struggles and their achievements. She became an activist in support of women's rights, childcare programs, education reform, rape crisis centres, women's work and health, and many more hotly debated issues. Her columns were a force for social and legal change - women turned to her because they knew that they could count on her to tell the real story. In Writing the Revolution Michele takes the best of those 3000 columns and uses them to reflect on the past, present, and future of women's lives in Canada. While recognizing the success of the women's movement, she knows the fight is not over. A feminist hero and an unflinching activist, Michele is an inspiration to the women who read her column, and to a passionate new generation of women who are fighting to see that the revolution continues.

Judy Rebick's Ten Thousand Roses is a major contribution to a chronicling of the second wave women's movement in Canada of the 1970s and 1980s. The story is told through the voices of dozens of women who played key roles in the fight for women's liberation and women's rights.

"Her parents moved her from Austria to Tokyo, Japan before she started school. They were all rendered stateless when Nazi Germany and Austria stripped Jews of their citizenship. She graduated high school fluent in Japanese plus four other languages and went to college in America at age 15. Cut off from her parents by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and America's entry into World War II, she went years not knowing if they were alive. She returned to post-war Japan as an interpreter, found her parents, and wrote the fateful words that make her a storied feminist hero in that nation even today. As Justice Sonia Sotomayor said about Beate Sirota Gordon, 'It is a rare life treat for a Supreme Court Justice to get to meet a framer of a Constitution. It is rarer indeed for that framer to have been a woman'"--

Unlike most leading works that focus on a broad spectrum of the woman's rights movement, Israel Kugler's volume provides an in-depth analysis of the drive for equalty for women during a specific, influential era in American history: the pioneering efforts of woman's rights organizations in the post-Civil War period. With the war against slavery at an end, the Reconstruction Era was hailed by women leaders, who had been active in the Union cause, as the time for the establishment of equal rights for all humanity--men and women alike. It was this historic period that saw the creation of permanent woman's rights organizations dedicated to a specific goal--that of woman suffrage.