In Constructive Feminism, Daphne Spain examines the deliberate and unintended spatial consequences of feminism's second wave, a social movement dedicated to reconfiguring power relations between women and men. Placing the women's movement of the 1970s in the context of other social movements that have changed the use of urban space, Spain argues that reform feminists used the legal system to end the mandatory segregation of women and men in public institutions, while radical activists created small-scale places that gave women the confidence to claim their rights to the public sphere.Women’s centers, bookstores, health clinics, and domestic violence shelters established feminist places for women’s liberation in Boston, Los Angeles, and many other cities. Unable to afford their own buildings, radicals adapted existing structures to serve as women’s centers that fostered autonomy, health clinics that promoted reproductive rights, bookstores that connected women to feminist thought, and domestic violence shelters that protected their bodily integrity. Legal equal opportunity reforms and daily practices of liberation enhanced women’s choices in education and occupations. Once the majority of wives and mothers had joined the labor force, by the mid-1980s, new buildings began to emerge that substituted for the unpaid domestic tasks once performed in the home. Fast food franchises, childcare facilities, adult day centers, and hospices were among the inadvertent spatial consequences of the second wave.

Product Description: The United States is suffering its greatest upheaval since the Civil War--politically, economically, socially, religiously. With elegant, sweeping vision, Gus diZerega explores the complex causes leading us to this point, comparing them to giant fault lines that, when they erupt, create enormous disturbance and in time new landscapes...read more

Product Description: The turbulent year of 2011 has brought the appearance of mass popular unrest and the collapse of long lived autocratic regimes in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and possibly Syria. The sudden and unanticipated fall of these regimes – often thought of as exemplars of authoritarian resilience - has brought much of the conventional wisdom on the durability and vulnerability of nondemocratic regimes into question...read more

Product Description: In recognizing the relation between gender, race, and class oppression, American women of the postwar Progressive Party made the claim that peace required not merely the absence of violence, but also the presence of social and political equality...read more

Product Description:  "A magisterially written, well-researched, informative, and entertaining biography of a woman who helped throw open the doors to broader participation and power for women in the Republican Party and American politics."---Dave Dempsey, author of William G...read more

Product Description: In this richly detailed firsthand history of the contemporary Women's Liberation Movement (WLM), scholar-activist Carol Giardina argues against the prevalent belief that the movement grew out of frustrations over the male chauvinism experienced by WLM founders active in the Black Freedom Movement and the New Left...read more

Product Description: This study examines the early writing and relationships of activist Margaret Sanger by focusing on the feminist aspect of the birth control movement pertaining to sexual autonomy for women. Sanger's distinctive philosophy separated her early advocacy for birth control from other women's movements...read more

Product Description: Much of the scholarship on second-wave feminism has focused on divisions within the women's movement and its narrow conception of race and class, but the contributors to this volume remind readers that feminists in the 1960s and 1970s also formed many strong partnerships, often allying themselves with a diverse range of social justice efforts on a local grassroots level...read more

Gathers writings by Kate Millett, Vivian Rainer, Barbara Smith, Alix Katess Shulman, Joan Nestle, Jo Freeman, Yvonne Rainer, Barbara Smith, and Ellen Willis

Boasting more than five hundred thousand contributing members and five hundred chapters nationwide, the National Organization for Women has been politically active for more than thirty-five years. In a book that offers tools for predicting the long-term viability of a range of organizations, Maryann Barakso traces the political development of NOW. According to Barakso, NOW’s activities and the stances it has taken throughout its history have been shaped primarily by the organization’s internal political system. Established during the group’s founding period, NOW’s governance structure consists of a set of principles and institutional rules that continue to guide the group’s internal political dynamics and its decision-making. Focusing on interactions between NOW leaders and rank-and-file members, Barakso reveals how the organization’s internal structure affects its development and its participation in the wider political arena. The author also reveals why strategic change has always been such a contentious issue for the organization, the ways in which NOW enhances civic and political engagement, and the limits on NOW's future mobilizing capacity. Governing NOW contributes to a deeper understanding of membership-based voluntary associations: why they choose some goals and tactics over others, why they invest resources as they do, and why they join or abstain from coalition politics.

Product Description: This book includes Sanger's writings on marriage and children, the labor movement, socialism, prison reform, pacifism, eugenics and sex education.

Product Description: The birth control crusader, feminist, and reformer Margaret Sanger was one of the most controversial and compelling figures in the twentieth century. The Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger, Volume 1 is composed of Sanger\u2019s letters, diaries, journals, articles, and speeches, most of which have not appeared previously in print...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

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Product Description: Few historians have contributed more to our understanding of the history of women, and women's effect on history, than Alice Kessler-Harris. Author of the classic Out to Work, she is one of the country's leading scholars of gender, the economy, and public policy...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

The feminist activist shares her passionate, harrowing tale of growing up a woman before the era of legalized abortion and rape crisis centers, offering revealing portraits of Betty Friedan, Kate Millett, Germaine Greer, and Gloria Steinem, among others. Reprint. (view table of contents)

An introduction to the women's liberation movement in the 1960s and 1970s chronicles the growth of feminism, including its roots in the 1920s women's suffrage movement, and profiles key figures. (view table of contents)

Gathers writings by Kate Millett, Vivian Rainer, Barbara Smith, Alix Katess Shulman, Joan Nestle, Jo Freeman, Yvonne Rainer, Barbara Smith, and Ellen Willis

A 'pro-rights' collection of essays by abortion providers, journalists, legal strategists, and philosophers includes a timeline of events from 1940 to the present (view table of contents)

Explores the changing role of women in American society in the early years of the twentieth century

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