1st Edition
Womanhoods and Equality in the United States 20th–21st Century Perspectives
Womanhoods and Equality in the United States explores how the idea of equality has evolved along with the debates that have animated contemporary American women’s history.
This book argues that “womanhood” is neither a unified concept nor a monolithic experience but rather a multifaceted notion. This collection thus looks at this plural dimension of womanhood—womanhoods—with a special focus on equality as a common goal. The authors question what equality means depending on many factors such as race, class, sexuality, education, marital or parental status, physical appearance, and political orientation, and address timely issues including abortion rights, Black womanhood, and sexual violence on college campuses.
Womanhoods and Equality in the United States is an essential resource for academics and students in gender studies, American sociocultural history, and the sociology of social movements.
Introduction
Part I: Fashioning and Refashioning Womanhoods
1. Echoes of Womanhood: Listening to Women’s Voices on the Radio
Anais Le Fèvre-Berthelot
2. Women’s Magazines and Fashion Magazines as (Re)Sources for (De)Constructing Womanhood: Working on Femininity, from Producers to Readers to Researchers
Alice Morin
3. The Right to Be Beautiful: Annie Malone, Beauty Culture, and New Negro Womanhood
Néfertiti Ngoupande-Nah
Part II: Violence and Womanhood
4. The Paradox of Violent Women in the U.S. Antiabortion Movement
Karissa Haugeberg
5. Gender-Based and State Violence from Central America to the U.S./Mexico Border: From Invisibility to Visibility
Cléa Fortuné
6. Title IX: Fighting Sexual Violence on U.S. College Campuses by Reframing it as Sex Discrimination
Soukayna Mniaï
Part III: Womanhood: Sites of Debate and Negotiation
7. “Just a Housewife”: Reassessing Feminist Portrayals of the American Housewife in the 1960s and 1970s
Christen Bryson
8. Legal Frames, Scientific “Expertise,” and Abortion Debates in the United States
Michael Stambolis-Ruhstorfer
Biography
Christen Bryson is an associate professor of American Studies at Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris, France. Her research deals primarily with the American family during the postwar era. She is interested in the ways in which the White, heterosexual, middle-class nuclear family represents traditional conceptions of American family life.
Anne Légier is an associate professor of American Studies at Université Paris Cité, France. Her research focuses on the history of abortion and reproductive health in the United States, and the role played by progressive religious forces in the abortion debate.
Amélie Ribieras is an associate professor of American Studies and Legal English at Université Paris 2-Panthéon-Assas, Paris, France. Her research focuses on antifeminism and conservative women in the United States in the 1960s-80s through the figure of Phyllis Schlafly and her STOP ERA movement.
