Womanhoods and Equality in the United States: 20th–21st Century Perspectives 9781032545462, 9781032545431, 9781003425380

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Table of Contents
List of Figures
List of Tables
List of Contributors
Acknowledgements
Foreword
Constituting Womanhood: A Century of Struggle for the Equal Rights Amendment
The Introduction of the Equal Rights Amendment
Early Contestation Over Women’s Need for Labor Protections
Navigating Political Power in Congress
Divided Womanhood and the Rules of Ratification
Changing the Rules of Change
Conclusion
Notes
Introduction
Womanhoods
Equality
A Mosaic
Notes
Reference List
Part I Fashioning and Refashioning Womanhoods
1 Echoes of Womanhood: Listening to Women’s Voices On the Radio
Gender Trouble On the Air
WNYC: Womanhood(s) of New York City
Conclusion
Notes
Reference List
2 Women’s Magazines and Fashion Magazines as (Re)Sources for (De)Constructing Womanhood: Working...
Producing Femininity: Fashion Magazines’ Format and Power Dynamics
Representing Women in Changing Times: The Case of the Women’s Movement as Seen Through Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar
Readers’ Agency and Individual Readings: Fashion Magazines as Unilateral Purveyors of Content?
Conclusion
Notes
Reference List
3 The Right to Be Beautiful: Annie Malone, Beauty Culture, and New Negro Womanhood
An Elitist Vision of New Negro Womanhood
Stereotypes of “Ugliness”
Beauty Culture and the Restrictive Construction of Black Women’s Bodies
Beauty Culture as a Space of Redefinition of New Negro Womanhood
Annie Malone and New Negro Womanhoods
Advertising New Negro Womanhood
Conclusion
Notes
Reference List
Part II Violence and Womanhood
4 The Paradox of Violent Women in the U.S. Antiabortion Movement
Coverture as a Dividing Line Between Progressive and Conservative Women
Beauty as a Conservative Value
Violence as an Escape From the Beauty Cult?
Conclusion
Notes
Reference List
5 Gender-Based and State Violence From Central America to the U.S./Mexico Border: From Invisibility to Visibility
Fleeing Violence in the Country of Origin to Experiencing Other Kinds of Violence On the Migratory Journey
Escaping Violence Through Migrant Caravans as a Way to Gain Visibility and Avoid More Violence
Dealing With the Impacts of the Migrant Protection Protocols On the 2018 Migrant Caravan in Douglas/Agua Prieta
Border Art as a Means to Resist and Denounce Violence at the U.S./Mexico Border
Conclusion
Notes
Reference List
6 Title IX: Fighting Sexual Violence On U.S. College Campuses By Reframing It as Sex Discrimination
Defining Sexual Harassment as a Form of Sex Discrimination in Higher Education
Theorizing Sexual Harassment in the Workplace as Sex Discrimination
Sexual Harassment From the Workplace to Educational Institutions
Sexual Violence On College Campuses: From a Criminal to a Civil Rights Approach
Expanding the Scope of Title IX in Sexual Harassment Claims
Leveraging Title IX to Hold Colleges Accountable for Instances of Sexual Violence
OCR’s Shift to Stronger Enforcement of Title IX
The Momentum for Student Activism Against Campus Sexual Violence
A Conservative Backlash
Strengthening Title IX to Better Address Sexual Violence in Higher Education
Conclusion
Notes
Reference List
Part III Womanhood: Sites of Debate and Negotiation
7 “Just a Housewife”: Reassessing Feminist Portrayals of the American Housewife in the 1960s and 1970s
How the Doctrine of Separate Spheres Shaped Domesticity
“Why I Want a Wife”: The Unquantifiable Nature of Housework and Care Work
The Home as the Site of Women’s Oppression
Conclusion
Notes
Reference List
8 Legal Frames, Scientific “Expertise,” and Abortion Debates in the United States
Politicized Science, Morality Politics, and Abortion Expertise
Legal Framing Junctures and Their Effect On Scientific Expertise
Medical Knowledge and Credibility Struggles: Texas SB 8 and Dobbs V. Jackson Women’s Health Organization
Conclusion
Notes
Reference List
Index

Citation preview

WOMANHOODS AND EQUALITY IN THE UNITED STATES

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 the 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. Christen Bryson is an associate professor of American Studies at Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris, France. Anne Légier is an associate professor of American Studies at Université Paris Cité, France. Amélie Ribieras is an associate professor of American Studies and Legal English at Université Paris 2-​Panthéon-​Assas, Paris, France.

WOMANHOODS AND EQUALITY IN THE UNITED STATES 20th–​21st Century Perspectives

Edited by Christen Bryson, Anne Légier and Amélie Ribieras

Designed cover image: Toufik Medjamia First published 2024 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2024 selection and editorial matter, Christen Bryson, Anne Légier and Amélie Ribieras; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Christen Bryson, Anne Légier and Amélie Ribieras to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-​in-​Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data Names: Bryson, Christen, editor. | Légier, Anne, editor. | Ribieras, Amélie, editor. Title: Womanhoods and equality in the United States : 20th–21st century perspectives / edited by Christen Bryson, Anne Légier and Amélie Ribieras. Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2024. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2023041101 (print) | LCCN 2023041102 (ebook) | ISBN 9781032545462 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032545431 (paperback) | ISBN 9781003425380 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Women’s rights–United States–History. | Equality–United States–History. Classification: LCC HQ1236.5.U6 .W635 2024 (print) | LCC HQ1236.5.U6 (ebook) | DDC 305.420973–dc23/eng/20231201 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023041101 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023041102 ISBN: 978-​1-​032-​54546-​2 (hbk) ISBN: 978-​1-​032-​54543-​1 (pbk) ISBN: 978-​1-​003-​42538-​0 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/​9781003425380 Typeset in Sabon by Newgen Publishing UK

To Hélène Le Dantec-​Lowry, our mentor and friend.

CONTENTS

List of Figures List of Tables List of Contributors Acknowledgements Foreword Introduction

ix x xi xiii xiv 1

PART I

Fashioning and Refashioning Womanhoods

13

1 Echoes of Womanhood: Listening to Women’s Voices on the Radio Anaïs Le Fèvre-​Berthelot

15

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

37

62

viii Contents

PART II

Violence and Womanhood

87

4 The Paradox of Violent Women in the U.S. Antiabortion Movement Karissa Haugeberg

89

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

114

137

PART III

Womanhood: Sites of Debate and Negotiation

161

7 “Just a Housewife”: Reassessing Feminist Portrayals of the American Housewife in the 1960s and 1970s Christen Bryson

163

8 Legal Frames, Scientific “Expertise,” and Abortion Debates in the United States Michael Stambolis-​Ruhstorfer

183

Index

206

FIGURES

3.1 “Hartona: The Grandest of All Preparations for the Hair,” The Colored American, December 22, 1900 3.2 “The Original Hair Growers,” The Forum, December 28, 1911 4.1 Marjory Mecklenburg and an unidentified woman, undated photograph 4.2 “Southern Women Feeling the Effects of the Rebellion, and Creating Bread Riots,” Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, April 2, 1863 4.3 Senator Rebecca Felton, first woman U.S. senator. Georgia, ca. 1922 4.4 White women were central to President Donald Trump’s popularity and key participants in the January 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol

70 76 93

99 100

103

TABLES

8.1 Frames and Arguments about Fact in U.S. Abortion Debates 8.2 Legal Framing Junctures in U.S. Abortion Debates 8.3 Legal Frames and Medical Science in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization Amicus Briefs

188 190 194

CONTRIBUTORS

Christen Bryson is an associate professor of American Studies at the Université

Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris, France. Her research has dealt 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. Cléa Fortuné is an associate professor of American Studies at the Université

Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris, France. Her research deals with immigration and security at the U.S./​Mexico border. She is interested in the ways in which U.S. federal border enforcement measures have impacted the lives of border residents since the 1990s. Karissa Haugeberg is an associate professor of History at Tulane University,

Louisiana, U.S., and author of Women against Abortion: Inside the Largest Moral Reform Movement of the Twentieth Century (2019). She has received awards from The Western Association of Women Historians and the Journal of the History of Medicine. Anaïs Le Fèvre-​Berthelot is an associate professor of American Studies at

Université Rennes 2, France. Her research focuses on women’s voices in contemporary American TV series and on how audiovisual apparatuses centered on voice and speech convey specific representations of women, femininity, and gender. In 2020, she published Speak Up! Des coulisses à l’écran, voix de femmes et séries américaines à l’orée du XXIe siècle.

xii  List of Contributors

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. Soukayna Mniaï is a PhD student in U.S. History at the Université Paris

Nanterre, France, under the supervision of Caroline Rolland-​Diamond. Her dissertation focuses on the fight against sexual violence in universities in the Los Angeles area from 1970 to 2020. Alice Morin is a postdoctoral researcher in the German interdisplinary

unit “Journalliteratur,” which focuses on periodical cultures, at Philipps-​ Universität in Marburg, Germany. She specializes in transnational magazine photography of the 20th century. Néfertiti Ngoupande-​Nah is a PhD candidate in American Studies at the

Université Paul-​ Valéry Montpellier 3, France, under the supervision of Claudine Raynaud-​Coudrin, and teaches English in secondary school. Her dissertation focuses on African American cosmetic entrepreneurs and beauty schools, 1920–​1940. 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. Michael Stambolis-​Ruhstorfer is a sociologist and associate professor of

American Studies at the Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès, France. His research examines the role of experts in controversial political debates in France and the United States using feminist and other critical perspectives. Julie C. Suk is a professor of Law at Fordham University School of Law,

New York, U.S. She is a legal scholar researching equality at the intersection of law, history, sociology, and politics in the United States and globally. She has recently published After Misogyny: How the Law Fails Women and What to Do about It (2023).

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First, we would like to thank the authors of this collection. Their intellectual contributions and insight into the questions we initially posed in beginning this project have sparked many interesting debates and conversations. Their varied approaches and case studies have helped us advance our own understandings of U.S. women’s studies. We would also like to express our sincere appreciation to Hélène Le Dantec-​Lowry. She tirelessly advised and supported us in this process. She has been a mentor for each of us and we are extremely grateful for all that she has done and continues to do for us in our intellectual endeavors. We would like to thank Jennifer Merchant (Université Paris 2-​Panthéon-​ Assas /​Institut Universitaire de France) for her generous contribution to the conference “Womanhood(s) in the United States: Cultural, Social, and Political Conflicts in Achieving Equality since the 1920s,” the stepping stone for this publication. We also want to express our gratitude to Toufik Medjamia for his creativity and patience in drawing the image for our conference poster and now the cover of this book. Finally, we would like to thank the following institutions for their continued financial and material support, first for the conference that started this project, and then the production of this book: CREW and the Research Commission at Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, LERMA and the Women & the F-​Word team at Aix-​Marseille Université, CERSA at Université Paris 2-​ Pantheon-​Assas, and ICT-​Les Europes dans le monde at Université Paris Cité. We would also like to thank the SAGEF for their continued support.

FOREWORD

Constituting Womanhood: A Century of Struggle for the Equal Rights Amendment

Julie C. Suk is a Professor of Law at Fordham University School of Law, New York. The Introduction of the Equal Rights Amendment “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.”

American women have struggled for over a century to add those words to the Constitution of the United States, a document that establishes the foundation for the legal and political order of the nation.1 The successes and failures of this continuing struggle have shaped the multiple contested meanings of womanhood—​ as legal status, cultural experience, social movement, and political strategy. Throughout the transgenerational making and unmaking of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), women have disagreed about what womanhood is and should be, how women should be treated by law and by society, and whether women’s inclusion in the Constitution matters to their lives. The predominant cultural narrative about the ERA’s downfall, as evidenced by the 2020 TV miniseries Mrs. America presents the failure of women to unite behind a common vision of American “womanhood” as the cause of the ERA’s failure. But the story of divided womanhood masks the pernicious operation of overempowered manhood in law and politics.2 It is not the diversity and complexity of womanhood that has blocked the constitutional enshrinement of gender equality, but rather, the procedural

Foreword  xv

tactics of male opponents—​ small in number but massive in entrenched power—​that has shaped the constitutional fate of womanhood in America. The Equal Rights Amendment was first introduced in Congress in 1923.3 I deliberately use the passive voice, because even though women who were feminists wrote the amendment and pushed it forward, they had to rely on the men who were elected to Congress to propose it as law. A fundamental challenge for women seeking to dismantle the laws of patriarchy, under which women had no rights of legal personhood independent of their fathers and husbands, can be summed up as, “How do you get rights without any rights?” It took generations for suffragists to succeed in obtaining the vote for women, as they struggled without the vote to persuade men to give it to them, even as men benefited from women’s exclusion from legal rights and political power. Men could control their wives’ property and earnings and exercise exclusive authority over their children, over which women had no legal say. That was the problem to which the Equal Rights Amendment was a solution. Early Contestation Over Women’s Need for Labor Protections

“Now at last we can begin,” wrote Crystal Eastman,4 one of the authors of the Equal Rights Amendment, in celebrating the addition of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, guaranteeing that the right to vote would not be abridged on account of sex. For Eastman, the ability of women to vote was necessary but grossly insufficient to achieve women’s full equality as persons and citizens. Beyond the vote, women needed choice in occupation and economic independence. There were too many laws that severely restricted women’s access to jobs and economic security, and confined them to a life of motherhood, housework, and economic dependence on men. Eastman and her militant collaborator, Alice Paul, envisioned a constitutional amendment that would wipe out all the laws that denied women the rights that men enjoyed.5 But in the 1920s, some suffragists opposed the ERA because they believed that the conservative all-​male Supreme Court would deploy it to women’s detriment.6 Since 1905, the Supreme Court had struck down labor laws that limited the hours of work and set minimum wages to protect workers from overwork and exploitation.7 At first, the courts upheld such regulations if they applied to women only—​to protect their reproductive health and functions.8 But after women won the vote, the Supreme Court held that women, as men’s equals, no longer needed special protection because they were mothers. That ruling, issued in 1923, caused women’s wages to plummet. Florence Kelley, who had fought for decades to improve women’s working conditions, feared that a constitutional amendment requiring women and men to be treated the same would expose women to greater exploitation by employers. Instead of supporting the ERA in 1923, Kelley called for legislation that provided

xvi Foreword

healthcare and other resources for mothers and infants, and reforms to expand the Supreme Court, including by the addition of female Justices. Because of fears like Kelley’s, labor unions and the male politicians who backed them opposed the ERA for the first few decades. One such politician was Emanuel Celler, a Democratic congressman from Brooklyn, New York who chaired the House Judiciary Committee for much of the 1950s and 1960s. His leadership position in Congress gave him tremendous power over the fate of the ERA, which he prevented from getting a hearing or a vote in the House despite growing popular support for the amendment and the Senate’s adoption of it in 1950 and 1953. Typically, proposed legislation does not get debated or seriously considered for adoption on the floor of the House until after the relevant committee—​the Judiciary Committee in the case of a constitutional amendment—​hears it and reports it out to the full body. Representative Celler, representing a shrinking group of men who opposed the ERA, stopped that from happening. Navigating Political Power in Congress

The ERA finally got a floor debate and a vote in the House in 1970, only because Martha Griffiths, a congresswoman from Michigan, outmaneuvered Celler by spearheading a discharge petition.9 If a member of Congress manages to get half of the members to sign a petition, that petition discharges the House Judiciary Committee of its exclusive authority over the matter, and allows it to be debated and considered by all the representatives.10 Upon Griffiths’ successful petition, debate in the House showcased the support of all but one of the ten women in the House, from both political parties.11 Both Republican and Democratic women urged the necessity of the ERA in 1970: women should have equal rights to men, they agreed, because the law imposed too many disabilities on women because they were women. Women across the political spectrum emphasized the disadvantages women sustained because they were mothers. On the Democratic side, the first women of color in Congress, including Patsy Takemoto Mink (a Japanese American from Hawaii) and Shirley Chisholm (a Black teacher from Brooklyn), drew on their experiences of backing childcare legislation in Congress.12 Republican Congresswoman Margaret Heckler from Massachusetts emphasized the discrimination she had faced as a mother working in law and politics. Even if not all women were mothers (Griffiths and Chisholm were not), the disadvantages women faced because of motherhood was a defining feature of womanhood, as shaped by the law that they were trying to change. Once these women took the opportunity to persuade members of the House, they adopted the ERA by a landslide—​352 to 15—​in 1970. But it died that year because the Senate did not vote on it. It did not vote because one Senator, Sam Ervin of North Carolina, held the floor to hold up the ERA. Senator Ervin claimed to speak for the mothers of America, mothers who

Foreword  xvii

would be devastated if the law started treating them like men.13 At the time, the Senate consisted of 99 men and one woman. Most of those men voted in the next session of Congress to adopt the ERA. But the ERA’s initial death at Senator Ervin’s hands shaped the ERA’s future trajectory, and its implications for women’s rights in 21st century America. The Senate failed to bring the ERA to a vote because Ervin prolonged debate. He delayed by insisting upon some changes to the ERA proposal, some of which seemed minor and unobjectionable, such as a seven-​year deadline on ratification.14 But debating these changes had the intention and effect of letting the resolution die without a vote because time ran out on that session of Congress before Election Day. When Congresswoman Martha Griffiths reintroduced the ERA in the next congressional session that began in 1971, she included Ervin’s deadline in the hopes that Ervin and his small band of aggressive opponents of equality would back down from the fight.15 She miscalculated, underestimating their drive to kill the amendment. And, even though Griffiths had given into that seven-​ year deadline thinking that she was compromising in exchange for the opponents’ support of the ERA, Senator Ervin still voted against it.16 Nonetheless, Ervin did not have much company. ERA opposition in the Senate was in the single digits, with 84 in favor of the ERA and 8 against it in 1972. The House had adopted the ERA again in that session by a significant margin, 354–​24,17 and with the adoption by two-​thirds of both chambers, the amendment went to the states for ratification. After Congress adopted it with well over the two-​thirds vote of both Houses required by Article V of the Constitution, 30 states ratified it within the same year, and by 1977, 35 states had ratified it, including some of the most populous states at the time, such as California, New York, and Texas. In most states throughout America, the ERA was immensely popular and easily ratified. It was an emblem of the women’s movement of the 1960s and the Women’s Strike for Equality in 1970, which had commemorated the 50th anniversary of the suffrage amendment with marches and protests in multiple cities across the nation demanding equality in the workplace, access to abortion, and free childcare. But Article V of the Constitution requires three-​ fourths of the states to ratify an amendment after congressional adoption—​ which means 38 states. As the seven-​year ratification deadline loomed closer, ratification stalled at 35 states, as conservative icon Phyllis Schlafly led an energetic STOP-​ERA movement in the remaining states. Divided Womanhood and the Rules of Ratification The Stop-​ERA Movement

Actress Cate Blanchett’s portrayal of Phyllis Schlafly in the Hulu miniseries Mrs. America, would have 21st-​ century observers believe that she

xviii Foreword

singlehandedly stopped the ERA, exposing the divisions within American womanhood. But the political maneuvering by a relatively small number of men who controlled state legislatures during the ratification period is what enabled these divisions to kill a constitutional amendment that most states representing most of the American people had ratified. Schlafly embraced Senator Sam Ervin’s suggestion that the ERA would harm women. She worked behind the scenes with him to persuade state legislators in unratified states that the ERA would destroy a woman’s “most precious and important right of all”—​the right to be a mother.18 She claimed that the ERA would abandon the needs of homemakers; it would stop protecting alimony for housewives facing divorce and compel women to serve in the military to the neglect of their domestic duties. Schlafly and her armies of housewives showed up to the Illinois legislature on days when ERA ratification was on the calendar, with freshly baked bread labeled “From the Breadmakers to the Breadwinners.” The Illinois legislature did not ratify the ERA before the deadline elapsed. Congress voted to extend the deadline by another three years to 1982. But the extension did not help because no state legislature ratified the ERA from 1977 to 1982. However, after four decades, the Illinois legislature finally ratified the ERA in 2018.19 Illinois was following the bold action by the Nevada state legislature in 2017 to ratify the ERA.20 With the Women’s March of 2017 and the #MeToo movement changing political dynamics at the state level, by 2020, the Virginia legislature became the third state to act in this wave of 21st-​century ERA ratifications.21 However, five state legislatures that had ratified the ERA early had also taken some action before 1979 to rescind their ratifications. The rescissions and revivals of ERA ratification by these states have raised unprecedented questions in constitutional law: should the ERA now be regarded as a validly completed, ratified amendment to the U.S. Constitution? And how would the Amendment address the evolving and disputed ideas of womanhood under the law that shaped the ERA’s initial success, later failure, and ongoing confusion about its status? If added to the Constitution in 2023, could the ERA resolve contestation over what sex equality under the law should mean, which visions of womanhood the law should affirm, and which visions of womanhood the law should overcome? More concretely, would the ERA protect the rights of women to reject motherhood by terminating a pregnancy? Marking a century since the ERA was first introduced, Black women in Congress have led the formation of a new ERA Caucus in 2023, devoted to legitimizing the ERA’s completed ratification.22 Representative Ayanna Pressley introduced a joint resolution recognizing the validity of the three states’ late ratifications and rejecting the validity of some states’ attempts to rescind their ratifications.23 The Supreme Court’s decision in 2022 to stop reading the right to abortion into the existing Constitution24 has

Foreword  xix

created a renewed sense of urgency about enshrining women’s rights in the Constitution. Without an amendment that is specifically about the rights of women, it appears that even the very debate about the needs of womanhood(s) would remain, by the Supreme Court’s interpretive approach, tethered to the meanings generally accepted at the time that the Constitution and its existing guarantee of equality and liberty was adopted, circa 1868. How Ratification Rules Skewed the Path

While it appears that the ERA came three states short of the ratifications necessary to amend the Constitution in the 1970s because conservative women’s vision of womanhood prevailed, it is important to understand how the political structures entrenched the power of those who already held it (mostly men), so as to skew the process to favor the STOP-​ERA side of womanhood. Procedural rules and practices in state legislatures vary widely, and in Phyllis Schlafly’s home state of Illinois, a key battleground state, the rule that applied to the ratification of federal constitutional amendments was unique. Even though a majority of both houses of the Illinois legislature voted to ratify the ERA in 1973, the Illinois rule required three-​fifths of both houses of the legislature. Under the rules of most other states’ legislatures, the legislative chambers’ majority votes would have been sufficient to count the state as having ratified the ERA. And then, a federal court concluded that the U.S. Constitution, in entrusting state legislatures to ratify amendments to the U.S. Constitution, entrusts them to devise their own rules for their processes of ratification.25 But the Constitution does not explicitly say anything about that. Under the Illinois rule requiring three-​fifths to ratify an amendment, the task of the women opposing ratification, that is, Phyllis Schlafly, was a lighter lift than the burden of persuasion confronting the ERA’s supporters. The rule gave the win to opponents of ratification for gathering only 40 percent of the legislators’ vote. Under such rules, an effective strategy to defeat a proposal was to awaken enough fear and confusion to cause a minority of members some pause. The ERA’s failure to be ratified in Illinois was nationally consequential. If Illinois had ratified the ERA within the seven-​year window, it would likely have created pro-​ratification momentum in other battleground states. These political dynamics in Illinois are a reminder that every battle over competing visions of womanhood is fought under a set of procedural rules that can shape its trajectory. The few women in the Illinois House of Representatives knew this, and they tried to change the three-​fifths rule to require a simple majority to ratify constitutional amendments during the decade while the ERA ratification clock was ticking.26 But the men who controlled the legislature held tight to the supermajority rule. It was only after the #MeToo movement exposed

xx Foreword

widespread abuses of power and sexual harassment in the Illinois legislature, leading to the establishment of a women’s legislative caucus to concentrate political capital to advance women’s interests, that ERA ratification cleared the three-​fifths hurdle in the Illinois House in 2018.27 Even when it succeeded, ERA ratification in Illinois passed with a margin of one vote under that three-​fifths rule, due in part to a debate between Black women Democrats raising some doubts about whether the ERA would do enough to help Black women.28 In Nevada and Virginia as well, men were able to manipulate idiosyncratic parliamentary rules to defeat ERA ratification by extremely narrow margins in the 1970s. In Nevada, the legislature held an advisory referendum on ERA ratification in 1979, in which voters rejected the ERA by a 2 to 1 margin. While this referendum outcome suggests that the ERA’s failure in Nevada within the ratification deadline was supported by the people, evidence suggests that voter turnout in that referendum was shaped by the well-​funded campaign of religious groups that opposed the ERA.29 It took decades for the Nevada legislature to take up ERA ratification again. In 2017, one legislative session before Nevada became the first legislature in the country to have more women than men elected, a bipartisan and multiracial coalition of women legislators led Nevada to ratify the ERA.30 In Virginia, ERA ratification failed in the 1970s because committees dominated by the men with seniority exercised excessive power over whether the ERA would even be considered by the full body of the legislature.31 The problem in Virginia was similar to the dynamic in Congress that had kept the ERA bottled up in a House committee, deprived of a floor vote because the men who controlled the committee opposed it. Throughout the seven-​ year ratification period in the 1970s, Virginia legislators who controlled the Privileges and Elections Committee stopped ERA ratification from being debated and voted upon by the entire legislative body. Without a floor vote or a debate, voters were left in the dark about whether their own representatives supported or opposed the ERA, and had no means of voting out the handful of men who had stopped the ERA in committee. But by 2020, the Virginia General Assembly had changed considerably, with record numbers of women elected. Black women sponsored the resolutions on ERA ratification, self-​consciously embracing the historic significance of their presence in an institution that had no Black members when ERA ratification was unsuccessful in the 1970s. Changing the Rules of Change

Whether or not any particular vision of womanhood succeeds by way of ERA ratification or defeat therefore depends not only on the substantive content of that vision, but on the procedural rules of constitutional change. Emanuel

Foreword  xxi

Celler, the Congressman who prevented the ERA from being considered by the House throughout the 1960s, finally left Congress after Liz Holtzman, a young woman lawyer from Brooklyn, defeated him in the Democratic primary in 1972.32 Holtzman’s campaign drew voters’ attention to Celler’s opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment. Once elected, Congresswoman Holtzman served on the House Judiciary Committee as a leading figure in the impeachment of President Richard Nixon, along with Barbara Jordan, the first Black woman elected to Congress from the South. Both Holtzman and Jordan led the way in extending the ERA ratification deadline in 1978.33 Holtzman, along with Republican ERA supporter Margaret Heckler, established the bipartisan Women’s Congressional Caucus, focused on policy issues affecting women’s status and rights. Among its most significant initiatives was the proposal to extend the ratification deadline for the ERA.34 Congress had never extended a ratification deadline on a constitutional amendment before. Deadline extensions had never been necessary, because the amendment proposals with seven-​year deadlines were ratified quickly, and those without deadlines required no extensions. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the law professor who became a Justice of the Supreme Court known for her contributions to women’s rights, testified at the congressional hearings to justify this unprecedented extension.35 Ginsburg argued that Congress had the legal authority under the Constitution to change the deadline, since Congress was the one that had imposed the deadline in the first place. More importantly, Ginsburg also pointed out that amending the constitution to add human rights—​ and particularly women’s rights—​ took a long time, spanning across generations. The ERA, like the suffrage amendment before, proposed significant social change that required debate and persuasion of those who held decision-​making power, amid fear and confusion arising due to the significant nature of the legal transformation proposed. The resolution to extend the ERA deadline to 1982 succeeded. After Virginia became the 38th state to finally ratify the Equal Rights Amendment in 2020, constituting the three-​fourths of the states required by Article V of the Constitution for amendments, debates resumed about Congress’s power over deadlines. It is natural to ask whether the three ratifications that were attempted decades after even the extended deadline should count, and if so, whether fairness demands that the rescissions that were attempted within the deadline should count. Justice Ginsburg herself asked those questions in public appearances following Virginia’s ratification before her death.36 In 2020 and 2021, the House passed resolutions removing the ERA deadline retroactively, but the Senate did not follow.37 In 2023, a new resolution proposed not only to remove the ERA ratification deadline, but also to recognize the ERA as ratified and part of the Constitution because 38 states have ratified it.38 The Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on February 28, 2023 to consider it.

xxii Foreword

In introducing the impetus for the hearing, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Richard Durbin, Senator from Illinois, presented congressional action to remove the ERA deadline and to add the ERA to the Constitution as a reaction to the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization: There is no room for uncertainty when it comes to protecting equal rights under law. Sadly, that lesson was driven home last year by the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, and—​for the first time in history—​to take away a constitutional right from every woman in America.39 This next phase of the struggle to add the Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is consciously forging a 21st-​century conception of womanhood, in which a legal order that forces women to become mothers cannot be accepted as legitimate. To amplify this point, two Black women in the House have formed a new ERA Caucus. In introducing the new caucus, Representatives Cori Bush of Missouri and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts are building a vision of womanhood that centers the experiences and leadership of Black women, including within the struggle for the ERA itself. It is not only what the ERA will change in the law, but what its enshrinement means for women leaders or even founders and framers of the nation’s Constitution. Cori Bush, in launching the ERA caucus, said: [T]‌he Constitution, in all its wisdom, guaranteed fundamental inalienable rights, but stopped short of guaranteeing those rights for everyone. Women? We were written out. Black women? Not only were we written out, but too many authors of the Constitution were busy enslaving, exploiting, and extracting the labor of our ancestors for profit and were unconcerned with what was owed to us: equal rights, nothing less.40 “Black women have always been leaders of the fight to enshrine equality in our nation’s constitution, but we haven’t always been in the headlines for leading that work.”41 Ayanna Pressley made it a point to recognize the Black women who have shaped the ERA across generations: Today, there will be no erasure. We will give all the flowers to Shirley Chisholm, and Barbara Jordan, and Pauli Murray. Black women, they believed, are inherently valued and our equality is a necessity. And they advocated for the ERA to codify those truths in our Constitution.42

Foreword  xxiii

Conclusion

Pauli Murray, the pioneering Black woman lawyer who has only recently been recognized for her crucial contributions to the development of civil rights and feminist lawmaking in the 1960s, articulated a vision of the ERA that centered the experience of Black womanhood. In 1965, Murray co-​authored an article, “Jane Crow and the Law,” arguing that laws that discriminated on the basis of sex, like “Jim Crow” laws that discriminated on the basis of race, should be struck down as unconstitutional.43 Murray, along with her co-​author Mary Eastwood, argued that laws that denied equal rights to women relegated women to an inferior status. At the same time, however, rejecting “Jane Crow” did not necessarily mean that the law should never distinguish between women and men. For instance, “to the degree that women perform the function of motherhood, they differ from other special groups,” such that the law could recognize “the intrinsic value of child care and homemaking.”44 When Murray testified in Congress in 1970 in favor of the ERA, the historical experiences and actual situation of Black women shaped her understanding of womanhood and an equal-​power vision of the ERA.45 During slavery, Black women were subject to rape by white enslavers who used sexual violence to produce new generations of enslaved laborers. In the mid-​20th century, Black women did not get the economic opportunities available to Black men, nor did they experience the glorification of motherhood bestowed on white women. Black women had no choice but to work outside the home, often as domestic workers for white families with the lowest wages. Murray argued that, while existing constitutional provisions could continue to be deployed to expand Black women’s rights, the struggle for the Equal Rights Amendment was a quest for equal power. “What the opponents of the Amendment most fear is not equal rights but equal power and responsibility,” Murray noted. “A society in which more than half of the population is absent from the formal authority and decision-​making process is a society in dangerous imbalance,” she urged.46 A declaration of equal constitutional rights was necessary to make women’s access to equal power palpable and real. Unless and until women could control lawmaking institutions—​for instance, by controlling enough seats in Congress to pass revolutionary laws or at least to block laws that deprived women of power and rights—​women would be hampered in fulfilling their potential as individuals and as contributors to democracy. It follows that, in state legislatures, what matters to whether any vision of the ERA is promoted and the rights it entails, from nondiscrimination to reproductive freedom, is the structure through which lawmaking power is deployed.

xxiv Foreword

Thus, the unfinished story of the Equal Rights Amendment is not only a story of infinite contestation over womanhood, but of women’s unfinished march towards democracy. Advocating for the ERA—​and debating about it in lawmaking institutions—​has shaped the political power of women. That power, too, is critical to womanhood in the 21st century. Notes 1 I recount this history in detail: Julie C. Suk, We the Women: The Unstoppable Mothers of the Equal Rights Amendment (New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2020). The narrative presented in this foreword is largely drawn from the sources cited therein. 2 I develop the concept of male “overempowerment” as a primary engine of misogyny, more significant than the hatred of women, in maintaining women’s subordination under patriarchal legal systems, in Julie C. Suk, After Misogyny: How the Law Fails Women and What to Do about It (Oakland: University of California Press, 2023). 3 H. J. Res. 75, 68th Cong. (1923). 4 Crystal Eastman, “Now We Can Begin,” in Crystal Eastman on Women and Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), 52–​57, previously published in The Liberator (December 1920). 5 See Nancy F. Cott, “Feminist Politics in the 1920s: The National Woman’s Party,” Journal of American History 71 (1984): 43–​68. 6 See generally Julie C. Suk, “Working Mothers and the Postponement of Women’s Rights from the Nineteenth Amendment to the Equal Rights Amendment,” University of Colorado Law Review 92 (2021): 813–​ 814, http://​dx.doi.org/​ 10.2139/​ssrn.3730​321. 7 The most famous of these decisions is Lochner v. New York, 198 U.S. 45 (1905). 8 See Muller v. Oregon, 208 U.S. 412 (1908). For a more detailed history of protective labor legislation and litigation challenging it, see Nancy Woloch, A Class by Herself: Protective Laws for Women Workers, 1890s–​1990s (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015). 9 See generally Suk, We the Women, 58. 10 Rules of the House of Representatives, § 891, Rule XV, clause 2. 11 See 116 Congressional Record, 27,999–​28,020 (1970). 12 See 116 Congressional Record 28,029. 13 Senator Ervin claimed that the laws that would be struck down by the ERA allowed women to say “Treat me like a mother.” See 116 Cong. Rec., 35,935. 14 See 116 Cong. Rec. 35,947–​36,278. See generally Suk, We the Women, 63–​65. 15 Griffiths described the seven-​year deadline as “an effort to gain united support for the Amendment.” See Equal Rights for Men and Women 1971, Hearing on H. J. Res. 35, 208 and Related Bills and H.R. 916 and Related Bills Before Subcommittee No. 4 of the House Committee on the Judiciary, 92nd Cong. 41 (Statement of Martha Griffiths). 16 See 118 Congressional Record 9598 (1972). 17 117 Congressional Record 35,815 (1971). 18 See generally Suk, We the Women, 89 (including sources cited in notes 17–​20). 19 Illinois General Assembly, S.J.R.C.A 0004, 100th Gen. Assembly (passed May 30, 2018).

Foreword  xxv

0 Nevada State Assembly, S.J.R. 2, 79th Sess (passed Mar. 22, 2017). 2 21 Virginia House of Delegates, H.J.R. 1, Virginia Senate, S.J. 1, 2020 Session (passed Jan. 27, 2020). 22 See Cheyanne M. Daniels, “A New Wave of Black Women Are Leading the Fight for the ERA,” The Hill, March 31, 2023, https://​theh​ill.com/​pol​icy/​3926​296-​a-​ new-​wave-​of-​black-​women-​are-​lead​ing-​the-​fight-​for-​the-​era/​. 23 H.J. Res. 25, 118th Cong (2023). 24 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, 142 S.Ct. 2228 (2022). 25 Dyer v. Blair, 390 F. Supp. 1291 (U.S. District Court, Northern District of Illinois, 1975). 26 Efforts by Dawn Clark Netsch and other Illinois legislators to change the ratification rule are recounted in Netsch’s oral history detailing the ERA fight in Illinois. See Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, Dawn Clark Netsch Oral History, ERA Fight in Illinois, https://​presi​dent​linc​oln.illin​ois.gov/​ oral-​hist​ory/​coll​ecti​ons/​net​sch-​dawn-​clark-​1/​interv​iew-​det​ail/​ 27 See generally Suk, We the Women, 143–​147 (detailing the open letter by women employed in the Illinois legislature and the establishment of the Women’s Caucus in the state legislature in 2018). 28 See Illinois House of Representatives, Transcription Debate, 100th General Assembly, May 30, 2018. 29 See O. Kendall White, Jr., “Mormonism and the Equal Rights Amendment,” Journal of Church and State 31, no. 2 (Spring 1989): 253. 30 Nevada Legislature, Research Division, Legislative Counsel Bureau, Women in the Nevada Legislature, February 2021, www.leg.state.nv.us/​Divis​ion/​Resea​rch/​ Docume​nts/​Wome​n_​NV​Legi​slat​ure.pdf. 31 See generally Suk, We the Women, 164–​168. 32 See Elizabeth Holtzman, Who Said It Would Be Easy? One Woman’s Life in the Political Arena (New York: Arcade, 1996). 33 See generally Suk, We the Women, 115–​119. 34 See H.R.J. Res. 638, 95th Cong., 92 Stat. 3799 (1978). 35 See Equal Rights Amendment Extension: Hearings on H.R.J. Res. 638 Before the Subcomm. On Civ. & Const. Rts of the H. Comm. On the Judiciary, 95th Cong. 121-​30 (1978) (Testimony of Ruth Bader Ginsburg); Equal Rights Amendment Extension: Hearing on S.J. Res. 134 Before the Subcomm. On the Const. of the S. Comm. On the Judiciary, 95th Cong. 272–​71 (1978) (testimony and written statement of Ruth Bader Ginsburg). For a discussion of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s legacy for the Equal Rights Amendment, see Julie C. Suk, “Justice Ginsburg’s Cautious Legacy for the Equal Rights Amendment,” Georgetown Law Journal 110, no. 6 (June 2022): 1391–​1436. 36 See “Searching for Equality: The Nineteenth Amendment and Beyond: A Conversation Between United States Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge M. Margaret McKeown,” Georgetown Law Journal 108, no. 1 (2020): 11. 37 H.R.J. Res. 79, 116th Cong. (2020); H.R.J. Res. 17, 117th Cong. (2021). 38 S.J. Res. 4, 118th Cong. (2023); H.R.J. Res. 25, 118th Cong. (2023). 39 “The Equal Rights Amendment: How Congress Can Recognize Ratification and Enshrine Equality in Our Constitution,” Hearing on S.J. Res. 4., 118th Cong., Feb. 28, 2023, available at www.judici​ary.sen​ate.gov/​commit​tee-​activ​ity/​heari​ ngs/​the-​equal-​rig​hts-​amendm​ent-​how-​congr​ess-​can-​recogn​ize-​ratif​i cat​ion-​and-​ enshr​ine-​equal​ity-​in-​our-​const​itut​ion

xxvi Foreword

0 169 Congressional Record H1457 (March 27, 2023) (Remarks of Rep. Cori Bush). 4 41 Cori Bush cited in Daniels, “A New Wave of Black Women Are Leading the Fight for the ERA.” 42 169 Congressional Record H1459 (March 27, 2023) (Remarks of Rep. Ayanna Pressley). 43 See Pauli Murray and Mary O. Eastwood, “Jane Crow and the Law: Sex Discrimination and Title VII,” George Washington Law Review 34 (1965): 232-​256. For a thorough account of Pauli Murray’s vision of the Equal Rights Amendment, see Julie C. Suk, “A Dangerous Imbalance: Pauli Murray’s Equal Rights Amendment and the Path to Equal Power,” Virginia Law Review Online 107 (2021): 3. 44 Suk, “A Dangerous Imbalance,” 18. 45 See Equal Rights 1970, Hearings on S.J. Res. 61 and S.J. Res. 231 Before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary 31 (1970), 427–​33 (Statement of Pauli Murray); Pauli Murray, “The Negro Woman’s Stake in the Equal Rights Amendment,” Harvard Civil Rights-​Civil Liberties Law Review 6 (1971): 253–​259. 46 Suk, “A Dangerous Imbalance,” 14.

Reference List Cott, Nancy F. “Feminist Politics in the 1920s: The National Woman’s Party.” Journal of American History 71 (1984): 43–​68. Daniels, Cheyanne M. “A New Wave of Black Women Are Leading the Fight for the ERA.” The Hill, March 31, 2023. https://​theh​ill.com/​pol​icy/​3926​296-​a-​new-​ wave-​of-​black-​women-​are-​lead​ing-​the-​fight-​for-​the-​era/​. Eastman, Crystal. “Now We Can Begin.” In Crystal Eastman on Women and Revolution, edited by Blanche Wiesen Cook, 52–​57. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978. Previously published in The Liberator (December 1920). Holtzman, Elizabeth. Who Said It Would Be Easy? One Woman’s Life in the Political Arena. New York: Arcade, 1996. Murray, Pauli. “The Negro Woman’s Stake in the Equal Rights Amendment.” Harvard Civil Rights-​Civil Liberties Law Review 6 (1971): 253–​259. Murray, Pauli and Mary O. Eastwood. “Jane Crow and the Law: Sex Discrimination and Title VII.” George Washington Law Review 34 (1965): 232–​256. “Searching for Equality: The Nineteenth Amendment and Beyond: A Conversation Between United States Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge M. Margaret McKeown.” Georgetown Law Journal 108, no. 1 (2020): 5–​25. Suk, Julie C. After Misogyny: How the Law Fails Women and What to Do about It. Oakland: University of California Press, 2023. —​—​—​. “Justice Ginsburg’s Cautious Legacy for the Equal Rights Amendment.” Georgetown Law Journal 110, no. 6 (June 2022): 1391–​1436. —​—​—​. “A Dangerous Imbalance: Pauli Murray’s Equal Rights Amendment and the Path to Equal Power.” Virginia Law Review Online 107 (2021): 3–​26. —​ —​ —​ . “Working Mothers and the Postponement of Women’s Rights from the Nineteenth Amendment to the Equal Rights Amendment.” University of Colorado Law Review 92 (2021). http://​dx.doi.org/​10.2139/​ssrn.3730​321.

newgenprepdf

Foreword  xxvii

—​—​—​. We the Women: The Unstoppable Mothers of the Equal Rights Amendment. New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2020. White, O. Kendall, Jr. “Mormonism and the Equal Rights Amendment.” Journal of Church and State 31, no. 2 (Spring 1989): 249–​267. Woloch, Nancy. A Class by Herself: Protective Laws for Women Workers, 1890s–​ 1990s. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015

INTRODUCTION

In 1923, under the impetus of feminist activists, the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) was introduced in Congress. It aimed to enshrine equality between men and women into the U.S. Constitution. While inciting much debate at that time, the amendment was not passed by both houses of Congress until 1972 when its phrasing had come to insist on “sex equality”: “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.”1 Since then, the concept of sex equality has evolved into claims for gender equality, even gender equity, as a result of the many demands for egalitarianism that have arisen during this period. Nevertheless, constitutional equality has yet to be achieved: despite having been ratified by the necessary number of states (38)—​most recently by Nevada in 2017, Illinois in 2018, and Virginia in 2020—​the ERA is still not a reality. While the technical issues of deadlines and rescissions persist, resistance to gender equality continues to play a crucial role in keeping the ERA in limbo. One of the striking features of the past century is the fact that the push for equality has not been unanimously supported by American women. On the one hand, some women have organized around issues that support equality: the first-​, second-​, and third-​wave feminist movements, campaigns for the right to vote and the ERA, even recent social media viral hashtags, like #MeToo and #SayHerName, both of which denounce the persistence of sexism, racism, and gender violence. On the other hand, some women have mobilized against the ERA, have been major actors in rolling back abortion rights, and have advocated for women’s identities to be exclusively those of wife and mother. The fact that battles undertaken in the name of rights for women have received support from some women but opposition from

DOI: 10.4324/9781003425380-1

2 Introduction

others has been a clear indicator that equality signifies different things to different women. The question of equality cannot, however, simply be collapsed into activist movements.2 The private lives of women have been important sites of redefining womanhood as well. Women have effectively negotiated their identities within and in relation to the home. It has also been in this environment that women have developed strategies to challenge and circumvent the norms elaborated for them. Women have used their private identities to stake a claim in public debates by being involved in community programs, church groups, philanthropic societies, and so on. Such engagement calls into question the idea that women belong in the private sphere and men in the public one. Feminist scholars have nuanced the “separate spheres” framework to demonstrate that this has been a superficial framing that negates the porous boundaries of gendered spaces and their incumbent roles.3 Dominant trends in American women’s history reveal a complicated relationship between women, equality, and their rights; especially as race, ethnicity, and class—​as well as other positionalities4—​act to situate women differently. The analyses of African American scholars and activists have, for instance, contributed to a better understanding of equality in the realm of reproductive issues. In an effort to encompass the experiences of all women—​notably women of color and women with fewer social and financial resources—​the issue of reproductive “rights” has been reframed to one of reproductive “justice.”5 This shift in perspective highlights how different positionalities influence access to contraceptive and abortion care. It also underlines the fact that “choices” and “rights” are constrained by other societal, rather than individual, factors like systemic racism, affordable childcare, and safe schools. Because of the variety of women’s experiences and interests, there might also be a fundamental disagreement, or misunderstanding, regarding the workability of equality as an efficient lever. An example of this can be seen in the 1920s and again in the 1970s, when the ERA incited opposition between women activists. In each era, there was a camp who believed constitutional equality would ensure women’s full participation in society, while the other believed that such an amendment would jeopardize the protective status that womanhood conferred on women. In the 1920s and 1930s, this meant protective labor legislation, while in the 1970s, it was the protective role that working husbands were supposed to provide to their homemaking wives. More recently, issues of pay inequality and lack of paid parental leave in the workplace as well as the burdens of the second shift and the mental load in the home have continued to call into question whether equality is the framework that will result in liberation. This book therefore puts forward the prism of womanhood(s) to grasp the different positionalities of women in space and time as it considers both the

Introduction  3

collective and the individual. In doing so, it aims to emphasize the diversity of women’s understandings of gender and how they inform the pursuit of equality in the United States. Womanhoods

Although it is seldom used in contemporary works about women, and gender history, we chose to highlight the term “womanhood” as emblematic of women’s lived experiences. According to literary scholar Tara Williams, “womanhood” emerged in Middle English during the 14th century, at least 150 years after the similarly constructed “manhood.” She argues that its usage resulted from a shift in the perception of the roles of women and filled “the gap that had developed between social reality and available vocabulary.”6 At the time, the English language tended “to consider women in categories connected to male figures rather than collectively and autonomously.”7 The word thus provided for a new collective identity that departed from the traditional subservient position of women. Although revolutionary in its reference to women as a group with an autonomous collective reality, the term was shaped by gendered assumptions about “femininity.” Women were no longer seen as either “maidens, wives or widows—​the traditional triad of female roles,”8 but were endowed with specific “feminine” attributes such as gentleness, humility, and sensitivity.9 This essentialist dimension of “womanhood” accompanied British settlers to the American continent and reached a zenith in the 19th-​century United States with “the Cult of True Womanhood.” Even though this phrase remained “vague,” it served to emphasize White women’s “feminine” qualities that could best be expressed within the domestic sphere.10 While the word is often essentialized, womanhood—​understood in this book as the condition of being a woman or a person’s journey to creating their identity as a woman—​is considered socially and culturally constructed rather than biologically assigned. Womanhood is neither exactly the same as “woman” (an identity), nor “gender” (a larger concept).11 Sometimes constraining, sometimes liberating, the term “womanhood” seems to have been neglected by scholars as a lens through which women can be studied. We opted for the unusual use of the plural “womanhoods” because—​although we believe that women share a common experience of discrimination and oppression as a social group—​we want to highlight how inequalities manifest themselves in various ways for different women, which has resulted in divergent perceptions and experiences of womanhood. Following in the footsteps of historian Joan Scott, we think womanhood could be similarly situated within the debate on the utility of gender studies in writing women’s history. Like “man” and “woman,” womanhood is “at once empty and overflowing. Empty because [it has] no ultimate, transcendent

4 Introduction

meaning. Overflowing because even when [it appears] to be fixed, [it] still contain[s]‌within [it] alternative, denied or suppressed definitions.”12 Womanhood, then, is difficult to define and is also heavily marked. As intersectionality has become a dominant theoretical framework of analysis, taking up terms like womanhood, which might be considered academically passé, seems a worthy endeavor precisely because this particular term continues to be rife with social meaning. As such, the study of womanhoods allows contributors to this book to expand on ways in which women’s social, political, and economic experiences are neither fixed, timeless, nor permanent.13 Our hope is that the concept of womanhoods anchors women’s history into gender studies by bridging the discursive gap between being a woman at a given time, women’s fight for gender equality, and the diffuse nature of power and access to it in American society. Equality

In this book, the concept of womanhood is studied in relation to equality as demand for the latter has been a galvanizing force for reconsidering women’s place in the United States. Yet, the social, economic, and legal gains of the 20th century led many feminist critics to turn away from equality as the guiding principle of their claims toward the concept of equity. Perhaps this is because, despite advancements, in practice equality remains unachieved in the United States. There have been many legal milestones advancing gender equality—​the 19th Amendment, the 1963 Equal Pay Act, Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Title IX of the 1972 Educational Amendments to the Civil Rights Act, the 1978 Pregnancy Discrimination Act, the 1993 Family and Medical Leave Act, the 1994 Violence Against Women Act, among others. Nevertheless, distinguished lecturer and civil rights activist Jessica Neuwirth has noted that equality in its legal interpretation has often meant neutrality, and when men are held up as the neutral example to be compared against, women lose.14 Despite legislative attempts to implement equality through the passage of laws, the American courts, specifically the Supreme Court, have largely focused on equal treatment rather than “the more fundamental notion of actual equality between men and women, which recognizes that women have been historically disadvantaged.”15 This necessarily means that equity is fundamental to ensuring that gender injustices are uprooted from the law and its legal interpretative framework. Legal scholar Julie C. Suk has recently made the argument that equitable treatment is integral to the legislative history of the Equal Rights Amendment and that its final adoption would “empower mothers and families” as well as “fix the democratic process.”16 Importantly, it would also allow for legislators, rather than judges, to shape laws and allow the United States “to deliver on its promise of democracy for all.”17

Introduction  5

The feminist turn to equity is not simply a question of the law, however. Economist Martha J. Bailey and sociologist Thomas A. DiPrete posited in 2016 that “[…] women’s progress has slowed or stalled.”18 Labor market participation and earnings, educational attainment, family planning and demographic trends, as well as social attitudinal changes have accompanied the legal codification of equality previously mentioned. The gender pay gap has narrowed; occupational segregation by gender has decreased overall; women’s educational attainment has outpaced men’s; women and men marry and have children later.19 However, women are less happy than they were 50 years ago; longevity has slowed; morbidity rates have risen.20 Women take more time off work after giving birth; they stay out of the labor force longer and want to work less than men once they have had children; women also perform more nonmarket work in households.21 We might therefore deduce that women’s material and psychological well-​being are intricately intertwined with questions of equity, which in turn speaks to the importance of continuing the pursuit for equality. A Mosaic

While the fight for equality animated feminist discussions during the 20th century, the persistence of gender inequalities and even the rolling back of certain fundamental rights, like the Supreme Court’s decision on abortion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022), has made nuancing this fight necessary. Following recent feminist scholarship, then, this book’s chapters will demonstrate how equality remains a necessary demand for American women, but that achieving it will require equity being thoroughly integrated into institutional structures and societal mental frameworks. Drawing on the intersection between womanhoods and equality, this book offers an innovative approach to the study of women’s experiences in the United States. Each participant’s chapter contributes to building a series of contextual vignettes that delineate womanhood and the relationship of some women to equality. In the vein of the recent work of British historian Lucy Delap, we are interested in the effect of “mosaic feminism” in the telling of how womanhoods and equality have come together in the United States since the 1920s.22 The result is however limited. Without claiming to cover the entirety of the 20th and 21st centuries, this book does manage to gather contributions that engage with the following debates over the past hundred years: activism in favor of/​ against equal rights for women; normative discourses on femininity, gender, and racial identity; women’s bodies, their corporal and sexual agency; gender violence; as well as conservative ideals of womanhood. We hope that the conversation between French scholars specialized in American studies and American scholars brought together here offers a

6 Introduction

unique perspective on U.S. women’s history.23 This exchange is further nuanced by the fact that the authors come from different disciplines with varying methodological approaches, including media and visual studies, women’s studies, sociology, American studies, African American studies, history, and law. To analyze the social constructs that influence women’s identities and trajectories and the ways they are understood, these contributors examine the notions of equality and womanhood in different social, political, legal, and historical contexts. They highlight the multiplicity of women’s experiences, without being exhaustive, and question what equality has meant for women, depending on where they position themselves or are positioned by race, immigration status, socioeconomic background, sexuality, gender identity, marital and parental status, physical appearance, and political orientation on a particular issue. In doing so, the authors demonstrate that women’s intersecting social identities have resulted in many womanhoods and have been the source of debates about what it implies for women to be granted equal rights in the United States, socially, economically, and politically. In the first part, entitled “Fashioning and Refashioning Womanhood(s),” authors consider women’s efforts to circumvent the constraints that were imposed on them because of their gender. As patriarchal forces have defined expectations linked to women’s bodies and social roles, establishing a monolithic vision of womanhood, women have carved spaces for themselves, refashioning their voices, bodies, and images. In her study of women’s magazines in the 1960s and 1970s, Alice Morin uses cultural history to underline the ambivalent work of fashion editors. Two mainstream publications, Vogue and Harpers’ Bazaar, are examined to showcase an idealized femininity as well as gender and racial norms. Morin also questions the possibility for magazines to be “sites of deconstruction.” She conducts a case study of three feminist figures—​Gloria Steinem, Susan Brownmiller, and Jane O’Reilly—​to discuss whether the production of content served their cause. She identifies a discrepancy between textual and visual content, which prevents these magazines from offering nuanced portrayals of womanhood. Morin’s media studies approach leads her to assess women’s consumption of these normative images of womanhood by questioning their reception. In her reflection on the absorption and perpetuation of beauty ideals, she concludes that the readers’ agency also defines the contours of womanhood. While idealized models do weigh on women, magazines also promote a fantasized vision of women’s appearance, which gives consumers some leeway in how they assimilate or reappropriate these norms. In her chapter, Néfertiti Ngoupande-​Nah demonstrates that, despite their importance, beauty standards can be actively and consciously reshaped to serve personal and collective purposes. Using a historical perspective and taking the example of the career of African American entrepreneur Annie

Introduction  7

Malone, she shows that some women took charge of their own socioeconomic emancipation and refashioned womanhood to their needs, in this case to combat stereotyped images of Black women in the 1920s. Claiming a right to be beautiful according to their own codes, African American women displayed their agency through entrepreneurship and reappropriated control over their bodies, especially their hair, in order to assert their respectability in the spirit of Racial Uplift. Mobilizing visual studies, Ngoupande-​Nah discusses an ad produced by Malone’s company to underline the double burden of sexism and racism, which often took the form of ugly stereotypes and offensive archetypes. She shows that such tropes were counteracted by the celebration of a new beauty culture that exalted Black womanhoods. Likewise, beginning in the 1920s, but expanding the historical timeline to the 1970s, Anaïs Le Fèvre-​Berthelot focuses on women’s adaptations and creative impulses in expressing their womanhoods. To do so, she analyzes the ways in which women’s voices on the radio had to conform to traditional gender norms because their presence on air was at first resisted. Looking at this by combining sociohistorical and media studies perspectives, she demonstrates that newswomen managed to assert their position in this sector both by redefining their corporeality and adjusting to the mores of the period. She analyzes radio archives that have recently been made available, reflecting on the very materiality of voices and the construction of gender through the medium of the radio. She shows that, to respond to technological developments, but also because their on-​air performance was essentialized, women on the radio deployed strategies that expanded the possibilities of womanhood both physically, through sound, and socially, through the redefinition of their public roles, paving the way for important women’s voices to be heard more distinctively. All these chapters point to womanhood being shaped by normative stereotypes but also being open to reframing. When defined by others, norms have forced women to question their positionalities and to reinvent themselves within, or beyond, set standards. While they are often perceived as immutable, gender norms can be adapted or bypassed, showing the agency of women and the malleability of womanhood. The second part of this book, entitled “Violence and Womanhood,” focuses on women’s complicated relationship to violence. Since violence and the fear of violence are shaped by gender dynamics, womanhood is often associated with experiencing, rather than perpetuating violence. Karissa Haugeberg, Cléa Fortuné, and Soukayna Mniaï, who all look at how violence has impacted women in the United States, challenge some of these assumptions as they describe the ways in which women resist, and sometimes even embrace violence. Analyzing the activist journeys of anti-​abortion women who, like Joan Andrews, adopted violent militant tactics, Karissa Haugeberg’s chapter

8 Introduction

addresses multiple levels of gendered stereotypes from a historical perspective. She looks at how docility and beauty, characteristics commonly associated with conservative womanhood, were subverted when women advocating for conservative values started resorting to violence. Women who once operated on the fringes of conservative womanhood, however, have recently returned to the conventional standards of beauty and motherhood. This leads Haugeberg to wonder about the explanatory models being employed to understand conservative women’s violence and point to the streamlining of extremist ideas by conservative media outlets. She points out that the connection between mainstream political actors and extremist ones has always been a part of the anti-​abortion movement, but placing a veneer on violent actors and their ideas has made this interconnection more palatable to larger segments of the conservative population. While Haugeberg focuses on the individual trajectories of women using violence, the chapters of Cléa Fortuné and Soukayna Mniaï both look at how gender-​based violence is imposed on women, whether it is by the state or patriarchal forces. Using fieldwork she conducted in Agua Prieta, Mexico and Douglas, Arizona in 2018 and 2019, Cléa Fortuné highlights contemporary state policies, which inflict specific hardships on women migrants. Her chapter underlines how these women, who have embarked on immigration journeys to escape violence in Central America, are being victimized again by state policies that force them to remain on the Mexican side of the border while the United States considers their asylum applications. This situation makes them more likely to experience other forms of violence, in particular sexual violence, at the hands of organized crime. Fortuné describes how cisgender and transgender women’s experiences of migration are shaped by this violence, which in turn leads to some forms of resistance, notably through border activism. For example, art is employed to deconstruct traditional images of the border, allowing artists and migrant women to become more visible. Considering violence in a different space, that of college campuses, Soukayna Mniaï’s chapter analyzes how Title IX of the Education Amendments (1972) has opened new avenues to fight against sexual assault. Looking at court rulings and governmental policies, she explains how advocates and survivors have resorted to the notion of equality to attempt to eliminate violence in higher education. Legal experts and activists have carefully reframed the conversation over rape and other types of assault to argue that they are a form of gender discrimination and thus, constitute civil rights violations. This approach shifted the perception of sexual assault from isolated criminal incidents to a social issue that universities must address to guarantee that students are provided with an environment conducive to success. However, the recasting of sexual violence has not been without blowback as some conservative forces have vehemently challenged university policies arguing

Introduction  9

that they violate due process. Mniaï’s chapter therefore speaks to the fact that patriarchy has structured womanhoods in a way that sexual violence is integral to women’s experiences. These three chapters thus paint multiple relationships to diverse sources of violence and the many paths women take to fight for bodily agency. Like women’s experience navigating their public image, the multidimensional aspect of women’s relationship to violence conveys how varied American womanhood is. It also opens the door to an array of possible negotiations on what it means to be a woman. The final part of the book, “Womanhood: Sites of Debate and Negotiation,” explores how women’s rights, women’s issues, women’s lifeways, even women’s identities have all been at the heart of different quandaries that have brought women, and men, to speak about equality and its meaning in their lives. These questions have been anchored in the varying positionalities of women from every part of the social spectrum in the United States and they do not always manifest themselves in the form of mobilizing for rights. There are activists, of course, but people from all walks of life inform the debates that construct and deconstruct womanhoods. Those involved in such debates are asking what American womanhood is and are trying to stake their claim in defining it on their own terms. Feminists have heatedly debated the reproductive labor that women have traditionally performed in the home and for society. Christen Bryson explores how certain identities of womanhood—​ mother and wife—​ were used by feminists in the 1960s and 1970s to gain more educational, political, and economic opportunities, but her chapter contends that some ground has also been lost in that feminism largely abandoned the added-​value that “women’s work” offers society as a whole. Rooted in sociocultural history, Bryson’s chapter returns to some of the significant feminist texts of that period and their specific discussions of housewifery. She analyzes the ways in which they took aim at the roles of mothers and wives who embodied the womanhood model of the White, suburban, middle classes of the postwar era. While feminists’ aims were liberatory, Bryson posits that perhaps such depictions fed into the larger patriarchal status quo that continued to minimize care work and housework. The consequences of this can be felt today as feminism has yet to properly bring the fight for the social, economic, and political recognition of care work and housework into being. The unsteady path to advancing the rights of women, whether they be rhetorical or practical, can also be seen in the abortion debate. Michael Stambolis-​Ruhstorfer adds to the scholarship on abortion in that he brings the experts and their expertise to the fore in order to discuss how the creation of knowledge and scientific communities designed to weigh in on such a polarizing topic might have consequences beyond this issue. Using a sociological framework, he examines how expertise and the scientization

10 Introduction

of politics have been mobilized in debates over abortion, arguing that the reframing of what might be considered a political and moral question into a technical one has been instrumentalized as a result of the medicalized legal framework put in place by Roe v. Wade (1973). Medical improvements over the past decades have called into question the workability of this framework and allowed for both proponents and opponents of abortion rights to frame their arguments as independent of, and superior to, the political and ethical justifications that are used in abortion debates. The expansion of scientific communities, focused on giving a technical and supposedly impartial view on such politicized questions, will likely continue to bear weight on women’s lives and issues as it is precisely women and other socially marginalized people whose lives and ways of life are up for debate in political and legal forums. Working like the pieces of a mosaic, the chapters in this book convey the idea that womanhood is not a monolith. Multiple womanhoods actually shape the ways in which women walk through life. Sometimes it is the women themselves who frame those debates or contribute to their shaping. Sometimes, it is societal and/​or communal understandings of what a woman should be that defines their own negotiation with womanhood. Debates themselves also act to fashion women’s experiences and what is considered “appropriate” womanhood. As long as gender remains a predominant way by which society is organized, womanhoods will continue to be sites by which society can be hierarchized and avenues by which women can negotiate their pursuits for equality. Notes 1 “Joint Resolution of March 22, 1972, 86 STAT 1523, Proposing an Amendment to the Constitution of the United States Relative to Equal Rights for Men and Women,” H.J. Res. 208, 27th Amendment [Proposed 27th Amendment], https://​ cata​log.archi​ves.gov/​id/​7455​549. 2 The “waves” metaphor associated with feminist activism has been criticized precisely for this reason. See Nancy Hewitt, No Permanent Waves: Recasting Histories of U.S. Feminism (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press: 2010). 3 Linda K. Kerber, “Separate Spheres, Female Worlds, Women’s Place: The Rhetoric of Women’s History,” The Journal of American History 75, no. 1 (June 1988): 9–​39. 4 The term “positionalities” refers to the ways in which people’s identities, in terms of race, class, gender, sexuality, and ability status, are shaped by shifting social and political contexts. It also points to the ways in which these identities influence how individuals perceive the world. See for example Frances Maher and Mary Kay Thompson Tetreault, The Feminist Classroom: Dynamics of Gender, Race, and Privilege (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001), 164–​200. 5 Loretta Ross and Rickie Solinger, Reproductive Justice: An Introduction (Oakland: University of California Press, 2017). 6 Tara Williams, Inventing Womanhood: Gender and Language in Later Middle English Writing (Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 2011), 3–​4.

Introduction  11

7 Williams, Inventing Womanhood, 5. 8 Williams, Inventing Womanhood, 2. 9 Williams, Inventing Womanhood, 1–​10. 10 Barbara Welter, “The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820–​ 1860,” American Quarterly 18, no. 2 (Summer 1966): 151–​174. 11 Some canonical works on gender as a category of social and philosophical analysis include Judith Butler, Gender Trouble (New York: Routledge, 1990) and Sandra Lipsitz Bem, The Lenses of Gender: Transforming the Debate on Sexual Inequality (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993). 12 Joan W. Scott, “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis,” The American Historical Review 91, no. 5 (1986): 1074. 13 Scott, “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis,” 1068. 14 Jessica Neuwirth, Equal Means Equal: Why the Time for an Equal Rights Amendment is Now (New York: The New Press, 2015). 15 Neuwirth, Equal Means Equal, 84. 16 Julie C. Suk, We the Women: The Unstoppable Mothers of the Equal Rights Amendment (New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2020), 178. 17 Suk, We the Women, 179. 18 Martha J. Bailey and Thomas A. DiPrete, “Five Decades of Remarkable but Slowing Change in U.S. Women’s Economic and Social Status and Political Participation,” RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 2, no. 4 (2016): 1–​2. 19 Bailey and DiPrete, “Five Decades of Remarkable but Slowing Change,” 3–​13. 20 Bailey and DiPrete, “Five Decades of Remarkable but Slowing Change,” 1. 21 Bailey and DiPrete, “Five Decades of Remarkable but Slowing Change,” 17–​21. 22 Lucy Delap, Feminisms: A Global History (London: Pelican, 2020), 20–​21. 23 Most of the topics presented in this book were first discussed and debated at the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris, France, during an international conference that brought the contributors together. Organized in May 2022, “Womanhood(s) in the United States: Cultural, Social, and Political Conflicts in Achieving Equality since the 1920s” allowed participants to present their research and offered these scholars, and the public, a chance to exchange on these topics from a variety of standpoints. This book is the fruit of this collective reflection.

Reference List Bailey, Martha J., and Thomas A. DiPrete. “Five Decades of Remarkable but Slowing Change in U.S. Women’s Economic and Social Status and Political Participation.” RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 2, no. 4 (2016): 1–​32. Delap, Lucy. Feminisms: A Global History. London: Pelican, 2020. Hewitt, Nancy. No Permanent Waves: Recasting Histories of U.S. Feminism. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2010. Kerber, Linda K. “Separate Spheres, Female Worlds, Women’s Place: The Rhetoric of Women’s History.” The Journal of American History 75, no. 1 (June 1988): 9–​39. Maher, Frances, and Mary Kay Thompson Tetreault. The Feminist Classroom: Dynamics of Gender, Race, and Privilege. New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001. Neuwirth, Jessica. Equal Means Equal: Why the Time for an Equal Rights Amendment is Now. New York: The New Press, 2015.

12 Introduction

Ross, Loretta, and Rickie Solinger. Reproductive Justice: An Introduction. Oakland: University of California Press, 2017. Scott, Joan W. “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis.” The American Historical Review 91, no. 5 (1986): 1053–​1075. Suk, Julie C. We the Women: The Unstoppable Mothers of the Equal Rights Amendment. New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2020. Welter, Barbara. “The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820–​1860.” American Quarterly 18, no. 2 (Summer 1966): 151–​174. Williams, Tara. Inventing Womanhood: Gender and Language in Later Middle English Writing. Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 2011.

PART I

Fashioning and Refashioning Womanhoods

1 ECHOES OF WOMANHOOD Listening to Women’s Voices on the Radio Anaïs Le Fèvre-​Berthelot

Definitions of femininity and its evolution tend to focus on images. American womanhood in the 20th century has been embodied by a multiplicity of figures: from the suffragist and the Flapper to Rosie the Riveter, the pin-​up, the Civil Rights activist, the suburban housewife, and the working mom. These images encapsulate the evolutions of the place of women in American society but also the great variety of experiences that are excluded from common definitions of womanhood in the U.S. Moreover, these images often provide definitions of womanhood that were informed by the male gaze and have stripped women of their agency. In this chapter, I argue that it is important to listen to women’s voices as well. Not just metaphorically, not just to see what they have to say, but to focus on where they (can) say it, on how they say it, and on how those voices may be perceived. Because voices are an interface between the private and the public, because they are both personal and political, because they are anchored in bodies, shaped by culture, and mediated by technologies, they are likely to challenge the often silent (and silenced) images of womanhood. The concept of voice in gender studies is often interpreted metaphorically, and while the political understanding of “women’s voices” is essential, it should not obscure the materiality of women’s voices and what they reveal about gender. Radio is an obvious medium to question issues related to the materiality of voices, but it also is an important part of women’s history. As Susan Ware writes, “Radio is one of those cultural spaces in which women have had unexpected latitude to shape and filter messages coming over the airwaves.”1 Over its century of existence, U.S. radio has emerged as a technology of gender and studying it as such may help us to “articulate the differences of women from Woman.”2 Much like the cinematic apparatus DOI: 10.4324/9781003425380-3

16  Anaïs Le Fèvre-Berthelot

analyzed by de Lauretis, radio participates in the construction of gender as a system of power because, through conventions, technological choices, definition of genres, silencing of some voices and foregrounding of others it shapes what gender sounds like and creates new possibilities for gender performances in production and reception. Despite a renewed interest in the medium in the 21st century in part linked to the emergence of sound studies, radio remains much less studied than other media.3 The cultural turn of the 1980s–​90s followed the more economic and institutional approaches of the 1960s, and led to the exploration of social issues and reception analyses.4 The place of women behind the scenes, on the air, and beside the receiver also became a subject of interest in the context of the development of feminist and women’s studies.5 Yet, available material (which is expanding thanks to digital access) can be listened to from a gendered perspective to analyze radio as a technology of gender and to take into account the materiality of sound, which is rarely the focus of works on radio.6 Gender equality remains elusive in radio, whether behind the scenes or on the air. In 2019, over 60% of commercial radio stations and 29% of non-​ commercial ones had no women on their news staff.7 In 2020, there were only fourteen women and only two women of color in Talkers’ top 100 radio news talk shows.8 Even on NPR, which stands out for the proportion of women on its newsroom staff (56.7% in 2019), the voices heard are mostly men’s (close to 70% in 2018).9 In 2020, while women represented about half of podcast listeners, only 21% of the most popular shows across four platforms were hosted by women.10 This silencing of women’s voices on radio and sound media in the U.S. may seem like just another example of the marginalization of women in the media in general, which it undoubtedly is. But the specific status of radio—​one of the first audiovisual mass media and the medium that still reached the most people in the United States in 2022 (88% of U.S. adults weekly with an average usage time of twelve hours per week)11—​means that this marginalization needs to be analyzed because of the consequences it has had on the place of women in U.S. media more generally and because of the issue of representation related to the voices American listeners can or cannot hear. It is also worth investigating the evolution of women’s presence on the air. Adopting a sociohistorical perspective can help to understand the lingering gender inequalities, the silencing of (some) women’s voices, and in the end how radio, as a technology of gender, has reflected and contributed to the evolving definitions of womanhood in the 20th century. In this perspective, I turned to one exceptional set of audio sources: WNYC, the municipal radio station of the city of New York until the mid-​1990s and a non-​profit station since then. It is one of the few radio stations in the U.S. to have its own archives department, created by director of archives Andy Lanset, and to

Echoes of Womanhood  17

have made some recordings available online, allowing researchers to grasp not just the metaphorical and political dimensions of women’s voices but also their material qualities. The available archive goes back to the 1920s and is extremely rich but far from complete. Few older programs are available in their entirety; the sound quality is not always clear, and the digitization of the original formats (combined with the lack of systemic information about those formats) means that the listeners’ access to the sound is mediated by several levels today. Most excerpts were aired on the municipal radio, but some were broadcast on other stations as well. The perspective on womanhood that is thus made available is necessarily partial, but it mirrors the relations of power that have contributed to the marginalization of women in radio, both in the industry and in the writing of history.12 This analysis focuses on some of the extracts available online that feature women as hosts, producers, or lead interviewers; these sources tell at least part of the story of the evolution of womanhood in the U.S. in the 20th century. The emergence of electronic media in the mid-​19th century (with the telegraph in the 1840s, the telephone in the 1870s) started a process that profoundly transformed how gender is constructed. The audio and visual mass media that developed in the 20th century (cinema, radio, television, the Internet) accompanied deep political, social and economic transformations that shaped what it meant to be a woman in the United States, by opening up new opportunities and by conveying images and voices that performed gender. The women who can be heard in the WNYC archives illustrate these changes. In addition to the limitations imposed by the accessibility of the audio archives, it is essential to keep in mind that the way we perceive sounds and voices from the past is shaped by social and cultural history as well as individual experiences. As Karl Marx wrote, “the forming of the five senses is a labor of the entire history of the world down to the present.”13 Thus, perception of women’s voices in the archives is always-​already informed by gender, but also by one’s cultural and socioeconomic background, education, listening habits, and so on. To take those limitations into account, it is necessary to follow Jonathan Sterne’s advice and move “just outside of sound” and to consider the technological, social, and cultural dimensions of sound production and reception.14 The analysis of audio sources can thus be completed by looking at written sources that commented on the radio, such as newspaper and magazine articles. The voice is an interface between the private and the public sphere and it is therefore not surprising that women’s presence on the air implied negotiations with technological and cultural norms that eventually openly challenged definitions of womanhood in the United States. Discourses on the materiality of women’s voices in the U.S. are shaped by gender and participate in the exclusion or marginalization of those voices, literally and metaphorically. The debates around the presence of women’s voices on the air have raised

18  Anaïs Le Fèvre-Berthelot

two main questions: what have been the characteristics of women’s voices and their reception? And how has women’s legitimacy in covering certain topics evolved? While the discourses around women’s voices tend to define very strict roles for women on the air, the medium has also offered some women, from the first radio amateurs to today’s podcasters, opportunities to transgress gender norms and make their voices heard. This chapter will explore these negotiations with norms and their consequences for women’s quest for equality on the radio, first by retracing the history of the place assigned to women and to women’s voices, and then by listening closely to the voices that speak to us from the WNYC online archives. Gender Trouble on the Air

1920 was the year when the 19th Amendment was ratified and the year when “commercial radio first began.”15 The emergence of radio coincided with the apex of the fight for women’s suffrage and with debates about women’s nature, identity, and role at the same time that women were entering the public sphere in numbers never seen before. Donna Halper explains that radio was very welcoming for women because they were a cheap workforce and were hired to find talent to put on the air as they often had musical training and contacts and were thought to be “good at organizing.”16 Even though women were present behind the scenes in the early days of radio, they were quickly marginalized on the air. Among the questions that the pioneers of commercial radio had to solve in the 1920s and 1930s was the place of women’s voices. As suffragists and reformers, and more generally a new generation of college-​ educated women and of urban workers challenged the doctrine of separate spheres, radio participated in the troubling of gender that characterized the early 20th century.17 Michele Hilmes writes that the subversive potential of the medium should not be underestimated as, “Both radio’s capacity to blur the basic distinctions of gender identity and its potential for allowing the private voices of women access to the public airwaves represented threats to established order that had to be contained.”18 At first, radio was not a sound technology, and while most amateur wireless operators were men, some hams were women and the possibility given to them to hide their gender and be part of conversations that were not meant for them generated some anxiety.19 This fear remained when women’s voices could be heard on the air. Because radio voices are disembodied, the emphasis on the materiality of women’s voices was used to justify their marginalization. The arguments that were used then—​and sometimes still are—​ combined biological essentialism (women’s voices are naturally incompatible with sound technology; women have too much or not enough personality) and cultural differentialism (women are not competent to talk about sports or politics).

Echoes of Womanhood  19

In 1924, a reader of Radio Broadcast wrote that, according to him, “the voice of a woman, when she cannot be seen is very undesirable, and to many, both men and women, displeasing.”20 This episode has been mentioned regularly by feminist historians of the media: after receiving this reader’s letter, Jennie Irene Mix, one of the rare women journalists focusing on radio, decided to tackle the topic of women’s voices in her column, “The Listeners’ Point of View.”21 She asked, “Does this mean that when a woman is speaking she may be fascinating as long as she remains in sight, and becomes displeasing the moment she cannot be seen although she may go right on talking just as delightfully as the moment before?”22 Mix concluded that: Women, as a rule, when they speak over the microphone, are apt to make one of two mistakes. They either speak in a patronizing tone or they are precise to a point of exasperation. With the latter, it is as if they stopped to cross every T and dot every I. The effect in either case is disagreeable. And, so far as the present writer’s experience goes, women radio speakers are lacking in humor. On the other hand, men are inclined to be preachy. Here is a choice of two evils, one as bad as the other.23 Despite the somewhat essentialist generalization, Mix clearly made her point that speaking on the air was an activity that required training and practice for everyone—​interestingly she reproaches both women and men radio speakers with affectations that place themselves in positions of authority, suggesting that she understood radio as a medium of proximity. She did question the specificity of the negative reception of women’s disembodied voices and pointed out that it may be a consequence of women’s objectification more generally. A few months later, the columnist returned to this topic in a piece entitled “For and Against the Woman Radio Speaker” that quotes six men who worked in the field and mostly agreed on the fact that women should not be speaking on the air. The arguments they put forward were varied: women’s voices do not have enough personality; they are too nasal,24 too “flat or they are shrill, and they are usually pitched far too high to be modulated correctly.”25 Women lack a sense of humor; they are not friendly enough; they are affected or stiff.26 But, most importantly, according to the director of a Detroit station: women “need a body to their voices.”27 If we believe these men, the defects of women’s voices are many. Such reproaches certainly testify to the rampant sexism of the industry—​and society. In an essay devoted to the long tradition of criticism addressed to women who dare(d) to speak in public, historian Mary Beard writes that, many aspects of this traditional package of views about the unsuitability of women for public speaking in general—​a package going back in its essentials over two millennia—​still underlies some of our own assumptions about, and awkwardness with, the female voice in public.28

20  Anaïs Le Fèvre-Berthelot

These assumptions are anchored in gender and the belief that authority cannot be feminine. Yet, sexist oppression is all the more efficient when it anchors exclusion in nature, and in this case, in technology. The argument that women’s voices simply are incompatible with the technologies of sound transmission has been used regularly to exclude women from the air up until today. Tina Tallon points out that this argument is not completely unfounded because of regulatory limitations of bandwidth and because equipment manufacturers took lower voices as the standard to build microphones and receivers. The signal was thus often capped at 3,400 hertz, which is a problem because “the frequency ranges which characterize the consonants sounds are appreciably higher in the speech of women”29 and, without frequencies above 5,000 hertz, intelligibility might be reduced. Tallon also explains that: This distortion was exacerbated by a common practice incited by the erroneous belief that women spoke more softly than men: engineers automatically turned up the volume knob when a woman took her place behind the mic. Many elements of female speech already sit in a range to which we are naturally more sensitive, and the improperly tuned equipment made women’s voices sound piercing or harsh.30 These technological constraints (which come in part from the fact that most engineers were and are still men) lead women to modify their voices to fit expectations. Brooke Gladstone, host of “On the Media” on WNYC, recalls that, When [she] began work as an editor at NPR in the late ‘80s, [she] talked to a lot of women who were given basic training before they went on the air, and this is NPR. They were told they sounded too young, they needed to lower their voices.31 Even as listeners moved from AM to FM radio and then to online radio or podcasts, technological progress did not lead to much change in this area since recent technologies such as Bluetooth and compressed formats like mp3 also cause a loss in the definition of women’s voices, making them sound “thin and tinny.”32 Even when women do follow injunctions to lower their voices so that they would fit the technology, they may be criticized for lacking personality, or for the creaking sound that might result from the strain put on vocal folds when one tries to lower their voice—​the infamous vocal fry.33 Of course, women were not just marginalized because of the material qualities of their voices, but also because of cultural prejudice that assigned them to specific roles.

Echoes of Womanhood  21

In the early days of radio, men could envision women as entertainers but not as announcers. Women’s participation in the rise of the new medium can be seen as part of the negotiation of women entering the public sphere in the U.S. In a move that can be seen as quite similar to the expediency arguments adopted by the suffragists at the beginning of the 20th century, women in the radio industry relied on gender stereotypes and traditional division of labor to have their voices heard: they were on the air as performers, announcers, story ladies, hosts of women’s shows focusing on homemaking, but they could not tell the news. So, being a woman on radio has often meant negotiating gender norms. To be on the air, women had to fit gender expectations regarding their roles and focus on typically “feminine” issues, but they were expected to match vocal standards based on the average male voice and on sexist prejudices. WNYC: Womanhood(s) of New York City

Historically, public radio has been a welcoming space for women, perhaps because of its commitment to public service for the whole community. WNYC provides a good illustration of this phenomenon. The station launched its first official broadcast in 1924 and, until 1995, WNYC was the only example of a municipal broadcasting station in the U.S., owned and funded by the city of New York.34 At the end of the 20th century, the station was sold to a non-​profit foundation, New York Public Radio, and since then, WNYC has been supported by private donations. The station is an NPR member station, which means that it carries some of NPR’s shows, including Morning Edition and All Things Considered. While this chapter does not focus on the NPR years (NPR aired its first broadcast in 1971), it does seem important to point to NPR as an example of public radio’s role in shaping gender. Jason Loviglio has underlined the specificity of NPR’s women’s voices, insisting on their “low, masculine tones.”35 Loviglio concludes by saying that since “the shifts of men’s and women’s voices intersect in important ways with shifts in technology and gender relations, then a great deal more attention needs to be paid to the role that voice plays in the performance of gender.”36 The next part of this chapter endeavors to do precisely this in listening to the recordings available in the WNYC online archives, while also providing context for the excerpts using mostly archives from The New York Times. This analysis focuses on programs produced between the 1920s and the 1960s. From eggplant recipes and short segments about civic life by a municipal librarian to a report on the 1968 Miss America Pageant protest, the selection echoes the major social, economic, and political transformations that shaped women’s roles in those years and offers a polyphony that challenges essentialist and monolithic definitions of womanhood in the U.S. Listening to the materiality of women’s voices in those excerpts also hints at

22  Anaïs Le Fèvre-Berthelot

new possibilities for a history of the body as the voice “traverses the nature/​ culture divide [and] demonstrates that the transformation of people’s physical attributes is part of cultural history.”37 The fact that the emergence of radio coincided with more women getting access to the right to vote and being involved in public affairs certainly encouraged a trend of women on the air, both as experts and as active members of the political debate. In the first half of the 20th century, more women accessed the sphere of paid work, but their participation was “carefully delimited by an ideology linking that activity to their sex”: women’s paid work—​whether in the textile or food industries or in white collar jobs such as teachers, nurses or secretaries—​could be seen as a continuation of their domestic care work.38 There was no woman announcer on staff at WNYC in the pre-​war years. But they were few people on staff anyway, and since the radio was owned by the City of New York, it was common for municipal employees to come on the air to address New Yorkers on programs related to their fields of expertise. According to Andy Lanset, Rebecca B. Rankin is the woman who appeared on the air most regularly between 1928 and 1938.39 Together with her staff, the woman Fiorello La Guardia later called “a human index of city affairs”40 prepared and presented “over three hundred radio speeches.”41 She was a librarian of the New York Municipal Reference Library and, on Wednesday, March 7, 1928 at 9:45 p.m., she gave a talk on WNYC encouraging citizens to pay a visit to the Municipal Building and praising the Municipal Reference Library as “the fact center for public official and citizen.”42 There is no available recording of that particular talk, but it was commented on in the press and the Brooklyn Daily Eagle praised her performance, writing that her talk was “chatty, bright, understandable [and delivered] so engagingly that we almost felt like figuring out some sort of story that would require several visits to the library.”43 Rankin’s on-​air interventions were not typical of women’s contributions in those days; she did not talk about cooking or child rearing or the domestic economy. Instead, in 1936, she explained proportional representation to New York voters. The educational mission of the municipal station was emphasized during the New Deal under the mayoralty of La Guardia. On the recording, Rankin’s voice sounds clear and is perfectly understandable despite being quite high-​pitched. Her careful articulation and didactic tone might fit what we assume was her ethos as a public librarian. Her regular presence on the air illustrates the new opportunities opened to educated women (she graduated from the University of Michigan in 1909).44 She was able to take part in the public debate just as the tradition of reform movements of the end of the 19th century came to meet the development of the welfare state in the 1930s. Her interventions also point to her political savvy, as she defended her institution and municipal services in general, in politically and economically complex times.

Echoes of Womanhood  23

Another municipal employee spoke on the air in the 1930s. Blanche Irene Welzmiller, a former leader of the Woman’s Suffrage Party of the Bronx who was appointed as the Deputy Commissioner of Markets for NYC from 1919 to the early 1930s, appeared on radio programs from 1927 onwards in short segments giving recipes and home economics advice.45 Welzmiller’s appointment was the consequence of her activism in favor of terminal food markets in New York City and a member of the Plenty Food League.46 She was thus introduced on a program from 1931 as “one of our best known club women in New York, one of the most prominent women in her profession” that would tell the listeners what to do with roastbeef leftovers or share some “recipes concerning that elusive vegetable: the eggplant.”47 While we do not get to listen to any recipe in the available excerpts, Welzmiller promotes the efforts of her administration (the Department of Public Markets) in helping listeners who “have the responsibility of feeding the family.” Welzmiller’s regular presence on the air testifies to the consequences of the Great Depression on gender: the traditionally feminine tasks of grocery shopping and cooking gained in importance as households had to make do with less and providing for the family increasingly fell to women. Welzmiller does not “simply” tell the listeners how to cook eggplants, but also insists on the political dimension of “food problems.” This can be seen as an example of women using traditional gender roles as a stepping stone to enter the public debate. Despite the poor quality of the segments, it seems that Welzmiller’s voice is lower and softer than that of Rankin, pointing, in case that was necessary, to the great variety of women’s voices. Welzmiller was also the president of the Woman’s Press Club of New York, an organization that sponsored a morning program on WNYC that allowed its members to talk about “journalism, fiction, music and art.”48 Despite her public commitments, her delivery is less assured than that of Rankin but she also adopted a didactic posture, indicating that these women’s presence on the air had purpose: educating the audience. This association of women on the air with their roles as civic educators is confirmed by another archive from 1931, in which Frances D. Pollack, Chairman (sic) of the Department of Vocational Guidance for the National Council of Jewish Women, talked about the importance of establishing trade schools to avoid wasting precious “human resources” at a time of crisis.49 In 1929, Pollack traveled to Hamburg, Germany as part of a delegation to the World Conference of Jewish Women;50 she clearly was a very active community member whose dedication to the cause of vocational training still comes through almost a century later. In the available digitized file, Pollack’s voice also could be said to belong to the lower register. Her delivery is extremely clear and assured; her tone is dynamic and engaging. Pollack’s talk mixes social and economic arguments with a “story” meant to illustrate the advantages of vocational training, proving her to be a very convincing orator.

24  Anaïs Le Fèvre-Berthelot

These three examples suggest that the women who entered public life through local activism, the fight for suffrage, and the reform movements of the turn of the century, quickly learned how to use the new medium to further their work and to amplify their participation in the public sphere. This was true whether women were speaking on or listening to the radio. In 1925, Carrie Chapman Catt who, after playing a central role in the suffrage movement as president of the National American Woman Suffrage Society and the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, continued to be very active in the public debate as a peace activist, gave a broadcast address on WEAF.51 This led women to gather for “radio teas” to listen to the feminist leader’s speech and then talk about “county problems with regard to local tickets.”52 One year earlier, The New York Times noted that radio supported women’s interest in politics: In recognition of the growing interest of women in politics, WGY is introducing a series of non-​ partisan talks on its afternoon programs. The value of the suffrage and the importance of exercising the privilege of voting are discussed by women. These talks reach the housewife at home and they have brought many expressions of appreciation from the listeners.53 This function was confirmed by Genevieve Earle, the first woman elected to the city council of New York City in 1937, who later commented on the broadcasting of council sessions over WNYC: “The women of the city had people in their homes for coffee at two o’clock on Tuesdays. They’d bring their knitting and their sewing, and spend the afternoons in each other’s houses, listening to the radio.”54 The radio did not only empower women by giving them access to the air and amplifying their voices, but played a role in the creation of a public sphere in which women could be active participants. This blurring of the frontier between the domestic and the public is key to the role radio played as a technology that challenged gender norms. In this case—​but this is true also of Eleanore Roosevelt’s broadcasts discussed below—​radio provided women with access to a public platform that allowed them to reach a wide audience, and to literally have their voices heard in the public debate. But even when women were “only” listening to the radio, the medium represented a window to the public sphere because of the way it easily found its place in women’s everyday lives: reading the papers or having conversation with neighbors about public issues generally required devoting time that many women did not have, whereas radio could often be listened to as women accomplished their domestic or paid work. Radio teas and coffees of the pre-​war era illustrate how the radio participated in the transformation of the public and private spheres by letting one enter the other and vice versa. This transformation

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accompanied the evolutions of womanhood by associating it with a more active participation in public debates. It is likely that three factors contributed to the regular presence of women on WNYC, including to talk about issues that were not necessarily “feminine,” in the station’s first decades. First, WNYC started to broadcast before the industry was structured, at a time when women may have had more opportunity to suggest programs before men realized the full potential of the medium. Second, the municipal station did not have a budget for programming, so municipal employees represented “free” content. Women were present in the municipal administration, especially from the 1930s onward, as Fiorello La Guardia rewarded women for their support of his campaign by appointing some to his administration.55 One of them was Frances Foley Gannon who became deputy markets commissioner. Elisabeth Israels Perry writes that, “Gannon’s morning radio ‘food service’ reports were so popular with women that, when Bronx president James Lyons moved to eliminate her post from the budget, city women mounted a huge protest.”56 In 1939, La Guardia appointed Gannon to serve as consultant for food and marketing to advise the station’s newly appointed board.57 Lastly, WNYC’s mission was civic and public service, an area where women had been present for decades, as illustrated by Welzmiller’s example. Overall, women’s activism in reform movements and for suffrage certainly participated in creating opportunities for women to speak on WNYC and become voices of the city. The war and the 1940s further opened new doors for women in the media as in other fields for two reasons: men left for the war and the development of audience research meant that, “for the first time it became obvious, beyond much doubt, that women composed the bulk of the listening audience at almost all times of the day and night.”58 In the context of the war, the archives suggest that it was also important for the municipal radio to broadcast a model of democracy that contrasted with tensions inside and outside the country and allowed multiple voices to be heard. The WNYC online archives confirm those new opportunities for women: Lilian Supove, a Smith College graduate, started working for the station in 1941. Four years later, she was the station’s News and Special Events Director. She produced and hosted a show called “World of Women” and interviewed guests every Friday on “Weekend in New York.”59 We can hear her in several excerpts from that show in 1946–​47. In many excerpts, her voice is breathy and her delivery is rather slow—​slow enough that it does not sound completely natural. Supove’s voice suggests a femininity that is both attractive and reassuring, but also a careful and conscious performance that should not trouble the listeners. Just like Supove’s, Pauline Frederick’s voice is quite low-​pitched when she explains in 1948, that there is a need for more women in elected positions.60 Frederick who worked for NBC, was “the only network woman regularly broadcasting straight news.”61 In 1948, she declared in The New York

26  Anaïs Le Fèvre-Berthelot

Times: “Technically, radio is geared for men; even the microphones are built to pick up men’s voices more eloquently than women’s.”62 The article confirmed the industry’s bias: the general opinion in the radio is that women can’t broadcast news. This school of thought believes that a woman’s voice doesn’t carry authority, especially on international affairs; that a feminine voice immediately suggests a woman’s program or strictly the cooking and sewing departments of life.63 While Supove and Frederick illustrate the new opportunities available to some women, they were exceptions, so was Lola Hayes who was among the few African American women to be mentioned as a producer by Andy Lanset. Hayes was a mezzo-​soprano (and therefore probably did not have a very high-​pitched spoken voice) who, between 1943 and 1944, produced a series—​Tone Pictures of the Negro in Music—​that focused on African American composers and dedicated one program to Langston Hughes whom she interviewed. However, no recordings of her program have been found so far.64 The presence of Lola Hayes on the air is quite remarkable especially given that “the ether waves were significantly etched along racial lines and only the voices of the dominant were initially heard.”65 At a time when commercial stations often broadcast white DJs who played African American music and used black vernacular speech thus appropriating “the sound and culture of African Americans,”66 the presence of Black voices on a station that did not expressly target African Americans underlines the specific status of WNYC as a municipal station focusing not on profit but on public service and the construction of a community. A major voice that became familiar to Americans in the 1940s was that of Eleanor Roosevelt as she made hundreds of radio appearances and hosted her own shows.67 The comparison between two archives available on the WNYC website (but probably not broadcast on the station) points to the evolution of her voice, as if she had learned to adapt her voice to the technology. In 1936, she participated in “America’s Town Meeting of the Air” and, maybe because of the context, her voice sounds loud and sometimes piercing; plosives and fricatives are especially grating. In 1949, Roosevelt interviewed Mary McLeod Bethune—​an educator and civil rights activist who founded Bethune-​Cookman University, became president of the National Association of Colored Woman in 1924 and served in Franklin Roosevelt’s Black Cabinet—​for The Eleanor & Anna Roosevelt Program (ABC 1948–​1949). Thirteen years later and in a more intimate setting, Roosevelt’s voice is softer, and sounds lower as she reads from a script. As for Bethune’s voice, it belongs to the median range and comes through perfectly. The friendly relation between the two women is conveyed not only in Roosevelt’s praises

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of Bethune, but also in her tone and the smile that can be heard as her voice goes up (2’47’’–​2’51’’) when she dutifully reads a question as a prompt for Bethune. Again, the digitizing process might have altered the sound quality, but the discrepancy between the two excerpts points to the importance of recording processes and conditions in the reception of women’s voices. Still, Roosevelt’s voice was quite characteristic, enough so that The New York Times mentioned her “unusually low voice” after the death of her husband, and that in an article published a century after her birth, The Washington Post commented on her “high-​pitched grande-​dame voice [that] was easy to mock,” but her popularity makes it difficult to find any real criticism of her vocal performances on the radio.68 Eleanor Roosevelt was sometimes a guest on WNYC. In August 1943, she participated in the first episode of a program entitled “Unity At Home Victory –​Abroad,” a series meant to promote racial peace in a tense context.69 As she enumerates what makes her love New York, praises Mayor La Guardia’s actions, and insists on New Yorkers’ responsibility to live out the American ideal of the melting pot as the country is fighting World War II, Eleanor Roosevelt’s voice is soft and steady despite high-​pitched openings. Addressing all New Yorkers, her speech is both reassuring and encouraging. Her performance participates in the construction of a citizenry at a time of tensions. The 1960s and 1970s were another turning point, and important voices emerged on WNYC. In 1966, Shirley Hayes became the station’s first full-​ time woman announcer.70 Hayes, who trained as an actor in Chicago, was a community organizer (she had led a campaign against Robert Moses’ plan to build a highway through Washington Square Park) and a member of the National Organization for Women.71 She came to radio after her divorce and hosted “the overnight classical music program While the City Sleeps and created, produced, and hosted the shows Landmark Reports and Planning Board Reports.”72 Hayes’ voice in the available excerpt is more dynamic than Supove’s for instance, but it remains in the middle and lower registers and sounds very controlled. In the 1960s, Eleanor Fischer, a former civil rights lawyer who changed course and became a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation correspondent and later opened the New York City office of NPR, was a radio reporter and followed the movements for civil rights that dominated the decade. While we do not have access to the programs she participated in, the WNYC archives hold a collection of reports she produced.73 In September 1968, she reported on the Miss America pageant protest which allows us to hear the voices of the protesters “loosely organized in something called the women’s liberation.” The first introduction to those “girls” is them belting out a parodic song in voices that are anything but harmonious, but certainly convey the youth and energy of the protesters. Among them “one 43-​year-​old wife and mother” who declares in a median voice that there is more to a woman’s life than getting

28  Anaïs Le Fèvre-Berthelot

married and having children. Her tone, fast pace, and well-​modulated speech convey her frustration, while “a 68-​year-​old grandmother” denounces the Vietnam War in a colorful speech before throwing away her high heels in the freedom trash can. The voices of these women offer an interesting contrast to the high-​pitched choir of the introduction. The report also features the men who opposed those women. We hear from the pageant director, Albert Marks, at length since he speaks for five minutes in a seventeen-​minute report, and gives his opinion “as a male, 100%.” Editing here is key since Fischer carefully framed Marks’ comments between women’s voices. Certainly, the focus on the voices of older, married women in the first segment was deliberate on the part of the journalist as it undermined the director’s remarks. The final part of the report also gave a voice to Miss America—​Judith Anne Ford—​and Miss Black America—​Saundra Williams—​two young women who managed to use their platforms as beauty queens to convey political messages: the former supported the enfranchisement of people at the age of 18 and the latter insisted on the importance of crowning a Miss Black America and criticized the exclusion of Black women from the pageant.74 This excerpt underlines the great variety of women’s voices that could debate in the public sphere and reach wider audiences as a result of the social movements of that decade. Nevertheless, if we pay attention to Fischer’s own voice, we remark that she adopted the same kind of soft, breathy, low voice that characterized women on WNYC once the industry was more structured, a type of voice that sounds like a deliberate counterpoint to the voices of the protesters and to the womanhood they embodied. Conclusion

Even with this limited foray into digitized archives, listening to one of the oldest radio stations in the U.S. confirms that women’s voices were present on the air from the very beginnings of radio and that history writing has marginalized radio women. In the WNYC archives, we can hear women, between 1931 and 1968, talk about politics, about theater, walks in the park, roast beef, discrimination, or the city’s planning boards. Recordings, transcripts, and reviews show that some women were producers, hosts, and guests on radio programs early on. The small number of women in the archives before the 1960s suggests however, that they may have been exceptions. They also often were white, educated women, who had some training in public speaking—​either through their education or their activism, or both. Women were often assigned specific roles: they were experts on domestic issues, or their voices embodied the stereotypical figure of the teacher or the librarian. Yet, it appears that in the narrow spaces of freedom that they carved out for themselves, they sometimes tried to convey their singular voices and to stand for causes they held dear. Another conclusion that can be drawn from this

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sample is that many women were silenced, in the industry and in the archives. Even though it seems that WNYC was more welcoming to a diversity of voices than commercial stations probably were, there is little trace of African American women or immigrant women on the air. In the first half of the 20th century, the radio allowed some women to perform their citizenship; the voices that can be heard on WNYC can be heard as an echo of the power relations that shaped womanhoods in New York at the time. What also emerges if we pay attention to the materiality of the voices that we have access to today, is that technical constraints and sexist discourses shaped the voices of radio women. It seems that, on WNYC, those voices were more acceptable if they belonged to a register that was lower than the median pitch for American women. None of the voices in the excerpts available online from those decades have a really distinctive character (except Eleanor Roosevelt’s): there were no very high-​pitched voices, nor were any of those voices extremely deep; they had no characteristic timbre, no strong accent (not even a New York one). These low, soft voices suggest that the multiple identities of the individual women were silenced. It seems as if to be heard, women had to get rid of what made their voices unique and thus guarantee that there would be no gender trouble on the air. Notes 1 Susan Ware, It’s One O’Clock and Here Is Mary Margaret McBride: A Radio Biography (New York: New York University Press, 2005). 2 Teresa de Lauretis, Technologies of Gender: Essays on Theory, Film, and Fiction (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1987), 2. 3 Michele Hilmes and Jason Loviglio, eds., Radio Reader: Essays in the Cultural History of Radio (New York: Routledge, 2002); Jason Loviglio and Michele Hilmes, eds., Radio’s New Wave: Global Sound in the Digital Era (New York: Routledge, 2013). 4 Erik Barnouw, A History of Broadcasting in the United States, Volume I: A Tower in Babel. To 1933 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1966). 5 See for instance Michele Hilmes, “Desired and Feared: Women’s Voices in Radio History,” in Television, History, and American Culture, ed. Mary Beth Haralovich and Lauren Rabinovitz (Durham: Duke University Press, 1999), 17–​35; Susan J. Douglas, Listening In: Radio and the American Imagination (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004); Jason Loviglio, “Sound Effects: Gender, Voice and the Cultural Work of NPR,” Radio Journal: International Studies in Broadcast & Audio Media 5, no. 2/​3 (July 2008): 67–​81; and for analyses focusing on other countries: Kate Lacey, Feminine Frequencies: Gender, German Radio, and the Public Sphere, 1923–​1945 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996); Caroline Mitchell and Anne Karpf, Women and Radio: Airing Differences (London: Routledge, 2000); Christine Ehrick, Radio and the Gendered Soundscape: Women and Broadcasting in Argentina and Uruguay, 1930–​1950 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015).

30  Anaïs Le Fèvre-Berthelot

6 For punctual analyses of women’s material voices on the air, see: David H. Hosley and Gayle K. Yamada, Hard News: Women in Broadcast Journalism (Santa Barbara: ABC-​ CLIO, 1987); Anne Karpf, The Human Voice: The Story of a Remarkable Talent (London: Bloomsbury, 2006), 157–​160; Donna Halper, Invisible Stars: A Social History of Women in American Broadcasting (London: Routledge, 2014); for an example of a more thorough approach on this, see: Loviglio, “Sound Effects.” 7 Women’s Media Center, “The Status of Women in the U.S. Media 2021” (Women’s Media Center, 2021), 48. 8 “2020 Talkers Heavy Hundred • 76–​100,” Talkers –​The Bible of Talk Media and the New Talk Media (blog), July 16, 2020, last accessed December 8, 2020. www. talk​ers.com/​2020-​talk​ers-​heavy-​hund​red-​%e2%80%a2-​76-​100/​. 9 Elizabeth Jensen, “NPR’s Staff Diversity Numbers, 2019,” NPR, November 19, 2019, www.npr.org/​secti​ons/​publi​cedi​tor/​2019/​11/​19/​779261​818/​nprs-​ staff-​divers​ity-​numb​ers-​2019; Elizabeth Jensen, “New On-​Air Source Diversity Data For NPR Show Much Work Ahead,” NPR, December 17, 2019, www. npr.org/​secti​ons/​publi​cedi​tor/​2019/​12/​17/​787959​805/​new-​on-​air-​sou​rce-​divers​ ity-​data-​for-​npr-​shows-​much-​work-​ahead. 10 Samson Amore, “Podcast Boys Club: Only 21% of Top-​Charting Shows Have a Female Host (Exclusive),” The Wrap, August 10, 2020, www.thew​rap.com/​podc​ ast-​boys-​club-​fem​ale-​host-​21-​perc​ent-​sex​ism/​. 11 “The Nielsen Total Audience Report: Advertising Across Today’s Media,” Nielsen, March 2021, www.niel​sen.com/​insig​hts/​2021/​total-​audie​nce-​adve​rtis​ing-​acr​oss-​ tod​ays-​media/​. 12 Michele Hilmes, “The Disembodied Woman,” in Radio Voices: American Broadcasting, 1922–​1952 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 132. 13 Karl Marx, “Private Property and Communism, Marx, 1844,” Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, accessed February 23, 2023, www.marxi​sts. org/​arch​ive/​marx/​works/​1844/​manu​scri​pts/​comm.htm. 14 Jonathan Sterne, The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003), 13. 15 Halper, Invisible Stars, 4. 16 Halper, Invisible Stars, 8. 17 About the separate spheres, see Nancy F. Cott, The Bonds of Womanhood. Veritas paperback ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, [1977] 2021) and Linda K. Kerber, “Separate Spheres, Female Worlds, Woman’s Place: The Rhetoric of Women’s History,” The Journal of American History 75, no. 1 (1988): 9–​39, https://​ doi.org/​10.2307/​1889​653. The “troubling of gender” comment is a reference to Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, 2nd edition (New York and London: Routledge, [1999] 1990). 18 Hilmes, “The Disembodied Woman,” 133. 19 Hilmes, “The Disembodied Woman,” 134–​136. Amateur radio operators are called “hams” because the first commercial operators, who incidentally used to be telegraphers, used that derogatory term meaning a poor operator to refer to amateurs who jammed the frequencies. Amateurs embraced the term and its derogatory connotations have since disappeared.

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20 “What Our Readers Write Us –​‘Contra Women Announcers,’ ” Radio Broadcast, June 1924. 21 For further analyses of this episode, see Anne McKay, “Speaking Up: Voice Amplification and Women’s Struggle for Public Expression,” in Technology and Women’s Voices: Keeping in Touch, ed. Cheris Kramarae (New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul Inc., 1988), 187–​207; Hilmes, “The Disembodied Woman,” 130–​ 150; Halper, Invisible Stars. 22 Jennie Irene Mix, “Are Women Undesirable –​Over the Radio?,” Radio Broadcast, August 1924, 332. 23 Mix, “Are Women Undesirable –​Over the Radio?,” 334. 24 Jennie Irene Mix, “For and Against the Woman Radio Speaker,” Radio Broadcast, September 1924, 393. 25 Mix, “For and Against the Woman Radio Speaker,” 391. 26 Mix, “For and Against the Woman Radio Speaker,” 392. 27 Mix, “For and Against the Woman Radio Speaker,” 392. 28 Mary Beard, “The Public Voice of Women,” London Review of Books, March 20, 2014, www.lrb.co.uk/​the-​paper/​v36/​n06/​mary-​beard/​the-​pub​lic-​voice-​of-​women. 29 John Steinberg, “Understanding Women,” Bells Laboratories Record, January 1927, 153–​154. 30 Tina Tallon, “A Century of ‘Shrill’: How Bias in Technology Has Hurt Women’s Voices,” The New Yorker, September 3, 2019, www.newyor​ker.com/​cult​ure/​ cultu​ral-​comm​ent/​a-​cent​ury-​of-​shr​ill-​how-​bias-​in-​tec​hnol​ogy-​has-​hurt-​wom​ens-​ voi​ces. 31 “How Radio Makes Female Voices Sound Shrill,” On the Media, WNYC Studios, accessed May 13, 2022, www.wnyc​stud​ios.org/​podca​sts/​otm/​episo​des/​how-​radio-​ fem​ale-​voi​ces-​sound-​shr​ill-​on-​the-​media. 32 Tallon, “A Century of ‘Shrill.’ ” 33 Bryn Taylor, Karen Wheeler-​ Hegland, and Kenneth J. Logan, “Impact of Vocal Fry and Speaker Gender on Listener Perceptions of Speaker Personal Attributes,” Journal of Voice (November 16, 2022), https://​doi.org/​10.1016/​j.jvo​ ice.2022.09.018. 34 Mary Jean Robinson, “ ‘Voice of the City:’ The Rise and Fall of WNYC-​TV” (New York: New York University, 2008), 8. 35 Loviglio, “Sound Effects,” 79. 36 Loviglio, “Sound Effects,” 79. 37 Sterne, The Audible Past, 13. 38 Ruth Milkman, “Women’s Work and Economic Crisis: Some Lessons of the Great Depression,” Review of Radical Political Economics 8, no. 1 (April 1, 1976): 76, https://​doi.org/​10.1177/​048​6613​4760​0800​107. 39 Andy Lanset, Les archives de WNYC /​WNYC archives, interview by Anais Le Fèvre-​Berthelot, November 4, 2019. 40 Elisabeth Israels Perry, After the Vote: Feminist Politics in La Guardia’s New York, illustrated ed. (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2019), 194. 41 Barry W. Seaver, “Rebecca Browning Rankin Uses Radio to Promote the Municipal Reference Library of the City of New York and the Civic Education of Its Citizens,” Libraries and Culture 36, no. 2 (2001): 279. 42 Rebecca B. Rankin, “A Fact Center for Municipal Information,” Special Libraries, 1928 19, no. 3 (March 1, 1928): 66–​68.

32  Anaïs Le Fèvre-Berthelot

43 Brooklyn Daily Eagle, March 8, 1928 quoted in Seaver, “Rebecca Browning Rankin Uses Radio to Promote the Municipal Reference Library of the City of New York and the Civic Education of Its Citizens,” 293. 44 Barry W. Seaver, “Rankin, Rebecca Browning (1887–​1965),” in Dictionary of American Library Biography: Second Supplement, ed. Donald G. Davis (Westport, CT: Libraries Unlimited, 2003), 180. 45 “Today on the Radio,” The New York Times, October 12, 1927. 46 Jacalyn Kalin, “Biographical Sketch of Blanche (Mrs. Louis Reed) Welzmiller,” Online Biographical Dictionary of the Woman Suffrage Movement in the United States, accessed May 16, 2022, https://​docume​nts.alex​ande​rstr​eet.com/​d/​101​ 0596​301. 47 Blanche Irene Welzmiller, “11:20 A. M. -​Roast Beef Leftovers,” The 1931 Files WNYC New York Public Radio, Podcasts, Live Streaming Radio, News, WNYC, 1931, id: 73690, www.wnyc.org/​story/​1120-​a-​m-​roast-​beef-​leftov​ers/​ and Blanche Irene Welzmiller, “Eggplant Recipes,” The 1931 Files WNYC New York Public Radio, Podcasts, Live Streaming Radio, News, WNYC, 1931, id: 73646, www. wnyc.org/​story/​1931-​files/​. 48 “Radio For Women Writers,” The New York Times, February 24, 1929. 49 Frances D. Pollack, “Vocational Guidance –​Mrs. Frances D. Pollack,” The 1931 Files WNYC New York Public Radio, Podcasts, Live Streaming Radio, News, WNYC, 1931, id: 73672, www.wnyc.org/​story/​1145-​a-​m-​voc​atio​nal-​guida​nce-​ mrs-​fran​ces-​d-​poll​ack. 50 “Jewish Women to Meet,” The New York Times, May 5, 1929. 51 Jacqueline Van Voris, Carrie Chapman Catt: A Public Life (New York: Feminist Press at CUNY, 1996), 181. 52 “ ‘Radio Teas’ for Mrs. Catt,” The New York Times, August 27, 1925. 53 “Radio Enlists Interest of Women In Politics,” The New York Times, October 5, 1924. 54 Cited in Israels Perry, After the Vote, 223. 55 Israels Perry, After the Vote, 184. 56 Israels Perry, After the Vote, 185. 57 “Program of WNYC to Be Enlarged,” The New York Times, May 11, 1939. 58 Michele Hilmes, “Femmes Boff Program Toppers: Women Break into Prime Time, 1943–​1948,” in Transmitting the Past: Historical and Cultural Perspectives on Broadcasting, ed. J. Emmett Winn and Susan L. Brinson (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 2005), 154–​155. 59 Andy Lanset, “Breaking the Glass Ceiling: Lilian Supove Blake,” WNYC, May 30, 2016, www.wnyc.org/​story/​break​ing-​glass-​ceil​ing-​lil​ian-​sup​ove-​blake/​. 60 Pauline Frederick, “Political Office –​For Men Only?” The NYPR Archive Collections, WNYC, 1948, id: 150686, www.wnyc.org/​story/​politi​cal-​off​i ce-​for-​ men-​only/​. 61 Nancy H. MacLennan, “Only One of Her Kind,” The New York Times, December 5, 1948. 62 MacLennan, “Only One of Her Kind,” 318. 63 MacLennan, “Only One of Her Kind,” 318. 64 Andy Lanset, “Lola Hayes and ‘Tone Pictures of the Negro in Music,’ ” WNYC, August 31, 2020, www.wnyc.org/​story/​lola-​hayes-​and-​tone-​pictu​res-​negro-​music/​.

Echoes of Womanhood  33

65 Judy L. Isaksen, “Resistive Radio: African Americans’ Evolving Portrayal and Participation from Broadcasting to Narrowcasting,” Journal of Popular Culture 45, no. 4 (August 2012): 750–​ 751, https://​doi.org/​10.1111/​j.1540-​ 5931.2012.00956.x. 66 Isaksen, “Resistive Radio,” 758. 67 “It’s a Woman’s World” (1935), “Talks by Mrs. Roosevelt” (1937), “Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt’s Own Program” (1940), “Over our Coffee Cups” (1941–​42), and “The Eleanor and Anna Roosevelt Program” (1948–​49). 68 Bess Furman, “Mrs. Roosevelt Bids Press Adieu,” The New York Times, April 20, 1945; Michael Kernan, “Eleanor Roosevelt, Pioneer,” The Washington Post, September 13, 1984, www.was​hing​tonp​ost.com/​arch​ive/​lifest​yle/​1984/​09/​13/​elea​ nor-​roosev​elt-​pion​eer/​079f2​0a1-​e124-​4809-​8065-​1f6ae​6c99​30b/​. 69 WNYC, “Unity At Home –​Victory Abroad,” The NYPR Archive Collections, WNYC, August 15, 1943, id: 8444, www.wnyc.org/​story/​8444-​elea​nor-​roosev​elt/​. 70 Andy Lanset, “Shirley Zak Hayes: WNYC’s First Woman Staff Announcer,” WNYC, October 9, 2014, www.wnyc.org/​story/​shir​ley-​zak-​hayes-​wnycs-​first-​ woman-​staff-​announ​cer/​. 71 Douglas Martin, “Shirley Hayes, 89; Won Victory Over a Road,” The New York Times, May 11, 2002. 72 Lanset, “Shirley Zak Hayes.” 73 “Eleanor S. Fischer,” WNYC, accessed April 12, 2023, www.wnyc.org/​peo​ple/​ elea​nor-​fisc​her/​. 74 Eleanor Fischer, “First Protests at the Miss America Pageant,” NYPR Archives and Preservation, WNYC, 1968, www.wnyc.org/​story/​first-​prot​est-​miss-​amer​ica-​ page​ant-​1968.

Reference List “2020 Talkers Heavy Hundred • 76–​100,” Talkers –​The Bible of Talk Media and the New Talk Media (blog), July 16, 2020, last accessed December 8, 2020. www.talk​ ers.com/​2020-​talk​ers-​heavy-​hund​red-​%e2%80%a2-​76-​100/​”www.talk​ers.com/​ 2020-​talk​ers-​heavy-​hund​red-​%e2%80%a2-​76-​100/​. Amore, Samson. “Podcast Boys Club: Only 21% of Top-​Charting Shows Have a Female Host (Exclusive).” The Wrap, August 10, 2020. www.thew​rap.com/​podc​ ast-​boys-​club-​fem​ale-​host-​21-​perc​ent-​sex​ism/​. Barnouw, Erik. A History of Broadcasting in the United States, Volume I: A Tower in Babel. To 1933. New York: Oxford University Press, 1966. Beard, Mary. “The Public Voice of Women.” London Review of Books, March 20, 2014. www.lrb.co.uk/​the-​paper/​v36/​n06/​mary-​beard/​the-​pub​lic-​voice-​of-​women. Douglas, Susan J. Listening In: Radio and the American Imagination. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2004. Ehrick, Christine. Radio and the Gendered Soundscape: Women and Broadcasting in Argentina and Uruguay, 1930–​ 1950. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015. Fischer, Eleanor. “First Protests at the Miss America Pageant.” NYPR Archives and Preservation. WNYC. 1968. www.wnyc.org/​story/​first-​prot​est-​miss-​amer​ica-​page​ ant-​1968.

34  Anaïs Le Fèvre-Berthelot

Frederick, Pauline. “Political Office –​For Men Only?” The NYPR Archive Collections. WNYC. 1948. Id: 150686. www.wnyc.org/​story/​politi​cal-​off​i ce-​for-​men-​only/​. Furman, Bess. “Mrs. Roosevelt Bids Press Adieu.” The New York Times, April 20, 1945. Halper, Donna. Invisible Stars: A Social History of Women in American Broadcasting. London: Routledge, 2014. Hilmes, Michele. “Desired and Feared: Women’s Voices in Radio History.” In Television, History, and American Culture, edited by Mary Beth Haralovich and Lauren Rabinovitz, 17–​35. Durham: Duke University Press, 1999. —​—​—​. “Femmes Boff Program Toppers: Women Break into Prime Time, 1943–​ 1948.” In Transmitting the Past: Historical and Cultural Perspectives on Broadcasting, edited by J. Emmett Winn and Susan L. Brinson, 137–​ 160. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 2005. —​ —​ —​ . “The Disembodied Woman.” In Radio Voices: American Broadcasting, 1922–​1952, 130–​150. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997. Hilmes, Michele, and Jason Loviglio, eds. Radio Reader: Essays in the Cultural History of Radio. New York: Routledge, 2002. Hosley, David H., and Gayle K. Yamada. Hard News: Women in Broadcast Journalism. Santa Barbara: ABC-​CLIO, 1987. Isaksen, Judy L. “Resistive Radio: African Americans’ Evolving Portrayal and Participation from Broadcasting to Narrowcasting.” Journal of Popular Culture 45, no. 4 (August 2012): 749–​768. https://​doi.org/​10.1111/​j.1540-​5931.2012.00956.x. Israels Perry, Elisabeth. After the Vote: Feminist Politics in La Guardia’s New York. Illustrated edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019. Jensen, Elizabeth. “NPR’s Staff Diversity Numbers, 2019.” NPR, November 19, 2019. www.npr.org/​secti​ons/​publi​cedi​tor/​2019/​11/​19/​779261​818/​nprs-​staff-​divers​ity​numb​ers-​2019. Jensen, Elizabeth. “New On-​Air Source Diversity Data For NPR Show Much Work Ahead.” NPR, December 17, 2019. www.npr.org/​secti​ons/​publi​cedi​tor/​2019/​ 12/​17/​787959​805/​new-​on-​air-​sou​rce-​divers​ity-​data-​for-​npr-​shows-​much-​work-​ ahead. Kalin, Jacalyn. “Biographical Sketch of Blanche (Mrs. Louis Reed) Welzmiller.” Online Biographical Dictionary of the Woman Suffrage Movement in the United States. Accessed May 16, 2022. https://​docume​nts.alex​ande​rstr​eet.com/​d/​101​ 0596​301. Karpf, Anne. The Human Voice: The Story of a Remarkable Talent. London: Bloomsbury, 2006. Kernan, Michael. “Eleanor Roosevelt, Pioneer.” The Washington Post, September 13, 1984. www.was​hing​tonp​ost.com/​arch​ive/​lifest​yle/​1984/​09/​13/​elea​nor-​roosev​ elt-​pion​eer/​079f2​0a1-​e124-​4809-​8065-​1f6ae​6c99​30b/​. Lacey, Kate. Feminine Frequencies: Gender, German Radio, and the Public Sphere, 1923–​ 1945. Social History, Popular Culture, and Politics in Germany. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996. Lanset, Andy. “Breaking the Glass Ceiling: Lilian Supove Blake.” WNYC. May 30, 2016. www.wnyc.org/​story/​break​ing-​glass-​ceil​ing-​lil​ian-​sup​ove-​blake/​. —​—​—​. Les archives de WNYC /​WNYC archives. Interview by Anais Le Fèvre-​ Berthelot, November 4, 2019. —​—​—​. “Lola Hayes and ‘Tone Pictures of the Negro in Music.’ ” WNYC. August 31, 2020. www.wnyc.org/​story/​lola-​hayes-​and-​tone-​pictu​res-​negro-​music/​.

Echoes of Womanhood  35

—​ —​ —​ . “Shirley Zak Hayes: WNYC’s First Woman Staff Announcer.” WNYC. October 9, 2014. www.wnyc.org/​story/​shir​ley-​zak-​hayes-​wnycs-​first-​woman-​ staff-​announ​cer/​. Lauretis, Teresa de. Technologies of Gender: Essays on Theory, Film, and Fiction. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987. Loviglio, Jason. “Sound Effects: Gender, Voice and the Cultural Work of NPR.” Radio Journal: International Studies in Broadcast & Audio Media 5, no. 2/​3 (July 2008): 67–​81. https://​doi.org/​10.1386/​rajo.5.2-​3.67_​1. Loviglio, Jason, and Michele Hilmes, eds. Radio’s New Wave: Global Sound in the Digital Era. New York: Routledge, 2013. MacLennan, Nancy H. “Only One of Her Kind.” The New York Times, December 5, 1948, sec. Archives. www.nyti​mes.com/​1948/​12/​05/​archi​ves/​only-​one-​of-​her-​ kind.html. Martin, Douglas. “Shirley Hayes, 89; Won Victory Over a Road.” The New York Times, May 11, 2002, sec. New York. www.nyti​mes.com/​2002/​05/​11/​nyreg​ion/​ shir​ley-​hayes-​89-​won-​vict​ory-​over-​a-​road.html. Marx, Karl. “Private Property and Communism, Marx, 1844.” Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. Accessed February 23, 2023. www.marxi​sts. org/​arch​ive/​marx/​works/​1844/​manu​scri​pts/​comm.htm. Milkman, Ruth. “Women’s Work and Economic Crisis: Some Lessons of the Great Depression.” Review of Radical Political Economics, vol. 8, no. 1, April 1976, p.71–​97. SAGE Journals. https://​doi.org/​10.1177/​048​6613​4760​0800​107. Mitchell, Caroline, and Anne Karpf. Women and Radio: Airing Differences. London: Routledge, 2000. Mix, Jennie Irene. “Are Women Undesirable –​Over the Radio?” Radio Broadcast, August 1924. —​ —​ —​ . “For and Against the Woman Radio Speaker.” Radio Broadcast, September 1924. Nielsen. “The Nielsen Total Audience Report: Advertising Across Today’s Media,” March 2021. www.niel​sen.com/​insig​hts/​2021/​total-​audie​nce-​adve​rtis​ing-​acr​oss-​ tod​ays-​media/​. Pollack, Frances D. “Vocational Guidance –​Mrs. Frances D. Pollack.” The 1931 Files WNYC New York Public Radio, Podcasts, Live Streaming Radio News. WNYC. 1931. Id: 73672. www.wnyc.org/​story/​1145-​a-​m-​voc​atio​nal-​guida​nce-​mrs-​fran​ ces-​d-​poll​ack. Radio Broadcast. “What Our Readers Write Us –​‘Contra Women Announcers.’ ” June 1924. Rankin, Rebecca B. “A Fact Center for Municipal Information.” Special Libraries, 1928 19, no. 3 (March 1, 1928): 66–​68. Robinson, Mary Jean. “ ‘Voice of the City:’ The Rise and Fall of WNYC-​TV.” PhD dissertation, New York University, 2008. Seaver, Barry W. “Rankin, Rebecca Browning (1887–​ 1965).” In Dictionary of American Library Biography: Second Supplement, edited by Donald G. Davis, 180–​181. Libraries Unlimited: Westport, CT, 2003. —​—​—​. “Rebecca Browning Rankin Uses Radio to Promote the Municipal Reference Library of the City of New York and the Civic Education of Its Citizens.” Libraries and Culture 36, no. 2 (2001): 289–​328. Steinberg, John. “Understanding Women.” Bells Laboratories Record, January 1927, 153–​154.

36  Anaïs Le Fèvre-Berthelot

Sterne, Jonathan. The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction. Durham: Duke University Press, 2003. Tallon, Tina. “A Century of ‘Shrill’: How Bias in Technology Has Hurt Women’s Voices.” The New Yorker, September 3, 2019. www.newyor​ker.com/​cult​ure/​cultu​ ral-​comm​ent/​a-​cent​ury-​of-​shr​ill-​how-​bias-​in-​tec​hnol​ogy-​has-​hurt-​wom​ens-​voi​ces. Taylor, Bryn, Karen Wheeler-​Hegland, and Kenneth J. Logan. “Impact of Vocal Fry and Speaker Gender on Listener Perceptions of Speaker Personal Attributes.” Journal of Voice, November 16, 2022. https://​doi.org/​10.1016/​j.jvo​ice.2022.09.018. The New York Times. “Jewish Women To Meet.” May 5, 1929. —​—​—​. “Program of WNYC to Be Enlarged.” May 11, 1939. —​—​—​. “Radio Enlists Interest of Women in Politics.” October 5, 1924. —​—​—​. “Radio for Women Writers.” February 24, 1929. —​—​—​. “ ‘Radio Teas’ For Mrs. Catt.” August 27, 1925. —​—​—​. “Today on the Radio.” October 12, 1927. Van Voris, Jacqueline. Carrie Chapman Catt: A Public Life. New York: Feminist Press at CUNY, 1996. Ware, Susan. It’s One O’Clock and Here Is Mary Margaret McBride: A Radio Biography. New York: New York University Press, 2005. Welzmiller, Blanche Irene. “11:20 A. M. –​Roast Beef Leftovers.” The 1931 Files WNYC New York Public Radio, Podcasts, Live Streaming Radio, News. WNYC. 1931. Id: 73690. www.wnyc.org/​story/​1120-​a-​m-​roast-​beef-​leftov​ers/​. —​ —​ —​ . “Eggplant Recipes.” The 1931 Files WNYC New York Public Radio, Podcasts, Live Streaming Radio, News. WNYC. 1931. Id: 73646. www.wnyc.org/​ story/​1931-​files/​. Women’s Media Center. “The Status of Women in the U.S. Media 2021.” 2021. https://​ womens​medi​acen​ter.com/​repo​rts/​the-​sta​tus-​of-​women-​in-​the-​u-​s-​media-​2021-​1. WNYC. “Unity At Home –​Victory Abroad.” The NYPR Archive Collections. WNYC. August 15, 1943. Id: 8444. www.wnyc.org/​story/​8444-​elea​nor-​roosev​elt/​. —​—​—​. “Eleanor S. Fischer.” Accessed April 12, 2023. www.wnyc.org/​peo​ple/​elea​ nor-​fisc​her/​. WNYC Studios. “How Radio Makes Female Voices Sound Shrill | On the Media.” Accessed May 13, 2022. www.wnyc​stud​ios.org/​podca​sts/​otm/​episo​des/​how-​radio-​ fem​ale-​voi​ces-​sound-​shr​ill-​on-​the-​media.

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

The role of women’s magazines in shaping—​ rather than “reflecting”—​ experiences of womanhood has already been the object of nuanced studies that adopt various standpoints.1 From the perspective of media studies, for instance, theories often imbued with psychoanalytic thought, following Laura Mulvey’s coining of the “male gaze” concept (1975), have elaborated on the unilateral patterns underlying image production.2 Cultural historians and theorists, for their part, have examined how women, girls, and fashion magazines have been pivotal in fashioning gender.3 Sociologists and communication scholars have analyzed how inferiorizing discourses on women and women’s roles have shifted yet persisted in media imagery, in the wake of Erving Goffman’s much-​quoted Gender Advertisements (1976)—​a structural analysis of how gender representations are coded in many fashion advertising images.4 In a somewhat related approach, psychologists have attempted to quantify the effect of problematic role models displayed in magazines on their women readers5—​and this necessarily quick overview could go on to include many more fields and important contributions. As the complex relations of feminism and the press, especially the specialized press, further indicate, these magazines have been and remain sites which promote, yet also negotiate problematic representations of womanhood. This function of women’s magazines has been the focus of studies from at least the 1970s onwards, in the wake of “second wave” feminist movements, and in particular Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique (1963).6 While activists as well as journalists have been amongst the first critics of the women’s press, they also strove to make themselves visible in mainstream media outlets.7 DOI: 10.4324/9781003425380-4

38  Alice Morin

Feminist movements have also importantly endeavored, since the 1960s, to achieve better media representation(s) of women, and perhaps more importantly of womanhood. It is all the more striking, then, that issues raised throughout the 20th century still remain topical today—​when traditional (print) magazines are experiencing a sort of “crisis,” with the rise of social media and the shifting paradigms between images, their producers, and their audiences. Such perseverance calls for us to turn our renewed attention to magazines as a resource where femininity is taught and at times contested, and as sources that shed light on the history of such recurring concerns and anxieties around womanhood. What I intend to contribute to this understanding of how (print) media are woven into the cultural fabric within which womanhood is conceptualized, performed, and negotiated, is twofold. First, my focus is on fashion magazines. While fashion magazines are often regarded as a sub-​category of women’s magazines, they also represent their own magazine genre, developed around and for the fashion industry, which they promote.8 This chapter analyzes two high-​end fashion magazines, Vogue (the U.S. edition) and Harper’s Bazaar, that stand out on account of their longevity (they were launched, respectively in 1892 and 1867, and are backed by two large media corporations, Condé Nast and Hearst).9 Durability has allowed them to develop a representational system; and these magazines’ economic stability, longevity, and cultural clout counterbalance other magazine ventures, often spearheaded by militants, that strove to present alternative visions of femininity, and usually folded after a few years or decades.10 Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar are exemplary because they are mainstream, and consequently this chapter will concentrate on the system that the two magazines exemplify and forge(d). I will first turn my attention to their specific, yet genre-​typical, production context and to their media specificity, their media “parameters.” Indeed, these magazines’ day-​ to-​day work is largely organized around the production of editorial content, visual and textual, that they compose in accordance with their own ecosystem, bridging advertisers and readers; and that they present strategically and hierarchically, in each issue, in accordance with markers indicative of their relative importance. A case study examining the representation of selected feminist figures will illustrate how these editorial strategies are enacted. Second, I argue that taking into account these magazines’ characteristic traits and format, shaping practices of production as well as content, is essential to writing a long history of representations of womanhood in the (specialized) press, and therefore to understanding why problematic representations still endure, in number and substance, despite actual variations in models and images of women over the long run. The history of fashioning womanhood by and through magazines hinges on complex power dynamics, in which audiences also partake—​and this chapter’s last section will finally reflect on readers–​viewers’ experiences.

Women’s Magazines and Fashion Magazines  39

Producing Femininity: Fashion Magazines’ Format and Power Dynamics

Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar have long been part of a flourishing economic, social, and cultural system, that of the publishing industry in the U.S. Since the late 19th century, this industry has relied on advertising rather than on sales for revenue. This is crucial to explain both the longevity as well as the pervasiveness of some magazines’ format and narratives.11 From the interwar period onward, the press industry was increasingly targeted by mass advertising; as a consequence, it increasingly segmented its readers into consumer groups, in a dynamic process.12 As such, magazines and market research classified audiences into “ideal types of consumers,” such as: “housewife,” “young married woman,” “teenager,” “fashion sophisticate,” and “with-​it generation.”13 Throughout the 20th century, the magazine funding model hinged on attracting audiences to endear advertisers, which entailed selling issues to their audiences, in order to remain attractive on both markets14 (or, in the words of sociologist Brian Moeran: “magazine publishers sell their readerships to (potential) advertisers, while editors sell advertised products to their readers.”15) This economic model intersected efficiently with women magazines’ entrusted cultural role: cultural theorist Jennifer Craik has described how they were to instruct women on how to be women on the one hand—​in the case of “domestic” magazines, often targeting working-​class audiences—​and how to be feminine on the other—​in fashion magazines “appealing to the social snobbery of the upper echelons.”16 Fashion magazines thus promoted a form of education through consumption; and Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar have been further imbued with an aspirational dimension, as they branded themselves as arbiters of taste and purveyors of products made for the upper-​ class. Indeed, their representation of womanhood, intimately intertwined with that of femininity, had to present an (unreachable) ideal, and incite readers to emulate it through various purchases that would tend both to body and mind (which explains their various sections, from Fashion to Beauty, from Culture to Health). These mechanisms of prompting desire and consumerism are shared by media in capitalist modernity. In terms of how these incentives are enacted, however, magazines are not neutral containers of normative imagery related to fantasized femininity, and they conceptualized it, and more importantly presented it, somewhat differently from other types of media, such as movies or catalogues. Before looking at Vogue’s and Harper’s Bazaar’s content in the following section, it seems essential to examine the media ecosystem weighing on such content production and presentation; that is, these magazines’ unwavering formal structure and their internal workplace dynamics. Both are characterized by intense power struggles.

40  Alice Morin

The authoritative yet complex, sometimes ambivalent nature of the representations of femininity disseminated by magazines are enmeshed in their media fabric. Indeed, as periodical studies have pointed out, magazines (and more generally periodicals) stand out in that they are serial, and as such on-​going media.17 Appearing at regular intervals, they require a regularity in their form(at), a given structure that orders their content. The said content, however, on account of the pressure to issue a volume at time-​ specific intervals, has to be just as regularly renewed, and generally speaking has to be topical.18 Concomitantly, because content is produced to “fill out” a pre-​established structure, it is always miscellaneous; and it is, to a large extent, “unruly.”19 Hence, magazines are bound to provide readers with varied, sometimes contradictory visions of femininity; they are also prone to hierarchize these representations within their core structure, presiding over each issue. It is all the more so the case that magazines are produced in a collective, but also very hierarchized manner. Their structure, or “formats,” are not ontologically given, but are performatively defined through their characteristic serial repetition—​ formats are aggregated sets of (more or less flexible) conventions, that emerge at the intersection of technological possibilities, producers’ practices, and readers’ expectations regarding what one medium should look like.20 It is therefore impossible to essentialize magazines’ historically (in)formed formats; and in turn, these formats are performatively upheld and sustained (or sometimes modified) by magazine-​ makers. Here, a production studies approach is useful to illuminate why mainstream magazines’ formats and discourses are more often reproduced than challenged, and how gatekeeping mechanisms run through the production of the press, shedding light on their inability to truly renegotiate problematic forms of womanhood.21 The internal organization of labor at Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar has solidified over decades. It entails securing key positions for a closed circle of decision-​makers, thereby streamlining the decision and conceptual processes, even though their discourses are polyphonic by definition. Indeed, magazines are neither monolithic in organization, nor in content. In their pages, many voices are juxtaposed and enter into a dialogue. However, if we consider the published page as a unified surface that prioritizes certain messages over others—​even if it can be read and received in various ways, the articulation of the various voices making the magazines bears traces of the power relations of such productions at their core. To give a very rough overview of mainstream magazines’ teams and organization, as observed through the study of magazines’ mastheads, interviews with editors and archival research, it is women who make up the bulk of the editorial staff as writers, journalists (often freelance), editors, stylists, and often editors-​in-​chief, are tasked with making most of the diverse

Women’s Magazines and Fashion Magazines  41

content.22 It is worth noting that recruiting processes often favor the hiring of upper-​class, white, and educated women, through co-​optation. However, the power positions are almost always held by (business) men: publishers and CEOs are predominantly cisgender men, as well as white and from the upper echelons of society. As decision-​makers, these top executives had and still have the last word on content, through two converging logics of selection and veto. These strategies shape content upstream, but also downstream as they prompt a certain amount of self-​censorship on the part of the editorial teams. In the end, it is they who weigh in on who is given a voice, in what circumstances, and to what extent. All these strategies account for the strong apparent homogeneity of these magazines’ content, as parts of it are put to the fore and others minimized in order to form an overall coherent ensemble. The Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar teams—​ and perhaps even their contributors—​have always operated under very traditional gender structures and show remarkably little class, race, and ideological diversity. Thus, the role model for women promoted up until the 1950s in these mainstream and elite publications was principally a stiff, graceful, composed, restrained ideal of femininity.23 Yet, amongst many other upheavals, the political, social, and cultural debates around womanhood of the late 1960s and 1970s had to permeate their pages in some ways, prompting changes at the helm of the editorial teams at both magazines, if only so they could remain topical and relevant.24 As a result, these magazines’ content in the 1960s and 1970s demonstrates a complex interplay between progressive and reactionary voices and undercurrents, an oscillation between a normative model of femininity achievable through consumerism, and an ambiguous framing of discourses related to feminism and women’s “liberation” challenging it. Representing Women in Changing Times: The Case of the Women’s Movement as Seen through Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar

While narrow, normative visions of femininity formed the bulk of these magazines’ content, there consistently were undeniably sparser, but persistent features that tried to contest it, more or less explicitly; in particular, a number of features engaged with the various issues raised by the Women’s Movement and in its wake. However, on account of the controlled processes of production, and of the pyramidal decision-​making processes determining content, dissenting threads, discourses, and elements have been incorporated in specific, subdued ways: they are present in some instances, but are almost always framed so as to appear as “minor voices.” Indeed, a quantitative–​ qualitative observation of issues published between 1962 and 1979 reveals that alternative models of femininity permeate the pages of Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. Only they did so in certain sections of the magazines, preceded and followed by certain types of content (e.g., cosmetic

42  Alice Morin

advertisements, health and education columns, etc.), and the layout did not necessarily bring these miscellaneous, alternative propositions to the fore. For instance, headlines using keywords such as “change,” “revolution,” “liberation,” “future” multiplied—​ often followed by articles adopting a rather conservative standpoint. To further illustrate this point, an obvious line of enquiry would be to observe which (visual) role models were offered to women following second-​ wave feminists’ notorious antics and (public and media) demonstrations, such as the Miss America Pageant protest in Atlantic City in 1968. In fact, studies from a number of disciplines have addressed this question, including my own analysis of how stereotypical imagery endured, albeit under a different guise, in fashion magazines throughout the 1970s and until the 1980s (which demonstrated a form of visual backlash against feminist demands).25 Instead, this chapter offers a case study on how prominent (media) figures of feminism were represented in Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Here, I focus more specifically on three women: Gloria Steinem, Susan Brownmiller, and Jane O’Reilly, all professional journalists who collaborated regularly with these titles, before and during their commitment to the Women’s Movement.26 Interestingly, only the first two were also regularly featured in the magazine. Famed activist Gloria Steinem had become a favored spokesperson of “second-​wave feminism” in the media, but she was a woman of the press long before that. She started her career by writing all sorts of articles for Vogue, Glamour, and the Ladies’ Home Journal in the early 1960s. Later, she presented her journalistic background and her feminist activism as intimately interwoven, and regularly denounced the shortcomings of the mainstream media industry, be it for readers or employees. Her knowledge of the industry probably explains to some extent how she came to be the “face” of the movement in magazines.27 As her aura as a “feminist icon” grew, her favor as a subject and as an expert of “feminist questions” in magazines did too, and she became, in the 1970s, principally a full-​time spokesperson for the movement. Interestingly, she presented herself as a sort of “connecting person” between ordinary women—​regularly referring to her contact and conversations with fellow journalists and readers to back-​up her arguments—​ and journalism. Her treatment in Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar is very revealing. In “Gloria, Hallelujah” written by columnist Eugenia Sheppard, she is presented as a socialite or tabloid regular, her political commitment cited as if a charmingly eccentric hobby. Her primary quality seems to be that she is not threatening, not aggressive: “Women like her as much as men do. […] She is consistently a good writer, informative, direct and amusing. She never grinds her personal axes, and she is not out to kill.”28 Along the same lines, she is later included in the “Success Guide” of June 1977, flaunting her stellar career and her then

Women’s Magazines and Fashion Magazines  43

high earnings.29 In a feature published in July 1972 by journalist Natalie Gittelson, the magazine’s strategy of representation is made explicit in the way that dissent within the feminist movement was addressed. The positions of Steinem, Betty Friedan, Shirley Chisholm, and Bella Abzug are all opposed. Once again, Steinem is presented as a “darling”-​sort of feminist.30 Besides these features, she is regularly called upon, as an expert, on topics as varied as marriage, political influence, and trends in car styles all throughout the 1970s and 1980s.31 Such wide-​ ranging solicitations worked to obscure and undermine the topics Steinem sought to tackle in and through these magazines, that of women’s rights and representations. Much in the same way, in both Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, Steinem is consistently presented in a positive light, and her political activism is systematically overlooked, even in the long feature pieces, in favor of her looks, her appearance, and her love life. In their pages, she incarnates a “glamorized” version of feminism, especially because she conforms to the standards of feminine beauty promoted by these magazines, making a subdued version of feminism accessible, even desirable for their readers. Even after Steinem announced that the persisting problematic representations of women in women’s magazines were a major reason for cofounding a feminist counterpart, Ms. magazine, in an op-​ed in Harper’s Bazaar, she remained a favorite referent for many mainstream titles.32 Additionally, her journalistic background was leveraged both to the benefit of the latter, and to promote and legitimize Ms.—​which, it should be noted, stayed clear of fashion reporting.33 Journalist and writer Susan Brownmiller is somewhat similarly portrayed, although with variations. She positioned herself comparatively closer to the radical branch of the Women’s Movement, being a former activist in the civil-​rights CORE organization and a co-​founder of the New York Radical Feminists. Her main contribution to Vogue is a political article following presidential candidates on the campaign trail in 1968.34 It is decisively light in tone. She is later featured in the magazine to promote her book Femininity in 1984. The visual treatment of Brownmiller in this piece is particularly stereotypical: she poses as the quintessential New York intellectual, non-​ conforming feminist. The images the magazine uses connote as much: she is pictured smoking a cigarette in a sweeping gesture, with her hair cut short, wearing a shapeless jumper, and captured in the middle of an eloquent speech. This photographic portrait is by Sheila Metzner, a major contributor to the magazine and the author of many glamorous images of strong women in Vogue’s fashion pages.35 To further complicate things, the article is juxtaposed with, on the opposite page, a portrait of actor Denis Quaid flaunting his muscles, as if to suggest a response to “Susan Brownmiller Contemplat[ing] Femininity—​and Find[ing] It Profoundly Annoying,” as the headline states. The feature is framed by trend reports on art exhibitions and

44  Alice Morin

Broadway shows, as part of the section “People are Talking About.” The next mention of Brownmiller in Vogue three years later is in a trend report titled “New Attitudes... A New Image. Femininity, Do You Buy It?”36 The three-​page text, illustrated with an alluring portrait of a model by fashion photographer Arthur Elgort occupying two thirds of the first double page, describes how designers are helping women reclaim their sexuality, through their body’s desirability. Brownmiller, as well as Carol Gillian and Betty Friedan are quoted alongside Alexandra Symond, M.D., “psychotherapist and associate clinical professor of psychiatry at NYU School of Medicine,” in an authoritative account of how the trendy look oozes adult femininity by combining seduction and (psychological) maturity. But these expert opinions are mostly summoned to further the point made by the clothing designs, and it is mostly fashion brand names that are showcased. The feature is immediately followed by a beauty column. In Harper’s Bazaar, Brownmiller appeared only once, upon the publication of her best-​selling book on rape, Against Our Will (1975). In this interview, entitled “Anti Rape Techniques,” Brownmiller gave readers puzzling advice: BAZAAR: What would you do if you thought you were about to be raped? BROWNMILLER: My feeling is I would instinctively recognize warning signals enough, so I would not find myself in that spot. [...] The true horror is the gang rape [accounting for 70% of all rapes, according to Brownmiller’s statistics]. [...] [I]‌f you are in some sort of encounter, use your wits rather than try to use physical strength because chances are you might not be strong enough. Also, never assume that it is an encounter that is going to end in your defeat. I don’t think women should ever prematurely decide they are going to be defeated. Quite often they can get away. [...] Some people tell you it’s best not to say a word. What do they mean, not to say a word? I would scream if I could scream, run if I could run. The assailant is not in charge. I wouldn’t let him get in charge. [...] Rapists are very selective. They want it to work as easily as possible [and go for easy targets]. [...] BAZAAR: Does being terribly rude help? BROWNMILLER: I think it often does. Unfortunately, women have a real terror of being impolite. We are trained to be “ladies.” Otherwise we are not “feminine.”37 Providing both magazines with her “expertise” and a feminist stamp of approval, Brownmiller appears as defending an unthreatening strand

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of feminism, even of femininity really, only occasionally bending the norms in some situations. Brownmiller herself is presented as somewhat eccentric yet her “common-​sense feminist” discourse offers possibilities for identification—​perfectly in line with how magazines can incorporate bits of feminist thinking. It is noteworthy that Steinem and Brownmiller were both criticized within the movement for such lukewarm mediatic interventions.38 Jane O’Reilly’s voice managed to get across in, and possibly, through Vogue. An investigative journalist, she researched and wrote long think pieces on various topics, covering events such as the United Nations Decade for Women Conference in Nairobi, Kenya in 1985 for Time and collaborating with mainstream outlets such as McCalls, Esquire, and the New York Times Book Review.39 She was also an activist journalist, and a regular contributor to the feminist magazine Ms. Her articles for Vogue include “Politics ‘84: Women—​the Suddenly Visible Sex” or “The Year of Getting Tough,” both written using a very personal tone; or “On the Vatican 24,” an article on nuns supporting abortion.40 Vogue did offer O’Reilly a journalistic tribune to discuss a broad range of topics. The “Letters” page in Vogue attests to the fact that her articles sparked more than one debate amongst readers. However, these text-​heavy columns were placed in somewhat absurd juxtapositions with ads for consumables. “The Year of Getting Tough” is illustrated by photographs of women athletes and counterbalanced with an ad for vodka. “On the Vatican 24” is framed by ready-​to-​wear ads including one for maternity wear. Generally, as is often the case with op-​ed columns, her texts were interrupted and continued a few hundred pages later in the issue—​a very effective way in which magazines hierarchize content, since visual features are never similarly fragmented. Furthermore, she was never herself represented in the magazine pages, as Steinem and Brownmiller were—​perhaps a nuanced, complex point of view was afforded to her in Vogue because she kept to a professional, journalistic stance rather than being a “media figure.” Thus, a very clear dichotomy between texts and their accompanying visual content (images and layout) emerges. The former occasionally proposes serious treatment of serious topics—​as in the case of O’Reilly, however, most often in the more text-​heavy pages and as op-​eds—​and tends to represent a form of feminism in a positive way. Visual constructions, however, tend to obscure these discourses by pushing them into less visible pages or, on the contrary, by visibilizing stereotyped representations of the enunciators. At any rate, the “representatives” of the movements who are given a voice in these pages are “legitimate” in that they know the press and its mechanisms; and they stand for “legitimate,” liberal versions of feminism potentially adaptable to magazines’ dominant discourses, therefore never seriously challenging the central ideal of conforming femininity.

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Such construction of feminism in the media was of course nothing new. Professor in Gender, Media, and Sociology, Kaitlynn Mendes notes that a fragmented and contradictory image of feminism emerged in various timeframes and geographical contexts, but also sometimes within one publication, or even within one article41—​a pattern, I would contend, that represents the only way for mainstream magazines to approach, integrate, and coopt subversive social developments; and one doomed to gut them: While I argue that discourses supporting equal rights attained hegemony, the liberal framework through which they were constructed failed to challenge gender roles, thus preventing a radical restructuring of society, and, thus, true liberation for women. Additionally, [my research] provides evidence of an emerging neoliberal discourse, which blames individual women, rather than wider social structures and systemic inequalities when women failed to achieve “equality.”42 Thus, even frank attempts to challenge gender norms and to offer more open representations of women on the political, social, and cultural scene were drowned out by the general overarching hegemonic discourse conveyed by mainstream fashion magazines, and especially through content presentation (framing, position in the issue, layout, etc.); a way of hierarchizing messages while incorporating dissent. It is to be noted that these media representations also have had a significant impact on the movement itself—​ mainstream media being precisely a site where historical memories of the movement are constructed, as noted by Bonnie Dow43—​and the subsequent tension between what was considered “acceptable” and “unacceptable” demands on the part of feminist activists participated in creating a schism within feminism, the effects of which are still felt today.44 An even more vivid testimony of magazines’ failure in re-​ writing women’s role in a successful way is readable through Vogue’s and Harper’s Bazaar’s visual productions during this time period. The editorial fashion photographs they created and published were anything but illustrative; rather they represented the heart of these magazines’ activity, and where their evocative power and message laid. And, as mentioned above, in the 1970s fashion photographs experienced a strong resurgence in depictions of beauty and dressing norms, as well as gendered injunctions. They also embraced the male gaze, multiplying examples of nudity and objectification in their choices of topics and how they were staged. Here, it is interesting to note that fashion magazines are much more conservative where the visual is concerned than in textual features. In the former, despite the variety of their content, they consistently visibilized an extremely narrow ideal of white, young, thin, and upper-​class femininity over other materials, be they visual or textual.

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Understanding how magazines unfold their overarching narrative entails considering how they weave all these disparate elements together, and all the polyphonic voices they harmonize into a system, one based on repetition and seriality, on hierarchization and order of the content, counteracting its characteristic miscellaneity. Perhaps more importantly, this fundamental structure allows for miscellaneous content to be funneled into a unified narrative, to effectively consume dissent, and to prevent a systematic, in-​ depth reconsideration of womanhood through these mass media platforms. Yet, the failure of fashion magazines to publicly foreground debate around womanhood and femininity should not cloud the possibilities they offer individual readers, and the contrasted individual reception that they actually meet. Readers’ Agency and Individual Readings: Fashion Magazines as Unilateral Purveyors of Content?

Magazines, then, do follow first and foremost their own internal rules. Their media parameters represent a unique cultural form; a “magazine exceptionalism” emerges in that they are a recurring presence in the life of their readers–​viewers, who engage serially with them.45 While every issue is adapted to various cultural and social parameters, they construct coherence over the long run. If it is undeniable that fashion magazines systematically promoted recurring problematic and narrow models of femininity, which are, at their core, stereotypical, it could be argued that much can be read in the inflections and calibrations that these representations have gone through over time—​a task undertaken by researchers, but also by readers–​viewers. As mentioned above, in the wake of the women’s movement, the first to study women’s magazines were scholars who observed that magazines had failed women both in offering diverse and inclusive models of womanhood, as well as in producing and disseminating a non-​normative, non-​injunctive frame and outlook on femininity—​a conclusion, as the introduction to this chapter noted, that is sustained by the very longevity of fashion magazines’ problematic representations of women. But it is worth noting that these works have since been challenged, and their perceptions complexified by new voices, underlining the fact that these views critically overplayed women’s alleged passivity in the reception of these models.46 While pointing out the ambivalence, to say the least, of women’s magazines on crucial issues, these new voices also warned against essentializing magazine platforms themselves: For Betty Friedan and for some historians, popular magazines represented a repressive force, imposing damaging images on vulnerable American women. Many historians today adopt a different approach in which mass culture is neither monolithic nor unrelentingly repressive. In this view,

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mass culture is rife with contradictions, ambivalence, and competing voices. We no longer assume that any text has a single, fixed meaning for all readers, and we sometimes find within the mass media subversive, as well as repressive, potential.47 To try and assess the realization of these “potentials,” inquiring into reception, where possible, is key. Reception studies have indeed often been concerned with the influence of women’s magazines on women’s perceptions of themselves and, by extension, of (ideal) womanhood, an important contribution in that direction being undoubtedly the large-​scale study carried out in 1995 by the media specialist Joke Hermes. Her approach was truly new in that she considered that only a study of reception would make it possible to free oneself from the critical position inherited from the condemnation of women’s magazines and to replace this judgmental position with an analysis of what works for the readership, or not, and what audiences obtain by engaging with magazines’ content.48 A more recent study, by Emily Norval, is also relevant here, as it applies Hermes’s method to Grazia, a fashion magazine oriented more towards the mass market: [Hermes] has discussed at length the difficulties that have arisen from this conflict in terms of the study of women’s magazines, in that many critics have taken the viewpoint that it is only they who feel a sense of conflict when reading magazines. She condemns critics who, citing themselves as feminists, show concern rather than respect for those who read women’s magazines. Many critics, she claims, engage with “modernity discourse” (Joli Jensen 1990 in Hermes 1995: 1) when discussing women’s magazines, which essentially depicts the media as an “agent of alienation, anomy and despair in the powerfully seductive guise of entertainment” (Hermes, 1995: 1) and deems readers incapable of seeing this for themselves.49 For Hermes, audiences’ perception of women’s magazines is in fact dependent on preconceptions about these magazine’s genres. Consequently, they are read with relative distraction, although they provide their women readers with real reading pleasure. In fact, they are consulted with a certain detachment—​ which also allows them not to take them literally.50 This is also the conclusion of Diana Crane’s study—​focusing on the reception of gendered magazine models by women readers—​which points out that while their influence is still great, their messages are selectively renegotiated.51 Indeed, the quantitative strand of reception studies focusing on magazines seems to indicate that readings of fashion magazines’ content are (increasingly) negotiated. Different attitudes, some of them not necessarily those intended by the magazines, are thus observed towards the content, in particular more distanced readings. Thus, identification or projection

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into the role models offered by women and fashion magazines are often not literal. In their study on the effects of women readers’ comparison of ideal bodies in magazines with their own, psychologists Marika Tiggemann, Janet Polivy, and Duane Hargreaves note that such a comparison leads not only to negative outcomes, such as social comparison and dissatisfaction, although these are very present, but also to a form of positive response when focused on the fantasy dimension of these images. In this process, the accompaniment of these images by an encouraging discourse is crucial.52 This demonstrates that women react differently to the same images in different contexts and that the “fantasy” dimension conveyed by fashion models is embraced by readers. Similarly, marketers Craig Thompson and Diana Haytko’s study of the reception of fashion images by young women readers, based on the assumption of their fundamental ambivalence, rightly questions this dichotomy: On the one side, the photo layouts and advertising images of women’s fashion magazines reproduce long-​ standing meanings about the importance of women’s appearance and the near imperative to enhance attractiveness through clothing, cosmetics, and dietary regimes. To appeal to a media-​savvy audience, however, many articles frequently espouse an oppositional viewpoint that calls attention to the artificiality and potential negative consequences of fashion imagery. [...] This diffusion of critical narratives—​ in mass media and academic contexts—​raises the question, just do how [sic] women consumers make sense of this complex of idealized images and countervailing narratives?53 Modes of reading these images appear to include ignoring, resisting, or even de-​and re-​constructing the proposed discourses. The first, in the form of “tabular” reading, particularly echoes the way in which content is conceived as part of a dynamic layout: this spatial, diagonal reading consists of searching for fragments of information in a non-​linear reading. Hermes, among others, notes from her interviews that reading women’s magazines is often an unfocussed affair, sometimes taking place at the same time as other activities and rarely over long periods of time;54 this echoes the idea that readers “flip through” magazines in general, rather than read them.55 If magazine discourses are not conceived continuously, they become even more difficult to follow coherently: they resist through their miscellaneity, and even more through the “unruliness” of their juxtapositions and interruptions. Each piece of information or element can then potentially be considered separately from the whole and re-​signified in a personal way: one can find what one is looking for, or find the unexpected and the surprising, according to the practice of “poaching” theorized by French scholar Michel de Certeau as an active practice of selection in the shared space of the written word56—​ which is nevertheless still governed by the rules of the producers. From this

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perspective, then, magazines can only be a proposition, but interpretations are no longer exercised on their own terms. Instead, they offer disparate choices, recomposed by each and every reader–​viewer. Another mode of reading of interest here are sensory readings, or haptic reading, based on visual impressions and sensations, and once again also operating on a selective and individual basis. For art historian Patricia Allmer, this eminently personal mode of interaction with content, in particular images, is one of the best ways of resisting a meaning, or a discourse, that would be imposed on a reader: [S]‌ensual, haptic objects […] shift the focus of the conventionally printed book from text to its textures, cultivating a multi-​ sensory experience emerging from the unevenness of the pages, the feel of different materials from different periods, and the noises and movements these different materials make when a page is turned. Here a haptical rather than an optical vision is invited. According to Laura U. Marks, one of the main differences between haptic and optic visuality is that the haptic image “forces the viewer to contemplate the image itself instead of being pulled into narrative” (Marks 2000: 163). Haptic vision does not move in only one direction, but is exploratory, is all-​over-​the-​place, focusing on the material details rather than the narrative line.57 Magazines’ miscellaneous content and fragmented sequencing seem to encourage such readings. Moreover, by creating intimate sensations, often linked to memory and reminiscing, sensory or haptic modes of reading engage personal sensibilities and subjectivities, far from constructed narratives which lush fashion images could also claim to inspire. This approach is in fact sought by magazines because such readings engage audiences in a relationship with their content. Editorial content therefore circulates and is negotiated, not so much in terms of the models they consistently propose, but rather in their reception, opening up possibilities for sensations by provoking reactions of satisfaction (or discomfort). Many researchers have pointed out that magazine-​ reading, however frivolous it may appear, is most often the result of a desire and pleasure received in return. Women’s magazines’ content tends to unfold its seduction not in public spaces, but in the private sphere. Several reception studies emphasize the idea that the satisfaction of this desire does indeed result in real pleasure, whether it is guilty or not. Thus, Janice Winship, in a feminist analysis, emphasizes the pleasure she took from studying the contents of magazines, a pleasure which she understands as one of the reasons for their popularity but which she also brings into dialogue with her rejection of the models they propose—​the two not being contradictory even if they are opposed.58 This pleasure is to be seen in relation to the pleasure derived from

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consumption and in particular to that relating to femininity and its staging.59 This idea of magazines as an ambivalent source of pleasure is shared across disciplines, particularly in reception studies, especially with regard to its reflexive and negotiated dimension: “there is certainly an odd juxtaposition demonstrated so far of readers’ ability to take pleasure in magazines while simultaneously questioning that pleasure.”60 Returning to Thompson and Haytko’s study, they observed that an openness of interpretation is coded into seductive fashion images (and more generally in the apparatus deployed by fashion magazines, even when it nonetheless sustains an authoritative discourse): Indeed, their interpretations suggest that fashion discourses exhibit far too many disjunctures and offer too many countervailing interpretive positions to function as a totalizing ideological system. Although hegemonic fashion discourses are typically thought of as a language of seduction and commodification, these consumption narratives exhibit intertextual tensions that can be used to problematize and resist the potentially seductive qualities of consumer culture.61 The fashion press format, open(ing) to interpretation, enters in tension with the controlled operations of production. The double dialectic of simplification/​ complexity—​ coded already in the production of editorial content—​potentially permeates content discourse, which is internalized by readers–​viewers. In turn, as Thompson and Haytko suggest, these receivers have the possibility to influence this production through their reactions and interpretations. The fashioning of femininity, one of magazines’ main concerns, would lend itself particularly well to these negotiated receptions, as these secondary sources seem to suggest—​the possibility of carrying out a reception study of my own in the case of 1960s and 1970s Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar being unlikely, if not impossible. It turns out, however, that these magazines surprisingly resist these responses. One of the most common ways in which magazine producers and readers have historically exchanged is through public correspondence. Women’s Studies scholar Leslie Rabine notes that most women’s magazines began publishing letters from their readers in the 1960s—​at a time when these media began to reflexively ponder their function, in the wake of social movements.62 Yet at Vogue, one only finds traces of these letters from 1977 (correspondence sections were published but not maintained, sporadically in the 1900s, 1910s, and 1930s). In the late 1970s, two to three letters were published monthly under the masthead, but interestingly, this section did not include replies from the magazine. It was not until the mid-​1980s that a full-​page feature was devoted to them at the beginning of the issue, between advertisements, still without response.

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Harper’s Bazaar, on the other hand, rarely published letters from its readers after the 1890–​1900 period. During this time, the editorial staff wrote etiquette guides for “anxious” readers. In 1972, the new version of the magazine under the aegis of Jim Brady published several pages of letters, sometimes positive, sometimes very critical, which were highlighted in advertisements on the same pages, inviting readers to subscribe to see their letters appear in the magazine. However, these letters were not answered in the pages of Bazaar either and, from February 1973, following a significant change in layout, they disappeared. From then on, letters were only mentioned very occasionally to justify the choice of certain topics. In fact, in both magazines, published letters are primarily those addressed by the editors to the readership rather than the other way around. One can therefore posit that these magazines attempted to keep control over a relationship that can only unfold in tension, another form of the power struggle. This relationship, un-​ reciprocal and unequal from the outset, was structurally placed under the stewardship of the authority figure these enduring titles fashioned themselves into, even if the balance of power shifted in part. Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar’s longevity did rest, to a certain extent, on their success, as circulation figures indicate.63 Solid institutional structures of funding and production partly account for such endurance, especially in that they yielded a seductive variety of content, which readers developed ways of reading allowing for them to enjoy, negotiate, and even appropriate. Yet, the first stirs of a shifting balance of power in the 1970s and 1980s turned out to forecast more seismic changes, deployed in the digital era, which magazines have had to reckon with for nearly three decades now. Conclusion

The very durability of fashion magazines’ system of representation(s) positions them centrally on the map of the complex forces that participate(d) in shaping and negotiating womanhood up until today. It seems as if each generation has had to deconstruct magazines’ treatment of womanhood, over and over again, their format both too unwavering and too flexible to genuinely accommodate diverging voices. As far as fashion magazines such as Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar are concerned, a close study of both titles reveals that the granularities displayed both (occasionally) on the part of producers and (individually) by readers are ultimately absorbed by an all-​ encompassing structure. Eventually, magazines’ miscellaneity of content is subsumed by the regularity of their format, which orders content. This echoes Mendes’s insistence on the notion of mediation, which she calls “framing,” as essential to understanding the way the press presents feminism. In the wake of critical

Women’s Magazines and Fashion Magazines  53

media studies, she demonstrates that “framing” is inevitable, and that over time it comes to unconsciously influence the producers of discourses themselves, causing them to naturalize their frame of reference, which then becomes distinct from reality but all the more powerful for being presented as authentic.64 Keeping in mind the long history of magazines’ structures and organizations, which frame magazines’ content and influence reception, therefore seems critical. Fashion magazines are a fertile ground for research in that they present striking microcosms of the sociocultural negotiations, layering power struggles from production to content to reception—​here, around “femininity” as an ideal version of womanhood—​throughout society. The conclusion that their serial and repetitive character limits the affordances of reception—​much in the same way as it does with dissenting content, by incorporating it and subsuming it—​is further supported by the observation that alternative magazine models have failed to endure—​not having similar production resources, and thus not being able to sustain a competing format. Such a conclusion, however, should be nuanced when considering the new media landscapes emerging in the digital age. In recent decades, we have witnessed a “crisis” in the printed press, prompted in a large part by the fact that advertising revenue has been diverted by social media. It is an interesting time to observe how these negotiations are unfolding anew, especially when traditional forms and formats are challenged by the development of digital platforms. Historically solidified in their organization of labor and in their format through their materiality, print magazines have shown remarkable resistance to these changing tides. Mainstream magazines have so far failed to adopt an efficient strategy to face these new challenges, a major one being that readers are now entering into a dialogue with producers, one which is not so easy to brush off.65 Evidently, power struggles remain; and today, more than ever, far from reflecting society, magazines are sites where these tensions and contradictions unfold, both online and offline—​and they remain to be explored. The present chapter sheds some light on how magazines can be used as complex sources, that do not reflect history but contribute(d) to writing it. It has also hopefully opened new avenues in how they can be read—​for instance as resources to (de)construct womanhood, be it as (magazine) scholars or as contemporary media readers–​viewers. Notes 1 Media studies approaches, in particular, warn us against the “reflection hypothesis”: “media imagery is not a ‘reflection’ of the news; it is the news […] media imagery works to create, transform, and perpetuate certain cultural ideas rather than others. […] the media create as much as reflect reality, and their process of ‘selection and interpretation’ is historically significant.” See Carolyne Kitch,

54  Alice Morin

The Girl on the Magazine Cover (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 2–​3. This applies of course to most, if not all, significant events reported on by magazines. 2 For fashion photography, as disseminated notably through the fashion press, see for example Diana Fuss, “Fashion and the Homospectatorial Look,” Critical Inquiry 18, no. 4 (1992) or Leslie Rabine, “A Woman’s Two Bodies,” in On Fashion, ed. Shari Benstock and Suzanne Ferriss (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1994), 59–​75. 3 See notably Angela McRobbie, Feminism and Youth Culture (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1991) as well as Hilary Radner, “On the Move,” in Fashion Cultures: Theories, Explorations and Analysis, ed. Stella Bruzzi and Pamela Church Gibson (London: Routledge, 2000), 128–​142; or Kitch, The Girl on the Magazine Cover, 2001. 4 See, for instance, Mee-​Eun Kang, “The Portrayal of Women’s Images in Magazine Advertisements,” Sex Roles 37, no. 11 (1997) or Katharina Lindner, “Images of Women in General Interest and Fashion Magazine Advertisements from 1955 to 2002,” Sex Roles 51, no. 7–​8 (2004) following Goffman’s analytical framework; or Edward Timke, “An Ideal American Woman through the French Woman,” e-​ crini 5, no. 2 (2013) or Justine Marillionnet, “Images de mode et images de femmes dans la presse magazine féminine française,” ESSACHESS 7, no. 2 (2014): 133–​ 143. Many of these works have taken as their focus advertising in magazines and other media, while this chapter is chiefly interested in editorial content (that is, all the other content that is not advertising and that magazines have to put together in order to compose their issue). Yet because these examine the visual system developed by fashion images (including ads and editorials), I consider them to also be relevant to my study of editorial content. 5 See, amongst others, Mia Sypeck, James Grey, and Anthony Ahrens, “No Longer Just a Pretty Face,” International Journal of Eating Disorders 36 (2004): 342–​347 or Marika Tiggemann, Janet Polivy, and Duane Hargreaves, “The Processing of Thin Ideals in Fashion Magazines,” Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology 28, no. 1 (2009): 73–​93. 6 Friedan, in her seminal (and later much criticized) book, examines the role of “experts” as disseminated through various media, including the press. It might be noted that Friedan was a journalist herself. While feminist movements were especially visible from the late 1960s on (in particular through mass media coverage), women’s movements have always been entangled with media cultures. On the topic and for new perspectives on early feminist movements, see notably Maria DiCenzo et al., “Feminisms and Print Culture, 1830–​1930s, in the Digital Age,” Women’s Studies International Forum 29, no. 3 (2006): 227–​330. 7 For critics, see for instance Denise Warren, “Commercial Liberation,” Journal of Communication 28, no. 1 (1978): 169–​ 173; Sandra Bartky, Femininity and Domination (Hove: Psychology Press, 1990); Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth (New York: Perennial, 1990); or Susan Bordo, Unbearable Weight (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). On feminist movements’ media exposure, see Kaitlynn Mendes, Feminism in the News (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011); Bonnie Dow, Watching Women’s Liberation (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2014). 8 The intertwinement of the fashion industry and its dedicated press is especially visible in the yearly calendar adopted by fashion magazines: twice a year, they

Women’s Magazines and Fashion Magazines  55

(still) publish special issues dedicated to the “collections” as presented at the so-​ called “fashion weeks” (the March and September issues); in July, they generally present swimwear, in November coats and other winter apparel. To be noted is also the intricate and symbiotic relationship between advertising and editorial content in fashion magazines, since the designers promoted in editorial pages are very often also advertising elsewhere in the magazine. Said designers are most often advertisers, clients and colleagues of editors, and readers of fashion magazines. See Brian Moeran, “More Than Just a Fashion Magazine,” Current Sociology 54, no. 5 (2006): 727. 9 Vogue US and Harper’s Bazaar’s production have been examined through archive research and interviews; their content through the consultation of all issues between the years 1962 and 1987; and their circulation pondered through adjacent secondary literature. 10 For fashion, notable examples of alternative magazines would be Nova (London, 1965–​1975) or the countercultural Rags (San Francisco, 1970–​1971) or BUST (New York, 1993–​ ). For women’s magazines, an interesting example is Ms. Magazine (New York, since 1972), which this chapter briefly examines later on. 11 This is more generally the case, besides Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, for a number of women’s and general-​ interest magazines, sometimes termed “consumer magazines.” Mehita Iqani, Consumer Culture and the Media (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 5–​6. This long-​standing model has indeed proven very effective, while also prompting fierce competition within segments of the press market—​ until recently that is, when it was challenged in the digital era, as the conclusion to this chapter posits. Stella Earnshaw, “Advertising and the Media,” Media, Culture & Society 6 (1984): 413. 12 Rosalind Ballaster et al., Women’s Worlds (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1991), 109. 13 Jennifer Craik, The Face of Fashion (London: Routledge, [1994] 1995), 51. 14 Indeed, prices charged per advertisement page are dependent on a magazine’s readership numbers (they are also dependent on the size, placement of the ad, etc.). 15 Moeran, “More Than Just a Fashion Magazine,” 727. 16 Craik, The Face of Fashion, 47–​50. 17 Margaret Beetham, “Towards a Theory of the Periodical as a Publishing Genre,” in Investigating Victorian Journalism, ed. Laurel Brake, Aled Jones, and Lionel Madden (London: Macmillan, 1990), 19–​32. 18 James Mussell, “Repetition. Or, ‘In Our Last’,” Victorian Periodicals Review 48 (2015). 19 Mark Turner, “The Unruliness of Serials in the Nineteenth Century,” in Serialization in Popular Culture, ed. Rob Allen and Thijs van den Berg (London: Routledge, 2014), 11–​32. 20 Nicola Kaminski and Jens Ruchatz, Journalliteratur –​Ein Avertissement (Hannover: Wehrhahn, 2017), 31–​ 32; Alice Morin and Jens Ruchatz, “Photography In/​Between Media Formats,” Interfaces 45 (2021). 21 On the production studies approach to media culture, see Vicki Mayer, Miranda J. Banks, and John Thornton Caldwell, eds., Production Studies: Cultural Studies of Media Industries (New York: Routledge, 2009). 22 The personal papers consulted for this research include Diana Vreeland’s (at the New York Public Library); Alexander Liberman’s (at the Archives of American Art); and Grace Mirabella’s (at the Briscoe Center, University of Texas at Austin).

56  Alice Morin

23 For a study of how feminine ideals, and in particular female bodies have shifted from the 1950s to the 1960s, see Alice Morin, “Corps en tension dans la presse de mode américaine mainstream,” in Corps en crise, crise(s) du corps, ed. Marine Galiné and Timothy Heron (Reims: Éditions et Presses Universitaires de Reims, 2018), 53–​74. 24 Vogue appointed a new editor-​in-​chief, Grace Mirabella (with a background in sales and marketing) in 1971; Harper’s Bazaar’s editorship was entrusted to journalist Jim Brady in 1970 in order to be “modernized,” but its new formula failed to meet directorial approval, and Anthony Mazzola (formerly the art director) took his place in 1972. This change in leadership signaled that new approaches to editing were deemed necessary, at a time when the authority of fashion magazines was called into question; it is to be noted, however, that a corresponding shift did not take place at the level of these press groups’ management. 25 On this topic see for instance Rabine, “A Woman’s Two Bodies”; Radner, “On the Move”; or Marillonnet, “Images de mode et images de femmes dans la presse magazine féminine française.” For my own study of stereotypical women’s representations in Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar in the 1970s, see Alice Morin, “Représentations féminines et stéréotypes dans la presse de mode américaine,” RFEA 158, no. 1 (2019): 13–​28. 26 All three were, like most of the content producers (journalists, columnists, artists such as photographers and illustrators), freelancers rather than members of staff. This latter category includes editors, art directors, and sales executives who work to secure said content, and to arrange it into each magazine issue—​a distinction which is obviously of importance when considering the parameters of the power struggles taking place within magazine production. 27 Mendes, Feminism in the News, 6. 28 Eugenia Sheppard, “Gloria, Hallelujah,” Harper’s Bazaar, February 1970, 142–​143. 29 Timothy Bay, “Unlikely Routes to the Top,” Harper’s Bazaar, June 1977, 48–​49. 30 Natalie Gittelson, “Betty & Gloria & Shirley & Bella,” Harper’s Bazaar, July 1972, 80–​81. 31 Eugenia Sheppard, “Is Marriage Going Out of Style?” Harper’s Bazaar, October 1971, 168–​169; Diane English, “Sex in Advertising: Does it Really Sell?” Vogue, August 1979, 36; Shirley Lord, “Women and American Cars: What’s Coming in the ‘80s,” Vogue, February 1981, 292–​293. 32 B.G., “Gloria Steinem Creates a New Magazine,” Harper’s Bazaar, December 1971, 34. Ms. magazine holds a special place in the history of the women’s press. It was co-​founded in 1971 by Gloria Steinem and Dorothy Pitman Hughes together with a female editorial team, with the explicit intention of providing women with alternative models to those of traditional women’s magazines. While such an ambition is not in fact unique—​and very much of its time—​the unabashed activism of its producers made it stand out on the press market. These women were well acquainted with the press, many being journalists in the general press before this undertaking, including Steinem, Letty Cottin Pogrebin, and Mary Thom, who were all members of the original team. Ms. therefore positioned itself on two distinctive paths, claiming that their perspective was unique for the women’s press: offering quality journalism, addressing sometimes difficult subjects

Women’s Magazines and Fashion Magazines  57

honestly with a woman reader in mind; and banning demeaning imagery from its pages, both in ads and in editorial images. Ms. set out from the start to be a long-​lasting and well-​established publication. Therefore, it also had to resort to traditional funding methods (subscriptions to a certain extent, but mostly through advertisements; see Gloria Steinem Papers, series V, box 149, folders 9–​10), which made the latter task particularly difficult since, although its intentions and its journalists were activists, its format remained very well defined and circumscribed. 33 Gloria Steinem Papers, series V, box 153, folder 6. 34 Susan Brownmiller, “Backstage with Dick, Hubie and George,” Vogue, October 1968, 96–​97. 35 Kazumi Kurigami, “Susan Brownmiller Contemplates Femininity,” Vogue, February 1984, 360. 36 Kathleen Madden, “New Attitudes...A New Image. Femininity, Do You Buy It?” Vogue, March 1987, 444–​446. 37 Anonymous (editorial staff), “Susan Brownmiller’s Anti Rape Techniques,” Harper’s Bazaar, March 1976, 119; 136. 38 Gloria Steinem Papers, series II, box 86, folder 20; Susan Brownmiller Papers, series III, subseries C. 39 Jane O’Reilly Papers, series I, subseries 2. 40 Jane O’Reilly, “Politics ‘84: Women—​the Suddenly Visible Sex,” Vogue, October 1984, 630; “The Year of Getting Tough,” Vogue, November 1984, 290–​291; “On the Vatican 24,” Vogue, April 1985, 182. 41 Mendes notes that, especially compared to British feminist movements, American militant groups were much more organized, which entailed that several branches of the Movement designated a number of spokespersons (most often spokeswomen) to discuss it in the media—​as is the case here with Steinem. Mendes, Feminism in the News, 6. 42 Mendes, Feminism in the News, 9–​10. 43 Dow, Watching Women’s Liberation, 7. 44 Mendes, Feminism in the News, 9. 45 David Abrahamson, “Magazine Exceptionalism: The Concept, the Criteria, the Challenge,” Journalism Studies 8, no. 4 (2007): 667–​670. 46 Ellen McCracken, Decoding Women’s Magazines (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1992); Joke Hermes, Reading Women’s Magazines (Cambridge: Polity, 1995). 47 Joanne Meyerowitz as cited in Rachel Ritchie et al., eds. Women in Magazines (New York: Routledge, 2016), 5. 48 Hermes, Reading Women’s Magazines, 1. 49 Emily Norval, Research into Women’s Magazines and the Social Construction of Womanhood, MA diss. (University of Leeds, 2011), 12–​13. 50 Hermes, Reading Women’s Magazines, 29. 51 Diana Crane, “Gender and Hegemony in Fashion Magazines,” The Sociological Quarterly 40, no. 4 (1999): 541–​563. 52 Tiggemann, Polivy, and Hargreaves, “The Processing of Thin Ideals in Fashion Magazines,” 87. 53 Craig Thompson and Diana Haytko, “Speaking of Fashion,” Journal of Consumer Research 24, no. 1 (1997), 31. 54 Hermes, Reading Women’s Magazines, 14.

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55 Thierry Gervais, “L’invention du magazine,” Études photographiques, no. 20 (2007): 50–​67. 56 Michel de Certeau, L’invention du quotidien (Paris: Gallimard, 1980), 239. 57 Patricia Allmer “Relating the Story of Things.” Image & Narrative 12, no. 3 (2011), 10. 58 Janice Winship, Inside Women’s Magazines (St Albans: Rivers Oram Press, 1987), xii. 59 Sarah Berry, Screen Style (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000), 93; Mary Ann Doane, “Film and the Masquerade,” Screen 23, no. 3–​4 (1982): 74–​88. 60 Norval, Research into Women’s Magazines, 37. See also Ritchie et al., Women in Magazines, 4. 61 Thompson and Haytko, “Speaking of Fashion,” 36. 62 Rabine, “A Woman’s Two Bodies,” 61. 63 Since the 1970s, Vogue has boasted a circulation of around 1 million copies distributed monthly; Harper’s Bazaar, around 750,000. Audit Bureau of Circulation. 64 Mendes, Feminism in the News, 31. 65 On the magazine industry adjusting to digital changes, see articles in the press such as Elizabeth Paton, “Inside the Revolution at Condé Nast International,” The New York Times, Sept. 14, 2018, www.nyti​mes.com/​2018/​09/​14/​style/​conde-​ nast-​intern​atio​nal-​wolfg​ang-​blau-​vogue-​run​way.html.

Reference List Abrahamson, David. “Magazine Exceptionalism: The Concept, the Criteria, the Challenge.” Journalism Studies 8, no. 4 (2007): 667–​670. Allmer, Patricia. “Relating the Story of Things.” Image & Narrative 12, no. 3 (2011): 5–​21. Ballaster, Rosalind, Margaret Beetham, Elizabeth Frazer, and Sandra Hebron. Women’s Worlds: Ideology, Femininity and the Woman’s Magazine. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1991. Bartky, Sandra Lee. Femininity and Domination: Studies in the Phenomenology of Oppression. Hove: Psychology Press, 1990. Beetham, Margaret. “Towards a Theory of the Periodical as a Publishing Genre.” In Investigating Victorian Journalism, edited by Laurel Brake, Aled Jones, and Lionel Madden, 19–​32. London: Macmillan, 1990. Berry, Sarah. Screen Style: Fashion and Femininity in 1930s Hollywood. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000. Bordo, Susan. Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body. Berkeley: University of California Press, [1993] 2004. Brownmiller, Susan. Papers, 1935–​2000. Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University. Craik, Jennifer. The Face of Fashion: Cultural Studies in Fashion. London: Routledge, [1994] 1995. Crane, Diana. “Gender and Hegemony in Fashion Magazines: Women’s Interpretations of Fashion Photographs.” The Sociological Quarterly 40, no. 4 (1999): 541–​563. de Certeau, Michel. L’invention du quotidien II. Habiter, cuisiner. Paris: Gallimard, [1980] 1994.

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DiCenzo, Maria, Cynthia Comacchio, Susan Hamilton, Alison Lee, Linda Mahood, and Leila Ryan, eds. “Feminisms and Print Culture, 1830–​1930s, in the Digital Age.” Women’s Studies International Forum 29, no. 3 (2006): 227–​330. Doane, Mary Ann. “Film and the Masquerade: Theorising the Female Spectator.” Screen 23, no. 3–​4 (1982): 74–​88. Dow, Bonnie J. Watching Women’s Liberation, 1970: Feminism’s Pivotal Year on the Network News. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2014. Earnshaw, Stella. “Advertising and the Media: The Case of Women’s Magazines.” Media, Culture & Society 6 (1984): 411–​421. Friedan, Betty. The Feminine Mystique. New York: W. W. Norton, 1963. Fuss, Diana. “Fashion and the Homospectatorial Look.” Critical Inquiry 18, no. 4 (1992): 713–​737. Gervais, Thierry. “L’invention du magazine. La photographie mise en page dans La Vie au grand air (1898–​1914).” Études photographiques, no. 20 (2007): 50–​67. Goffman, Erving. “Gender Advertisements.” Society for the Anthropology of Visual Communication 3, no. 2 (1976): 1–​9. Harper’s Bazaar. New York: Hearst Corporation, since 1867 [Issues from 1962 to 1987]. Hermes, Joke. Reading Women’s Magazines: An Analysis of Everyday Media Use. Cambridge: Polity, 1995. Iqani, Mehita. Consumer Culture and the Media: Magazines in the Public Eye. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. Kaminski, Nicola, and Jens Ruchatz. Journalliteratur –​Ein Avertissement. Hannover: Wehrhahn, 2017. Kang, Mee-​ Eun. “The Portrayal of Women’s Images in Magazine Advertisements: Goffman’s Gender Analysis Revisited.” Sex Roles 37, no. 11 (1997): 979–​996. Kitch, Carolyn. The Girl on the Magazine Cover: The Origins of Visual Stereotypes in American Mass Media. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001. Lindner, Katharina. “Images of Women in General Interest and Fashion Magazine Advertisements from 1955 to 2002.” Sex Roles 51, no. 7–​8 (2004): 409–​421. Marillonnet, Justine. “Images de mode et images de femmes dans la presse magazine féminine française. Parades normatives ou mascarade stratégique?” ESSACHESS. Journal for Communication Studies 7, no. 2 (2014): 133–​143. Mayer, Vicki, Miranda J. Banks, and John Thornton Caldwell, eds. Production Studies: Cultural Studies of Media Industries. New York: Routledge, 2009. McCracken, Ellen. Decoding Women’s Magazines: From Mademoiselle to Ms. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1992. McRobbie, Angela. Feminism and Youth Culture: From Jackie to Just Seventeen. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1991. Mendes, Kaitlynn. Feminism in the News: Representations of the Women’s Movement since the 1960s. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. Moeran, Brian. “More Than Just a Fashion Magazine.” Current Sociology 54, no. 5 (2006): 725–​744. Morin, Alice. “Corps en tension dans la presse de mode américaine mainstream: idéaux et contre-​modèles.” In Corps en crise, crise(s) du corps: réflexions interdisciplinaires autour du corps déconstruit, edited by Marine Galiné and Timothy A. Heron, 53–​ 74. Reims: Éditions et Presses Universitaires de Reims, 2018.

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—​—​—​. “Représentations féminines et stéréotypes dans la presse de mode américaine: le tournant des années 1970.” Revue Française d’Études Américaines 158, no. 1 (2019): 13–​28. Morin, Alice, and Jens Ruchatz. “Photography In/​ Between Media Formats: The Work of Format from Magazines to Books, from Horst. P. Horst to Henri Cartier-​ Bresson.” Interfaces 45 (2021). http://​journ​als.open​edit​ion.org/​int​erfa​ces/​2234. Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Screen 16, no. 3 (1975): 6–​18. Mussell, James. “Repetition. Or, ‘In Our Last.’” Victorian Periodicals Review 48 (2015): 343–​358. Norval, Emily. Research into Women’s Magazines and the Social Construction of Womanhood. An Investigation into the Readership of Women’s Magazines, with Specific Focus upon the Nature and Reception of the “Weekly Glossy” Genre created by Grazia Magazine. MA dissertation, Media Industries, University of Leeds, 2011. O’Reilly, Jane. Papers, 1965–​1993. Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University. Paton, Elizabeth. “Inside the Revolution at Condé Nast International.” The New York Times, September 15th, 2018. www.nyti​mes.com/​2018/​09/​14/​style/​conde-​nast-​ intern​atio​nal-​ wolfgang-​blau-​vogue-​runway.html. Rabine, Leslie W. “A Woman’s Two Bodies: Fashion Magazines, Consumerism and Feminism.” In On Fashion, edited by Shari Benstock and Suzanne Ferriss, 59–​75. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1994. Radner, Hilary. “On the Move: Fashion Photography and the Single Girl in the 1960s.” In Fashion Cultures: Theories, Explorations and Analysis, edited by Stella Bruzzi and Pamela Church Gibson, 128–​142 (Kindle edition). London: Routledge, 2000. Ritchie, Rachel, Sue Hawkins, Nicola Phillips, and S. Jay Kleinberg, eds. Women in Magazines: Research, Representation, Production and Consumption. New York: Routledge, 2016. Steinem, Gloria. Papers, 1940–​2000. Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College. Sypeck, Mia Foley, James J. Grey, and Anthony H. Ahrens. “No Longer Just a Pretty Face: Fashion Magazines’ Depictions of Ideal Female Beauty from 1959 to 1999.” International Journal of Eating Disorders 36 (2004): 342–​347. Thompson, Craig J., and Diana L. Haytko. “Speaking of Fashion: Consumers’ Uses of Fashion Discourses and the Appropriation of Countervailing Cultural Meanings.” Journal of Consumer Research 24, no. 1 (1997): 15–​42. Tiggemann, Marika, Janet Polivy, and Duane Hargreaves. “The Processing of Thin Ideals in Fashion Magazines: A Source of Social Comparison or Fantasy?” Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology 28, no. 1 (2009): 73–​93. Timke, Edward. “An Ideal American Woman through the French Woman: Beauty Ads from American Magazines in the late 1950s and 1960s.” e-​crini 5, no. 2 (2013). www.crini.univ-​nan​tes.fr/​jour​nee-​d-​etude-​rep​rese​ntat​ion-​des-​nati​ons-​ame​rica​ine-​ et-​ britannique-​dans-​la-​photographie-​de-​femme-​et-​les-​travaux-​contemporains-​de-​ femmes-​ photographes. Turner, Mark. “The Unruliness of Serials in the Nineteenth Century (and in the Digital Age).” In Serialization in Popular Culture, edited by Rob Allen and Thijs van den Berg, 11–​32. London: Routledge, 2014. Vogue. New York: Condé Nast, since 1892 [Issues from 1962 to 1987].

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Warren, Denise. “Commercial Liberation.” Journal of Communication 28, no. 1 (1978): 169–​173. Winship, Janice. Inside Women’s Magazines. St Albans: Rivers Oram Press, 1987. Wolf, Naomi. The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women. New York: Perennial, [1990] 2002.

3 THE RIGHT TO BE BEAUTIFUL Annie Malone, Beauty Culture, and New Negro Womanhood Néfertiti Ngoupande-​Nah

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, African Americans promulgated a movement for self-​determination and social, economic, and cultural change. Out of this, the philosophy of Racial Uplift came into being. This was a political program that aimed at finding the best strategies to help Black people achieve equality.1 For Black women, this time was also the “woman’s era,” as African American women intellectuals wrote books, made speeches, and organized in clubs all over the country to “uplift” poor, uneducated women and redefine Black womanhood in a patriarchal and racist society.2 The years between 1895 and 1925 also witnessed what was later called the “New Negro Movement,” a collective endeavor to change the representations of African Americans in the mainstream media from deplorable stereotypes to dignified and respectable ideals.3 As middle-​class Black women used this ideology to craft their own version of the New Negro, which might be found at the crossroads of White ideals of womanhood and Black imperatives of “uplift,” working-​class African American women involved in the fledgling beauty industry reclaimed New Negro Womanhood through a new identity performed via the use of cosmetics. One of those trendsetters was Annie Malone, a young entrepreneur who, in 1907, crafted an advertisement for her hair-​care product that juxtaposed working-​class African American womanhood with enduring stereotypes of Black women’s ugliness. It offered Black women the opportunity to craft a new relationship with their bodies via this new portrayal.4 This chapter examines how the ideological atmosphere and philosophies of Racial Uplift resonated in the materialistic field of commercial beauty culture in the early 20th century. At first sight, these reflections and debates on how to improve the living conditions of African Americans and empower them to DOI: 10.4324/9781003425380-5

The Right to Be Beautiful  63

become full participants in American society might seem to contradict any importance given to the beauty industry, its patent cosmetics, and perhaps frivolous cosmetics. However, the cosmetic industry, emerging in such circumstances, provided working-​class Black women with an opportunity to give meaning to the advertisement of beauty products made for and consumed by Black women. What they most importantly sought was to respond to mainstream stereotypes about them and recreate themselves on their own terms.5 As a result, the Black woman’s body, and in particular her hair, became a major site of discussion in the early 1900s as a cohort of African American women cosmetic manufacturers started producing advertisements in which they used their own bodies as the markers of these new identities.6 The term “Marketplace intellectuals,” which was coined by historian Davarian Baldwin in Chicago’s New Negroes, has been used to refer to the people who were not part of the Black intelligentsia but still produced ideas about modernity and gave meaning to their manufacturing and advertising work.7 With their own marketing tools, these early Black women manufacturers proposed an alternative version of New Negro Womanhood that came to challenge the perspective of the dominant African American classes and that counteracted the stereotypes created by White society. While Baldwin used the example of the famous Madam C. J. Walker (1867–​1919) to illustrate his point on the intersection of intellectual life and beauty culture,8 I have chosen to focus on Annie Minerva Turnbo Pope Malone (1877–​1957) who entered the cosmetic industry before Walker and whose work and impact on modern African American beauty culture has yet to be assessed in an extensive way. In Hair Raising, Noliwe Rooks also used the life and work of Madam C. J. Walker to discuss the emergence of African American beauty culture. She referred to Annie Malone as a “trendsetter for [a]‌type of marketing” that promoted a vision of Black womanhood that was “not undergirded by unfavorable ideologies of race and gender.”9 She also pointed out the originality of the advertisement produced by Malone, but her study stopped short of exploring Malone’s impact further.10 This left some aspects of Malone’s contribution unexplored, such as the graphics, language, and messaging of the ads as well as the vision of modern Black womanhood they constructed in response to dominant ideologies of race, color, and beauty. The prevailing vision of the New Negro Woman was produced by upper-​ middle-​ class and college-​ educated intellectuals who often crafted this image with class and color biases. This resulted from their internalization of Eurocentric beauty standards that had constructed stereotypes of Black ugliness associated with dark skin and curly hair. This construction pervaded the commercial beauty culture as White-​owned companies used these beauty norms to sell cosmetics to African American women. A typical ad by the Hartona Remedy Company can be taken as a good example of how rigidly Black women’s bodies were constructed along these lines (See Figure 1).

64  Néfertiti Ngoupande-Nah

Contrasting the Hartona Remedy ad with that of Annie Malone demonstrates how Malone’s advertisement deconstructed such standards. With the multiplication of ads produced by Black women for Black women, African American newspapers became a space to redefine New Negro Womanhood. Her working-​ class background and her middle-​ class sensibilities allowed Annie Malone to both embrace modernity by using and selling beauty products and showing deference to middle-​class notions of respectability in the advertisement she crafted. An Elitist Vision of New Negro Womanhood

In 1900, Annie Malone started selling the Wonderful Hair Grower, a hair pomade she had been working and testing on her relatives and friends’ hair since the beginning of the 1890s.11 The same year saw the publication of an anthology written by famous educator Booker T. Washington (1856–​1915), Norman Barton Wood (1857–​1933), a minister and historian, and Fannie Barrier Williams (1855–​1944), a journalist and educator, which was entitled A New Negro for a New Century: An Accurate and Up-​to-​Date Record of the Upward Struggles of the Negro Race. Its main goal, as historian Henry Louis Gates Jr. puts it, was to “re-​present [Black Americans’] public selves in order to reconstruct their public, reproducible images.”12 This “reconstruction” was intended to counteract the negative stereotyping of Black people, culture, and identity that circulated in the mainstream media and entertainment. A New Negro for a New Century most importantly featured pictures of members of the Black intelligentsia who embodied this ideal: 39 men, among whom were medical doctors, preachers, soldiers, artists and journalists, and 21 women, all of whom were clubwomen, that is, educators involved in associations devoted to the uplift of Black womanhood.13 New Negro Womanhood required more work to redefine the double burdens14 of racism and sexism that had been imposed on African American women. Black women had been the victims of negative stereotypes since slavery because of their race, but also because of their sex, and, as Laurie Kaiser puts it, they were “too often seen as temptresses with insatiable sexual appetites.”15 These deep-​ rooted prejudices caused clubwomen to craft an ideal of New Negro Womanhood that would reflect the virtues of “True Womanhood,” taken up concurrently by White women. Margaret Murray Washington (1865–​1925), Booker T. Washington’s wife, who was the last woman to be featured in the essay, personified this new category of African Americans who were characterized by “education, refinement, and money.”16 In “The New Negro Woman,” a speech she read at the First National Conference of Colored Women in Boston in August 1895, Margaret Murray Washington enjoined upper-​middle-​class Black women, to

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get involved in advancing the interests of the African American community. To her, privileged clubwomen who had “hundreds of years of advantages and experience” should teach their values to “the most helpless members of the race.”17 The first value they wished to instill in their sisters was that of domesticity. This was one of the four key virtues, along with piety, sexual purity, and submissiveness, all of which were praised in the “Cult of True Womanhood” of the Victorian era.18 “The home” was “the responsibility of womanhood” and where “there was no home, there was no manhood.”19 Women, as mothers and wives, were thus considered the key to improving the nation, and part of the work performed by clubwomen focused on teaching other women how to take care of their homes.20 Murray Washington also insisted on chastity as a value. Because Black women were considered “immoral” by White society, women of the Black middle class had to teach their less privileged sisters “cultivation of the sacredness of the marital relations which are at the root of the home.”21 What Margaret Murray Washington envisioned was a whole change in the manners and mores of poor African Americans through the inculcation of respectable values, that is, morals around cleanliness, modesty, and sexual purity, that would earn them the respect of White people. This “politics of respectability,” to use Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham’s famed expression, would ultimately contribute to the discrediting of these negative stereotypes, to a decrease in racial violence against African Americans, and to an end in racism and racial discrimination.22 This crafting of New Negro Womanhood actually mirrored White middle-​ class values.23 The New Negro Woman was in fact what Shirley Carlson called a “Black Victoria,” a woman who “embodied the genteel behavior of the ‘cult of true womanhood’ espoused by larger society” and was also committed to the uplift of her community.24 Most representatives of the New Negro Woman were light-​ skinned and had straight or loosely curled hair.25 This was the case for Margaret Murray Washington whose father was a White man of Irish descent. Those who belonged to the upper echelons of African American society generally projected Eurocentric standards of beauty onto African American womanhood. This physical crafting of New Negro Womanhood made it difficult for most Black women to identify with this ideal as they were darker-​skinned and had curlier hair than the African Americans portrayed in A New Negro for a New Century. Moreover, the colorism expressed in the essay reflected deep-​rooted prejudice that existed in White society and had been internalized by African Americans of the upper middle class. The advertisements Annie Malone produced at the beginning of the 20th century would break with this tradition as it explored the possibilities of Black physical beauty in association with brown or dark-​brown skinned women of the lower classes.

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Stereotypes of “Ugliness”

Beauty had traditionally been associated with White skin, straight hair, and European features while, through a mechanism of racial polarization, ugliness had continuously served to characterize Black skin, frizzy hair, and physical traits commonly associated with African Americans and Afro-​descendants.26 The historical construction of Blackness as synonymous with ugliness started with the early meetings of Europeans and Africans and was exacerbated during the process of colonization and enslavement.27 However, this way of representing Black people took new forms in the 1880s, first, through the rise of “scientific” racism, which sought to explain the racial ”inferiority” of people of African descent via their physical appearance, and second, through the popularization of minstrel shows, vaudeville, and musical revues in the United States.28 This distorted representation of African Americans had even deeper meanings for Black women as gender and race intersected. For instance, laziness was often considered typical of Black manhood, but the trope of ugliness was more frequently associated with depictions of Black womanhood.29 This was constructed in an absolute opposition to White womanhood, which had the exclusive privilege of “beauty.”30 According to Janell Hobson, the constructed ugliness of African American women took many forms as the “black female body” was seen as “grotesque,” “strange,” “unfeminine,” “lascivious,” and “obscene.”31 The stereotypical women characters that emerged during these years exemplified the complexity of this representation of “ugliness.” The most powerful of these female stereotypes was the Mammy. It appeared for the first time in a travel narrative in 1810 but gained prominence after the Civil War with the development of minstrel shows and vaudevilles.32 Its popularity even increased with the creation of its most famous enactment: the Aunt Jemima trademark in 1893, which allowed a typically Southern figure who belonged to the “nursery” to become a significant element of Northern kitchens.33 African American stereotypes were used to hide the reality of racial relations in the United States and the Mammy was a tool that initially served to justify slavery.34 She was the loyal servant who was devoted to the master’s family. Her positive and jovial attitude conveyed the belief that the enslaved were content with “the peculiar institution.”35 The Mammy’s submission and domesticity could have been assets since the same values were praised in White women. However, the prism of racism inverted this virtue and distorted it so that the Mammy was transformed into a grotesque character who cared more about other people’s children than her own, having a “lavish, affectionate patience” with White children while being “impatient and brusque” with her own offspring.36 The ugliness of the character was further reinforced by her physical appearance, as Kimberley

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Wallace-​ Sanders suggests, she “is grotesquely marked by excess: she is usually extremely overweight, very tall, broad-​shouldered, her skin is nearly black.”37 This physical description recalls the grotesque, strangeness, and lack of femininity that Hobson pointed out. The fact that her skin was “nearly black” added to the caricature. Indeed, very dark skin carried a heavy social stigma, and “dark-​complexioned women were viewed as anomalous, ungroomed, and mentally ill.”38 This color stigma functioned differently depending on gender. While dark skin was acceptable for the New Negro Man, it was unthinkable in representations of the New Negro Woman. For example, in “Rough Sketches: The New Negro Man,” an illustrated essay published in 1904 in Voice of the Negro, a literary magazine sponsored by Booker T. Washington,39 illustrator John Henry Adams portrayed handsome Black men, most of whom were dark-​skinned, whereas not one of his seven sketches in the essay he had written about New Negro women were the color of ebony.40 The most famous archetype of African American womanhood, which appeared on thousands of manufactured goods across the country, was thus too big, too fat, too dark, and too unfeminine for mainstream American beauty standards. This ultimate desexualizing was, of course, based on the ideological premise that would dismiss the claims that enslaved women were sexually abused by White enslavers.41 Such a lie about the realities of slavery for Black women was also constructed the other way around with the creation of a hypersexualized feminine stereotype, the Jezebel. This character was also elaborated during the antebellum period to justify the rape of Black women as many racially mixed enslaved people were born out of these interracial sexual assaults.42 The Jezebel was depicted as “a promiscuous, sexually voracious black woman”43 who was “middle-​aged or young” while Mammy was rather old.44 Even though they were two antithetical representations of Black womanhood, Mammy and Jezebel were in fact two sides of the same coin. The first one contributed to the construction of a physical ugliness whereas the second one was morally hideous. This hypersexualizing of African American women used the Black woman’s body as its most potent vector. In response, African American elites, intellectuals, and clubwomen devised strategies that attempted to invisibilize this body in their construction of New Negro Womanhood in order to avoid any accusations of immorality. Silence over sexual matters was actually a collective strategy of resistance for African American women. According to historian Darlene Clark Hine, the trauma of rape during slavery had caused them to develop a “culture of dissemblance,” in which, under an apparent openness, they kept any matter that was private, personal, and sexual for themselves.45 This culture of secrecy implied silence in all parts of one’s intimate life, which included their own bodies. Hine goes further in stating that the National Association of Colored Women, founded in 1896,

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was the “most institutionalized form” of this “culture of dissemblance,” as the organization primarily sought to “attack … the derogatory images and negative stereotypes of Black women’s sexuality.”46 This silencing of the bodies of African American women went hand in hand with its disciplining. Black clubwomen became “super-​ moral” and adhered rigorously to “sexual purity,” which was a key component of the politics of respectability.47 The Black Church was particularly instrumental in the disciplining and controlling of Black women’s bodies, through sermons, but also through a system of punishment for those who had sexual relationships without being married as they were exposed, reprimanded in front of the congregation, and forced into wedlock by church ministers.48 The way one should dress was also part of this process. “Modest” and decent clothing was prescribed in order not to attract male attention.49 As shown in historian Noliwe Rooks’ Ladies Pages, the Ringwood Afro-​ American Journal of Fashion (1891–​ 1894), which was connected to the club movement, upper-​ middle-​ class Black women “crafted an ‘uplift’ strategy that related fashion to morality […] in order to combat cultural assertions about African American women’s perceived hypersexuality.”50 All this finally resulted in invisibilizing the Black woman’s body through the denial of her sexuality. However, the commercial beauty culture that emerged at the end of the 19th century was essentially corporeal as it placed the bodies of Black women at the center of the stage. Knowing these prescriptions and restrictions on African American women’s bodies, Annie Malone had to find a way to show and promote the body without oversexualizing it. Beauty Culture and the Restrictive Construction of Black Women’s Bodies

The ideology of the New Negro was prominent at the same time that “beauty culture” was in full expansion. Beauty care was increasingly commercialized between the 1890s and 1920s. The “set of practices” that it constituted became “at once physical, individual, social, and commercial” at that time.51 As historian Kathy Peiss argues in Hope in a Jar, this industry was focused on women and built by women.52 Even though women of all ethnicities took part in this experience, beauty culture was a highly political issue for African American women who saw this as a way to reach a form of equality.53 Inequalities in terms of personal care had started when the slave trade to the Americas began. Hair was shaved as soon as they arrived in the Americas, mostly for “ ‘sanitary reasons’, but also to ‘alter the relationship between the African and his or her hair.’ ”54 What was a source of pride and the object of admiration of the first European explorers to Africa in the 15th century rapidly became a source of shame in the context of slavery because the conditions of enslavement did not allow for personal care and grooming, as

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enslaved African Americans could only take care of their hair on Sundays, “their day off.”55 In this context, enslaved people did what they could with what they had at their disposal. Instead of the appropriate comb, they used “a sheep fleece carding tool to untangle their hair.”56 To prevent their hair from knotting, women usually “wrapped,” or “threaded” their hair, that is, wrapping pieces of cloth around strands of hair that had previously been “carded.” Then, they covered their hair with a head rag or bandanna to maintain it and protect it from the sun and dust during the week. Once they took the bandannas off on Sundays, they were able to style their hair “into the desired shape.”57 These efforts were nonetheless insufficient to erase the social stigma constructed around Black hair in the United States. During slavery, White people insisted on calling it “wool,” to distance themselves from Black people and to signal their racial inferiority, associating them with animals. The racialization of African American hair was so strong that even when biracial enslaved people, and particularly women, had hair that looked more European than African, this derogatory appellation was still used to emphasize differences.58 For Black people looking for social acceptance, erasing the “kinks” became paramount in a world where the privileging of White skin and straight hair marked “the Other” as inferior. One cultural practice that symbolized this internalizing of White beauty standards was the straightening of hair, which was usually done with heated cloth after the hair had been greased.59 This psychological block regarding the most identifiable signs of Blackness—​ curly hair and dark skin—​became so important that it influenced African Americans’ aesthetic judgment vis-​à-​vis their own bodies. This is apparent in the distinction made between the light-​skinned house slaves who had “good hair,” that is, hair that looked like European hair, and the dark-​skinned field slaves whose “bad hair” revealed their African ancestry. This differentiation was reinforced by the enslavers who exploited these differences to establish a “hierarchy [...] within the social structure of the slave community.”60 As beauty became a commodity over the course of the 19th century, the way it was advertised reflected these perceptions of “White beauty” and “Black ugliness.” Starting in the 1830s, White-​owned manufacturing companies advertised their products in African American newspapers in the North.61 While they promoted a broad range of cosmetics in the mainstream media, they only sold two kinds of products to African Americans: hair straighteners and skin lighteners. Products that were marketed mainly to women.62 The message that accompanied these beauty products promised a radical change in appearance and status: from ugliness and misfortune to beauty and success.63 What illustrated these views were the images that supported the advertisements, before-​and-​after pictures showing, on the left side, a dark-​skinned woman

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The Grandest of All Preparations for the Hair,” The Colored American, December 22, 1900.

FIGURE 3.1  “Hartona:

with curly hair and, on the right side, the same woman who had “turned White” after using the beauty product.64 Moreover, the language used in these notices used racist stereotypes to appeal to consumers and play on their insecurities. This was the case of an ad published in December 1900 in The Colored American that promoted Hartona products. This advertisement promised a radical transformation from Black to White skin using the before-​and-​after format: an African American woman with disheveled hair on the left, next to a White woman with a tidier, but elaborate hairdo on the right. This pairing echoed the imagery of chromolithographed trade cards that manufacturers used extensively at the end of the 19th century to promote all kinds of goods, from home appliances to soap and other cleaning products.

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In the Hartona advertisement, the Black figure was constructed as a “regressive foil” representing the past, the “before” state, even though Black women were the targeted consumers. The White figure was the most updated version of femininity as she was placed on the right side. Moreover, the ad followed a convention present in trade cards, that of “linking […] dark, usually black, skin color, with dirt and ‘dirtiness.’ ”65 The skin whitener was called “Hartona Face Wash,” as if to suggest that “becoming White” was just a matter of washing one’s dark skin away. The third product that was advertised in the notice, “Hartona No-​Smell,” strengthened this stereotype of dirtiness as it helped construct smelliness, a third supposed flaw in African American women, along with their “filthy skin” and “ugly hair.” The vocabulary used to designate Black hair was also telling. Negative words like “knotty, stubborn, [and] harsh,” conveyed the idea that the very nature of such hair was problematic. The “straightening” of the hair was then presented as the only solution to deal with this problem. In these advertisements produced by White people, Black women’s bodies were constructed as anomalies that needed a radical transformation that only beauty products such as hair straighteners, skin lighteners, and even odor killers could perform. The name of the company that manufactured Hartona was the “Hartona Remedy Company,” which implied that, for this company, cosmetics for African Americans were considered as medicine that was supposed to cure the “ailment” that was Blackness. The terminology used by other similar businesses was consistent with this idea. The names of three of the most frequently advertised preparations between 1866 and 1905 reflected either the “curative” function of the products (“Curl-​I-​Curl,” “Black and White Ointment”) or the “problematic” nature of the Black woman’s body (“Black Skin Remover”).66 In crafting her advertisement, Annie Malone sought, first, to challenge these “controlling images,”67 to use the phrase by sociologist Patricia Hill Collins, and second, to construct another set of images and rewrite the narrative around Black womanhood. Beauty Culture as a Space of Redefinition of New Negro Womanhood

Beauty culture was not only a business, but also a “discourse,”68 shaped by race, gender, as well as class considerations among African Americans. The initial ideologies about beauty were produced from a middle-​ class masculine perspective before women intellectuals expressed their views.69 These opinions reflected a general opposition to, and condemnation of, all kinds of bodily adornment, for the use of cosmetics signaled either pure vanity, “white emulation,” or “self-​ loathing.”70 Most importantly, those who opposed hair straighteners and skin lighteners favored “a positive and explicitly modest and unadorned image of black womanhood.”71 This vision, embedded in moral and religious thoughts, contended that the use of artifice

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contradicted the values of domesticity that Black women had to respect in order to conform to the cult of true womanhood.72 Contrary to the Black middle class whose response to dominant ideology was to dismiss the use of cosmetics, poor African American women saw in beauty culture a space for self-​definition in a society that denied them this right. Instead of adopting a moral perspective, they used notions of freedom and equality to claim the right to be beautiful.73 The first prerogative those women asked for was to be visible. Apart from caricatures in popular shows and trade cards where they appeared in the form of Mammies who served “the construction of an ideal white female consumer,”74 working-​class Black women did not exist anywhere. They were only seen through the prism of racist and sexist ideologies that paradoxically displayed them in a way that reinforced their invisibility. The second demand was linked to the first. Working-​class Black women considered African American beauty culture as a space where they could perform their agency and become full-​fledged consumers. In the mainstream media, they were denied this right at the expense of White women, as Marilyn Mehaffy notes: “trade-​card iconographies […] persist[ed] in excluding black women from the parameters of both consuming domesticity and civilized nationhood.”75 This exclusion was also flagrant in African American fashion magazines at the turn of the century. Noliwe Rooks remarks that in Ringwood’s Journal, for instance, “identifiably black African American women were rarely presented as models able to embody and represent the myriad meanings of fashion” and that only “light-​skinned African American women with white features” were portrayed in this periodical.76 Carving out a space of expression for themselves was what was at stake in poor, working-​ class Black women’s involvement in the cosmetic industry. The third claim concerned “self-​expression.”77 Lower-​class Black women did not want to be defined by others, taking instead “a more authorial role in the portrayal of their identities.”78 As illustrated by Annie Malone’s advertisements, they chose what to show and what to hide, what to say about themselves with their bodies, actions, and products. Annie Malone and New Negro Womanhoods

The definitions of New Negro Womanhood that developed between the 1890s and the 1920s ranged from two extreme positions: “excessive presentations of physical naturalness” at one end of African American society to “explicit engagement with excessive adornment and artifice” at the other.79 This meant that there were as many definitions as there were Black women entrepreneurs. Situating Annie Turnbo Pope Malone in this continuum helps us understand what shaped her work as a cosmetic manufacturer and how she viewed modern Black womanhood. One of the first African American millionaires,

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the founder of PORO College, a two-​million-​dollar institution in St. Louis, Missouri in the 1920s, Malone has been very difficult to situate socially as she did not easily fit into the pattern of the poor, working-​class Black woman. Contrary to Madam C. J. Walker whose life story epitomized the uplift of a poor and uneducated Black woman from the South who achieved success in the urban North,80 the story of Malone reveals the heterogeneity of the African American social strata. Even though her involvement in club work during her career has led some to think that she was from a middle-​class background, biographical elements indicate that she had humble beginnings.81 Annie Malone was born Annie Minerva Turnbo in 1877 on a farm in Metropolis, Illinois. Her parents, Robert and Isabella Turnbo, were formerly enslaved and married at the end of the Civil War.82 Malone was raised by her older siblings after the early death of their parents. Her position in the family was advantageous to her as her siblings made sure she received an education. She was sent to Peoria, a city in northern Illinois to live with one of her married sisters and attend high school there.83 She was consequently more educated than the majority of African Americans who usually did not attend school beyond the eighth grade. The few accounts of her early life suggest that her work as a hairdresser and beauty manufacturer seemed to have been a calling. Having suffered from an illness which prevented her from graduating from high school, she had time to try to find a preparation that would help grow and do hair. Her concern for hair care signaled a more working-​class perspective as many poor Black women suffered from hair and scalp diseases that were due to a poor diet, difficult living conditions, and irregular washing for lack of running water. Thanks to some knowledge in chemistry, she eventually developed the Wonderful Hair Grower, a preparation made specifically to grow the hair of African American women. Malone started selling it in Brooklyn, Illinois, in 1900 and was helped by her younger sister, Laura. As the Wonderful Hair Grower gained in popularity among working-​class African American women, the sisters moved to St. Louis, Missouri in 1902. They intended to take advantage of the potential consumer base that would be attracted to the city as the Louisiana Purchase Exposition was about to take place there.84 This connection with working-​class women through the selling and use of cosmetics was balanced by her early exposure to middle-​class values in religious circles. Annie Malone was a member of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the second largest Black denomination in the United States after the National Baptist Convention.85 As Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham has shown, the African American Church was the place where women of the higher classes communicated the concept of Racial Uplift to the masses. She explains, the Church “functioned as […] a public sphere in which values and issues were aired, debated, and disseminated throughout the larger black community.”86

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From childhood, then, we might presume that Malone was taught the middle-​ class values of respectable behavior, demeanor, and dressing that she came to be identified with in later years.87 She certainly must have internalized these values as she taught Sunday school during her teenage years and represented her state at national conventions on several occasions. She was also involved in the Temperance Movement and made a pledge of abstinence from alcohol during these years.88 This religious, moral, and social education counterbalanced her working-​ class background and placed her at a crossroads of often conflicting values, interests, and desires. While she had the language and knew the morals of the Black middle classes, she understood the beauty needs of poor Black women with whom she identified. This position shaped the way she advertised her beauty products and her personal definition of New Negro Womanhood. Advertising New Negro Womanhood

Noliwe Rooks has remarked that the year 1906 was a turning point in the history of beauty advertisements geared towards African American women. Post-​ 1906, there was a progressive decrease in the number of White-​ manufactured products appearing in African American newspapers, which was concomitant with the increased visibility of cosmetics produced by African American women.89 This year was also critical in the development of Annie Malone’s, and Laura Roberts’—​Malone’s sister—​business. They used hundreds of women they called agents90 to sell the Wonderful Hair Grower door to door.91 One of them, Sarah Breedlove McWilliams, had left St. Louis at the beginning of 1906 to settle in Denver, Colorado, carrying with her bottles of Malone’s preparation that she intended to sell in this new market. Upon her arrival in the Mile-​High City, McWilliams, who had just married a publicist named C. J. Walker, started selling the Wonderful Hair Grower without crediting Malone. Rumors about this must have reached St. Louis since at some point during the month of May, the new Mrs. C. J. Walker, maybe out of fear of being caught, wrote to Malone to inform her that some people had tried to copy her product. Malone replied to her letter and asked her to publish it in the Colorado Statesman. This forced Walker to publicly acknowledge that she was selling Malone and Roberts’ Wonderful Hair Grower. This connection did not last, however. By August 1906, Madam C. J. Walker, as she was now called, would break ties with Malone and present herself as the inventor of the Wonderful Hair Grower.92 This early challenge forced Malone to devise new commercial strategies in her business practices. As the name of her product, the Wonderful Hair Grower, was now being used by her former employee and new competitor, she coined the brand PORO, which was the association of the first syllables of Pope—​Malone’s married name—​and Roberts, and trademarked it on January

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8, 1907.93 While she continued recruiting agents, she started advertising her production in the developing Black press. The first PORO ad appeared in Midwestern newspapers from at least May 3, 1907, to December 18, 1909, when a new advertisement replaced it after the creation of PORO College.94 In this first advertisement, Mrs. A. M. Pope and Mrs. L. L. Roberts presented themselves as “The Original Hair Growers” to signal their pioneering work as more and more competitors and imitators entered the field. While trying to fend off rivals and carve out substantial parts of this growing market, Annie Malone produced more than a simple advertisement, she gave meaning to her product, her business, and Black women’s identities. She first positioned her work out of the “construct” of “racial ideologies” that had been built by White manufacturers of African American cosmetics.95 The language she used radically departed from the negative terminology that abounded in those advertisements. There were no references to straightening but instead, a focus on the idea of growth: “We Grew Our Hair, Now Let Us Grow Yours,” “our wonderful work of growing,” “we have grown the hair for hundreds, rapidly achieving success.” Even though the Malone sisters’ hair appears to have been straightened so as to show its full length, the stress was on the process that led to this result, and not on the texture of the hair, which stood in contrast to White-​produced advertisements. The PORO Hair Grower was a kind of pomade that one had to apply twice or three times a week, but the enterprise would later develop the “PORO pressing oil” that would be used to grease the hair before straightening it with a hot comb.96 The erasing of the idea of straightening contributed to a redefinition of the meaning of cosmetics for Black women and served to make them acceptable in the eyes of middle-​class African Americans who favored naturalness. The language used to refer to African American hair also helped cast this type of hair differently. Derogatory adjectives such as “kinky,” “snarly,” or “knotty,” had been replaced by more neutral expressions that showed the diversity of hair among Black people. African Americans were seen by mainstream society as a monolith. The same prejudice applied to the texture of the hair which was seen as uniform whereas the curls that were specific to people of African descent ranged from extremely tight to very loose. Malone deconstructed this prejudice invoking the variedness of Black hair and its malleability: “all kinds, all qualities, all lengths, and all conditions of hair.” Doing this, she reconstructed African American hair on a symbolic level, and, through a metonymical device. She restored the integrity of the Black woman’s body, which was no longer presented as anomalous. Along with the language used, the pictures were also designed in opposition to the prevalent paradigm. Malone used the traditional diptych to prove the efficiency of her pomade but subverted it as it was not based on a before-​and-​ after dynamic. The past did not appear in these images. It was only referred to by the expression “four years ago” which located in time the beginning of the

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process. What mattered was the present, which was the core of the ideology of the New Negroes who wanted to rid themselves of the past and its present-​ day connotations. The Black woman who was usually associated with the past whether in trade cards or in traditional cosmetic advertisements was now the present and the future.97 Instead of two caricatures of the past and the present, one could see two modern Black women in a very becoming posture, which came to counter mainstream constructions of Black womanhood. The second way they deconstructed the stereotypes that concerned Black women and circulated throughout the nation was by the fact that Mrs. A. M. Pope and Mrs. L. L. Roberts were not “Mammies,” but businesswomen who

FIGURE 3.2 “The

Original Hair Growers,” The Forum, December 28, 1911.

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manufactured beauty products. There was no sign of servility in the way they were dressed, as the two sisters wore white shirtwaists.98 These button-​ down blouses were very fashionable at the time and symbolized modernity, as they were associated with the independent and progressive New Woman who conquered the public sphere through work, leisure, and politics.99 The shirtwaist was also what the Gibson Girl wore.100 This ideal of beauty and femininity which was created by illustrator Charles Dana Gibson in 1890 provided “an alternative model of American femininity to the politically ambitious New Woman.”101 This figure was also “an insatiable consumer and an appealing commodity.”102 The fact that Annie Malone and Laura Roberts wore shirtwaists demonstrated their partaking in the experience of modernity. They were “working girls” who consumed cosmetics and, through the use of their own product, offered a space for leisure and self-​ care to African American women. Moreover, “by using their own bodies as marketing tools,”103 they themselves became commodities. This transgression of the New Negro Woman’s values of domesticity and naturalness led the two women to counterbalance the modernity of their stance with more conventional signs of middle-​ class Black womanhood. They had to insist on their moral character in order not to be taken for Jezebels. They were not girls but married women who displayed their marital titles and spouses’ names at the expense of their own identities: “Mrs. A.M. Pope,” “Mrs. L.L. Roberts.” This was all the more significant since in 1907, Annie Malone was already separated from her first husband, Nelson Pope. She chose to keep his name and did not mention her divorce to remain respectable and protect her business.104 The two women also practiced the politics of respectability in covering their bodies. Apart from their hair which was prominently displayed for commercial purposes, the other parts of their bodies were modestly presented. Contrary to the sexualized Gibson Girl who was “clothed in the latest low-​neck fashion” to show her long neck, Annie Malone and Laura Roberts had “standing collars” that covered the décolletage completely. As Riana Henderson put it bluntly, during the progressive era, “high fashion went sexy as Black fashion went austere and dignified.”105 Middle-​class women usually wore their hair tied in a bun and had hats on to signal their status.106 Here, the two women’s hair was loose, which was a breach of Victorian propriety. This transgression was also reinforced by the fact that the two sisters explicitly talked about their hair and consequently about their bodies: “my hair was only a finger-​length,” “my temples were bald half,” “my hair just covered my shoulders.” This very intimate disclosure needed to be counteracted by a more discreet look. This is why they adopted a very respectable posture while being photographed. Neither of them looked directly at the camera; Annie Malone was shot in profile while her sister was in half profile with her gaze averted.107 Their slight smiles exemplified

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this tension between respectability, on the one hand, and modernity, on the other. While Malone and Roberts did not have the “somber countenance” that characterized conventional photographs, they did not show their teeth either, as teeth were considered “semiprivate parts of the body” during the Victorian era.108 These two women set new standards of beauty outside of the mainstream media. The markers of beauty that made the Gibson Girl popular at that time—​her upswept hair in a Pompadour style, her snub nose, and small mouth—​were replaced by new ones: loose hair, large noses, and thick lips. The Gibson Girl was a sketch crafted out of the mind of Charles Dana Gibson. In many ways she was unreal and her beauty unattainable. She had a very narrow waist that contrasted with a very large bosom, and no “cleft between the breasts.”109 Conversely, Annie Malone and Laura Roberts were two embodiments of Black beauty many women could identify with. The potency of this ad was that it functioned as a mirror in which African American women could see themselves, and beauty was made accessible through a language that connected “the Original Hair Growers” with their potential clients: “We Grew Our Hair, Now Let Us Grow Yours.” Conclusion

This chapter explored how the philosophy of Racial Uplift and the ideology of the New Negro intersected with commercial beauty culture in the early 1900s. This connection between two apparently antithetical worlds produced a unique and alternative vision of New Negro Womanhood in the advertisement produced by beauty entrepreneur Annie Malone in 1907. With her working-​class background, Malone departed from the elitist definitions of New Negro women as envisioned by African American intellectuals who applied class and color biases to their portrayal of New Negroes. Her definition was almost essentially based on a discussion and displaying of Black women’s bodies, a locus usually silenced by the Black intelligentsia. With her middle-​class sensibilities, she managed to construct a modern Black woman who used cosmetics while respecting the language and codes that reflected Victorian proprieties. With these photographs of herself and her sister displayed in African American newspapers for more than two years, she created a new visibility for Black women’s bodies. This allowed her to reclaim womanhood, attractivity, and beauty for herself but also for working-​ class Black women who used her product. Malone effectively reclaimed the objectified caricature created by the White male gaze in her construction of the New Negro Woman. This New Negro Woman became a subject by creating her own cosmetics, beautifying her body, and sharing a culture of beauty with other women.

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Notes 1 Jacqueline M. Moore, Booker T. Washington, W.E. B. Du Bois, and the Struggle for Racial Uplift (Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, 2003), xv. 2 Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880–​1920 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), 1; 13. The phrase comes from abolitionist Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, quoted in Hazel V Carby, “ ‘On the Threshold of Woman’s Era’: Lynching, Empire, and Sexuality in Black Feminist Theory,” Critical Inquiry 12, no. 1 (1985): 262–​264, www.jstor.org/​sta​ble/​1343​470. 3 Henry Louis Gates, Jr., “The Trope of a New Negro and the Reconstruction of the Image of the Black,” Representations no. 24 (1988): 131; 137, https://​doi.org/​ 10.2307/​2928​478. 4 Noliwe Rooks, Hair Raising: Beauty, Culture, and African American Women (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996), 16; 48. 5 Rooks, Hair Raising, 15. 6 Rooks, Hair Raising, 39–​ 40; 42–​ 43; Treva B. Lindsey, Colored No More: Reinventing Black Womanhood in Washington, D.C. (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2017), 56. 7 Davarian Baldwin, Chicago’s New Negroes: Modernity, the Great Migration, and Black Urban Life (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 5–​7. 8 Baldwin, Chicago’s New Negroes, 53–​90. 9 Rooks, Hair Raising, 48; 45. 10 Rooks, Hair Raising, 48–​49. 11 Claude A. Barnett Papers, Chicago History Museum, The Light and Heebie Jeebies, 19.02.1927, box 262, folder 5. 12 Gates, “Trope of a New Negro,” 129. 13 Washington, Booker T., Norman Barton Wood, and Fannie Barrier Williams, A New Negro for a New Century: An Accurate and Up-​to-​date Record of the Upward Struggles of the Negro Race (Chicago: American Publishing House, 1900). 14 Frances Beale, “Double Jeopardy: To Be Black and Female,” in The Black Woman: An Anthology, ed. Toni Cade Bambara (New York: New American Library, 1970), 100; Kimberlé Crenshaw, “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color,” Stanford Law Review 43, no. 6 (1991): 1243–​1244, https://​doi.org/​10.2307/​1229​039. 15 Laurie Kaiser, “The Black Madonna: Notions of True Womanhood from Jacobs to Hurston,” South Atlantic Review 60, no. 1 (1995): 98, https://​doi.org/​10.2307/​ 3200​715. 16 Gates, “Trope of a New Negro,” 136. 17 Booker T. Washington, “ ‘The New Negro Woman,’ Lend a Hand (1895),” in The American New Woman Revisited: A Reader, 1894–​1930, ed. Martha H. Patterson (Ithaca, NY: Rutgers University Press, 2008), 58; 55, https://​doi.org/​10.36019/​ 978081​3544​946-​009. 18 Barbara Welter, “The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820–​ 1860,” American Quarterly 18, no. 2 (1966): 162, https://​doi.org/​10.2307/​2711​179. 19 Washington, “The New Negro Woman,” 55; 57. 20 Washington, “The New Negro Woman,” 57.

80  Néfertiti Ngoupande-Nah

1 Washington, “The New Negro Woman,” 55. 2 22 Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 14; Washington, “The New Negro Woman,” 59. 23 Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 15. 24 Shirley Carlson, “Black Ideals of Womanhood in the Late Victorian Era,” The Journal of Negro History 77, no. 2 (1992): 61, https://​doi.org/​10.2307/​3031​483. 25 See the portraits of women, especially those of Miss Helen Abott, or Miss Mattie B. Davis, who could have easily as passed. Washington, A New Negro, 381; 422. 26 Janell Hobson, “The ‘Batty’ Politic: Toward an Aesthetic of the Black Female Body,” Hypatia 18, no. 4 (2003): 87–​88, www.jstor.org/​sta​ble/​3810​976. 27 Gates, “Trope of a New Negro,” 131; Hobson, “Batty Politic,” 87. 28 Reconstruction officially started in 1865 with the ratification of the 13th Amendment and the abolition of slavery. During this period, African Americans became citizens and obtained voting rights. It ended in 1877 with the termination of the “federal protection of blacks,” see Moore, Booker T. Washington, xxi–​xxii. 29 J. Stanley Lemons, “Black Stereotypes as Reflected in Popular Culture, 1880–​ 1920,” American Quarterly 29, no. 1 (1977): 111, https://​doi.org/​10.2307/​ 2712​263. 30 Laila Haidarali, Brown Beauty: Color, Sex, and Race from the Harlem Renaissance to World War II (New York: New York University Press, 2018), 85. 31 Hobson, “Batty Politic,” 87. 32 Kimberly Wallace-​Sanders, Mammy: A Century of Race, Gender, and Southern Memory (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2009), 2; David Pilgrim, “The Mammy Caricature,” Ferris State University. (October 2000), https://​jimcro​wmus​ eum.fer​ris.edu/​mamm​ies/​homep​age.htm; “Popular and Pervasive Stereotypes of African Americans,” NMAAHC, accessed March 21, 2023, https://​nma​ahc. si.edu/​expl​ore/​stor​ies/​popu​lar-​and-​pervas​ive-​ster​eoty​pes-​afri​can-​americ​ans. 33 Wallace-​Sanders, Mammy, 2; 10. 34 NMAAHC, “Stereotypes of African Americans”; Christine Eck, “Three Books, Three Stereotypes: Mothers and the Ghosts of Mammy, Jezebel, and Sapphire in Contemporary African American Literature,” Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism 11, no. 1 (2018): 12, https://​scho​lars​arch​ive.byu.edu/​criter​ion/​vol11/​iss1/​5. 35 Pilgrim, “Mammy Caricature.” One of the most famous embodiments of this stereotype was the character called Mammy in Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind. 36 Wallace-​Sanders, Mammy, 6. 37 Wallace-​Sanders, Mammy, 5–​6. The stereotype was not initially constructed with this physique. Wallace-​Sanders notes that before 1852 and the publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe, “not one of the Mammy characters … [was] as large and overweight,” see page 7. 38 Kaiser, “Black Madonna,” 102; Haidarali, Brown Beauty, 71; Hobson, “Batty Politic,”103. 39 Louis R. Harlan, “Booker T. Washington and the Voice of the Negro, 1904–​ 1907,” The Journal of Southern History 45, no. 1 (1979): 45, https://​doi.org/​ 10.2307/​2207​901. 40 John H. Adams, “Rough Sketches: A Study of the Features of the New Negro Woman,” Voice of the Negro 1, no. 8 (August 1904): 323–​326, https://​doi.org/​ 10.36019/​978081​3544​946-​041; “Rough Sketches: The New Negro Man,” Voice

The Right to Be Beautiful  81

of the Negro 1, no. 10 (October 1904): 447–​452, https://​doi.org/​10.1515/​978140​ 0827​879-​010. 41 Pilgrim, “Mammy Caricature.” 42 Eck, “Three Books, Three Stereotypes,” 12. 43 Eck, “Three Books, Three Stereotypes,”12. 44 Mahassen Mgadmi, “Black Women’s Identity: Stereotypes, Respectability, and Passionlessness (1890–​1930),” LISA e-​journal 7, no. 1 (2009): 40–​55, https://​doi. org/​10.4000/​lisa.806. 45 Darlene Clark Hine, “Rape and the Inner Lives of Black Women in the Middle West,” Signs 14, no. 4 (1989): 912–​916, www.jstor.org/​sta​ble/​3174​692. 46 Hine, “Rape,” 917. 47 Hine, “Rape,” 920. 48 Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 193; 201. 49 Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 200. 50 Noliwe Rooks, Ladies’ Pages: African American Women’s Magazines and the Culture that Made Them (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004), 48. 51 Kathy Peiss, Hope in a Jar: The Making of America’s Beauty Culture (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1998), 62. 52 Peiss, Hope in a Jar, 4; 62. 53 Peiss, Hope in a Jar, 7; 210–​211. 54 Ayana Byrd and Lori Tharps, Hair Story: Untangling the Roots of Black Hair (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2001), 10–​11. 55 Byrd and Tharps, Hair Story, 7–​9; Shane White and Graham White, “Slave Hair and African American Culture in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,” The Journal of Southern History 61, no. 1 (1995): 26, https://​doi.org/​10.2307/​ 2211​360. 56 Byrd and Tharps, Hair Story, 13. 57 White and White, “Slave Hair,” 70. 58 White and White, “Slave Hair,” 56; 58. 59 Byrd and Tharps, Hair Story, 13–​14; White and White, “Slave Hair,” 71. 60 Byrd and Tharps, Hair Story, 19. 61 Rooks, Hair Raising, 13; 24. 62 Rooks, Hair Raising, 26–​27. 63 Rooks, Hair Raising, 35. 64 Rooks, Hair Raising, 26. 65 Rooks, Hair Raising, 136. 66 Rooks, Hair Raising, 27. 67 Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. (New York: Routledge, 2009), 76. 68 Lindsey, Colored No More, 54. 69 Lindsey, Colored No More, 40. 70 Rooks, Hair Raising, 47; Peiss, Hope in a Jar, 7. 71 Davarian Baldwin, “From the Washtub to the World: Madam C. J. Walker and the ‘Re-​creation’ of Race Womanhood, 1900–​1935,” in The Modern Girl around the World, ed. Alys Eve Weinbaum et al. (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008), 57. 72 Baldwin, “Washtub,” 58. In White beauty culture, these moral arguments were the core of the debate as women who used lipstick, rouge, and other kinds of makeup were considered prostitutes. See Peiss, Hope in a Jar, 26–​27.

82  Néfertiti Ngoupande-Nah

3 Peiss, Hope in a Jar, 7; 210–​11. 7 74 Marilyn Mehaffy, “Advertising Race/​ Raceing Advertising: The Feminine Consumer(-​Nation), 1876–​1900,” Signs 23, no. 1 (1997): 132, www.jstor.org/​sta​ ble/​3175​155. 75 Mehaffy, “Advertising Race,” 152. 76 Rooks, Ladies’ Pages, 22. 77 Lindsey, Colored No More, 56. 78 Lindsey, Colored No More, 55. 79 Baldwin, “Washtub,” 57. 80 Baldwin, “Washtub,” 56–​57; 64–​65. 81 Baldwin, Chicago’s New Negroes, 66. 82 “Robert Turnbow and Izabell Cook, 01 Apr 1866: Illinois, County Marriages, 1810–​1940,” FamilySearch, citing Massac, Illinois, United States, county offices, Illinois; FHL microfilm 961, 837, accessed February 19, 2021, https://​famil​ysea​ rch.org/​ark:/​61903/​1:1:KF25-​BTP. 83 Robert O. French Papers, Vivian G. Harsh Research Collection of Afro-​American History and Literature, Chicago Public Library, box 1, folder 14, folder 27. 84 Claude A. Barnett Papers, Chicago History Museum, The Light and Heebie Jeebies, February 19,1927, box 262, folder 5. 85 Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 6. 86 Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 7. 87 Baldwin, Chicago’s New Negroes, 66. 88 Robert O. French Papers, Vivian G. Harsh Research Collection of Afro-​American History and Literature, Chicago Public Library, box 1, folder 14, folder 27. 89 Rooks, Hair Raising, 42. 90 Annie Malone, as other women entrepreneurs of the early 20th century, took the agent system from the California Perfume Company (later renamed Avon) which, from 1886 on, used women to sell its perfumes. Kathy Peiss, Hope in a Jar, 72. Malone would use this system to its full potential with 75,000 PORO agents selling her products and doing Black women’s hair by 1924. 91 Claude A. Barnett Papers, Chicago History Museum, The Light and Heebie Jeebies, February 19, 1927, box 262, folder 5. 92 The Colorado Statesman, “Why Need Wear False Hair Any Longer,” March 16, 1906, 6; “To the Ladies,” May 11, 1906, 12; “All Persons Will Take One Treatment,” May 12, 1906, 5; “Mme Walker, The Hair Grower,” August 17, 1906,12. 93 Patricia Carter Sluby, The Entrepreneurial Spirit of African American Inventors (Santa Barbara, California: ABC-​CLIO, Incorporated, 2011), 52. 94 The Statesman, “The Original Hair Growers,” May 3, 1907,16; “The Original Hair Growers,” December 18, 1909, 6. 95 Rooks, Hair Raising, 35. 96 Poro College (Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture), “Price list for dealers of Poro products.” Poro Hair & Beauty Culture. Poro College, 1922, 18; Poro College (Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture), “Enrollment Certificate to Poro College for Lucille Brown,” March 19, 1915. 97 Mehaffy, “Advertising Race,” 133; Rooks, Hair Raising, 27–​29.

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98 Jo-​Ann Morgan, “Mammy the Huckster: Selling the Old South for the New Century,” American Art 9, no. 1 (1995): 99–​100, www.jstor.org/​sta​ble/​3109​197. 99 “What is a Shirtwaist?” PBS, accessed April 22, 2023, www.pbs.org/​wgbh/​ame​ rica​nexp​erie​nce/​featu​res/​trian​gle-​fire-​what-​shi​rtwa​ist/​. 100 Riana Henderson, “The New Negro Woman: African-​American Womanhood, Respectability, and Power in the Early Twentieth Century,” PhD diss. (University of Kansas, 2022), 59. 101 Kasia Boddy, “American Girl: The Iconographies of Helen Wills,” in “Visualities –​ Sports, Bodies, and Visual Sources,” ed. Jörn Eiben and Olaf Stieglitz, special issue, Historical Social Research /​Historische Sozialforschung 43, no. 2 (164) (2018): 112, www.jstor.org/​sta​ble/​26454​282. 102 Kasia Boddy, “American Girl,” 112. 103 Rooks, Hair Raising, 42–​43. 104 Claude A. Barnett Papers, Chicago History Museum, The Light and Heebie Jeebies, February 19, 1927, box 262, folder 5. 105 Donald Kuspit, “Charles Dana Gibson’s Girl,” Jahrbuch Für Amerikastudien 7 (1962): 184. www.jstor.org/​sta​ble/​41155​010; Henderson, “African American Womanhood,” 9; 7. 106 Henderson, “African American Womanhood,” 9. 107 Rooks, Ladies’ Pages, 33. 108 Lynn Thomas, “The Modern Girl and Racial Respectability in 1930s South Africa,” in The Modern Girl around the World, ed. Alys Eve Weinbaum et al. (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008), 102–​103; David Sonstroem, “Teeth in Victorian Art,” Victorian Literature and Culture 29, no. 2 (2001): 351, www. jstor.org/​sta​ble/​25058​558. 109 Lois Banner, American Beauty (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1983), 154; Lynn D. Gordon, “The Gibson Girl Goes to College: Popular Culture and Women’s Higher Education in the Progressive Era, 1890–​1920,” American Quarterly 39, no. 2 (1987): 211, https://​doi.org/​10.2307/​2712​910; Donald Kuspit, “Charles Dana’s Gibson Girl,” 184.

Reference List Adams, John H. “Rough Sketches: A Study of the Features of the New Negro Woman.” Voice of the Negro 1, no. 8 (August 1904): 323–​326. https://​doi.org/​ 10.36019/​978081​3544​946-​041. Adams, John H. “Rough Sketches: The New Negro Man.” Voice of the Negro 1, no. 10 (October 1904): 447–​452. https://​doi.org/​10.1515/​978140​0827​879-​010. Baldwin, Davarian. Chicago’s New Negroes: Modernity, the Great Migration, and Black Urban Life. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2007. Banner, Lois W. American Beauty. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1983. Barnett Claude A. Papers. Chicago History Museum. Beale, Frances. “Double Jeopardy: To Be Black and Female.” In The Black Woman: An Anthology, edited by Toni Cade Bambara, 90–​100. New York: New American Library, 1970. Boddy, Kasia. “American Girl: The Iconographies of Helen Wills.” In “Visualities –​ Sports, Bodies, and Visual Sources,” edited by Jörn Eiben and Olaf Stieglitz. Special

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Issue, Historical Social Research /​Historische Sozialforschung 43, no. 2 (164) (2018): 109–​128. www.jstor.org/​sta​ble/​26454​282. Brooks Higginbotham, Evelyn. Righteous Discontent: The Women’s Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880–​1920. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993. Byrd, Ayana, and Lori Tharps. Hair Story: Untangling the Roots of Black Hair in America. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2001. Carby, Hazel V. “‘On the Threshold of Woman’s Era’: Lynching, Empire, and Sexuality in Black Feminist Theory.” Critical Inquiry 12, no. 1 (1985): 262–​277. www.jstor.org/​sta​ble/​1343​470. Carlson, Shirley J. “Black Ideals of Womanhood in the Late Victorian Era.” The Journal of Negro History 77, no. 2 (1992): 61–​ 73. https://​doi.org/​10.2307/​ 3031​483. Carter Sluby, Patricia. The Entrepreneurial Spirit of African American Inventors. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-​CLIO, Incorporated, 2011. Crenshaw, Kimberlé. “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color.” Stanford Law Review 43, no. 6 (1991): 1241–​ 1299. https://​doi.org/​10.2307/​1229​039. Eck, Christine. “Three Books, Three Stereotypes: Mothers and the Ghosts of Mammy, Jezebel, and Sapphire in Contemporary African American Literature.” Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism 11, no. 1 (2018): 11–​24. https://​scho​lars​arch​ive.byu. edu/​criter​ion/​vol11/​iss1/​5. French Robert O. Papers. Vivian G. Harsh Research Collection of Afro-​American History and Literature, Chicago Public Library. Gates, Henry Louis. “The Trope of a New Negro and the Reconstruction of the Image of the Black.” Representations no. 24 (1988): 129–​155. https://​doi.org/​10.2307/​ 2928​478. Gordon, Lynn D. “The Gibson Girl Goes to College: Popular Culture and Women’s Higher Education in the Progressive Era, 1890–​1920.” American Quarterly 39, no. 2 (1987): 211–​230. https://​doi.org/​10.2307/​2712​910. Haidarali, Leila. Brown Beauty: Color, Sex, and Race from the Harlem Renaissance to World War II. New York: New York University Press, 2018. Harlan, Louis R. “Booker T. Washington and the Voice of the Negro, 1904–​1907.” The Journal of Southern History 45, no. 1 (1979): 45–​62. https://​doi.org/​10.2307/​ 2207​901. Henderson, Riana. “The New Negro Woman: African-​ American Womanhood, Respectability, and Power in the Early Twentieth Century.” PhD dissertation, University of Kansas, 2022. Hill Collins, Patricia. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. New York: Routledge, 2009. Hine, Darlene Clark. “Rape and the Inner Lives of Black Women in the Middle West.” Signs 14, no. 4 (1989): 912–​920. www.jstor.org/​sta​ble/​3174​692. Hobson, Janell. “The ‘Batty’ Politic: Toward an Aesthetic of the Black Female Body.” Hypatia 18, no. 4 (2003): 87–​105. www.jstor.org/​sta​ble/​3810​976. Kaiser, Laurie. “The Black Madonna: Notions of True Womanhood from Jacobs to Hurston.” South Atlantic Review 60, no. 1 (1995): 97–​109. https://​doi.org/​ 10.2307/​3200​715. Kuspit, Donald B. “Charles Dana Gibson’s Girl.” Jahrbuch Für Amerikastudien 7 (1962): 183–​187. www.jstor.org/​sta​ble/​41155​010.

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Lemons, J. Stanley. “Black Stereotypes as Reflected in Popular Culture, 1880–​1920.” American Quarterly 29, no. 1 (1977): 102–​116. https://​doi.org/​10.2307/​2712​263. Lindsey, Treva. Colored No More: Reinventing Black Womanhood in Washington, D.C. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2017. Mehaffy, Marilyn Maness. “Advertising Race/​Raceing Advertising: The Feminine Consumer(-​Nation), 1876–​1900.” Signs 23, no. 1 (1997): 131–​174. www.jstor. org/​sta​ble/​3175​155. Mgadmi, Mahassen. “Black Women’s Identity: Stereotypes, Respectability, and Passionlessness (1890–​1930).” LISA e-​journal 7, no. 1 (2009): 40–​55. https://​doi. org/​10.4000/​lisa.806. Moore, Jacqueline. Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, and the Struggle for Racial Uplift. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources Inc., 2003. Morgan, Jo-​Ann. “Mammy the Huckster: Selling the Old South for the New Century.” American Art 9, no. 1 (1995): 87–​109. www.jstor.org/​sta​ble/​3109​197. National Museum of African American History & Culture. “Popular and Pervasive Stereotypes of African Americans.” NMAAHC. Accessed March 21, 2023. https://​nma​ahc.si.edu/​expl​ore/​stor​ies/​popu​lar-​and-​pervas​ive-​ster​eoty​pes-​afri​can-​ americ​ans. Peiss, Kathy. Hope in a Jar: The Making of America’s Beauty Culture. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1998. Pilgrim, David. “The Mammy Caricature.” Ferris State University. October 2000. www.fer​ris.edu/​HTMLS/​news/​jimc​row/​mamm​ies/​homep​age.htm. Rooks, Noliwe. Hair Raising: Beauty, Culture, and African American Women. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996. Rooks, Noliwe. Ladies’ Pages: African American Women’s Magazines and the Culture that Made Them. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004. Sonstroem, David. “Teeth in Victorian Art.” Victorian Literature and Culture 29, no. 2 (2001): 351–​382. www.jstor.org/​sta​ble/​25058​558. Wallace-​Sanders, Kimberly. Mammy: A Century of Race, Gender, and Southern Memory. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2009. Washington, Booker T. “ ‘The New Negro Woman,’ Lend a Hand (1895).” In The American New Woman Revisited: A Reader, 1894–​1930, edited by Martha H. Patterson, 54–​ 59. Ithaca, NY: Rutgers University Press, 2008. https://​doi.org/​ 10.36019/​978081​3544​946-​009. Washington, Booker T., Norman Barton Wood, and Fannie Barrier Williams. A New Negro for a New Century: An Accurate and Up-​to-​date Record of the Upward Struggles of the Negro Race. Chicago: American Publishing House, 1900. Weinbaum, Alys Eve, Lynn M. Thomas, Priti Ramamurthy, Uta G. Poiger, Madeleine Yue Dong, and Tani E. Barlow, eds. The Modern Girl around the World: Consumption, Modernity, and Globalization. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008. Welter, Barbara. “The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820–​1860.” American Quarterly 18, no. 2 (1966): 151–​174. https://​doi.org/​10.2307/​2711​179. “What is a Shirtwaist?” PBS. Accessed April 22, 2023. www.pbs.org/​wgbh/​ame​rica​ nexp​erie​nce/​featu​res/​trian​gle-​fire-​what-​shi​rtwa​ist/​. White, Shane, and Graham White. “Slave Hair and African American Culture in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries.” The Journal of Southern History 61, no. 1 (1995): 45–​76. https://​doi.org/​10.2307/​2211​360.

PART II

Violence and Womanhood

4 THE PARADOX OF VIOLENT WOMEN IN THE U.S. ANTIABORTION MOVEMENT Karissa Haugeberg

When I studied women’s experiences in the U.S. antiabortion movement for my book, Women against Abortion, I sought to understand how so many women—​nearly all of them white and Catholic or white evangelical Christians—​justified their use of intimidating, misleading, and sometimes violent strategies in their quest to end abortion.1 The women I studied plastered physicians’ neighborhoods with posters that identified them as wanted killers, replete with their travel schedules, license plate numbers, and the names and addresses of clinic staff. These activists posed as patients to gather intelligence on clinic operations and building designs. They stalked providers, tailing them as they drove from work to their homes, their churches, and even to their children’s sporting events. They detonated bombs and even fired guns with the intent to kill. And they rationalized this violence, maintaining that they were part of a holy crusade to save innocent babies from murderous doctors and the women who carried them. In the years since the book’s publication, I continue to observe how some scholars and many journalists continue to erect misleading—​and I would argue, inaccurately sharp—​ distinctions between violent and nonviolent antiabortion organizing. I have also considered how conservative women who embraced violent strategies compare to other conservative women activists in U.S. history. In particular, I have thought about the work that I left unfinished, which is the strange relationship between conservative women’s activism and the beauty cult that has shaped opportunities for generations of white, middle-​class women. Scholarship about the meanings and motivations of conservative and reactionary women has flourished in the last two decades. Stephanie Jones-​ Rogers, Kathleen Blee, Elizabeth Gillespie McRae, Lisa McGirr, Catherine DOI: 10.4324/9781003425380-7

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Rymph, Seyward Darby, and others have documented the ways in which women have been central to the project of erecting and maintaining patriarchy and white supremacist regimes.2 Scholars who study conservative women in the U.S. have demonstrated that gender is not predictive of one’s political ideology. Rather, women generally identify with people from a similar class or with those who share their support for, or rejection of, white supremacy. Although conservative and reactionary movements often promote stereotypes about men and women that have the effect of marginalizing women, select women have benefitted from inequality and injustice. Many of those women joined their husbands and fathers to protect their economic and social interests, even when it came at the expense of gender equality. Historians of women’s and gender history often remind students that—​despite claims to the contrary—​there has never been a coherent, singular “woman’s culture.”3 Coverture as a Dividing Line between Progressive and Conservative Women

Scholars who have analyzed women’s participation in conservative movements in the U.S. often frame their studies with an intellectual and legal history rooted in the tradition and practices of coverture. After the American Revolution, states modeled many of their laws on British common law. The common law practice of coverture treated men and women differently. It diminished women’s legal rights upon marriage because wives were understood to be “covered” by their husbands’ civil identities. Under this scheme, husbands’ relationships with their wives resembled authoritative–​ protective relationships between parents and their minor children.4 Coverture permitted men to exercise legal power over their wives’ property and over their bodies. Thus, marital rape was not considered a criminal act under most circumstances.5 Married women could not make contracts, be sued, determine their family’s domicile, vote, hold office, or serve on juries. Laws and customs that drew on coverture were predicated on the assumption that women were too emotional and irrational for civic responsibility. These laws were justified as being for a woman’s protection and benefit. The women’s liberation movement of the late 20th century took aim at the vestiges of coverture that continued to influence women’s political, legal, and social lives. Under the terms of coverture, physicality operated in strictly gendered terms. Men were assumed to be capable of, and in many instances, entitled to aggression. Women had little legal recourse when husbands raped or abused them. Physicality also bound husbands and wives. Husbands were expected to support their wives by providing at least the minimum necessities and to protect their wives from other men’s violence. In turn, wives were expected to provide household labor, affection, companionship, and sex.6 For many conservatives, coverture’s gender-​segmented physical scheme made

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good sense. It was reciprocal: in theory, men and women had obligations to one another and in turn, were eligible to enjoy benefits from one another. Women’s opinions about coverture have often distinguished those who identify as conservatives from those who identify as progressives, well into our own time. The fight over women’s suffrage, the second battle over the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), and even the ongoing debate about the selective service military registration requirement hinge on very old disagreements about men’s and women’s obligations to one another and to the state. For its proponents, women’s intellectual and physical weakness justified the codification of inequality. Coverture, they maintained, protected women from the stresses of public life, the burdens of civic obligations, and the physical dangers that lurked outside the home. Well into the 20th century, antifeminists, including Phyllis Schlafly, maintained that coverture offered women a unique “privileged” status, one that would be lost if men no longer felt obligated to protect and provide.7 Anxieties over de-​gendering and “de-​privileging” continue to animate social conservatives, as we see in contemporary efforts to exclude trans women and girl athletes under the guise of “protecting” cis-​gendered women and girls.8 Scholars have pointed to the enduring legacies of coverture to understand why women were attracted to antiabortion activism. In the early 1980s, sociologist Kristen Luker interviewed over 200 women who supported and opposed abortion rights for her landmark book, Abortion & the Politics of Motherhood. Her research revealed that women who opposed abortion were anxious that the meaning and status of motherhood was being undermined by feminist social and legal reforms in the United States. At the time, most women who opposed abortion were working-​class, white Catholics. Many of them dropped out of the paid workforce after having children to care for their families full time. And many of them perceived that feminists were hell-​ bent on destroying nuclear families characterized by breadwinning husbands and wives who dropped out of the paid workforce to raise children and tend to their households full time.9 Many of the antiabortion women whom Luker interviewed feared that their social status would be diminished if motherhood became optional because of legal contraception and abortion. They worried that feminists’ calls for equal pay would dismantle the male breadwinner model, a model that had—​at least in theory—​offered women the financial “freedom” or the “privilege” to drop out of the paid workforce after marriage. In reality, a constellation of factors has prompted women, who could afford to do so, to drop out of the paid workforce. Job dissatisfaction, childcare costs, gender-​based pay discrimination, and a lack of gender equity at home have driven women from their wage-​paying jobs.10 Nevertheless, many women who opposed abortion rights perceived feminists’ demands for equality as an implicit criticism of their desire to participate in a gender-​regimented system.11 If motherhood

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were to become optional, they questioned, how might feminists and others judge them for their status as homemakers and mothers? More recently, historian Gillian Frank has observed that many of the women who opposed abortion in Michigan in the late 1960s and early 1970s also opposed busing programs intended to desegregate the nation’s public schools. Richard Nixon’s notoriously racist—​ and antiabortion—​ 1972 presidential campaign was designed to appeal to working-​class white Catholics in the urban and suburban United States.12 Nixon, and later Ronald Reagan, sought to persuade long-​ time Democrats that the new Republican Party would protect their interests. Leaders of the New Right, a coalition of activists and organizations that opposed a constellation of liberal programs and policies, including the Equal Rights Amendment, affirmative action, and government regulations, promised to uphold religious freedom, protect “traditional” values, and dismantle welfare programs that benefitted the “undeserving” poor.13 Scholars of conservative women might draw from the reproductive justice movement, which highlighted the shortcomings of “choice”-​based politics (Who “gets” to choose abortion?) to interrogate how poor and working-​class white conservative women understood the ways that choice-​based politics might harm their interests.14 Put plainly, conservative women believed that the word “choice” was coded, with some “choices” having more value than others. And they worried that the bedrocks of their identities—​being perceived as good mothers—​was under threat. Future scholarship on conservative women in the U.S. might expand on Gillian Frank’s work to address the hydra-​like quality of coverture. I offer that we might do more to interrogate the aesthetic coding of women in U.S. conservative movements, coding that offered certain women entrée to leadership roles and has determined the boundaries of protection. We might investigate how racism, fat phobia, and antipathy toward disabled bodies have framed women’s experiences in the far right. And we might study the gendered relationship between beauty, class, and violence in conservative activism. Beauty as a Conservative Value

Scholars of right-​wing and fascist movements in Europe, Latin America, and Japan have been doing this work for decades.15 They have emphasized how those movements valorized disciplined, often chiseled, Anglo-​Saxon, and cis-​ gendered, able bodies and demonized gender-​ non-​ conforming, “semitic,” disabled, fat, and “African” bodies. It is important to acknowledge that these supposedly “timeless” or unchanging “classical” images of women and men were in fact framed by the mores of the era in which they were deployed. Attitudes about weight, race, and fitness have changed in the conservative imagination over time, even if adherents pretend otherwise.16

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We might do more to interrogate the relationship between women’s physical appearances—​their hair, their clothes, and their bodies—​and their success in conservative movements in the United States. Conservative women who thrived in government and in conventional antiabortion groups often conformed to gendered, racialized, and ableist stereotypes about beauty. Scholars have examined how Phyllis Schlafly and other conservative women’s criticisms of progressive feminists weaponized stereotypes about beauty. In the 1970s, pundits taunted feminists as “unfeminine,” “ugly,” and “manly” women.17 We might take this a step further to examine how conservative women themselves operated within this scheme. To what degree did women thrive in right-​wing movements because they had the money, the pigmentation, the able-​bodiedness, and the time to conform to specific beauty standards? Many of the women who thrived in the conventional, organized wing of the antiabortion movement conformed to popular white, middle-​class, ableist beauty conventions. Among them was Marjory Mecklenburg, who helped to organize Minnesota’s right-​ to-​ life movement in the years just before Roe. Marjory and her husband, Fred, became early leaders in the National Right to Life Committee, the largest antiabortion organization in

FIGURE 4.1  Marjory

Mecklenburg and an unidentified woman, undated photograph. American Citizens Concerned for Life records, Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library, Ann Arbor, MI.

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the U.S. in the aftermath of Roe.18 As Methodists, the Mecklenburgs were received warmly by antiabortion movement leaders, who were eager to expand the organization’s membership beyond the Catholic faithful. In the 1970s, Marjory Mecklenberg established many of the first crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) in the United States. At these centers, volunteers—​ nearly all of whom were women—​plied people with unwanted or unplanned pregnancies with pamphlets that claimed—​incorrectly—​that abortion harms women’s physical and mental health. When CPC activists began producing these pseudo-​scientific tracts, national antiabortion leaders did not pay much attention to their strategy for ending abortion. CPC volunteers’ grassroots activism seemed quaint in comparison to the effort to add a fetal personhood amendment to the Constitution, to the work to establish political action committees (PACs), and to help elect antiabortion candidates. However, after Americans began to sour on the antiabortion movement in the early 1990s in the wake of lethal antiabortion violence, leaders turned to grassroots activists who operated crisis pregnancy centers to rehabilitate the antiabortion movement’s image. For the next 30 years, the antiabortion movement enjoyed tremendous success by promoting legislation and regulations that depicted pregnant women as vulnerable and abortion providers as predatory. Instead of analyzing the significance of her antiabortion work, journalists often focused on Mecklenburg’s physical beauty, race, and stamina. They remarked on her looks in the early 1970s, when she got her start in grassroots organizing in suburban Minneapolis, Minnesota. At the time, a local reporter described Mecklenburg as “statuesque, five feet, eight and a half inches, with blondish-​brown hair and amber-​brown eyes, [with] a broad Grace Kelly-​like face.”19 In 1980, another Minneapolis journalist introduced Mecklenburg to readers by explaining, “She’s white, attractive, 45…. Her careful lipstick wears off as she talks steadily, fluidly, about the ultimate pipe dream, about working to create a society in which ‘even unborn babies are accorded dignity and respect and legal protection.’ ”20 When she assumed a post at the Department of Health and Human Services in 1982, many journalists were disinterested in Marjory Mecklenburg’s work to dismantle decades-​old comprehensive sex education programs and instead fund abstinence-​only initiatives. Mecklenburg used federal money to enrich CPCs, which promised to produce and distribute abstinence-​only sex education materials. This was an important turning point: the federal government subsidizing the production of pseudo-​ scientific brochures that reflected religious rather than scientific ideas about sexual health and reproduction. Instead of investigating Mecklenburg’s work to funnel federal money into private religious, non-​ medical clinics, journalists who covered her continued to be more interested in her physique than her activism. A reporter for The Washington Times who profiled Mecklenburg described her as a

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“tall, handsome, Nordic-​looking doctor’s wife cum activist cum bureaucrat [who] is a conciliatory reformer.”21 As recently as 2011, a scholar rather uncritically parroted journalists’ accounts of Mecklenburg and her husband, Fred, referring to them as having been “young, energetic, and attractive … the perfect team to spread the pro-​life message [in Minnesota.]”22 Conventional, cis-​gendered, able-​bodied, slender, and racialized (usually white) ideas of beauty continue to animate right-​wing politics in the United States. Consider the conservative women who have thrived in national politics in recent years, including Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachman, Nikki Haley, Kristi Noem. To what degree have their slender bodies, their neatly coiffed hair, and their tailored suits made them “palatable” for conservative voters? The beauty cult extends to conservative media, where women journalists’ careers have been shaped by systemic sexual harassment and pressures to conform to conventional beauty stereotypes. In 2016, Fox News host Gretchen Carlson, who reigned as the 1989 Miss America before graduating from Stanford University, sued Fox News chairman and CEO Roger Ailes, alleging that he had retaliated against her after she refused to submit to his sexual harassment. The torrent of women who came forward in the wake of Carlson’s suit detailed how they were expected to conform to rigid stereotypes about women’s beauty, which included requirements to wear copious amounts of makeup and short skirts. The network’s misogynistic culture led many women who appeared on camera to believe that staying thin was crucial to promotions and continued employment. Women employed by Fox News also understood that submitting to sexual harassment was key to getting promoted. Those like Carlson, who refused to “play along,” were shunned, demoted, and eventually, fired.23 The beauty cult has also been used as a cudgel to punish women who criticize powerful conservative men. In August 2022, The Washington Post’s deputy editorial page editor, Ruth Marcus, learned that a conservative writer compared her to the fictional character Strega Nona (Italian for “grandma witch”), after she criticized Senator Lindsey Graham for fomenting violence when he warned that there would be “riots in the streets” if Donald Trump were to be prosecuted for taking classified documents to Mar-​a-​Lago after his presidency. Illustrations of Strega Nona, a character in a popular children’s book series, depict her as having a large nose and a compact build. Marcus pointed out that women in journalism are hamstrung by the beauty cult. “If a woman is too attractive,” she wrote, “she risks not being taken seriously.” And if a woman is not attractive enough, “that works against her, too.” And those journalists who complain about the beauty cult, Marcus noted, risk being dismissed as “strident harridans.”24 Scholars of conservative women in the United States who interrogate the conservative beauty cult must be mindful of the ways that both conservatives and moderates have subverted feminist critiques of the beauty regime by

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turning conservatives into the victims, and critics into perpetrators. Consider comedian Michelle Wolf’s notorious speech at the 2018 White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Wolf said of then-​White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, “I actually really like Sarah. I think she’s very resourceful. But she burns facts and then she uses that ash to create a perfect smokey eye. Like maybe she’s born with it, maybe it’s lies. It’s probably lies.”25 A host of journalists and political commenters lambasted Wolf’s joke as sexist for remarking on Sanders’ physical appearance. MSNBC journalist Mika Brzezinski wrote, “Watching a wife and mother be humiliated on national television for her looks is deplorable.”26 New York Times journalist Maggie Haberman tweeted, “That @PressSec [Huckabee Sanders] sat and absorbed intense criticism of her physical appearance, her job performance, and so forth, instead of walking out, on national television, was impressive.”27 Journalists generally ignored the thrust of Wolf’s critique—​ that Sanders had lied repeatedly to defend President Trump. And they also missed an opportunity to consider how Sanders (or her handlers) had transformed her hair, dress, and makeup when she became the national spokesperson for the right-​wing administration. The dizzying array of ways that women in politics, journalism, and comedy are subjected to the beauty cult makes the work of scholars both difficult and vital. We cannot count on traditional cultural and professional sources to make us aware of the extent of the cult of beauty within the American right because those who traditionally do this work are themselves subjected to the pernicious cult of beauty. Scholars who are brave enough to interrogate the conservative beauty cult must steel themselves. If recent history is any guide, those who do might have experiences like those who work in journalism and comedy. They might be vulnerable to accusations of sexism and objectification, both from conservatives who resent the spotlight, but also from left-​of-​ center pundits who do not have an appetite for sustained historical analysis. But as scholars of women and gender, I think that we have a professional responsibility to question how and why right-​ wing organizations in the United States offer power and camera time to only a select few women. This analysis of the relationship between gender, beauty, and opportunities for leadership in conservative social and political movements offers a variation of the What’s the Matter with Kansas? dilemma: why are so many people attracted to conservative movements that have a history of excluding them from the levers of power?28 Violence as an Escape from the Beauty Cult?

However, the explanatory model falls short when I reflect on antiabortion women who embraced violence. The physicality of extremist women’s guerilla warfare against abortion clinics, staff, and providers did not conform

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to stereotypes about conservative women’s roles in society. In 1986, Joan Andrews crowned a 13-​year career of terrorizing abortion providers when she led an invasion into a Pensacola, Florida women’s health clinic. During the melee, the intruders shoved two employees to the ground, causing one to suffer permanent neck, shoulder, and ear damage.29 Scholars of antiabortion violence had usually overlooked the Catholic women who began terrorizing abortion clinics in the 1970s. Instead, they foregrounded the experiences of Protestant evangelical men, including Operation Rescue’s Randall Terry, or the so-​called “lone wolves” who began to murder physicians in the 1990s. But my examination of antiabortion women revealed that they had begun deploying violent tactics decades earlier. Joan Andrews’s entrance to antiabortion activism was similar to that of other women who opposed abortion in the 1980s. A devout Catholic from rural Tennessee, Andrews was horrified by the sexual revolution of the 1960s. In high school, she defied her conservative parents by opposing the war in Vietnam. Indeed, many Catholic women who joined the antiabortion movement, like those women who joined the women’s liberation movement, had first come to think of themselves as activists when they participated in civil rights protests or antiwar demonstrations as high school students. Other scholars have observed that many of these antiabortion activists emulated the strategies they had learned as antiwar activists in their subsequent antiabortion work. Among the traditions from which they borrowed was the use of dramatic street theater, replete with signs depicting gory images of fetal remains that echoed Vietnam protestors’ use of signs depicting babies who had been sprayed with Agent Orange by the U.S. military.30 By 1977, antiabortion activists started to engage more frequently in a form of protest they termed “rescue operations” because they were designed to “rescue” fetuses by paralyzing clinic operations.31 The first rescues were covert, chaotic operations, organized by activists who met secretly to develop missions for their “cells.”32 They borrowed strategies from the Irish Republican Army, and even circulated IRA pamphlets and training manuals. Women usually initiated rescue operations because they could more easily enter abortion clinics without raising suspicion. They made appointments claiming that they were interested in procuring an abortion or needed a routine gynecological exam. A typical rescue began with faux patients who hid in clinic washrooms while male activists assembled outside clinic entryways. “Then [we] would sneak around,” explained Andrews, “until [we] ended up inside the abortuary—​in the killing room or the waiting room—​and then block doors.”33 Activists would then swarm the building, encouraging women to leave, screaming at staff to stop “killing” babies, and destroying medical equipment.34 These operations paralyzed clinics for hours and sometimes for weeks. In addition to destroying medical equipment and terrorizing patients and staff,

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antiabortion activists sometimes detonated so-​called stink bombs into clinic ventilation systems.35 Owners of clinics that were the frequent targets of antiabortion attacks sometimes paid out-​of-​pocket for costly repairs out of fear that their insurers might drop them. Insurance companies—​rationally—​ deemed most clinics to be at high risk for vandalism and arson. Additionally, clinics had to absorb the cost of security guards, metal detectors, and retrofitted security doors. The founders of many of the nation’s first stand-​ alone abortion clinics that opened in the wake of Roe v. Wade were proud to operate independently from traditional, patriarchal hospitals and clinics. However, their separation from multispecialty clinics came at a cost. Some scholars have speculated that more physicians might have stood in solidarity with abortion providers if their ear, nose, and throat patients were subjected to a gauntlet of jeering protestors or if their podiatry practices were reduced to rubble in a bombing intended for a neighboring abortion provider.36 Rescuers were motivated by a sense of urgency: for them, the slow pace of legal and legislative reform held little appeal when matters of life and death hung in the balance. According to Andrews, “It is one thing to argue about when life begins … It is another thing to stand at a door and see women approach, knowing that if they go in, there will be a dead baby … in an hour or so.”37 The only way to end abortion, Andrews maintained, was to participate in a holy guerilla war against abortion providers.38 Likening herself to Joan of Arc, with other violent women comparing themselves to Jael, a heroine in the Book of Judges who killed Sisera to deliver Israel from King Jabin of Canaan, antiabortion women were remarkably unbothered—​and in fact, often boastful—​of their own capacity for physical violence.39 It is not difficult to find examples of right-​wing women leaders who have been forthright about their anger with the men in their lives. Antiabortion women who adopted violent strategies for opposing abortion complained bitterly about clergy who did not prioritize the fight against abortion. When abortion was legalized nationally in 1973, parish priests had mixed reactions to the Catholic Church’s condemnation of Roe v. Wade. Some Catholic clergy who were inspired by the Second Vatican Council opposed abortion but preferred to focus their attention on poverty, civil rights work, and the human rights abuses in Central America. Joan Andrews justified her use of aggressive strategies as a necessary counter to weak or ineffectual leadership by the Catholic Church. She despaired that faculty at St. Louis University, a Jesuit college, had been some of the most outspoken critics of aggressive antiabortion protest tactics.40 Frustrated with her local diocese’s tepid response to Roe, Joan Andrews took matters into her own hands. For conservative women in these parishes, the turn toward violence signified both their intense desire to end abortion and their willingness to disobey male clergy.

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A handful of Catholic women, including Joan Andrews, were also upset with conservative Republican leaders, including President Ronald Reagan, whom supporters nicknamed the “Father of the pro-​ life movement.”41 These activists maintained that the GOP’s adoption of an antiabortion plank offered little more than lip service to the objective of ending abortion. These women believed it was their moral duty to save babies and framed their tactics as part of the Christian tradition of civil disobedience. These women’s unbending commitment to eradicating abortion and their willingness to excoriate male colleagues and the institutions to which they belonged, I offer, is key to understanding the realignment of the GOP in the late 20th century.42 We can find other examples of conservative women who justified their fury as a response to men’s ineffectual leadership. In her dual biography of Ida B. Wells and Rebecca Latimer Felton, Crystal Feimster explains how Felton, a white supremacist former enslaver, justified her partisan political work.43 Felton, who was born to a wealthy slaveholding family in Georgia in 1835, became famous for her plea to “lynch a thousand a week,” claiming that

FIGURE 4.2 “Southern

Women Feeling the Effects of the Rebellion, and Creating Bread Riots,” Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, April 2, 1863, 141. Photograph. Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. www.loc. gov/​item/​200​7683​044/​.

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FIGURE 4.3 Senator

Rebecca Felton, first woman U.S. senator. Georgia, ca. 1922. Photograph. Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. www.loc.gov/​ item/​mnw​p000​372/​.

Southern white men had failed to protect white women from Black men’s sexual violence. She would later warn that white men failed to protect white women and girls from abusive white men, too. She denounced white men for failing to provide for their families in the aftermath of the Civil War. By the end of the 19th century, Felton encouraged white women to break free from their economic, political, and physical dependence on men, who could not be trusted to hold up their end of the coverture bargain. Far from being punished for excoriating the white men in her social milieu, Felton was celebrated. She was a sought-​after public figure in her own time, delivering speeches and writing in support of prison reform, the expansion of public education, and for women’s suffrage. Although she served only one day, Felton became the first woman to serve in the U.S. Senate in 1922, after her husband died in office. During the 20th century, violent extremists, unlike their colleagues in the nonviolent wing of the movement, did not worry about projecting their devotion to their children and husbands the way that other conservative women leaders did. This is paradoxical, given that extremist women traveled, spent days and sometimes weeks in jail, and risked lengthy prison sentences on the rare occasions that they were convicted for their crimes. In

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sum, participation in violence has offered conservative women opportunities for notoriety and prestige outside of the cults of coverture, beauty, and motherhood. Between 1980 and 1985, Andrews was arrested approximately 120 times for trespassing, disorderly conduct, and destruction of property in six states. She was able to amass such a lengthy rap sheet, in part because prosecutors declined to pursue charges against her approximately 90% of the time. On the dozen or so occasions when Andrews was brought before a judge, she received sentences ranging from four days to nearly one year.44 Andrews’s haphazard experiences with the justice system were typical of most antiabortion activists, especially women activists’ experiences. For most of the 1980s, the federal government refused to investigate violent antiabortion extremists as members of a coordinated, nationwide effort to terrorize people who performed abortions and those who sought them.45 Between 1977 and 1993, the federal government declined to investigate whether 28 bombings, 188 reports of stalking, 88 incidents of assault and battery, 2 kidnappings, and 166 death threats against abortion providers were the work of an organized group.46 Indeed, in 1984, FBI director William Webster explained that the federal government did not classify antiabortion violence as a form of domestic terrorism because the crimes were not committed by a “definable group or activity.”47 As a consequence, journalists, scholars, and the general public came to regard antiabortion violence as regional and sporadic. As highly choreographed violence in the antiabortion movement escalated, federal and state authorities poured billions of dollars into prosecuting and incarcerating those involved in the drug trade—​ a campaign that singled out nonviolent, Black men who operated at the lowest rungs of the trade in disproportionate numbers.48 Meanwhile, federal and state authorities remained indifferent to violent antiabortion activists, most of whom were white and many of whom were women, who terrorized abortion providers in every state. Because the federal government refused to intervene to investigate and prosecute antiabortion extremism, these tasks fell to local authorities. In the late 20th century, conservative circles continued to celebrate violent women, including those who lambasted their male colleagues. Conservative evangelical ministers were eager to publicize Joan Andrews’s plight in 1986, when she was sentenced to serve five years at the Broward Correctional Institution in Pensacola, Florida. Although Andrews was rarely mentioned in national media coverage of the movement, she was a cause célèbre in the evangelical media. Pat Robertson and James Dobson voiced their support for Andrews on their television and radio programs. A young Randall Terry, who would later lead Operation Rescue, organized “Free Joan Andrews” protests outside her prison.49 And 30,000 people, mostly Protestant evangelicals, wrote letters of support to Andrews while she was incarcerated.

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Many communities treated antiabortion violence as isolated crimes that occasionally got out of hand; judges, prosecutors, and politicians routinely ignored the pleas of clinic administrators, who had begun to piece together the membership of extremist groups as early as the 1980s. The biographical profiles of key antiabortion women leaders woven through Women against Abortion reveal how the lack of federal attention and activists’ strategy of traveling from state to state was crucial to obscuring the escalation of violence over the course of the late 20th century. One of the most chilling discoveries of my research—​ and one that reverberates in testimony before the U.S. House Select Committee on January 6, 2021—​was to learn how frequently the lines between politicians in Washington, D.C., conventional activism, and violent grassroots antiabortion activism blurred. Conservative women often served as bridges between the conventional and fringe wings of the movement. For example, in 1986, Earl Appleby, an aide to Republican North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms, invited Joan Andrews to Washington, D.C., where he asked Andrews to resuscitate rescue operations in Pensacola.50 Two years earlier, in 1984, antiabortion activists bombed three abortion clinics on Christmas Day.”51 (They called it a “birthday present for Jesus.”) Conventional antiabortion groups, in typical fashion, condemned the bombings, seeking to distance themselves from extremism. These denunciations were usually very short. Typically, antiabortion leaders would blame abortion providers for the terror that they experienced, arguing that supporters of abortion rights had created “a culture of death.” Appleby wanted Andrews to shutter the city’s clinics for good. It was at a U.S. Senator’s top aide’s request that Andrews traveled to Pensacola to energize the city’s Rescue movement. In March 1986, Andrews organized the terrifying clinic invasion for which she would later receive a five-​year sentence for assaulting clinic employees. In 1993, antiabortion extremist Michael Griffin murdered physician David Gunn, who performed abortions as part of his obstetrics and gynecology practice in Pensacola.52 In 1988, Florida Governor Bob Martinez granted Joan Andrews clemency, knowing that she would be extradited to Pennsylvania to face multiple trespass charges. But she failed to show up to her hearing in Pennsylvania and instead resumed her traveling protest routine and spent eight years as a fugitive, eluding authorities throughout the East Coast.53 By the late 1990s, she established roots in New York, where she married, had children, and quietly receded from the Rescue movement for a time. However, she has returned to extremist antiabortion activism in recent years. In 2020, the Department of Justice indicted nine antiabortion activists—​ including Andrews—​for violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act when they invaded a Washington, D.C. reproductive healthcare facility using the strategies Andrews had helped to develop 35 years earlier. The group barricaded the clinic’s doors with furniture, they chained themselves

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to one another, injured a nurse, and terrorized patients and staff for over an hour.54 By the close of the 20th century, antiabortion activists had become remarkably effective by operating through both legitimate and underground channels. Conventional organizations had gained a toehold in respectable mainstream politics by establishing abortion litmus tests for political and judicial nominees and by enacting legislation that has made it more difficult for women to obtain abortions. Meanwhile, extremists, drawing upon the strategies developed by Joan Andrews and her colleagues in the 1970s, made the task of providing abortions onerous. Even in states where abortion remains legal, medical programs often do not offer abortion training as part of their instruction on obstetrical and gynecological care even though more Americans will have abortions than appendectomies annually.55 Clinic owners struggle to find insurers who are willing to take on private practices that are so vulnerable to arson and vandalism. The cumulative effect of several decades of unrelenting terror pulled the antiabortion movement to the right. Moderate antiabortion activists of the 1970s, those who called for better federal programs to assist mothers and children or those who supported public funding for birth control to reduce demand for abortions,

FIGURE 4.4 White

women were central to President Donald Trump’s popularity and key participants in the January 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol. Photograph by André-​Pierre du Plessis, Women for Trump, November 6, 2016, Creative Commons.

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were replaced by supporters of invasive policies, including state laws that require physicians to read misleading and inaccurate statements about the potential risks of abortion. Conclusion

Where do scholars of women and gender go from here? I offer we are ready to explore new explanatory models to understand the motivation and meaning of conservative women’s violence. We might consider how the beauty cult that has dominated conventional right-​wing politics has made white supremacy and misogyny palatable for primetime audiences on Fox News. We might interrogate more critically how their participation in violence enables conservative women to puncture the constraints of coverture and beauty to contribute—​albeit with terrifying malice—​to assume positions of leadership. We might also examine how conservative women’s engagement with extremism and violence no longer shelters them from the pressure to conform to the cult of beauty. Prominent women in the far right of the Republican Party now encourage faithful conservatives to intimidate voters, question the patriotism of Jewish Americans, and mock transgender children.56 Unlike the women who intimidated Black children as they sought to enter public schools or opened fire on abortion providers, today’s extremist women hold elected office. And with their neatly coiffed hair and sheath dresses, they more closely resemble Fox News anchors than archetypical conservative women who defended their use of violence under the banner of motherhood.57 Extremist conservative women, including Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene and former Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, are raising more money than most of their male colleagues and are influencing the direction of the GOP by amplifying racist, transphobic, and antisemitic conspiracy theories that are popular among Donald Trump’s supporters. As women’s power over the GOP and public policy has expanded to unprecedented levels, their physical comportment has become ever more confined. Finally, by focusing our attention on the history of women in the antiabortion movement, we might understand our own historical moment. Responding to the majority opinion in the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which asserted that because criminal abortion laws existed at the time the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted in 1868, the Amendment should never be interpreted to protect the right to abortion, legal scholar Reva Siegal wrote that “selective claims about America’s ‘history and traditions’ […] celebrate inequality as freedom.”58 Women have been central to the project of celebrating traditions that stereotyped men’s and women’s roles in the family, the economy, and society. Although many of these activist women—​in particular those who adopted violent strategies—​often worked outside the alleged boundaries of

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women’s proper roles in society, they were undeniably effective in their work to create the intellectual framework and the protest strategies that led to the dismantling of Roe v. Wade. Notes 1 Karissa Haugeberg, Women against Abortion: Inside the Largest Moral Reform Movement of the Twentieth Century (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2017). 2 Stephanie E. Jones-​Rogers, They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South (London, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019); Elizabeth Gillespie McRae, Mothers of Massive Resistance: White Women and the Politics of White Supremacy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018); Lisa McGirr, Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 2001); Kathleen M. Blee, Women of the Klan: Racism and Gender in the 1920s (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991); Catherine E. Rymph, Republican Women: Feminism and Conservatism from Suffrage Through the Rise of the New Right (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006); Seyward Darby, Sisters in Hate: American Women on the Front Lines of White Nationalism (New York, NY: Little, Brown and Company, 2020). 3 Benita Roth, Separate Roads to Feminism: Black, Chicana, and White Feminist Movements in America’s Second Wave (Cambridge, UK; Cambridge University Press, 2004); Winifred Breines, The Trouble Between Us: An Uneasy History of White and Black Women in the Feminist Movement (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). 4 The authoritative formulation of the concept of coverture appears in William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765): “By marriage, the husband and wife are one person under law: that is, the very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended during the marriage, or at least is incorporated and consolidated into that of the husband: under whose wing, protection, and cover, she performs everything. […] [H]‌er condition during her marriage is called her coverture.” William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1765), 430; 433. Emphasis in the original. On why courts in the United States invoked Blackstone’s concept of coverture, see Peregrine Bingham, The Law of Infancy and Coverture (London: J. Butterworth and Son, 1816), 180–​184. 5 Linda K. Kerber, No Constitutional Right to Be Ladies: Women and the Obligations of Citizenship (New York: Hill and Wang, 1998). English and American common law prohibited the prosecution of husbands for raping their wives. According to Lord Hale, in English common law, “The husband cannot be guilty of a rape committed by himself upon his lawful wife, for by their mutual matrimonial consent and the contract the wife hath given up herself in this kind unto her husband, which she cannot retract.” Matthew Hale, The History of the Pleas of the Crown, First American Edition (Philadelphia: Robert H. Small, 1847), 628, http://​books.goo​gle.com/​books/​about/​Hist​oria​_​Pla​cito​rum_​Coro​nae. html?id=​P2s0A​AAAI​AAJ. States did not begin to criminalize marital rape until the mid-​1970s; marital rape was not a crime in every state until 1993. Aubrey L. Jackson, “State Contexts and the Criminalization of Marital Rape Across

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the United States,” Social Science Research 51 (2015): 290–​306. See also Maria Pracher, “The Marital Rape Exemption: A Violation of a Woman’s Right of Privacy,” Golden Gate University Law Review 11 (1981): 717–​757. 6 Rebecca M. Ryan, “The Sex Right: A Legal History of the Marital Rape Exemption,” Law & Social Inquiry 20 (1995): 941–​1001. 7 Amélie Ribieras, “ ‘I Want to Thank My Husband Fred for Letting Me Come Here,’ or Phyllis Schlafly’s Opportunistic Defense of Gender Hierarchy,” in Male Supremacism in the United States: From Patriarchal Traditionalism to Misogynist Incels and the Alt-​Right, ed. Emily K. Carian, Alex DiBranco, and Chelsea Ebin (London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2022), 67–​ 93. See also Kim E. Nielsen, Un-​American Womanhood: Antiradicalism, Antifeminism, and the First Red Scare (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2001); Donald T. Critchlow, Phyllis Schlafly and Grassroots Conservatism: A Woman’s Crusade (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 2005); and Michelle M. Nickerson, Mothers of Conservatism: Women and the Postwar Right (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2012). 8 “Arizona School District Passes Resolution Opposing State’s Transgender Sports Ban,” The Hill, accessed May 9, 2022, https://​theh​ill.com/​chang​ing-​amer​ica/​resp​ ect/​equal​ity/​3479​720-​ariz​ona-​sch​ool-​distr​ict-​pas​ses-​res​olut​ion-​oppos​ing-​sta​tes-​ tran​sgen​der-​spo​rts-​ban/​; Associated Press, “Tennessee Governor Signs Legislation Banning Collegiate Transgender Athletes,” Sports Illustrated, accessed May 9, 2022, www.si.com/​coll​ege/​2022/​05/​06/​tennes​see-​gover​nor-​signs-​legi​slat​ion-​bann​ ing-​col​legi​ate-​tran​sgen​der-​athle​tes. 9 Kristin Luker, Abortion & the Politics of Motherhood (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), 158–​191. 10 Claire Cain Miller and Liz Alderman, “Why U.S. Women Are Leaving Jobs Behind,” The New York Times, December 12, 2014, sec. The Upshot, www.nyti​ mes.com/​2014/​12/​14/​ups​hot/​us-​emp​loym​ent-​women-​not-​work​ing.html; “Is the Cost of Childcare Driving Women out of the U.S. Workforce?” Equitable Growth (blog), November 29, 2016, www.equi​tabl​egro​wth.org/​is-​the-​cost-​of-​childc​are-​ driv​ing-​women-​out-​of-​the-​u-​s-​workfo​rce/​; “Why the Pandemic Is Forcing Women Out of the Workforce,” The New Yorker, accessed September 16, 2022, www. newyor​ker.com/​news/​q-​and-​a/​why-​the-​pande​mic-​is-​forc​ing-​women-​out-​of-​the-​ workfo​rce; Michael Sainato, “ ‘I Don’t Have a Choice’: Childcare Cost Preventing US Women from Returning to Work,” The Guardian, November 5, 2021, www. theg​uard​ian.com/​us-​news/​2021/​nov/​05/​childc​are-​us-​women-​workfo​rce. 11 Luker, Abortion & the Politics of Motherhood, 204. 12 Gillian Frank, “The Colour of the Unborn: Anti-​Abortion and Anti-​Bussing Politics in Michigan, United States, 1967–​1973,” Gender & History 26 (2014): 351–​378. 13 Jerome Himmelstein, “The New Right,” in The New Right: Mobilization and Legitimation, ed. Robert C. Liebman and Robert Wuthnow (Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1983), 15. 14 See “Reproductive Justice,” SisterSong, accessed September 16, 2022, www.sis​ ters​ong.net/​repro​duct​ive-​just​ice; Alyssa N. Zucker, “Reproductive Justice: More Than Choice,” Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy 14 (2014): 210–​ 213; Barbara Anne Gurr, Reproductive Justice: The Politics of Health Care for Native American Women, (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2015); Dorothy Roberts, “Reproductive Justice, Not Just Rights,” Dissent

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Magazine 52 (2015): 79–​ 82; Melissa Murray, “Race-​ Ing Roe: Reproductive Justice, Racial Justice, and the Battle for Roe v. Wade,” Harvard Law Review 134 (2021): 2025–​2102. 15 James E. Young, “The Terrible Beauty of Nazi Aesthetics,” in The Stages of Memory (University of Massachusetts Press, 2016); Alan Tansman, The Aesthetics of Japanese Fascism, A Study of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009); Eugenia Paulicelli, Fashion Under Fascism: Beyond the Black Shirt (Oxford, UK: Oxford International Publishers, 2004); James J. Fortuna, “Fascism, National Socialism, and the 1939 New York World’s Fair,” Fascism (Leiden) 8 (2019): 179–​218; Dagmar Herzog, Sexuality in Europe: A Twentieth-​Century History, New Approaches to European History (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011); Edward Ross Dickinson, “ ‘Must We Dance Naked?’: Art, Beauty, and Law in Munich and Paris, 1911–​ 1913,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 20 (2011): 95–​131; Alejandra Bello, “Latin America’s Right-​Wing Shift: Cruelty and the Government of Other Bodies during the Neoliberal Stage of Capital,” Cultural Studies (London, England) 35 (2021): 1027–​1048. 16 Eric Hobsbawm explains, “It is the contrast between the constant change and innovation of the world and the attempt to structure at least some parts of social life within it as unchanging and invariant, that makes the ‘invention of tradition’ so interesting for historians of the past two centuries.” Eric Hobsbawm, introduction to Invention of Tradition, ed. Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 2. 17 Betty Luther Hillman, “ ‘The Clothes I Wear Help Me to Know My Own Power’: The Politics of Gender Presentation in the Era of Women’s Liberation,” Frontiers 34 (2013): 155–​185. 18 Connie Paige, The Right to Lifers: Who They Are, How They Operate, Where They Get Their Money (New York: Summit Books, 1983), 51–​52. 19 Joan Mahowald “Marjory Mecklenburg is for Life,” The Catholic Digest, June 1973. 20 Patricia Ohmans, “Obsession: Enough about Me. What About You? What Do You Think about Me?” Machete, 1980, American Citizens Concerned for Life Records, Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library, Ann Arbor, MI. 21 Sue Mullin, “The Lady Behind the Squeal,” The Washington Times, December 28, 1982, 1B. 22 Robert N. Karrer, “The National Right to Life Committee: Its Founding, Its History, and the Emergence of the Pro-​Life Movement Prior to Roe v. Wade,” The Catholic Historical Review 97 (2011): 541. 23 “Gretchen Carlson v. Roger Ailes, Complaint” (Superior Court of New Jersey Law Division: Bergen County, July 6, 2016), https://​s3.docume​ntcl​oud.org/​ docume​nts/​2941​030/​Carl​son-​Compla​int-​Filed.pdf; Kate Aurthur, “Gretchen Carlson, Five Years After Her Lawsuit Brought Down Roger Ailes: ‘We’ve Made Immense Progress,’ ” Variety, July 6, 2021, https://​vari​ety.com/​2021/​tv/​news/​gretc​ hen-​carl​son-​sex​ual-​har​assm​ent-​laws​uit-​five-​year-​anni​vers​ary-​123​5010​908/​. 24 Ruth Marcus, “I Usually Ignore the Sexism and Ageism Directed at Me. Now I’m Calling It Out,” The Washington Post, September 1, 2022, www.was​hing​tonp​ost. com/​opini​ons/​2022/​09/​02/​ruth-​mar​cus-​fed​eral​ist-​str​ega-​nona-​ins​ult/​. 25 “Michelle Wolf Complete Remarks at 2018 White House Correspondents’ Dinner,” C-​SPAN, 2018, www.yout​ube.com/​watch?v=​DDbx​1uAr​VOM.

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26 Patrick Shanley, “Michelle Wolf Slammed for ‘Vile’ Sarah Huckabee Sanders Jokes at White House Correspondents’ Dinner,” The Hollywood Reporter (blog), April 29, 2018, -​www.hollyw​oodr​epor​ter.com/​news/​gene​ral-​news/​miche​lle-​wolf-​ slam​med-​vile-​sarah-​hucka​bee-​sand​ers-​jokes-​at-​white-​house-​cor​resp​onde​nts-​din​ ner-​1106​776/​. 27 Maggie Haberman [@maggieNYT], “That @PressSec Sat and Absorbed Intense Criticism of Her Physical Appearance, Her Job Performance, and so Forth, Instead of Walking out, on National Television, Was Impressive,” Tweet, Twitter, April 29, 2018, https://​twit​ter.com/​maggie​NYT/​sta​tus/​990​4289​9354​2414​336. 28 Thomas Frank, What’s the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2004). 29 “Six Arrested at Abortion Clinic,” The New York Times, March 27, 1986, A18. 30 Joan Andrews, You Reject Them, You Reject Me: The Prison Letters of Joan Andrews, ed. Richard Cowden Guido (Manassas, VA: Trinity Communications, 1988), 33. See Richard L. Hughes, “Burning Birth Certificates and Atomic Tupperware Parties: Creating the Antiabortion Movement in the Shadow of the Vietnam War,” Historian 68 (2006): 541–​558. 31 The first rescue is believed to have occurred in 1975, when a handful of men and women arranged to trespass at a Rockville, Maryland, clinic. Six women were arrested for blocking the entrance and later sentenced to six months of unsupervised probation. This tactic is referred to as a ‘sit-​in.’ Cynthia Gorney, Articles of Faith: A Frontline History of the Abortion Wars (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998), 248. See also “Logistical Plan for August 2, 1975,” JCOP, box 6, folder 3. For state-​ by-​ state comparisons of religious affiliations, see The Association of Religion Data Archives, “Catholic States (1980),” Patricia Baird-​Windle and Eleanor J. Bader, Targets of Hatred: Anti-​Abortion Terrorism (New York: Palgrave for St. Martin’s Press, 2001), 111, accessed March 7, 2010, www.thea​rda.com/​Qui​ckLi​sts/​Quick​List​_​60.asp; The City of New York City Graduate Center “American Religious Identity Survey,” accessed March 7, 2010, www.gc.cuny.edu/​facu​lty/​rese​arch​_​bri​efs/​aris/​key_​f​i ndi​ngs.htm. In her analysis of Operation Rescue members’ tactics, Peggy Phelan discovered that membership in the organization “can mean anything from participating in a single rescue to traveling throughout the country and performing rescues constantly.” Peggy Phelan, “White Men and Pregnancy: Discovering the Body to Be Rescued,” in Acting Out: Feminist Performances, ed. Lynda Hart and Peggy Phelan (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1993), 384. 32 Andrews to Cowden-​Guido, You Reject Them, 35. 33 Andrews, I Will Never Forget You, 43. 34 Andrews, I Will Never Forget You, 44–​46. 35 Haugeberg, Women against Abortion, 116–​117. 36 David S. Cohen and Carole Joffe, Obstacle Course: The Everyday Struggle to Get an Abortion in America (Oakland: University of California Press, 2020); Lisa Hope Harris et al., “Dynamics of Stigma in Abortion Work: Findings from a Pilot Study of the Providers Share Workshop,” Social Science & Medicine 73, no. 7 (2011): 1062–​1070. 37 Andrews, I Will Never Forget You, 53. 38 Andrews to Bernard and Adelle Nathanson, You Reject Them, 166.

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9 J. Edgar Bruns, “Judith or Jael?,” The Catholic Biblical Quarterly 16 (1954): 12–​14. 3 40 Andrews, I Will Never Forget You, 44. 41 Fred Barnes, “Ronald Reagan, Father Of the Pro-​Life Movement,” The Wall Street Journal, November 6, 2003. 42 Nearly two thirds of the delegates to the 1988 Republican National Convention were white Protestant men; the number of Jewish, non-​ white, and women delegates declined over the course of the decade. Baird-​Windle and Bader, Targets of Hatred, 111. 43 Crystal Feimster, Southern Horrors: Women and the Politics of Rape and Lynching (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2009), 1. 44 Andrews, You Reject Them, 78–​ 79; Elizabeth Andrews [Joan’s mother] to unnamed recipient, You Reject Them, 30. 45 David J. Garrow, Liberty & Sexuality: The Right to Privacy and the Making of ‘Roe v. Wade,’ (New York: Macmillan, 1994), 651. Nanette Falkenberg, the executive director of the National Abortion Rights League, was critical of the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms’ finding that there was not enough evidence to link the violence to antiabortion organizations. “It starts with picketing, then paint in the waiting room, then the locks are jammed,” she contended. James Barron, “Abortion Issue Takes a Violent Turn,” The New York Times, November 24, 1984, E2. Jack Killorin, a spokesperson for the ATF defended the Reagan Administration’s decision to investigate individuals rather than organizations, “If there were a national conspiracy, we’d say there is one. If we needed help, we’d say, hey, we need help.” Leslie Maitland Werner, “U.S. Asserts Bombings Aren’t Work of Single Group,” The New York Times, January 3, 1985, A17. 46 National Abortion Federation, “Violence and Disruption Statistics, 1977–​2009,” 2009, www.procho​ice.org/​abo​ut_​a​bort​ion/​viole​nce/​viol​ence​_​sta​tist​ics.html; Jon Nordheimer, “Bombing Case Offers a Stark Look at Abortion Conflicts,” The New York Times, January 18, 1985, A12. 47 “Terrorist Bombings Decline, Abortion Attacks Excluded,” The Washington Times, December 5, 1984, A4. See also Patricia Donovan, “The Holy War,” Family Planning Perspectives 17, no. 1 (January 1985): 5–​9. Indeed, the federal government did not begin to use its anti-​ terrorist resources to investigate antiabortion activists until after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States. By this time, anti-abortion militants were sending anthrax through the U.S. Postal Service to abortion clinics. Nonetheless, the FBI was slow to investigate anthrax-​laced letters sent to abortion clinics in comparison to their investigation of anthrax-​laced letters sent to U.S. Congressional offices and television studios. Carol Mason, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Dare? Confronting Anti-​ Abortion Terrorism after 9/​ 11,” University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law 6 (2003): 796–​797; 805–​807. 48 Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, rev. ed. (New York: New Press, 2012). 49 James Risen and Judy L. Thomas, Wrath of Angels: The American Abortion War (New York: Basic Books, 1998), 186; Andrews, I Will Never Forget You, 205–​ 207; “69 More Opponents of Abortion Jailed in Atlanta Protests,” The New York Times, August 7, 1988, 20.

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50 Note that “Defenders of Defenders of Life” is not a misspelling. Defenders of Defenders of Life members support the families (defenders of activists) of anti-abortion activists (defenders of “babies”) who commit crimes to stop abortion. 51 Mary Voboril, “Bombings Were ‘Gift to Jesus’ Woman Says (Jacksonville, NC),” The Daily News, January 4, 1985, 9A. 52 Jennifer Jefferis, Armed for Life: The Army of God and Anti-​Abortion Terror in the United States (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2011), 85. 53 Risen and Thomas, Wrath of Angels, 213. 54 Roxy Szal, “U.S. Department of Justice Indicts Nine Anti-​Abortion Extremists for Clinic Invasion,” Ms. Magazine (blog), April 7, 2022, https://​msm​agaz​ine. com/​2022/​04/​07/​lau​ren-​handy-​fetus-​fetal-​rema​ins-​just​ice-​dep​artm​ent-​anti-​abort​ ion-​dc-​cli​nic-​invas​ion/​. 55 Edward H. Livingston et al., “Disconnect Between Incidence of Nonperforated and Perforated Appendicitis,” Annals of Surgery 245, no. 6 (2007): 886–​892; Katherine Kortsmit et al., “Abortion Surveillance: United States, 2020,” Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 71 (2022): 1–​27, https://​doi.org/​10.15585/​mmwr. ss711​0a1. 56 “Marjorie Taylor Greene Accused of ‘Verbal Assault’ on Alexandria Ocasio-​ Cortez,” BBC News, May 13, 2021, www.bbc.com/​news/​world-​us-​can​ada-​57109​ 040; Rachel Shatto, “Lauren Boebert Responded to Roe v. Wade Leak With Anti-​ Trans ‘Jokes,’ ” Advocate, May 4, 2022, www.advoc​ate.com/​polit​ics/​2022/​5/​04/​ lau​ren-​boeb​ert-​color​ado-​respon​ded-​roe-​v-​wade-​leak-​anti-​trans-​jokes; Jacqueline Alemany, “House Democrats Seek to Censure Marjorie Taylor Greene over ‘Biden Is Hitler’ Comment,” The Washington Post, October 7, 2022, www.was​hing​tonp​ ost.com/​polit​ics/​2022/​10/​07/​mtg-​cens​ure-​house-​democr​ats/​; Aaron Pellish, “Kari Lake Says She Would Accept ‘Fair, Honest and Transparent’ Arizona Election Results,” CNN, October 22, 2022, www.cnn.com/​2022/​10/​21/​polit​ics/​kari-​lake-​ ariz​ona-​acc​ept-​elect​ion-​resu​lts/​index.html. 57 Thanks to Michael Stambolis-​Ruhstorfer for observing that recent conservative extremists in the U.S. have adopted stereotypical beauty conventions. 58 Reva Siegel, “Dobbs, the Politics of Constitutional Memory, and the Future of Reproductive Justice,” Balkinization (blog), January 22, 2023, https://​bal​kin. blogs​pot.com/​2023/​01/​dobbs-​polit​ics-​of-​con​stit​utio​nal-​mem​ory.html.

Reference List Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. Rev. ed. New York: New Press, 2012. Andrews, Joan. I Will Never Forget You: The Rescue Movement in the Life of Joan Andrews. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989. —​—​—​. You Reject Them, You Reject Me: The Prison Letters of Joan Andrews. Edited by Richard Cowden Guido. Manassas, VA: Trinity Communications, 1988. Baird-​ Windle, Patricia, and Eleanor J. Bader. Targets of Hatred: Anti-​ Abortion Terrorism. New York: Palgrave for St. Martin’s Press, 2001. Bello, Alejandra. “Latin America’s Right-​Wing Shift: Cruelty and the Government of Other Bodies during the Neoliberal Stage of Capital.” Cultural Studies 35 (2021): 1027–​1048.

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Bingham, Peregrine. The Law of Infancy and Coverture. London: J. Butterworth and Son, 1816. Blee, Kathleen M. Women of the Klan: Racism and Gender in the 1920s. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991. Breines, Winifred. The Trouble between Us: An Uneasy History of White and Black Women in the Feminist Movement. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. Bruns, J. Edgar. “Judith or Jael?” The Catholic Biblical Quarterly 16 (1954): 12–​14. Cohen, David S., and Carole Joffe. Obstacle Course: The Everyday Struggle to Get an Abortion in America. Oakland: University of California Press, 2020. Critchlow, Donald T. Phyllis Schlafly and Grassroots Conservatism: A Woman’s Crusade. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 2005. Darby, Seyward. Sisters in Hate: American Women on the Front Lines of White Nationalism. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2020. Dickinson, Edward Ross. “‘Must We Dance Naked?’: Art, Beauty, and Law in Munich and Paris, 1911–​1913.” Journal of the History of Sexuality 20 (2011): 95–​131. Donovan, Patricia. “The Holy War.” Family Planning Perspectives 17 (1985): 5–​9. Feimster, Crystal. Southern Horrors: Women and the Politics of Rape and Lynching. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2009. Fortuna, James J. “Fascism, National Socialism, and the 1939 New York World’s Fair.” Fascism (Leiden) 8 (2019): 179–​218. Frank, Gillian. “The Colour of the Unborn: Anti-​Abortion and Anti-​Bussing Politics in Michigan, United States, 1967–​1973.” Gender & History 26 (2014): 351–​378. Frank, Thomas. What’s the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2004. Garrow, David J. Liberty and Sexuality: The Right to Privacy and the Making of ‘Roe v. Wade.’ Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. Gorney, Cynthia. Articles of Faith: A Frontline History of the Abortion Wars. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998. Gurr, Barbara Anne. Reproductive Justice: The Politics of Health Care for Native American Women. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2015. Harris, Lisa Hope, Michelle Debbink, Lisa Martin, and Jane Hassinger. “Dynamics of Stigma in Abortion Work: Findings from a Pilot Study of the Providers Share Workshop.” Social Science & Medicine 73, no. 7 (2011): 1062–​1070. Haugeberg, Karissa. Women against Abortion: Inside the Largest Moral Reform Movement of the Twentieth Century. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2017. Herzog, Dagmar. Sexuality in Europe: A Twentieth-​Century History. New Approaches to European History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Himmelstein, Jerome. “The New Right.” In The New Right: Mobilization and Legitimation, edited by Robert C. Liebman and Robert Wuthnow, 15–​ 30. Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1983. Hobsbawm, Eric J., and Terence O. Ranger, eds. The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. Hughes, Richard L. “Burning Birth Certificates and Atomic Tupperware Parties: Creating the Antiabortion Movement in the Shadow of the Vietnam War.” Historian 68 (2006): 541–​558. Jackson, Aubrey L. “State Contexts and the Criminalization of Marital Rape Across the United States.” Social Science Research 51 (2015): 290–​306. Jefferis, Jennifer. Armed for Life: The Army of God and Anti-​Abortion Terror in the United States. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2011.

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Jones-​Rogers, Stephanie E. They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019. Karrer, Robert N. “The National Right to Life Committee: Its Founding, Its History, and the Emergence of the Pro-​Life Movement Prior to Roe v. Wade.” The Catholic Historical Review 97, no. 3 (2011): 527–​557. Kerber, Linda K. No Constitutional Right to Be Ladies: Women and the Obligations of Citizenship. New York: Hill and Wang, 1998. Kortsmit, Katherine, Antoinette T. Nguyen, Michele G. Mandel, Elizabeth Clark, Lisa M. Hollier, Jessica Rodenhizer, and Maura K. Whiteman. “Abortion Surveillance: United States, 2020.” Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 71 (2022): 1–​27. Livingston, Edward H., Wayne A. Woodward, George A. Sarosi, and Robert W. Haley. “Disconnect Between Incidence of Nonperforated and Perforated Appendicitis.” Annals of Surgery 245 (2007): 886–​892. Luker, Kristin. Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984. Luther Hillman, Betty. “ ‘The Clothes I Wear Help Me to Know My Own Power’: The Politics of Gender Presentation in the Era of Women’s Liberation.” Frontiers 34 (2013): 155–​185. Mason, Carol. “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Dare? Confronting Anti-​ Abortion Terrorism after 9/​11.” University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law 6 (2003): 796–​817. McGirr, Lisa. Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 2001. McRae, Elizabeth Gillespie. Mothers of Massive Resistance: White Women and the Politics of White Supremacy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. Murray, Melissa. “Race-​Ing ‘Roe’: Reproductive Justice, Racial Justice, and the Battle for Roe v. Wade.” Harvard Law Review 134 (2021): 2025–​2102. Nickerson, Michelle M. Mothers of Conservatism: Women and the Postwar Right. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2012. Nielsen, Kim E. Un-​American Womanhood: Antiradicalism, Antifeminism, and the First Red Scare. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2001. Paige, Connie. The Right to Lifers: Who They Are, How They Operate, Where They Get Their Money. New York: Summit Books, 1983. Paulicelli, Eugenia. Fashion Under Fascism: Beyond the Black Shirt. Oxford: Oxford International Publishers Ltd, 2004. Phelan, Peggy. “White Men and Pregnancy: Discovering the Body to Be Rescued.” In Acting Out: Feminist Performances, edited by Lynda Hart and Peggy Phelan, 383–​402. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993. Pracher, Maria. “The Marital Rape Exemption: A Violation of a Woman’s Right of Privacy.” Golden Gate University Law Review 11 (1981): 717–​757. Ribieras, Amélie. “ ‘I Want to Thank My Husband Fred for Letting Me Come Here,’ or Phyllis Schlafly’s Opportunistic Defense of Gender Hierarchy.” In Male Supremacism in the United States: From Patriarchal Traditionalism to Misogynist Incels and the Alt-​Right, edited by Emily K. Carian, Alex DiBranco, and Chelsea Ebin, 67–​93. London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2022. Risen, Jim, and Judy Lundstrom Thomas. Wrath of Angels: The American Abortion War. New York: Basic Books, 1998.

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Roberts, Dorothy. “Reproductive Justice, Not Just Rights.” Dissent Magazine 52 (2015): 79–​82. Roth, Benita. Separate Roads to Feminism: Black, Chicana, and White Feminist Movements in America’s Second Wave. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Ryan, Rebecca M. “The Sex Right: A Legal History of the Marital Rape Exemption.” Law & Social Inquiry 20 (1995): 941–​1001. Rymph, Catherine E. Republican Women: Feminism and Conservatism from Suffrage Through the Rise of the New Right. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006. Siegel, Reva. “Dobbs, the Politics of Constitutional Memory, and the Future of Reproductive Justice.” Balkinization (blog), January 22, 2023. https://​bal​kin.blogs​ pot.com/​2023/​01/​dobbs-​polit​ics-​of-​con​stit​utio​nal-​mem​ory.html. Szal, Roxy. “U.S. Department of Justice Indicts Nine Anti-​Abortion Extremists for Clinic Invasion.” Ms. Magazine (blog), April 7, 2022. https://​msm​agaz​ine.com/​ 2022/​04/​07/​lau​ren-​handy-​fetus-​fetal-​rema​ins-​just​ice-​dep​artm​ent-​anti-​abort​ion-​ dc-​cli​nic-​invas​ion/​. Tansman, Alan. The Aesthetics of Japanese Fascism. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009. Young, James E. “The Terrible Beauty of Nazi Aesthetics.” In The Stages of Memory, 127–​140. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2016. Zucker, Alyssa N. “Reproductive Justice: More Than Choice.” Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy 14 (2014): 210–​213.

5 GENDER-​BASED AND STATE VIOLENCE FROM CENTRAL AMERICA TO THE U.S./​MEXICO BORDER From Invisibility to Visibility Cléa Fortuné

Mexico and the United States constitute the largest migration corridor in the world, with an estimated 11 million migrants crossing between the two nations in 2020.1 Over the past decade, the profile of migrants arriving at the border shifted: individuals coming from Central America, and especially from the Northern Triangle (El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala) have been on the rise, so much so that in 2018 they made up the majority of Southwest border apprehensions. Researchers have noticed rising migration levels among both cisgender and transgender women in this region, mostly due to gender and transphobic violence.2 Studying gender violence, defined as “an umbrella term for any harm that is perpetrated against a person’s will and that results from power inequalities based on gender roles,”3 is crucial to account for the distinct distressing obstacles that women face in their migratory journeys compared to men, as they are more likely to experience sexual violence.4 Additionally, when they reach the U.S./​Mexico border, they suffer from state violence in an area where security has been increasingly reinforced by both Democratic and Republican administrations since the 1990s to try to stop irregular migration. In 2019, the Trump administration went a step further by implementing the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP, also known as the “Remain in Mexico” policy). The program keeps foreign individuals seeking asylum in the U.S. on the Mexican side of the border until their scheduled court hearing. Being stuck at the border has had a significant impact on migrants. As anthropologist Anna Ochoa O’Leary explains, “their journeys have become more dangerous as the border has been militarized and as migration has become a big business increasingly dominated by organized syndicates or cartels.”5 Women have specifically become even more vulnerable to sexual assaults and other attacks. DOI: 10.4324/9781003425380-8

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Because women make up almost half of international migrants, gender remains an important category in migration analysis.6 Until the 1970s and 1980s, gendered understandings of migration were largely ignored or neglected. Starting in the 1990s, gender migration studies focused on labor migrations, motherhood, and transnational families (among other lenses of analysis),7 but few focused on the violence that women endured in their border crossing journeys.8 Drawing on research on gender migration, violence, and border studies, this chapter will focus on the different kinds of violence that women from Central America face in their journey to the United States, namely gender-​ based and state violence. This chapter is based on my research conducted in the small border town of Douglas, Arizona (15,000 inhabitants) and its Mexican sister city Agua Prieta, Sonora (80,000 inhabitants) from 2017 to 2020. These border towns have not been studied extensively compared to San Diego/​Tijuana or El Paso/​Ciudad Juarez. Yet, they are important places to consider because they, too, welcome migrants who have been made more visible to criminal trafficking organizations since the implementation of MPP. Participant observation and interviews conducted with local residents between 2018 and 2019 attested to the violence and insecurity faced by these individuals when seeking asylum in the United States. I will first identify the reasons that drive women to migrate to the United States from Central America. Fleeing gender-​based violence in their countries of origin, women risk gender-​based violence during their journeys and come to face state violence when they reach the U.S./​Mexico border. Then, I will examine what happened specifically in 2018–​2019 in the border towns of Douglas, Arizona and Agua Prieta, Sonora when the Trump administration implemented the Migrant Protection Protocols after a migrant caravan arrived at the border. The U.S./​Mexico border is too often depicted as a site of militarization that associates immigrants with criminals and trivializes state violence. To avoid this pitfall, I will conclude by exploring how borderlands artists use the fence9 to denounce the dominant narrative on migrants and to make violence at the border visible, through the study of a local Douglas/​ Agua Prieta artist, who defines herself as neither Mexicana nor Americana and who honors women in the borderlands. Fleeing Violence in the Country of Origin to Experiencing Other Kinds of Violence on the Migratory Journey

The United States has a long tradition of immigration; it has thus been characterized as a “traditional immigrant-​ receiving society.”10 In 2020, more than 40 million people living in the U.S. were born in another country, representing one fifth of the world’s migrants.11 Since the 1990s, the number of migrants from Central America in the United States has tripled. According

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to a study conducted by the Migration Policy Institute in 2013, the Central American “immigrant population grew faster than any other region-​ of-​ origin population from Latin America between 2000 and 2010.”12 In 2018, migrants from Central America represented 8% of the migrant population living in the United States.13 In recent decades, there has been an increase in the number of people migrating from the Northern Triangle of Central America, that is El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. Their numbers rose by 25% between 2007 and 2015, in contrast to a slight decline in the number of Mexican migrants.14 More than two million people are estimated to have left these countries since 2014,15 making El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras the top three countries of origin for Central American immigrants in the United States.16 Among migrants from the Northern Triangle, women and minors make up a significant proportion.17 This feminization18 is “reflected in the share of migrant women apprehended in Mexico […] and in the U.S […].”19 From 2012 to 2017, women apprehended for being irregular border crossers in Mexico rose from 13% of the adult total to 25%, and in the United States they rose from 14% to 27%.20 Researchers have studied the causes that drive women out of the Northern Triangle.21 Socioeconomic conditions such as food insecurity, poverty, and the environmental crises (hurricanes and coffee crop failures) account for some of the push factors.22 For example, in 2021, 73% of Hondurans lived below the poverty line, and nearly 54% lived in extreme poverty.23 Not only are migratory flows from the Northern Triangle to the United States connected to socioeconomic reasons, they are also connected to violence in El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala. As sociologist Olga Odgers-​Ortiz argues, “violence has been one of the major causes of Central American emigration” since the second half of the 20th century.24 She draws attention to three types of violence: urban violence, domestic violence, and political violence, all of which are deeply intertwined.25 In the 2000s, the Northern Triangle became the primary transit corridor for South American drugs bound for the United States, leading to insecurity and urban violence. Urban violence is associated with the criminal ecosystem that includes transnational gangs such as Mara Salvatrucha (MS-​13) and the Eighteenth Street Gang (M-​18).26 These gangs are known for their extreme violence, as is illustrated by MS-​13’s motto “kill, rape, control,” according to one FBI gang specialist.27 As for domestic violence, the Northern Triangle countries have among the highest rates of femicides in the world: In Honduras, femicide rates increased 263 percent between 2005 and 2013. In El Salvador, the number of femicides increased 140 percent between 2015 and 2016. Guatemala’s government also reported a marked

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increase in femicides in 2015 and 2016. The numbers correlated with the increase in women and child migrants who were apprehended in Arizona at the U.S.-​Mexico border in 2015 and early 2016.28 In 2020, femicide rates and increased migration continued to go hand in hand. El Salvador and Honduras had some of the highest rates of femicide in Latin America, with 4.7 per 100,000 women killed in Honduras and 2.1 per 100,000 women killed in El Salvador.29 This lethal form of gender-​ based violence drives women to flee their countries of origin in the Northern Triangle. Trans women also experience gender-​based violence that pushes them to migrate. Even though the Honduran government recognized its responsibility in the death of a trans woman named Vicky Hernandez in 2022,30 the country still has one of the world’s highest rates of trans homicides.31 As for Guatemala, the state does not recognize the rights of the LGBTQIA+​community and, with an average of 2.83 trans persons murdered per 1,000,000 inhabitants, the country is ranked second on transgender murders by the Observatory on Murdered Trans Persons.32 Escaping Violence Through Migrant Caravans as a Way to Gain Visibility and Avoid More Violence

In order to escape violence in their countries of origin, more and more cisgender and transwomen have joined migrant caravans, which have been occurring more regularly since the 2010s. Migrant scholars have conceptualized migrant caravans as a “strategy for mobility and safety in light of the restrictive immigration policies that Mexico and the U.S. have implemented since the 1990s.”33 It is a form of collective action that contests the border regime and claims the right to mobility and security, as well as a social movement.34 Migrant caravans are a particular form of migration that enable migrants to move in groups in order to travel more safely, which is of particular importance when we consider the increased violence they experience on their migratory journeys. Indeed, in their transit through Mexico, women are at greater risk than men of physical and sexual violence.35 According to estimations, between 60% and 80% of women migrating from Central America to the United States are victims of sexual abuse “at the hand of criminal groups, human smugglers, or corrupt officials […].”36 One example of such sexual assault is the existence of so called “rape trees” in the borderlands: women’s undergarments can be found hanging from bushes and trees and they serve as a warning that the area is rife with gender-​based violence. As a result, many women take contraception to prevent pregnancy if raped during their transit.37 Some Mexican border towns such as Altar, Sonora, are also infamous for their many drug stores selling birth control

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pills, which is considered indicative of the threat of sexual assault that women face while attempting to cross to the United States with their smugglers.38 In order to avoid this kind of gender-​based violence, cisgender and transgender women have been joining the caravans. While the migrant caravans started in the 2010s, one of them was particularly mediatized in October 2018 because of how it originated and because of its large number and the composition of the individuals forming it. This migrant caravan started in Honduras, with a flyer circulating on social media in September 2018 criticizing the Honduran president and inviting people to join the “Caminata del Migrante.” Migration scholar Rosario Rizzo Lara described its content: “The flyer stated the time and place of departure, along with the statement, ‘No nos vamos por que queremos, nos expulsa la violencia y la pobreza’ [We are not leaving because we want to; we are driven out by violence and poverty].”39 A group of about 200 Hondurans gathered in San Pedro Sula to trek northward, and the group was joined by other Hondurans, Guatemalans, Salvadorans, and Nicaraguans on the journey. The local radio and television first reported on the caravan because of the flyer circulating on social media and as the group grew as it crossed borders, international media outlets started reporting on it.40 I would also argue that it was highly mediatized and captured political attention because the caravan was moving northward in the context of the mid-​term elections in the United States. Donald Trump, whose presidency was marked by restricting immigration and a promise to build the “wall,” was seeking a congressional majority. Donald Trump was, once again, embracing an anti-​immigrant message and announced a “crisis” at the U.S. southern border. He responded to the migrant caravan by sending 7,000 active-​duty U.S. troops to put up barbed wire along the U.S./​Mexico fence in a mission that was called Operation Faithful Patriot when it was launched.41 In November 2018, about 7,000 migrants from Central America arrived at the border to ask for asylum in the United States. This caravan was largely composed of women and children.42 In December 2018, then secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Kirsten Nielsen, announced the Migrant Protection Protocols as a response to what the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) called an “illegal immigration crisis at the U.S./​Mexico border.”43 The Protocols, also known as the “Remain in Mexico” policy, took effect in January 2019 when DHS stated: The Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) are a U.S. Government action whereby certain foreign individuals entering or seeking admission to the U.S. from Mexico—​illegally or without proper documentation—​may be returned to Mexico and wait outside of the U.S. for the duration of their immigration proceedings.44

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Before these Protocols, asylum seekers could ask for a credible fear interview—​that is, the opportunity to demonstrate that they might suffer from persecution if returned to their home country—​with an asylum officer at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). If the latter gave them a court hearing document, the asylum seekers could wait in the United States until they appeared in front of a U.S. judge. But the “Remain in Mexico” policy changed the asylum-​seeking process and forced individuals to wait for their hearings on the Mexican side of the border. As part of the anti-​immigration rhetoric when implementing the Migrant Protection Protocols, Donald Trump said that only 2% of asylum seekers went to their court hearings. However, data from the Department of Justice contradicts this claim, showing that 89% went to their court hearing in 2017.45 Nonetheless, since they were stuck at one of the most militarized borders in the world46 in the wake of the implementation of the MPP, it did become harder for migrants to attend their court hearings. Geographer Austin Kocher describes the arduous demands of trying to make it to one’s hearing: “to attend 7:30 am court hearings on the U.S. side of the border, migrants were instructed to show up at ports of entry three hours in advance—​ at 4:30 am—​in cities with high rates of violence, kidnapping and femicide.”47 Moreover, since asylum seekers frequently lacked an address in Mexico, “Border Patrol agents reportedly wrote ‘Facebook’ as the street address for migrants on forms related to their immigration hearing even though there does not appear to be a mechanism for the government to communicate with migrants through social media.”48 These reasons explain the low hearing attendance rates since the implementation of the MPP. The Protocols thus excluded asylum seekers “geographically and plac[ed] an international border between them and their hearings;” they “were physically excluded from the country even as their legal cases were pending inside the United States,”49 thus violating the principle of non-​ refoulement under international human rights law. In May 2019, around 13,000 individuals were on waiting lists to ask for asylum on the Mexican side of the border. Making it complicated and long to ask for asylum not only violates human rights but is also a deterrence strategy and a form of state violence directed towards immigrants. As border scholars Jeremy Slack and co-​authors argue: Violence, not security objectives, guides border enforcement strategies. In recent years, border enforcement strategy has centered on the development of a militarized logic and a strategic plan for enforcement that emphasizes pain, suffering, and trauma as deterrents to undocumented migration.50 Women who had fled gender-​based violence and persecution in their countries of origin found themselves exposed to state violence when arriving at the

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U.S./​Mexico border, in the context of the Migrant Protection Protocols that were implemented all along the border, including at the Douglas/​Agua Prieta crossing. Dealing with the Impacts of the Migrant Protection Protocols on the 2018 Migrant Caravan in Douglas/​Agua Prieta

Agua Prieta is a Mexican border town of about 80,000 official inhabitants but residents argue that the population is actually closer to 200,000.51 In the 1990s–​2000s, it was a major crossing point for undocumented migrants on their way to the United States.52 In 2018, this Mexican border town was still a crossing point, with the difference that migrants were stuck in Agua Prieta and becoming targets of organized criminal activities like kidnapping and ransom demands. As the director of the local migrant shelter CAME (Centro de Atención al Migrante Exodus) and CRM (Centro de Recursos para Migrantes) explained: There are migrants here. The territory is controlled by organized crime […] They control the narcotraffic and polleros [migrant smugglers]. So yes, there are migrants here [even if] we don’t see them. The data that the Douglas consulate shares with us shows that 1,500 individuals went to detention facilities in 2018. So there are migrants, but there is territorial control.53 Agua Prieta is controlled by the Sinaloa cartel, which was headed by El Chapo Guzman until his arrest in 2016 (his sons and associate Ismael Zambada have since assumed leadership of the cartel). Sinaloa is the most powerful transnational criminal organization, controlling as much as 45% of the drug trade in Mexico and having an estimated annual revenue of three billion dollars.54 Until 2019, José Javier Rascón Ramírez controlled Agua Prieta for the cartel. While it specializes in drug trafficking, it also deals in human trafficking and smuggling, which are reported to be more lucrative activities.55 Undocumented migrants willing to cross through the desert to the United States need to pay the cartel. One migrant related in an interview, “To go through the desert, I had to pay 4,000 U.S. dollars to the cartel. You see these mountains? The halcones [halcones are lookouts, from the Spanish for falcons or hawks] watch the drugs and people crossing. If they are not aware of a crossing and they see something, they kill people crossing without authorization.”56 In order to spot migrants arriving in Agua Prieta, the cartel keeps the local bus station under surveillance. The director of CAME and CRM recounted, “From where do they control? The bus station. They are there, controlling, taking pictures of the migrants, taking pictures of their identification and

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asking with which pollero they are going to cross.”57 As soon as they arrive in Agua Prieta, the local cartel asks migrants to pay 500 dollars immediately to have the right to be in the city. If they cannot pay, they are kidnapped and taken to casas de seguridad [safehouses] on the outskirts of town. Escape from these places is difficult and dangerous, adding to the isolating experience and invisibilization of migrants. As geographer Jeremy Slack states: Migrants and deportees are rendered vulnerable by their journey through clandestine space. Their relationship to the border, as undocumented migrants, means they are no longer connected to the social fabric as citizens with identities, families, friends, and social ties; rather, they have been dislodged from the norms and protections of society as a whole.58 In 2018, the migrant caravan made individuals migrating visible. As a volunteer for CRM at the time, I had access to data regarding this specific caravan.59 Among 5,000 migrants in transit through Mexico and moving to the United States in November 2018, around 20% were women, 87 were part of the LGBTQIA+​community and 24 were pregnant women. Central Americans from the caravan arrived mostly in big Mexican border towns such as Tijuana (Baja California), Mexicali (Baja California), Ciudad Juárez (Chihuahua), and Nogales (Sonora), few arrived directly in Agua Prieta. While the Department of Homeland Security stated that Mexico would provide asylum seekers “with all appropriate humanitarian protections for the duration of their stays,”60 Mexican border municipalities were not prepared to receive thousands of asylum seekers along its northern border. Shelters rapidly became overcrowded, leading to health and humanitarian issues as migrants had to sleep outside in the cold winter nights. Moreover, officials in these border towns were telling migrants that they had to wait several months to ask for asylum in the United States. Since almost no migrants had arrived in Agua Prieta, the volunteers of the migrant shelter CAME organized to pick up asylum seekers in Nogales, in order to alleviate the pressure on this facility and for claims to be taken into account more quickly at the Douglas port of entry. But as the word spread, more and more Central Americans arrived directly in Agua Prieta, so much so that CAME was sheltering 160 individuals in December 2018 even though it has a capacity of 44. As the director of CAME explained: We work in collaboration with the institutional organizations in Nogales […]. The shelters in Nogales are at capacity. They asked us if we can receive families to accompany them in their asylum-​seeking process […]. We helped transwomen, there were 30, and we helped them here in Agua Prieta over two weeks. It helped that they had U.S. pro-​bono lawyers. CAME is a shelter for men but we have opened it to families needing

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shelter. And we could shelter these transwomen. In other border towns, conditions are terrible and undermine the dignity of people. It is going to be a very long and very sad process because we still don’t know what will happen with the thousands of people seeking asylum in the United States.61 While from this description we can see that the 30 transgender women’s asylum claims were quickly taken into account by U.S. border officials, things changed in January 2019 when the “Remain in Mexico” policy took effect. U.S. border officials at the Douglas port of entry started to handle only six to eight asylum claims per day, trapping hundreds of individuals at the border in Agua Prieta for months. As they were unfamiliar with the area, living in marginal spaces like shelters, tents, and on the streets, migrants became more visible to transnational criminal organizations that control northern Mexican border towns. Increased security at the U.S./​Mexico border put women at additional risk as they continued to be the main targets of organized crime and be sold for commercial sexual exploitation.62 In order to protect migrant families and individuals from violence, U.S. and Mexican volunteers of the Agua Prieta shelter personally accompanied asylum seekers to the Douglas port of entry,63 even when they were threatened by the cartel. Some volunteers recounted that they were either almost ran over or stopped and surrounded by cars, with cartel members pressing upon them the importance of not sheltering migrants as they were losing a source of revenue.64 By denying asylum seekers entry to the United States, geographer Austin Kocher explains that the MPP program violates “domestic and international refugee law by sending asylum seekers back to locations where they were likely to face unsafe conditions or further persecution, thus violating the principle of non-​refoulment.”65 Indeed, the Protocols go against the 1951 Refugee Convention that laid the foundation for the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1984, which states that “No State Party shall expel, return or extradite a person to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.”66 This form of state violence is denounced by many who work and live along the border. In the next section, I would like to focus on how artists condemn these practices in borderlands art, with a specific look at one artist in Douglas/​Agua Prieta. Border Art as a Means to Resist and Denounce Violence at the U.S./​Mexico Border

As this chapter explored in the first three sections, the U.S./​Mexico border is a place of transit, a place of passage, and a place of immobility for individuals

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stuck on the Mexican side because of restrictive U.S. immigration policies. However, the border should be seen as more than a transit zone. It is also “a place of residence for millions of people” and, as such, can be “a site for change and agency.”67 I want to explore here how the border can be seen as a site of innovation and possibility where state violence can be addressed and as a place where awareness can be raised on issues faced by women at the border. Women in the borderlands, such as artist Jenea Sanchez in Douglas/​ Agua Prieta, resist the state narrative by challenging dominant representations and hegemonic discourses. This is “a way of calling attention to the unjust effects of austerity, precarity, neoliberalism, authoritarian control, and securitarian politics.”68 Border art is a concept that was coined in the San Diego region (California) in the 1980s by the Border Art Workshops (BAW)/​Taller de Arte Fronterizo (TAF), a community of artists creating art focusing on human rights violations and inequalities. Founded in 1984, the BAW/​TAF group was composed of Mexicans, Americans, and Mexican Americans, who described themselves as having “family histories that mapped journeys of exile, migration, displacement and translation.”69 According to documentarian Aude-​Emilie Judaïque, they “constructed and deconstructed [their] representations of the border and played around with images [they] associate with it—​sometimes as a wall, sometimes as a connection.”70 This group of artists made the border the site of their work but also the content of their work. Since the 1980s, different kinds of art have been created at, and on, the border. In 2017, Kikito, a famous border piece created by French street artist JR, was installed in the San Diego/​Tijuana region. This 70-​foot rendition of a Mexican child looking over the fence at the United States aimed to challenge the traditional view of the border as a place of division, repositioning it as a place of connection, according to Megan Morrissey, an associate professor of rhetoric.71 As researchers Cristina Giudice and Chiara Giubilaro argue, “working on imagination and creating alternative spaces, artists are able to challenge dominant representations and hegemonic discourses, making the border an active site of resistance and struggle.”72 Because Douglas/​Agua Prieta are small border towns, researchers have not studied them extensively. However, they are also sites where local artists not only denounce violence at the border, but also give an alternative discourse to border politics. One of them is local border artist Jenea Sanchez, born and raised in Douglas/​Agua Prieta. “Aware of [her] cultural categorization, neither as native Mexicana nor Americana, [she] strive[s]‌to utilize this nomadic sensibility by inserting [herself] between, among, and outside of the status quo of American and Mexican culture.”73 In 2015, she created an arts organization called Border Arts Corridor (BAC), a non-​profit dedicated to telling an alternative narrative about life on the border, through workshops,

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installations, and performances on both sides of the border. She says, “I love experimenting with […] ideas that represent women of color and, you know, life on the border that can counter the dominant narrative.”74 Her works display violence at the border and make it visible. In October 2018, when the migrant caravan from Central America was arriving at the U.S/​ Mexico border, she invited Mexican and U.S. artists to perform on border issues that affect women, both on the Mexican and U.S. sides—​so that the members of the audience who could not cross could attend the performance. A dance piece denounced the separation of children from their parents—​ which was the result of the “zero tolerance policy” implemented in 2018. A performance condemning women being raped during their journey took the form of a poem. And a theatrical rendition explored the difficulty of leaving one’s country.75 Another project that Jenea Sanchez developed honors local women practicing sustainable ways of surviving in Agua Prieta. As U.S. immigration policies become progressively restrictive, more and more migrants are stuck at the border, waiting to ask for asylum or waiting to gather enough money to cross clandestinely. Thus, migrants in transit increasingly become migrant settlers:76 instead of crossing to the United States, migrants settle permanently on the Mexican side of the border, where economic opportunities are rare. Individuals work in the maquiladoras—​foreign-​owned companies based in Mexico that benefit from the duty-​free and tariff-​free importation of raw materials and equipment and then export their manufactured products to the United States mostly—​where wages are about 44 U.S. dollars a week. Such a wage is insufficient in an area known for being more expensive than the rest of Mexico. As families cannot rely on a single breadwinner, both men and women need to find work.77 That is why the cooperative DouglaPrieta Trabaja was created in 2004. This center allows women to learn and practice permaculture. They bring the fruit and vegetables they grow back home, which is cheaper than buying produce at the supermarket. The goal of this cooperative is to promote mutual aid between the members of the community so that women and their families can be economically independent. Permaculture also encourages sustainable food security. Trinidad, one of the women from the community, comes from Álamos, Southern Sonora, where she and her husband owned land. However, the taxes on their land were too high, so they moved to the north with their six children to find better economic opportunities. Her husband found work in a maquiladora while she became a member of DouglaPrieta Trabaja.78 To honor Trinidad and the women of DouglaPrieta Trabaja, artist Jenea Sanchez started a border, women-​ centered project called “The Mexican Women’s Post Apocalyptic Survival Guide in the Southwest: Food, Clothing, Shelter, y La Migra.” Sanchez photographed this group of women, looking

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into the camera, “with a combination of pride, defiance, and strength. The tools of their trade—​a shovel handle, a small rabbit, hands dirty from gardening—​[…] hint at the labor and gift of these women”79 who are “both students and experts living sustainable lifestyles, who run a communal garden, raise livestock, make clothing, produce bricks for building all while living on the outskirts of highly militarized border.”80 As Jenea Sanchez stated in an interview: It’s an economically struggling community but they are so efficient in their way of survival—​they raise animals, make clothes, have contraptions to collect rainwater to use for crops. They are multifunctional in their survival skills. This project is meant to honor them as strong female leaders in a community practicing sustainable ways of surviving.81 Printing their faces in a big format was meant “to make a statement about [their] power and importance to our world.”82 Transforming the fence into a tool to resist the dominant narrative on immigration through performances on and at the border, as well as celebrating local women, is a way for artists to question federal security policies and their impact on people migrating, which helps to make state violence visible. “Making bodies and their sufferings visible is probably the most powerful way to disrupt the impression of objectivity suggested by borderlines and their apparatuses.”83 Borderlands artists engage with the world, “a world in which states are normally considered—​at least by mainstream International Relations Theory—​ as the (only) powerful actors.”84 In the borderlands, artists become powerful actors who provide information and raise awareness on what is going on at the border. Conclusion

Gender-​based violence is a complex issue influenced by political, economic, and social factors. It is a driver of migration for women, who often make the decision to leave the Northern Triangle to seek a better life in the United States because of community and domestic violence. However, in the context of restrictive U.S. immigration policies, women have been exposed to state violence—​ especially in 2019 in the context of the “Remain in Mexico” policy that made it very complicated and long to ask for asylum in the United States—​as well as more of the very gender-​based violence that they had tried to escape since they are more vulnerable to transnational criminal organizations during such journeys. The asylum-​seeking process was even made impossible when the border shut down during the Covid-​ 19 pandemic. Asylum seekers were stuck

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indefinitely on the Mexican side of the border, waiting for their claims to be considered. As sociologist Douglas S. Massey stated in the late 1990s: In the United States, in particular, both legal and illegal migration continue to expand, and there is little evidence that the restrictive measures imposed so far have had much success in reducing either of these flows. Rather, policies in the United States have been largely symbolic, signaling to angry or fearful citizens and workers that their concerns are being addressed while marginalizing immigrants socially and geographically to make them less visible to the public.85 This statement is still valid in 2023. If asylum seekers have been made less visible to the public in the aftermath of the MPP, they have been made highly visible to transnational criminal organizations, thus increasing their vulnerability, especially women’s. While the state has tried to make the fate of asylum seekers invisible, local border artists try to raise public awareness about what is going on at the border. This is the case in Douglas/​Agua Prieta, where a local artist denounces the forms of violence that women face when migrating and when they become migrant settlers. Not only does she mobilize artists from both sides of the border to increase public understanding of border issues, but she also gives an alternative discourse on the border by celebrating former women migrants who settled in the region and managed to find economic opportunities to provide for themselves and their families. Under the Biden administration, officials recognized that women fleeing gender-​ based violence and persecution in their countries of origin need access to protection. However, studies have revealed that women seeking asylum still wait for extended periods on the Mexican side of the border, often in dangerous situations where the risk of kidnapping, rape, and trafficking remain threats.86 Moreover, the Biden administration proposed a new immigration policy in February 2023 that requires migrants to have sought asylum and have been denied it in another country through which they transited. This goes against the principle of non-​refoulement under the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and as such, the study of the lived experiences of women migrants continues to demand the attention of scholars and needs to be further documented.87 Notes 1 International Organization for Migration, “World Migration Report Data Snapshot,” World Migration Report, 2022, https://​world​migr​atio​nrep​ort.iom. int/​sites/​g/​files/​tmz​bdl1​691/​files/​docume​nts/​WMR-​Data-​Snaps​hot-​Larg​est-​migrat​ ion-​corrid​ors.pdf.

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2 Ariel G. Ruiz Soto, Michael Fix, and Jeffrey Hallock, “In Search of Safety, Growing Numbers of Women Flee Central America,” Migration Policy Institute, May 29, 2018, www.migr​atio​npol​icy.org/​arti​cle/​sea​rch-​saf​ety-​grow​ing-​numb​ers-​ women-​flee-​cent​ral-​amer​ica. 3 Andrea L. Wirtz, Tonia C. Poteat, Mannat Malik, and Nancy Glass, “Gender-​ Based Violence Against Transgender People in the United States: A Call for Research and Programming,” Trauma, Violence, & Abuse 21, no. 2 (2020): 227. 4 Ruiz Soto, Fix, and Hallock, “In Search of Safety, Growing Numbers of Women Flee Central America.” 5 Anna Ochoa O’Leary and William Paul Simmons, “Reproductive Justice and Resistance at the US-​Mexico Borderlands,” in Radical Reproductive Justice, ed. Loretta J. Ross et al. (New York: Feminist Press, 2017), 313. 6 Anastasia Christou and Eleonore Kofman, “Gender and Migration: An Introduction,” in Gender and Migration: IMISCOE Short Reader, ed. Anastasia Christou and Eleonore Kofman, IMISCOE Research Series (Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2022), 1. 7 Pierrette Hondagneu-​Sotelo and Ernestine Avila, “ ‘I’m Here, but I’m There:’ The Meanings of Latina Transnational Motherhood,” Gender & Society 11, no. 5 (October 1, 1997): 548‑571; Eleonore Kofman, “Family-Related Migration: A Critical Review of European Studies,” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 30, no. 2 (March 1, 2004): 243–​262. 8 Christou and Kofman, Gender and Migration, 78. 9 The term fence refers to the different kinds of barriers that exist along the U.S./​ Mexico border. The term “wall” is also often used—​especially in the media—​but it does not encompass the varieties of see-​through fences that are located along the border. 10 Douglas S. Massey et al., “Theories of International Migration: A Review and Appraisal,” Population and Development Review 19, no. 3 (1993): 431. 11 Abby Budiman, “Key Findings about U.S. Immigrants,” Pew Research Center, August 20, 2020, www.pewr​esea​rch.org/​fact-​tank/​2020/​08/​20/​key-​findi​ngs-​ about-​u-​s-​imm​igra​nts/​. 12 Jeanne Batalova and Sierra Stoney, “Central American Immigrants in the United States,” Migration Policy Institute, March 18, 2013, www.migr​atio​npol​icy.org/​ arti​cle/​cent​ral-​ameri​can-​imm​igra​nts-​uni​ted-​sta​tes-​2011. 13 Budiman, “Key Findings about U.S. Immigrants.” 14 D’Vera Cohn, “Rise in U.S. Immigrants From El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras Outpaces Growth from Elsewhere,” Pew Research Center’s Hispanic Trends Project, December 7, 2017, www.pewr​esea​rch.org/​hispa​nic/​2017/​12/​07/​ rise-​in-​u-​s-​imm​igra​nts-​from-​el-​salva​dor-​guatem​ala-​and-​hondu​ras-​outpa​ces-​gro​ wth-​from-​elsewh​ere/​. 15 Amelia Cheatham and Diana Roy, “Central America’s Turbulent Northern Triangle,” Council on Foreign Relations, June 22, 2022, www.cfr.org/​backg​roun​ der/​cent​ral-​ameri​cas-​turbul​ent-​north​ern-​trian​gle. 16 Batalova and Stoney, “Central American Immigrants in the United States.” 17 Olga Odgers-​ Ortiz, “The Perception of Violence in Narratives of Central American Migrants at the Border between Mexico and the United States,” Revue Européenne Des Migrations Internationales 36, no. 1 (October 1, 2020): 53–​73. 18 The feminization of migration describes the shift in migration patterns: while men used to migrate in larger numbers than women, in the 1980s there was a shift that

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resulted in an increasing number of women moving on their own, not necessarily to join a husband or relatives. See Gloria Moreno-​Fontes Chammartin, “The Feminization of International Migration,” International Migration Programme, 2002, https://​libr​ary.fes.de/​pdf-​files/​gurn/​00072.pdf. However, new studies nuance the term “feminization” of migration when talking about international migration since analysis demonstrates that women have always migrated in substantial numbers. See Katherine M. Donato and Donna Gabaccia, “The Global Feminization of Migration: Past, Present, and Future,” Migration Policy Institute, June 1, 2016, www.migr​atio​npol​icy.org/​arti​cle/​glo​bal-​femin​izat​ion-​migrat​ion-​ past-​pres​ent-​and-​fut​ure. 19 “Migrant Women and Girls from the Northern Triangle and Their Journey through Mexico: A Downward Spiral of Hazards,” Open Americas, February 15, 2021, https://​opena​meri​cas.org/​2021/​02/​15/​migr​ant-​women-​and-​girls-​from-​ the-​north​ern-​trian​gle-​and-​their-​jour​ney-​thro​ugh-​mex​ico-​a-​downw​ard-​spi​ral-​of-​ haza​rds/​. 20 “Migrant Women and Girls from the Northern Triangle.” 21 Leigh Anne Schmidt and Stephanie Buechler, “ ‘I Risk Everything Because I Have Already Lost Everything’: Central American Female Migrants Speak Out on the Migrant Trail in Oaxaca, Mexico,” Journal of Latin American Geography 16, no. 1 (2017): 139–​164; Jennifer Hyndman and Wenona Giles, “Waiting for What? The Feminization of Asylum in Protracted Situations,” Gender, Place & Culture 18, no. 3 (June 1, 2011): 361–​379; Odgers-​Ortiz, “The Perception of Violence in Narratives of Central American Migrants”; Douglas S. Massey, New Faces in New Places: The Changing Geography of American Immigration, first ed. (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2010). 22 Massey, New Faces in New Places. 23 Cheatham and Roy, “Central America’s Turbulent Northern Triangle.” 24 Odgers-​Ortiz, “The Perception of Violence in Narratives of Central American Migrants.” 25 Odgers-​Ortiz, “The Perception of Violence in Narratives of Central American Migrants.” 26 Cheatham and Roy, “Central America’s Turbulent Northern Triangle.” 27 “MS-​13 Gang: The Story behind One of the World’s Most Brutal Street Gangs,” BBC News, April 19, 2017, sec. US & Canada, www.bbc.com/​news/​world-​us-​can​ ada-​39645​640. 28 Schmidt and Buechler, “  ‘I Risk Everything Because I Have Already Lost Everything,’ ” 141. 29 “The Pandemic in the Shadows: Femicides or Feminicides in 2020 in Latin America and the Caribbean,” Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean and Gender Equality Observatory for Latin America and the Caribbean, 2020, https://​oig.cepal.org/​sites/​defa​ult/​files/​21-​00792_​folleto_​the_​pa​ndem​ic_​i​n_​th​e_​sh​ adow​s_​we​b_​0.pdf. 30 Cristian Cabrera G., “Honduras Recognizes Its Responsibility in Trans Killing,” Human Rights Watch, May 13, 2022, www.hrw.org/​news/​2022/​05/​13/​hondu​ras-​ rec​ogni​zes-​its-​res​pons​ibil​ity-​trans-​kill​ing. 31 Trans Murder Monitoring, “Transgender Europe: IDAHOT TMM 2015,” TvT, May 8, 2015, https://​trans​resp​ect.org/​en/​tran​sgen​der-​eur​ope-​ida​hot-​tmm-​2015/​.

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32 Sarah Brenden et al., “The Cycle of Violence: Migration from the Northern Triangle,” Research Works Archive, 2017, https://​digi​tal.lib.was​hing​ton.edu:443/​ resear​chwo​rks/​han​dle/​1773/​38696. 33 Rosario de la Luz Rizzo Lara, “La Caminata del Migrante: A Social Movement,” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 47, no. 17 (December 13, 2021): 3892; Eduardo Torre Cantalapiedra and Dulce María Mariscal Nava, “Batallando con Fronteras: Estrategias Migratorias en Tránsito de Participantes en Caravanas de Migrantes,” Estudios Fronterizos 21 (April 22, 2020): 1–​21, https://​doi.org/​ 10.21670/​ref.2005​047. 34 Amarela Varela Huerta et Lisa McLean, “Caravanas de migrantes en México –​ Migrant caravans in Mexico: nueva forma de autodefensa y transmigración”, Revista CIDOB d’Afers Internacionals, no. 122 (2019): 163–​186; Rosario de la Luz Rizzo Lara, “La Caminata del Migrante: A Social Movement”, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 47, no. 17 (December 13, 2021): 3891–​3910, https://​doi.org/​10.1080/​13691​83X.2021.1940​111. 35 Schmidt and Buechler, “  ‘I Risk Everything Because I Have Already Lost Everything’ ”; Argan Aragon, Migrations clandestines d’Amérique centrale vers les États-​Unis (Paris: Presses Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2015). 36 Anna-​Cat Brigida, “ ‘I Didn’t Have Anywhere to Run”: Migrant Women Are Facing a Rape Epidemic,’ ” Vice, August 29, 2016, www.vice.com/​en/​arti​cle/​evg​ g9j/​i-​didnt-​have-​anywh​ere-​to-​run-​migr​ant-​women-​are-​fac​ing-​a-​rape-​epide​mic. 37 Hana Masri, “Queer Border Objects and the Sucio Material Politics of Migration in the U.S.–​Mexico Borderlands,” QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking 5, no. 2 (2018): 2; 15. 38 Jude Joffe-​ Block, “Facing Risk of Rape, Migrant Women Prepare with Birth Control,” Fronteras, March 12, 2014, http://​kjzz.org/​cont​ent/​9552/​fac​ing-​risk-​ rape-​migr​ant-​women-​prep​are-​birth-​cont​rol. 39 Rizzo Lara, “La Caminata del Migrante,” 3895. 40 Rizzo Lara, “La Caminata del Migrante,” 3902 41 Reuters Staff, “Pentagon drops ‘Faithful Patriot’ moniker for Mexico border mission,” Reuters, November 7, 2018, www.reut​ers.com/​arti​cle/​us-​usa-​immi​grat​ ion-​penta​gon-​idUSKC​N1NC​2D9. 42 Huerta and McLean, “Caravanas de migrantes en México –​Migrant caravans in Mexico,” 174. 43 Department of Homeland Security, “Migrant Protection Protocols,” January 24, 2019, www.dhs.gov/​news/​2019/​01/​24/​migr​ant-​pro​tect​ion-​protoc​ols. 44 Department of Homeland Security, “Migrant Protection Protocols | Homeland Security,” 2022, https://​www.dhs.gov/​news/​2019/​01/​24/​migr​ant-​pro​tect​ion-​ protoc​ols. 45 U.S. Department of Justice, “Statistics Yearbook –​Fiscal Year 2017,” 2017, 33, www.just​ice.gov/​eoir/​page/​file/​1107​056/​downl​oad. 46 Reece Jones, Violent Borders: Refugees and the Right to Move (London New York: Verso, 2016). 47 Austin Kocher, “Migrant Protection Protocols and the Death of Asylum,” Journal of Latin American Geography 20, no. 1 (April 1, 2021): 251. 48 Adolfo Flores, “Border Patrol Agents Are Writing ‘Facebook’ As A Street Address for Asylum-​Seekers Forced To Wait In Mexico,” BuzzFeed News, September 27,

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2019, www.buzzf​eed.com/​adolf​oflo​res/​asy​lum-​not​ice-​bor​der-​app​ear-​faceb​ook-​ mex​ico. 49 Kocher, “Migrant Protection Protocols and the Death of Asylum,” 250. 50 Jeremy Slack et al., “The Geography of Border Militarization: Violence, Death and Health in Mexico and the United States,” Journal of Latin American Geography 15, no. 1 (March 1, 2016): 8. 51 Personal interviews with the author, 2017–​2020. 52 Sam Dillon, “Agua Prieta Journal; Boom Turns Border to Speed Bump,” The New York Times, January 18, 2000, www.nyti​mes.com/​2000/​01/​18/​world/​agua-​ pri​eta-​jour​nal-​boom-​turns-​bor​der-​to-​speed-​bump.html. 53 Personal interview with the author, translation from Spanish by the author, December 2018. 54 William Dean et al., “The War on Mexican Drug Cartels: Options for U.S. and Mexican Policy-​Makers,” Final Report of the Institute of Politics National Security Student Policy Group, Harvard University Institute of Politics, Cambridge, Mass: Institute of Politics, September 2012; Beittel, June S. “Mexico: Organized Crime and Drug Trafficking Organizations.” Congressional Research Service, R41576: 40. Washington, D.C., December 20, 2019, 25, https://​crs​repo​rts.congr​ ess.gov/​prod​uct/​pdf/​R/​R41​576/​40. 55 According to the UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR, “Human trafficking and smuggling are two different crimes […]. Human trafficking is involuntary and victims are exploited, whereas smuggling is voluntary, yet still bears life-​threatening risks.” “Trafficking in persons,” UNHCR, 2023, www.unhcr.org/​what-​we-​do/​prot​ ect-​human-​rig​hts/​asy​lum-​and-​migrat​ion/​traf​fi ck​ing-​pers​ons; Guadalupe Correa-​ Cabrera, Los Zetas Inc.: Criminal Corporations, Energy, and Civil War in Mexico (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2017). 56 Personal interview with the author, October 2018. 57 Personal interview with the author, translation from Spanish by the author, December 2018. 58 Jeremy Slack, Deported to Death: How Drug Violence Is Changing Migration on the US–​Mexico Border, first ed. (Oakland, California: University of California Press, 2019), 92. 59 As part of CRM, I was part of the WhatsApp group intended to inform volunteers of migrants’ situations. Beto, the CRM director, received information and data through a network of Mexican NGOs working together to monitor the migrant caravan and for migrant shelters to organize and welcome migrants. 60 Department of Homeland Security, “Migrant Protection Protocols: Homeland Security,” 2022, www.dhs.gov/​news/​2019/​01/​24/​migr​ant-​pro​tect​ion-​protoc​ols. 61 Personal interview with the author, translation from Spanish by the author, December 2018. 62 Brenden et al., “The Cycle of Violence: Migration from the Northern Triangle,” 23. 63 Participant observation by the author. 64 Personal interview with the author, December 2018. 65 Kocher, “Migrant Protection Protocols and the Death of Asylum,” 250. 66 United Nations, “Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment,” OHCHR, 1984, www.ohchr.org/​en/​inst​ rume​nts-​mec​hani​sms/​inst​rume​nts/​con​vent​ion-​agai​nst-​tort​ure-​and-​other-​cruel-​ inhu​man-​or-​degrad​ing.

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67 Michelle Téllez, “Community of Struggle: Gender, Violence, and Resistance on the U.S./​Mexico Border,” Gender & Society 22, no. 5 (October 2008): 547; 546, https://​doi.org/​10.1177/​08912​4320​8321​020. 68 Judith Butler, Zeynep Gambetti, and Leticia Sabsay, Vulnerability in Resistance (Duke University Press, 2016), 2. 69 Jo-Anne Berelowitz, “Conflict Over ‘Border Art,’  ” Third Text 11, no. 40 (September 1, 1997): 69. 70 Aude-​Emilie Judaïque, “The Roots of Border Art: Villa Albertine,” 2022, https://​ villa-​albert​ine.org/​magaz​ine/​roots-​bor​der-​art-​art-​us-​mex​ico-​bor​der. 71 Megan Elizabeth Morrissey, “How Art Installations on the US-​Mexico Border Affected People’s Understanding of the Border,” National Communication Association, June 30, 2020, www.nat​com.org/​commun​icat​ion-​curre​nts/​how-​art-​ instal​lati​ons-​us-​mex​ico-​bor​der-​affec​ted-​peop​les-​unders​tand​ing-​bor​der. 72 Cristina Giudice and Chiara Giubilaro, “Re-​Imagining the Border: Border Art as a Space of Critical Imagination and Creative Resistance,” Geopolitics 20, no. 1 (January 2015): 79. 73 Jenea Sanchez, “About,” M. Jenea Sanchez, 2023, http://​mjenea​sanc​hez.com/​en/​ about-​1. 74 Interview with the author, Douglas, November 28, 2018. 75 Participant observation by the author, Douglas, October 2018. 76 Cléa Fortuné, Sécurité Frontalière, Insécurité Locale dans les Borderlands États-​ Unis/​Mexique. Étude de Douglas (Arizona) et Agua Prieta (Sonora), PhD diss., (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2020). 77 Personal interview with the author, December 2018. 78 Personal interview with the author, December 2017. 79 Michelle Wallace, “15 Minutes with M. Jenea Sanchez: Weaving Community Through Art,” Catapult, January 18, 2017, https://​catap​ult.co/​stor​ies/​15-​minu​ tes-​with-​m-​jenea-​sanc​hez. 80 M. Jenea Sanchez, “The Mexican Woman’s Post Apocalyptic Survival Guide in the Southwest,” M. Jenea Sanchez, 2019, http://​mjenea​sanc​hez.com/​en/​home#/​en/​ the-​mexi​can-​wom​ans-​post-​apoc​alyp​tic-​survi​val-​guide-​in-​the-​southw​est/​. 81 Nicole Rupersburg, “The Mexican Woman’s Post Apocalyptic Survival Guide in the Southwest and Other Stories of Life on the Border from M. Jenea Sánchez,” Creative Exchange, February 22, 2017, https://​spri​ngbo​arde​xcha​nge.org/​the-​ mexi​can-​wom​ans-​post-​apoc​alyp​tic-​survi​val-​guide-​in-​the-​southw​est-​and-​other-​ stor​ies-​of-​life-​on-​the-​bor​der-​from-​m-​jenea-​sanc​hez/​. 82 Rupersburg, “The Mexican Woman’s Post Apocalyptic Survival Guide.” 83 Giudice and Giubilaro, “Re-​Imagining the Border,” 80. 84 Renée Marlin-​Bennett, “Art-​Power and Border Art,” Arts and International Affairs, October 27, 2019, https://​the​arts​jour​nal.net/​2019/​10/​27/​mar​lin-​benn​ett-​2/​. 85 Douglas S. Massey, “International Migration at the Dawn of the Twenty-​First Century: The Role of the State,” Population and Development Review 25, no. 2 (1999): 318. 86 “Stuck in Uncertainty and Exposed to Violence: The Impact of US and Mexican Migration Policies on Women Seeking Protection in 2021,” Women’s Refugee Commission, February 2, 2022, www.wome​nsre​fuge​ecom​miss​ion.org/​resea​rch-​ resour​ces/​stuck-​in-​unce​rtai​nty-​and-​expo​sed-​to-​viole​nce-​the-​imp​act-​of-​us-​and-​ mexi​can-​migrat​ion-​polic​ies-​on-​women-​seek​ing-​pro​tect​ion-​in-​2021/​.

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87 Ana Luquerna and Christy Crouse, “Biden’s Proposed Asylum Policy does not Fulfill U.S. Treaty Obligations,” Opinio Juris, March 22, 2023, http://​opin​ioju​ ris.org/​2023/​03/​22/​bid​ens-​propo​sed-​asy​lum-​pol​icy-​does-​not-​fulf​i ll-​u-​s-​tre​aty-​obli​ gati​ons/​.

Reference List Aragon, Argan. Migrations clandestines d’Amérique centrale vers les États-​ Unis. Paris: Presses Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2015. Batalova, Jeanne, and Sierra Stoney. “Central American Immigrants in the United States.” Migration Policy Institute, March 18, 2013. www.migr​atio​npol​icy.org/​ arti​cle/​cent​ral-​ameri​can-​imm​igra​nts-​uni​ted-​sta​tes-​2011. Beittel, June S. “Mexico: Organized Crime and Drug Trafficking Organizations.” Congressional Research Service, R41576: 40. Washington, D.C., December 20, 2019, 1–​31. https://​crs​repo​rts.congr​ess.gov/​prod​uct/​pdf/​R/​R41​576/​40. Berelowitz, Jo-Anne. “Conflict over ‘border art.’ ” Third Text 11, no. 40 (September 1, 1997): 69–​83. Brenden, Sarah, Jacob Campbell, Henry Dotson, Madeline Gunderson, Monica Airut Murphy, Nicholas Raffa, Esther Ranjbar, Susana Roman Ruiz, Ivan Piton, and Noah Schramm. “The Cycle of Violence: Migration From the Northern Triangle.” The University of Washington’s Research Works Archives, 2017. https://​digi​tal.lib. was​hing​ton.edu:443/​resear​chwo​rks/​han​dle/​1773/​38696. Brigida, Anna-​Cat. “ ‘I didn’t have anywhere to run:’ Migrant Women Are Facing a Rape Epidemic.” Vice, August 29, 2016. www.vice.com/​en/​arti​cle/​evg​g9j/​i-​didnt-​ have-​anywh​ere-​to-​run-​migr​ant-​women-​are-​fac​ing-​a-​rape-​epide​mic. Budiman, Abby. “Key Findings about U.S. Immigrants.” Pew Research Center, August 20, 2020. www.pewr​esea​rch.org/​fact-​tank/​2020/​08/​20/​key-​findi​ngs-​ about-​u-​s-​imm​igra​nts/​. Butler, Judith, Zeynep Gambetti, and Leticia Sabsay. Vulnerability in Resistance. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016. Cabrera G., Cristian. “Honduras Recognizes Its Responsibility in Trans Killing.” Human Rights Watch, May 13, 2022. www.hrw.org/​news/​2022/​05/​13/​hondu​ras-​ rec​ogni​zes-​its-​res​pons​ibil​ity-​trans-​kill​ing. Cantalapiedra, Eduardo Torre, and Dulce María Mariscal Nava. “Batallando con fronteras: estrategias migratorias en tránsito de participantes en caravanas de migrantes.” Estudios Fronterizos 21 (April 22, 2020). Cheatham, Amelia, and Diana Roy. “Central America’s Turbulent Northern Triangle.” Council on Foreign Relations, June 22, 2022. www.cfr.org/​backg​roun​ der/​cent​ral-​ameri​cas-​turbul​ent-​north​ern-​trian​gle. Christou, Anastasia, and Eleonore Kofman. “Gender and Migration: An Introduction.” In Gender and Migration: IMISCOE Short Reader, edited by Anastasia Christou and Eleonore Kofman, 1–​ 12. IMISCOE Research Series. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2022. Cohn, D’Vera. “Rise in U.S. Immigrants From El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras Outpaces Growth from Elsewhere.” Pew Research Center’s Hispanic Trends Project, December 7, 2017. www.pewr​esea​rch.org/​hispa​nic/​2017/​12/​07/​rise-​in-​u-​ s-​imm​igra​nts-​from-​el-​salva​dor-​guatem​ala-​and-​hondu​ras-​outpa​ces-​gro​wth-​from-​ elsewh​ere/​.

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Correa-​Cabrera, Guadalupe. Los Zetas Inc.: Criminal Corporations, Energy, and Civil War in Mexico. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2017. Dean, William, Laura Derouin, Mikhaila Fogel, Elsa Kania, Tyler Keefe, James McCune, Valentina Perez, Anthony Ramicone, Robin Reyes, Andrew Seo, Minh Trinh, Alex Velez-​Green, Colby Wilkason, and Ben Sprung-​Keyser. “The War on Mexican Drug Cartels: Options for U.S. and Mexican Policy-​Makers.” Final Report of the Institute of Politics National Security Student Policy Group, Harvard University Institute of Politics, Cambridge, Mass: Institute of Politics, September 2012. Department of Homeland Security. “Migrant Protection Protocols.” January 24, 2019. www.dhs.gov/​news/​2019/​01/​24/​migr​ant-​pro​tect​ion-​protoc​ols. —​—​—​. “Migrant Protection Protocols | Homeland Security.” 2022. www.dhs.gov/​ news/​2019/​01/​24/​migr​ant-​pro​tect​ion-​protoc​ols. Dillon, Sam. “Agua Prieta Journal; Boom Turns Border to Speed Bump.” The New York Times, January 18, 2000. www.nyti​mes.com/​2000/​01/​18/​world/​agua-​ pri​eta-​jour​nal-​boom-​turns-​bor​der-​to-​speed-​bump.html. Donato, Katherine M. and Donna Gabaccia, “The Global Feminization of Migration: Past, Present, and Future.” Migration Policy Institute, June 1, 2016, www.migr​atio​npol​icy.org/​arti​cle/​glo​bal-​femin​izat​ion-​migrat​ion-​past-​pres​ent-​and-​ fut​ure. Flores, Adolfo. “Border Patrol Agents Are Writing ‘Facebook’ As A Street Address for Asylum-​Seekers Forced To Wait In Mexico.” BuzzFeed News, September 27, 2019. www.buzzf​eed.com/​adolf​oflo​res/​asy​lum-​not​ice-​bor​der-​app​ear-​faceb​ook-​ mex​ico. Fortuné, Cléa. Sécurité Frontalière, Insécurité Locale dans les Borderlands États-​Unis/​ Mexique. Étude de Douglas (Arizona) et Agua Prieta (Sonora). PhD dissertation, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2020. www.the​ses.fr/​s172​440. Giudice, Cristina, and Chiara Giubilaro. “Re-​Imagining the Border: Border Art as a Space of Critical Imagination and Creative Resistance.” Geopolitics 20, no. 1 (January 2015): 79–​94. Hondagneu-​Sotelo, Pierrette, and Ernestine Avila. “‘I’m here, but I’m there:’ The Meanings of Latina Transnational Motherhood.” Gender & Society 11, no. 5 (October 1, 1997): 548–​571. Huerta, Amarela Varela, and Lisa McLean. “Caravanas de Migrantes en México –​ Migrant Caravans in Mexico: Nueva Forma de Autodefensa y Transmigración.” Revista CIDOB d’Afers Internacionals, no. 122 (2019): 163–​186. Hyndman, Jennifer, and Wenona Giles. “Waiting for What? The Feminization of Asylum in Protracted Situations.” Gender, Place & Culture 18, no. 3 (June 1, 2011): 361–​379. International Organization for Migration. “World Migration Report Data Snapshot.” World Migration Report, 2022. https://​world​migr​atio​nrep​ort.iom.int/​sites/​g/​files/​ tmz​bdl1​691/​files/​docume​nts/​WMR-​Data-​Snaps​hot-​Larg​est-​migrat​ion-​corrid​ ors.pdf. Joffe-​Block, Jude. “Facing Risk of Rape, Migrant Women Prepare with Birth Control.” Fronteras, March 12, 2014. http://​kjzz.org/​cont​ent/​9552/​fac​ing-​risk-​rape-​migr​ ant-​women-​prep​are-​birth-​cont​rol. Jones, Reece. Violent Borders: Refugees and the Right to Move. London and New York: Verso, 2016.

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Judaïque, Aude-​Emilie. “The Roots of Border Art | Villa Albertine.” 2022. https://​ villa-​albert​ine.org/​magaz​ine/​roots-​bor​der-​art-​art-​us-​mex​ico-​bor​der. Kocher, Austin. “Migrant Protection Protocols and the Death of Asylum.” Journal of Latin American Geography 20, no. 1 (April 1, 2021): 249–​259. Kofman, Eleonore. “Family-related Migration: A Critical Review of European Studies.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 30, no. 2 (March 1, 2004): 243–​262. Luquerna Ana and Christy Crouse, “Biden’s Proposed Asylum Policy does not Fulfill U.S. Treaty Obligations,” Opinio Juris, March 22, 2023. http://​opin​ioju​ ris.org/​2023/​03/​22/​bid​ens-​propo​sed-​asy​lum-​pol​icy-​does-​not-​fulf​i ll-​u-​s-​tre​aty-​obli​ gati​ons/​. Marlin-​Bennett, Renée. “Art-​Power and Border Art.” Arts and International Affairs, October 27, 2019. https://​the​arts​jour​nal.net/​2019/​10/​27/​mar​lin-​benn​ett-​2/​. Masri, Hana. “Queer Border Objects and the Sucio Material Politics of Migration in the U.S.–​Mexico Borderlands.” QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking 5, no. 2 (2018): 1–​22. Massey, Douglas S. “International Migration at the Dawn of the Twenty-​ First Century: The Role of the State.” Population and Development Review 25, no. 2 (1999): 303–​322. —​—​—​, ed. New Faces in New Places: The Changing Geography of American Immigration. First ed. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2010. Massey, Douglas S., Joaquin Arango, Graeme Hugo, Ali Kouaouci, Adela Pellegrino, and J. Edward Taylor. “Theories of International Migration: A Review and Appraisal.” Population and Development Review 19, no. 3 (1993): 431–​466. “Migrant Women and Girls from the Northern Triangle and Their Journey through Mexico: A Downward Spiral of Hazards.” Open Americas, February 15, 2021. https://​opena​meri​cas.org/​2021/​02/​15/​migr​ant-​women-​and-​girls-​from-​the-​north​ ern-​trian​gle-​and-​their-​jour​ney-​thro​ugh-​mex​ico-​a-​downw​ard-​spi​ral-​of-​haza​rds/​. Morrissey, Megan Elizabeth. “How Art Installations on the US–​ Mexico Border Affected People’s Understanding of the Border.” National Communication Association, June 30, 2020. www.nat​com.org/​commun​icat​ion-​curre​nts/​how-​art-​ instal​lati​ons-​us-​mex​ico-​bor​der-​affec​ted-​peop​les-​unders​tand​ing-​bor​der. “MS-​13 Gang: The Story behind One of the World’s Most Brutal Street Gangs.” BBC News. April 19, 2017. www.bbc.com/​news/​world-​us-​can​ada-​39645​640. Ochoa O’Leary, Anna, and William Paul Simmons, “Reproductive Justice and Resistance at the US–​ Mexico Borderlands.” In Radical Reproductive Justice, edited by Loretta J. Ross, Lynn Roberts, Erika Derkas, Whitney Peoples, and Pamela Bridgewater Toure, 306–​325. New York: Feminist Press, 2017. Odgers-​Ortiz, Olga. “The Perception of Violence in Narratives of Central American Migrants at the Border between Mexico and the United States.” Revue Européenne Des Migrations Internationales 36, no. 1 (October 1, 2020): 53–​73. Reuters Staff, “Pentagon drops ‘Faithful Patriot’ moniker for Mexico border mission.” Reuters, November 7, 2018, www.reut​ers.com/​arti​cle/​us-​usa-​immi​grat​ion-​penta​ gon-​idUSKC​N1NC​2D9. Rizzo Lara, Rosario de la Luz. “La Caminata del Migrante: A Social Movement.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 47, no. 17 (December 13, 2021): 3891–​3910.

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Ruiz Soto, Ariel G., Michael Fix, and Jeffrey Hallock. “In Search of Safety, Growing Numbers of Women Flee Central America.” Migration Policy Institute, May 29, 2018. www.migr​atio​npol​icy.org/​arti​cle/​sea​rch-​saf​ety-​grow​ing-​numb​ers-​women-​ flee-​cent​ral-​amer​ica. Rupersburg, Nicole. “The Mexican Woman’s Post Apocalyptic Survival Guide in the Southwest and Other Stories of Life on the Border from M. Jenea Sánchez.” Creative Exchange, February 22, 2017. https://​spri​ngbo​arde​xcha​nge.org/​the-​mexi​ can-​wom​ans-​post-​apoc​alyp​tic-​survi​val-​guide-​in-​the-​southw​est-​and-​other-​stor​ies-​ of-​life-​on-​the-​bor​der-​from-​m-​jenea-​sanc​hez/​. Sanchez, M. Jenea. “About.” M. Jenea Sanchez, 2023. http://​mjenea​sanc​hez.com/​en/​ about-​1. Sanchez, M. Jenea. “The Mexican Woman’s Post Apocalyptic Survival Guide in the Southwest.” 2019. http://​mjenea​sanc​hez.com/​en/​home#/​en/​the-​mexi​can-​wom​ans-​ post-​apoc​alyp​tic-​survi​val-​guide-​in-​the-​southw​est/​. Schmidt, Leigh Anne, and Stephanie Buechler. “‘I Risk Everything Because I Have Already Lost Everything’: Central American Female Migrants Speak Out on the Migrant Trail in Oaxaca, Mexico.” Journal of Latin American Geography 16, no. 1 (2017): 139–​164. Slack, Jeremy. Deported to Death: How Drug Violence Is Changing Migration on the US–​ Mexico Border. First ed. Oakland, California: University of California Press, 2019. Slack, Jeremy, Daniel E. Martinez, Alison Elizabeth Lee, and Scott Whiteford. “The Geography of Border Militarization: Violence, Death and Health in Mexico and the United States.” Journal of Latin American Geography 15, no. 1 (March 1, 2016): 7–​33. “Stuck in Uncertainty and Exposed to Violence: The Impact of US and Mexican Migration Policies on Women Seeking Protection in 2021.” Women’s Refugee Commission, February 2, 2022. www.wome​nsre​fuge​ecom​miss​ion.org/​resea​rch-​ resour​ces/​stuck-​in-​unce​rtai​nty-​and-​expo​sed-​to-​viole​nce-​the-​imp​act-​of-​us-​and-​ mexi​can-​migrat​ion-​polic​ies-​on-​women-​seek​ing-​pro​tect​ion-​in-​2021/​. Téllez, Michelle. “Community of Struggle: Gender, Violence, and Resistance on the U.S./​Mexico Border.” Gender & Society 22, no. 5 (October 2008): 545–​567. “The Pandemic in the Shadows: Femicides or Feminicides in 2020 in Latin America and the Caribbean.” Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean and Gender Equality Observatory for Latin America and the Caribbean, 2020. https://​oig.cepal.org/​sites/​defa​ult/​files/​21-​00792_​folleto_​the_​pa​ndem​ic_​i​n_​th​e_​sh​ adow​s_​we​b_​0.pdf. “Trafficking in persons.” UNHCR, 2023. www.unhcr.org/​what-​we-​do/​prot​ect-​ human-​rig​hts/​asy​lum-​and-​migrat​ion/​traf​fi ck​ing-​pers​ons. Trans Murder Monitoring. “Transgender Europe: IDAHOT TMM 2015.” TvT, May 8, 2015. https://​trans​resp​ect.org/​en/​tran​sgen​der-​eur​ope-​ida​hot-​tmm-​2015/​. United Nations. “Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.” OHCHR, 1984. www.ohchr.org/​en/​inst​rume​nts-​mec​ hani​sms/​inst​rume​nts/​con​vent​ion-​agai​nst-​tort​ure-​and-​other-​cruel-​inhu​man-​or-​ degrad​ing. U.S. Department of Justice. “Statistics Yearbook –​Fiscal Year 2017.” 2017. www.just​ ice.gov/​eoir/​page/​file/​1107​056/​downl​oad.

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Wallace, Michelle. “15 Minutes with M. Jenea Sanchez: Weaving Community Through Art.” Catapult, January 18, 2017. https://​catap​ult.co/​stor​ies/​15-​minu​tes-​ with-​m-​jenea-​sanc​hez. Wirtz, Andrea L., Tonia C. Poteat, Mannat Malik, and Nancy Glass. “Gender-​Based Violence Against Transgender People in the United States: A Call for Research and Programming.” Trauma, Violence, & Abuse 21, no. 2 (February 2020): 227–​241.

6 TITLE IX Fighting Sexual Violence on U.S. College Campuses by Reframing It as Sex Discrimination Soukayna Mniaï

In 1972, Congress passed Title IX of the Education Amendments Act, which states that “no person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any educational program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.”1 Title IX is best known for its crucial role in opening all academic fields to women students, increasing the proportion of women in faculty positions, and developing women’s athletics in educational institutions. Over the past fifty years, Title IX has also been instrumental in the movement against sexual violence in higher education. Sexual violence was not a new phenomenon in the 1970s and the feminist anti-​rape movement was not the first social movement to politicize sexual violence, as the black freedom movement had theorized rape as “a tool of white supremacy” since the late 19th century.2 But the feminist anti-​rape movement of the 1970s was the first to politicize sexual violence within the “larger framework of sexism and gender injustice […] alongside issues like reproductive rights, workplace justice and health care.”3 Dominated by white women, the women’s liberation movement identified “all sexual violence against women as the ultimate expression of the patriarchal oppression of women.”4 They defined sexual violence as both the result of traditional norms of manhood encouraging and condoning male sexual aggression, and a tool to enforce traditional norms of womanhood. As feminist author Susan Griffin argued in 1971, “rape is a form of mass terrorism” because “the propagandists for male supremacy broadcast that it is women who cause rape by being unchaste or in the wrong place at the wrong time.”5 In 1975, feminist author Susan Brownmiller defined rape as “a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of fear”: sexual DOI: 10.4324/9781003425380-9

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violence was therefore understood as connected to womanhood because it was commonly experienced by women but also because it was a tool of women’s oppression as a social group.6 Because of the marginalization of feminists of color, white feminists’ understanding of rape, theorized primarily through the lens of gender, became dominant in the anti-​rape movement, and tended to exclude all other categories of analysis, including race, class, and sexuality.7 The movement against sexual violence in higher education emerged out of these feminist conceptualizations of men’s sexual abuse and has been part of the larger movement against sexual violence in the United States since the 1970s. With the development of feminist student groups, women’s studies programs, and women’s centers, universities have been prominent sites for feminist organizing since the 1970s.8 The activists against sexual violence in higher education identified sexual violence as a major site of injustice for women’s access to education and elaborated theories and strategies to address it. This chapter examines one prominent strategy in the fight against sexual violence on college campuses in the United States over the past fifty years: reframing sexual violence as more than a criminal issue by expanding the definition of sex discrimination. From a criminal problem that should be addressed solely by the police and criminal justice system, sexual violence has also become a gender equality issue that must be addressed by educational institutions.9 Defining sexual violence as a civil rights issue draws attention to its consequences on individual survivors as well as its social causes and its collective impact.10 Because the consequences of sexual victimization adversely affect women’s college experiences, activists and advocacy groups have asserted that sexual violence is a barrier to women’s equal access to education.11 In the long run, sexual violence in higher education also impacts society as a whole because it limits women’s educational advancements, and therefore their ability to achieve professional and economic equality. As this chapter will show, framing sexual violence as a group-​based issue of gender discrimination has allowed activists to shed light on its collective impact on women and called for measures addressing not only the short-​term needs of individual survivors, but also preventive measures at the institutional level to address the social causes of sexual violence. However, this strategy had also been at the center of culture wars around the legitimacy of applying Title IX to sexual violence, the federal administrations’ varying interpretations of Title IX, and “the contours of due process in schools.”12 This chapter draws on a variety of sources, such as court decisions, documents issued by the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR), and press articles, to provide a historical account of how activists against sexual violence in higher education have reframed it as an issue of

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gender equality within the legal framework of Title IX since the 1970s. In doing so, they have drawn attention to the connection between sexual violence in education and womanhood, by arguing that such violence disproportionately affects women precisely because it reflects and perpetuates gendered norms shaping the roles, attitudes, and behaviors expected of women and men in society.13 First, I explain how feminists conceptualized sexual harassment as a form of sex discrimination in the workplace and educational institutions in the 1970s, and how judicial and administrative interpretations of Title IX recognized that it applied to sexual violence. However, because Supreme Court decisions in the 1990s limited the possibility for victims of sexual harassment to seek monetary damages in civil suits against their schools, activists and advocacy groups increasingly focused on the administrative enforcement of Title IX through the OCR. Then, I demonstrate how, during the presidency of Barack Obama, the combination of a powerful student movement against campus sexual violence was able to leverage Title IX to bring national attention to the issue and force institutions of higher education to change their policies defining disciplinary procedures, remedies available to survivors, and prevention programs. I close by examining the conservative backlash against this movement that has led to a partial dismantling of Title IX provisions during the Trump administration, before discussing the propositions of student activist groups and gender equity advocacy organizations to strengthen Title IX to better address sexual violence. Defining Sexual Harassment as a Form of Sex Discrimination in Higher Education

Since the 1970s, feminists have shed light on the extent of women’s experiences of sexual violence, from stalking to sexual harassment and rape, and argued that these different forms of male violence against women serve to maintain women’s subordination in society.14 As legal historian Karen Tani has explained, feminist scholars and activists claimed that because sexual violence prevents women from “participat[ing] in public life on full and equal terms,” it should be recognized as “a civil rights violation—​something that undermined the victim’s inclusion in the polity just as surely as being denied the vote or access to public space.”15 Activists relied on this analogy between women’s and African Americans’ oppression to define sexual violence as a form of discrimination based on sex. Feminists’ long campaign for the recognition of a right to be free from sexual violence began with workplace sexual harassment cases in the 1970s, before inspiring activists against sexual violence in higher education in the 2010s.

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Theorizing Sexual Harassment in the Workplace as Sex Discrimination

Although the set of abuses now known as “sexual harassment” had long been known to and opposed by early feminists and the labor movement in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the term “sexual harassment” itself was coined in a feminist consciousness-​raising group organized by feminist journalist Lin Farley as part of a class on women and work at Cornell University in 1974.16 In the following years, feminist lawyers, legal scholars, and activists were able to make unwanted sexual advances at work legally actionable under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. They argued that sexual harassment of women by men in the workplace was an abuse of power that resulted from unequal gender relations placing men in a position of sexual and economic domination. In the first book on workplace sexual harassment, Sexual Shakedown: The Sexual Harassment of Women on the Job (1978), Farley defined sexual harassment as “a practice that has kept working women both individually and collectively locked into a position of economic inferiority.”17 As such, feminists framed sexual harassment as an obstacle to gender equality and a form of sex discrimination. In 1975 and 1976, several cases argued that unwanted sexual advances by a supervisor should be considered sex discrimination, but the courts rejected the argument until the Williams v. Saxbe decision in April 1976. The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia recognized for the first time that “quid pro quo sexual harassment”—​“the retaliatory actions of a male supervisor, taken because a female employee declined his sexual advances”—​“constitutes sex discrimination within the definitional parameters of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.”18 Following early court decisions of the 1970s, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)—​the federal agency tasked with enforcing Title VII—​published its first rules on sexual harassment in November 1980. The document largely relied on feminist legal scholar Catharine MacKinnon’s publication, The Sexual Harassment of Working Women: A Case of Sex Discrimination (1979), to provide what ultimately became the standard definition of sexual harassment: “unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favor, and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature.”19 This first definition also included MacKinnon’s distinction between demanding sexual favors in exchange for professional benefits or under the threat of punishment, defined as quid pro quo sexual harassment, and degrading behavior, comments, or attitudes of a sexual nature that are sufficiently severe or pervasive to create an intimidating, hostile, or offensive working environment, even when there is no direct economic injury. In 1986, the Supreme Court’s Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson decision expanded the definition of sexual harassment actionable under Title VII to include “hostile work environment” situations where the sexual harassment was “sufficiently

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severe or pervasive to alter the conditions of [the victim’s] employment and create an abusive working environment.”20 Title VII case law shows an expansion of the meaning of “sex” in “sex discrimination.” Sexual harassment may be considered sex discrimination because gender and presumed sexual orientation is a central part of sexual desire: for example, an employer who is a man and heterosexual would not sexually abuse a secretary who is also a heterosexual man. But the courts have recognized that sexual harassment is also an expression of gender-​ based stereotypes and a tool to enforce them. People of all genders may be abused by people of all genders because they do not conform to gendered expectations—​a man may be sexually harassed by other men because he is not “manly” enough for example, as in the Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Services (1998) case, where the Supreme Court found that “harassing conduct need not be motivated by sexual desire to support an inference of discrimination on the basis of sex.”21 In the words of legal scholar Katharine Franke, “sexual harassment is a technology of sexism” as it is “a disciplinary practice that inscribes, enforces, and polices the identities of both harasser and victim according to a system of gender norms that envisions women as feminine, (hetero)sexual objects, and men as masculine, (hetero)sexual subjects,” and therefore, “sexual harassment is a sexually discriminatory wrong because of the gender norms it reflects and perpetuates.”22 Between the 1970s and the 1990s, to make sexual harassment legally actionable, feminist activists, legal scholars, and lawyers focused their efforts on antidiscrimination law and conceptualized sexual harassment as a civil wrong. As sexual harassment was recognized in case law as a form of sex discrimination in the workplace, victims of sexual harassment were able to sue perpetrators or their employers in civil court for monetary damages or file a complaint with the EEOC. These avenues of redress offered by Title VII for workplace harassment inspired other feminist student groups and lawyers looking for a legal basis to address sexual abuse in education. Sexual Harassment from the Workplace to Educational Institutions

The first legal attempt to transpose sexual harassment into the educational domain and define it as a form of sex discrimination in education prohibited by Title IX began in July 1977, when five students—​ Ronni Alexander, Margery Reigler, Pamela Price, Lisa Stone, and Ann Olivarius—​and a classics professor, John Winckler, filed a civil lawsuit against their university, Yale, for violating Title IX of the 1972 Act. Alexander reported repeated sexual propositions by a teacher who then raped her; Price claimed that a professor offered to give her an A in his class if she accepted his sexual advances, which she refused and received a C; Reigler and Stone described repeated sexual propositions by teachers and a sports coach; Olivarius related that, as an

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officer of the Undergraduate Women’s Caucus, she had helped other female students make a complaint to university officials and had been rebuffed. Since Title IX required federally funded educational institutions to have a grievance procedure to handle potential Title IX violations, the suit, Alexander v. Yale University, asked for relief by “requiring defendant to institute and continue a mechanism for receiving, investigating and adjudicating complaints of sexual harassment.”23 Like the Civil Rights Act of 1964, when Title IX of the Education Amendments was passed in December 1972, it was not meant to address sexual violence. In fact, debates on sex discrimination in higher education focused mostly on the admission process and the impact Title IX would have on single-​sex institutions. The legal innovation of framing sexual harassment as sex discrimination in education emerged from collaborations between Ann Olivarius, a Yale senior, Catharine MacKinnon, a Yale Law School graduate who was teaching at Yale at the time, and Anne Simon, a Yale graduate and lawyer at the New Haven Law Collective.24 After Yale failed to take action following reports of sexual harassment, they looked for a legal avenue for redress and found that the antidiscrimination provision in Title IX could be used in the same way as Title VII for workplace sexual harassment. Alexander v. Yale made the case that sexual harassment should be recognized as a form of sex discrimination in education prohibited by Title IX because Yale’s “failure to combat sexual harassment of female students and its refusal to institute mechanisms and procedures to address complaints and make investigations of such harassment interfere[d]‌with the educational process and denie[d] equal opportunity in education.”25 By redefining the meaning of equal opportunity in education to include the absence of sexual harassment, they imagined a new interpretation of Title IX: sociologist Celene Reynolds has called this process the “repurposing” of Title IX. Almost all the complaints were dismissed in December 1977, except Price’s case, which was considered on its merits, and the court ruled that she did not have sufficient proof that she had been sexually harassed by her professor. However, despite its initial failure, Alexander v. Yale had a considerable impact both because of its national media coverage at the time and because the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit recognized the validity of the legal arguments presented, stating that sexual harassment, where “academic advancement [is] conditioned upon submission to sexual demands constitutes sex discrimination in education.”26 In the following years, Yale adopted a grievance procedure for sexual harassment cases to comply with Title IX in order to avoid further lawsuits, as did many colleges and universities throughout the nation. In 1978, a group of UC Berkeley students who had founded Women Organized Against Sexual Harassment (WOASH) filed the first federal Title IX complaint for sexual harassment in an institution of higher education.

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As Berkeley officials refused to create a specific grievance procedure to adjudicate complaints against an assistant professor of sociology, Elbaki Hermassi, a lawyer at Equal Rights Advocates suggested filing a federal Title IX complaint with the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, a federal agency created in 1967. OCR was initially only tasked with enforcing school desegregation after the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, but it subsequently became responsible for the enforcement of other civil rights laws at educational institutions receiving federal funding, including Title IX. On February 26, 1979, WOASH members filed a complaint alleging that the university had violated Title IX because it did not have a specific grievance process for sexual harassment. OCR agreed to investigate the case and determined that “sexual harassment may constitute sex discrimination where coercive sexual advances are made on the basis of sex.”27 Following this investigation, Berkeley administrators developed a “sexual harassment bureaucracy,” as Yale had done, with a grievance procedure for sexual harassment and a permanent Title IX coordinator responsible for managing complaints to abide by the new compliance standards developed by OCR.28 The Yale and Berkeley cases gave legitimacy to this novel interpretation of Title IX as applying to situations of sexual harassment in higher education. They opened new avenues for redress, through internal grievance procedures, civil lawsuits, and federal Title IX complaints with OCR. Sexual Violence on College Campuses: From a Criminal to a Civil Rights Approach

Since the 1970s, anti-​rape activism on college campuses has been tied to the wider anti-​rape movement in the U.S., with female students, faculty, and staff members participating in the creation of rape crisis centers and women’s centers on and off campus, organizing self-​defense classes and candlelight vigils, and demanding more security measures, including campus lighting, locks and keycard access to dormitories, as well as escorts to cars and dorms for women students, staff, and faculty, and more police patrols on and around campuses.29 In 1985, Ms. magazine published the results of the first national survey on rape among college students, conducted by psychologist Mary Koss: one in four female students declared she had been the victim of rape or attempted rape since entering college, and in most cases knew the perpetrator.30 Advocacy groups called for state and federal measures to address what became known as “date rape” on college campuses. As early anti-​rape activism on college campuses had led to the development of institutional policies and procedures for sexual misconduct and the institutionalization of rape prevention programs and support services for survivors, student activists then used these resources to work within the institution, by becoming peer educators and organizing various events to raise awareness about sexual

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violence. Through this activism, students contributed to the national debates on acquaintance rape and sexual harassment by challenging “the cultural and attitudinal norms that help sustain sexual violence.”31 The first federal laws on campus sexual violence were passed in the 1990s, after national media covered the particularly brutal 1986 rape and murder of Jeanne Clery in her dorm room. The Crime Awareness and Campus Security Act, known as the Clery Act (1990), requires colleges and universities to collect and publish annual campus crime statistics; and the Violence Against Women Act (1994) allocated funding for rape prevention programs on college campuses. However, grassroots and national student activism against sexual violence from the 1970s through the 2000s did not articulate a definition of campus rape and sexual assault as forms of sex discrimination covered by Title IX, and their core demands did not include a call for the federal government to enforce a right to be free from sexual violence in education through Title IX. In 1991, Terry Nicole Steinberg, a lawyer who had been raped as a college student, articulated for the first time a strategy for the extension of Title IX provisions for sexual harassment to rape and sexual assault in higher education: Traditionally, rape is not considered a form of sex discrimination. If one looks at what rape actually entails, however, the elements of sex discrimination become increasingly apparent. […] Rape is arguably the ultimate sexual harassment. […] Each woman is selected as a victim because of her gender and is violated because of her gender.32 At the time, applying the civil rights framework of sexual harassment to rape and sexual assault was a novel idea, and calling for the federal enforcement of Title IX to address the issue of date rape on college campuses was considered very radical.33 In the next two decades, this reframing of campus sexual violence as a civil rights issue gained ground among feminist legal advocates and student activists and was given legal legitimacy by federal courts and the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. Expanding the Scope of Title IX in Sexual Harassment Claims

OCR’s initial definition of sexual harassment remained limited to quid pro quo cases and did not consider student-​on-​student harassment. In the 1980s and 1990s, advocacy groups such as the Association of American Universities’ Project on the Status and Education of Women, the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC), and NOW’s Legal Defense and Education Fund supported various court cases and lobbied OCR to extend the scope of Title IX to include hostile environment, sexual harassment, and student-​on-​ student harassment, including in instances of rape and sexual assault.

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In the 1990s, three landmark Supreme Court decisions defined schools’ liability under Title IX. In Franklin v. Gwinnett County Public Schools (1992), the Supreme Court found that a student who had been sexually harassed by an employee of the school could file a civil suit against the school for failure to comply with Title IX and claim monetary damages.34 This decision created a strong incentive for educational institutions to address the issue of sexual violence to avoid costly lawsuits. However, the 1998 Gebser v. Lago Vista Independent School District decision restricted the scope of Title IX by ruling that a school was only liable for damages if “an official who at a minimum has authority to address the alleged discrimination and to institute corrective measures […] has actual knowledge of discrimination […] and fails adequately to respond.”35 The following year, in Davis v. Monroe County Schools, the Supreme Court found that Title IX also covered student-​on-​student sexual harassment but applied the same liability standards of “actual notice” and “deliberate indifference” as it did for employee-​on-​student harassment.36 The decision also added the provision that a school would only be liable for the harassment of a student by someone other than one of its employees if the harassment was “so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive that it c[ould] be said to deprive the victims of access to the educational opportunities or benefits provided by the school.”37 Because of the high threshold established by the Supreme Court, few survivors initiated civil suits for damages against their schools, and even fewer won their cases. Additionally, educational institutions seeking to shield themselves from civil liability were incentivized to remain unaware of instances of sexual harassment, and if they knew, to take only the minimal steps needed to avoid liability. With these setbacks, activists and advocacy groups placed their hopes in another avenue for redress: the federal enforcement of Title IX through the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. Indeed, creating a national civil right to be free from sexual violence had been one of the objectives of the anti-​rape movement since the 1970s.38 However, the federal civil rights remedy for victims of sexual violence included in the Violence Against Women Act (1994), which gave victims of gender-​ based violence the right to sue their assailant in federal court, was struck down by the Supreme Court in United States v. Morrison (2000). During the Obama presidency (2009–​2017), student activists and legal advocacy groups saw in OCR a federal agency with the power to enforce this right to be free from sexual violence at educational institutions. Leveraging Title IX to Hold Colleges Accountable for Instances of Sexual Violence

In the 2000s, several surveys showed that sexual violence still affected from one in five to one in four women college students.39 Despite the high prevalence of campus sexual assault, national media coverage of high-​profile cases of

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sexual violence at colleges and universities in the 2000s showed that, in most cases, the perpetrators faced little to no criminal or civil consequences and were often protected by school administrations, while victims received little support. Advocacy groups increasingly turned to federal enforcement of Title IX through OCR and encouraged victims to file federal complaints against their colleges and universities when their schools failed to respond to reports of sexual violence. Although until the 2010s Title IX was primarily seen as a law that guaranteed sports equity, by the end of the Obama presidency, Title IX had become the cornerstone of the fight against sexual violence on college campuses and the focus of the conservative backlash against this movement. OCR’s Shift to Stronger Enforcement of Title IX

As the agency in charge of enforcing Title IX, OCR receives complaints from students who feel that their school has violated their civil right to an education free from sex discrimination. OCR can also decide to open an investigation into a school on its own. The agency then verifies that the institution’s grievance process complies with Title IX. Investigations may involve reviewing a school’s policies, on-​site visits, and interviews with school officials, students, and faculty members. If a school is found noncompliant, OCR sends a detailed letter of finding that lists Title IX infringements. The agency can then adopt a conciliatory approach by negotiating voluntary compliance agreements with school officials and then monitors their efforts to conform to the recommendations. However, if a school is noncompliant, Title IX also gives OCR the possibility of terminating all federal financial assistance, including student financial aid. In practice, this second option is seen as the “nuclear option” and has never been used.40 As a federal agency led by an appointed Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights, OCR’s approach to enforcing civil rights statutes has changed with each new administration.41 During the Obama presidency, OCR was headed by two lawyers with a strong background working for civil rights advocacy groups—​Russlynn Ali (2009–​2012) and Catherine E. Lhamon (2013–​2017). Under their leadership, OCR’s approach to Title IX enforcement underwent a sea change, as, until then, OCR had only weakly enforced its 1997 and 2001 sexual harassment guidance documents detailing what schools must do to comply with Title IX.42 Indeed, in 2010, the Center for Public Integrity’s broad investigation into campus sexual violence found that OCR rarely investigated student complaints of sexual assault—​only 24 investigations were completed between 1998 and 2008; and when it did, OCR “rarely rule[d]‌against schools, and virtually never issue[d] sanctions against them.”43 On April 4, 2011, Vice President Joe Biden announced OCR’s new national guidelines to address sexual violence in colleges and universities. This 20-​page “Dear Colleague Letter,” signed by Assistant Secretary for Civil

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Rights Russlynn Ali, detailed schools’ obligations to prevent, respond to, and remedy sexual harassment, including sexual violence, in order to comply with Title IX.44 For the first time, OCR’s guidance used the term “sexual violence,” defined as “physical sexual acts perpetrated against a person’s will or where a person is incapable of giving consent […] including rape, sexual assault, sexual battery, and sexual coercion.”45 The letter clearly relies on the idea first outlined by feminists in the 1970s, that the “sexual harassment of students, including sexual violence, interferes with students’ right to receive an education free from discrimination,”46 and that this right can be guaranteed by institutional measures aimed at preventing sexual violence, disciplining perpetrators, and remedying the harm done to victims. The 2011 letter reminded schools that they had to designate a Title IX coordinator, and “adopt and publish grievance procedures providing for prompt and equitable resolution of student and employee sex discrimination complaints.”47 Disciplinary procedures had to include the “opportunity for both parties to present witnesses and other evidence,” “prompt time frames,” and “notice to parties of the outcome of the complaint.”48 For the first time, OCR stated that it expected schools to use the “preponderance of evidence” standard, which makes it “more likely than not that sexual harassment or violence occurred,” when resolving Title IX complaints, and not the higher “clear and convincing” standard of proof used by some schools.49 Finally, the “Dear Colleague Letter” stressed the importance of implementing comprehensive preventive educational programs, for example as part of orientation programs for new students and employees, training all Title IX employees and law enforcement personnel, and conducting regular climate surveys. Schools were also expected to provide remedies for victims, such as counseling and medical services or tutoring, and were reminded that survivors should not bear the burden of measures taken to separate them from their assailants—​they should not be the ones removed from their classes for instance. The Momentum for Student Activism Against Campus Sexual Violence

In the late 2000s and the early 2010s, college survivors across the country used social media to share their stories of assault and denounce the lack of support from their institutions, which had not pursued disciplinary proceedings against their assailants, failed to provide mental health support, and denied them academic accommodations.50 One of the first to do so was Wagatwe Wanjuki, who started the blog “Raped at Tufts University” in 2009. At the time, Title IX’s protections for victims of sexual violence were not widely known and student survivors often only discovered their Title IX rights when they connected with advocacy groups like Students Active for Ending Rape (SAFER), founded by Columbia University students in 2000,

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or nonprofit organizations like Security on Campus, Inc., the ACLU, or the Victim Rights Law Center. In the early 2010s, student survivors throughout the country used social media to create a national network of survivors sharing strategic advice on how to leverage Title IX to spur institutional change. Angered by their universities’ failures to adequately respond to reports of sexual assault, they filed federal Title IX complaints with OCR in the hope that the federal agency would force their schools to address campus sexual violence. Student activists joined forces and created national organizations: in the spring of 2013, Alexandra Brodsky (Yale) and Dana Bolger (Amherst) co-​founded Know Your IX, a national education campaign to educate all students about their Title IX right to an education free from sexual violence. Annie Clark and Andrea Pino (University of North Carolina Chapel Hill) co-​founded End Rape on Campus (EROC) to inform and support survivors who wanted to report their assaults to their schools and file Title IX complaints with OCR. As students at renowned institutions who were willing to speak publicly about their experiences, they were interviewed by newspapers and TV stations across the country, and in the following years, their organizations helped hundreds of students file complaints against their institutions with OCR. The student movement against sexual violence sparked a national conversation on the responsibilities of higher education. It garnered political attention and led to major policy changes at the state and federal levels. The Campus Sexual Violence Elimination Act (SaVE Act), passed in 2013, expanded colleges’ and universities’ reporting requirements under the Clery Act to include domestic violence, dating violence, and stalking. It also codified some of the 2011 Dear Colleague Letter’s provisions as it increased victims’ rights in disciplinary proceedings: like the respondents, the complainants can have an adviser of their choice, must be notified of the results of the proceedings, and have the right to appeal the decision. The Campus SaVE Act also requires colleges and universities to provide prevention and awareness programs for all new students and employees, and to offer accommodations to victims, including counseling and legal assistance. In January 2014, President Obama created the White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault, which held hearings and released a report, “Not Alone,” calling for institutions of higher education to conduct climate surveys on their campuses to assess the extent of the issue, and to step up prevention efforts, among other provisions. The White House supported the creation of the nonprofit “It’s On Us,” which launched a national awareness campaign with the It’s On Us Pledge to stop sexual violence, signed by thousands of students across the nation. It’s On Us chapters sprung up throughout the country and offered peer-​ to-​ peer educational programs on bystander intervention, survivor support, and consent education. In the following years, dozens of pieces of new federal and state legislation were proposed.

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With other survivors and allies across the country, Wagatwe Wanjuki, Alexandra Brodsky, Dana Bolger, Annie Clark, and Andrea Pino launched the “Ed Act Now” campaign in the spring of 2013 to demand that the Department of Education step up its enforcement of Title IX instead of agreeing to voluntary resolution agreements without any major changes. In 2014, OCR began to publish lists of colleges and universities under investigation for their handling of campus sexual violence, as well as letters of findings and voluntary resolution agreements once the investigations were completed. In the summer of 2013, approximately 20 institutions were investigated by OCR. By the end of the Obama presidency in 2016, there were more than 300. The number of complaints alleging sexual violence received by OCR increased dramatically, from 20 in 2009 to 32 in 2013, 106 in 2014, 165 in 2015, and a record-​high 177 in 2016.51 Between 2014 and 2016, OCR adopted a more adversarial approach by initiating long, public investigations into all types of higher educational institutions, from community colleges to four-​year public universities and elite private colleges, to pressure them into complying with its guidelines on sexual assault. The agency shifted from a focus on how educational institutions handled individual cases of sexual harassment to a review of broader institutional efforts to prevent sexual violence. Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Catherine Lhamon explained that OCR’s strategy was to use individual complaints to initiate a broader investigation into an educational institution’s policies in order to implement more systemic reforms. Investigations became much longer and more thorough, and therefore were more costly and time-​consuming for both OCR and educational institutions. The main hope for systemic change was through major changes in schools’ disciplinary procedures, affording victims more rights, and the requirement that all educational institutions regularly train their students, faculty, and staff. However, these institution-​wide investigations meant that individual survivors had little recourse when their schools refused to hold their assailants accountable or provide adequate resources to support them as they had often graduated or dropped out by the time OCR concluded its investigation and reached a voluntary resolution agreement with the school. A Conservative Backlash

OCR’s Dear Colleague Letter and the more aggressive enforcement of Title IX under the leadership of Russlynn Ali and Catharine Lhamon led to heated debates. Men’s rights groups, such as the National Coalition for Men, the anti-​civil rights coalition Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, and the conservative media accused the Obama presidency of having tilted the balance too far in favor of complainants, leading to men students being unjustly expelled from their universities. They relied primarily on the

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rhetoric of “due process,” arguing that Title IX has created a shadow justice system without the constitutional guarantees of the criminal justice system. According to them, with the 2011 “Dear Colleague Letter,” those accused were no longer considered innocent until proven guilty because schools had to take measures to protect complainants throughout the disciplinary process, but not respondents.52 Mothers of men accused of sexual assault on college campuses founded organizations such as “Families Advocating for Campus Equality” or “Save Our Sons” to lobby the Department of Education as well as state and federal legislatures to ensure the due process rights of respondents in Title IX proceedings. They helped men students accused of sexual assault file Title IX suits against their colleges, claiming that the new disciplinary procedures infringed upon their due process rights and discriminated against men. These conservative critics found political support in the Republican Party, whose 2016 party platform claimed that Title IX had been perverted “by bureaucrats—​ and by the current President of the United States—​ to 53 impose a social and cultural revolution upon the American people.” After Donald Trump’s election in 2016, they lobbied the Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, to demand an overhaul of Title IX. In September 2017, DeVos rescinded the 2011 “Dear Colleague Letter.” In 2018, OCR stopped publicizing the names of the institutions under investigation and its decisions. OCR’s approach to Title IX complaints also returned to a focus on the claims of individual complainants, without necessarily using these individual complaints as a point of entry for a more systemic investigation. This partial dismantling of Title IX led to strong reactions from organizations supporting survivors’ rights. Beginning in January 2017, End Rape on Campus and Know Your IX organized a campaign to call out Betsy DeVos with rallies, a petition, and the hashtags #DearBetsy on social media to ask her to commit to preserving Title IX protections for victims. Student organizations and survivor advocacy groups also encouraged students to protest the new regulations unveiled by Betsy DeVos in November 2018 through a social media campaign with the hashtag #HandsOffIX. Overall, OCR received more than 124,000 public comments, with the vast majority opposing the proposed new rules because they weakened protections for survivors.54 Indeed, the final rule published in May 2020 allowed schools to raise the evidentiary standard from a “preponderance of the evidence” to a “clear and convincing” standard and modelled the Title IX disciplinary setting after criminal proceedings, by requiring a live hearing with the complainant and the respondent present and the direct cross-​examination of survivors and witnesses by the respondents’ advisers.55 Schools no longer had to investigate off-​campus sexual assault, except if it occurred in a location used by an official program, such as in a school-​sanctioned fraternity, sorority, or athletic

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housing. Under the new rules, an institution would only be found to have violated Title IX if its response to a report of sexual violence was “clearly unreasonable.” The definition of sexual harassment was also narrowed to fit the Supreme Court’s interpretation of unwelcome conduct which was “severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive.” The new regulations still required supportive measures for survivors, except if they could be considered “punitive” for the respondent. In 2021, Know Your IX published a report entitled “The Cost of Reporting: Perpetrator Retaliation, Institutional Betrayal, and Student Survivor Pushout,” presenting the results of a survey of 100 student survivors who reported sexual violence to their colleges and universities. The report found “a massive failure on the part of schools to fulfill their obligations under Title IX.”56 According to Know Your IX, without strong federal oversight, institutions of higher education neglect the protection of survivors. As a result, more than half of them had taken a leave of absence, transferred to another university, or dropped out of school entirely. The report also noted that students accused of sexual misconduct had developed various strategies to fight back when they were implicated in Title IX proceedings, including making a Title IX complaint against those who accused them, and filing a civil lawsuit against their university. Early in Joe Biden’s presidency, student groups launched a campaign to lobby the Department of Education to suspend the guidelines enacted under the Trump presidency and draft new ones as soon as possible. The proposed rules were published and opened for comment in June 2022, on the fiftieth anniversary of Title IX: schools would no longer be required to hold live adversarial hearings and would be allowed to use a single investigator to investigate and adjudicate reports. However, the new rules would still allow schools to use the “clear and convincing” standard if they used it in all similar disciplinary proceedings. The Department of Education received 235,000 comments from various advocacy groups, organizations, students, and their families.57 On April 4, 2023—​12 years after the 2011 “Dear Colleague Letter”—​124 survivor advocacy organizations including EROC, Know Your IX, It’s On Us, and the NWLC launched a campaign asking the Education Department to publish its new rules by May 2023, so schools could implement them by the start of the next academic year. Know Your IX hung a clothesline of t-​shirts in front of the White House with examples such as, “I need Title IX because I shouldn’t be more traumatized by the way my school handled my sexual assault than by the assault itself—​Dickinson College,” “I need Title IX because I had to sit in a ten person class with my abuser for a whole semester—​Brucknell University,” and “I need Title IX because the dean told me to ‘just forgive him’—​Anonymous.”58 These examples show that, despite the major cultural and policy changes of the past decade, Title

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IX’s promise of equal access to education free from sexual violence has yet to be fulfilled.59 Strengthening Title IX to Better Address Sexual Violence in Higher Education

Fifty years after Title IX became law, national studies and campus climate surveys show that sexual violence is still a prominent issue on college campuses, affecting mostly women but also men and gender-​nonconforming students. Legal scholars, gender equity and civil rights advocacy groups, as well as student survivors have put forward various ways in which Title IX could better address campus sexual violence.60 One of their core demands is increased funding for public policies against campus sexual violence. While some institutions have Title IX offices with several full-​time investigators, others only have a part-​time Title IX coordinator who cannot dedicate enough time to Title IX-​related tasks and does not receive regular training. To help institutions comply with Title IX, federal legislation such as the Gender Equity in Education Act, first introduced in 2018, would provide additional resources to institutions and annual training and technical assistance for Title IX coordinators throughout the nation. Victims’ rights groups also insist on the need to expand the resources available to survivors, especially medical and mental health care, at no cost, with trauma-​informed programs and culturally specific resources, such as advocates who speak different languages and understand the specificities of sexual violence in different communities. A recent study of survivor advocacy services found that a quarter of college campuses have no advocates on staff to help survivors, and that on average postsecondary schools only have one full-​time equivalent advocate per 15,219 students.61 To address institutional impunity, student survivors and advocacy groups argue for additional funding for OCR to increase the number of staff positions and thus allow it to conduct more compliance reviews and respond more quickly to individual complaints. To give more teeth to the federal enforcement of Title IX, they also propose to increase transparency, by naming universities and colleges being investigated by OCR and making its final decisions public. OCR could also be allowed to levy Title IX fines calculated based on a percentage of a school’s budget when it is found to violate this law, as outlined in the Campus Accountability and Safety Act, introduced in Congress for the first time in 2014 by Senator Claire McCaskill (D-​MO). Legal scholars and advocacy groups have also suggested congressional reforms to change the standards of “actual notice,” “deliberate indifference,” and “severe, pervasive and objectively offensive” imposed by the Gebser and Davis rulings, which severely limit the possibility for victims to initiate a

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private action to claim monetary damages. The Civil Rights Act of 2008 and the Title IX Take Responsibility Act introduced in 2021 would have made institutions liable for monetary damages if they did not respond to sexual harassment reports with “reasonable care,” but both failed to pass Congress. The Students’ Access to Freedom & Educational Rights Act (SAFER Act) introduced in December 2022 would also require schools to respond with “reasonable care” to harassment that creates an “intimidating, hostile or offensive environment,” and that its employees knew or should have known about. Going a step further than the “reasonable care” standard, Catharine MacKinnon has proposed changing Title IX’s liability standard from “deliberate indifference” to “due diligence,” a standard developed in international human rights law: “Due diligence, adopted as a liability standard, would hold schools accountable to survivors for failure to prevent, adequately investigate, effectively respond to, and transformatively remediate sexual violation on campuses, so that sex equality in education is delivered in reality.”62 Such a standard would change what Title IX incentivizes schools to do: with the “actual knowledge” and “deliberate indifference” standards, schools are incentivized not to know about instances of sexual violence. MacKinnon argues that the legal standards used by courts have lost sight of the central goal of Title IX—​sex equality in education: “Nothing in existing law tells schools that the best way to avoid liability is to end the abuse, make sure it does not happen again, and repair the damage it did: deliver equality.”63 As Carrie Baker has noted, feminist activists who coined the term “sexual harassment” viewed it as “symptomatic of a deeply flawed patriarchal, capitalist, racist system” and “hoped to use the issue to inspire collective action to fight the root causes of injustice and transform society.”64 But in the following decades, “individualized solutions to sexual harassment” became the norm, instead of “collective efforts that might have led to deeper social transformations.”65 Feminist activists insist that Title IX should not be used only to get rid of the few bad apples through disciplinary procedures or to provide victims with monetary damages through civil lawsuits. Feminist understandings of sexual violence stress the need to address structural oppressions through broad social change, instead of focusing solely on punishing individual perpetrators and compensating victims. To achieve equality and eliminate sexual violence in higher education, feminist advocacy groups insist on the importance of comprehensive prevention policies beginning in the K-​ 12 grades and continuing into higher education. Because individual instances of sexual violence are tied to collective systems of oppression, student groups such as SAFER, Know Your IX, and EROC emphasize the importance of an intersectional framework in sexual violence prevention, considering how different systems of oppression

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are intertwined and impact the most marginalized communities.66 This is why a single information session or an online module on Title IX as part of orientation for new college students should not be sufficient for institutions to comply with Title IX, as is the case now. Research on prevention shows that changing the attitudes and beliefs that underlie sexual violence takes comprehensive prevention education, with regular in-​ person workshops discussing gender equality, reproductive justice, racism, and the experiences of LGBTQ+​and disabled students.67 Conclusion

This chapter has shown that, since the 1970s, activists against sexual violence in higher education have leveraged Title IX to address the immediate needs of victims and transform the institutional environment that allows such violence to occur. By reframing sexual violence as a form of sex discrimination, they have shed light on the connection between womanhood and sexual violence: it disproportionately affects women precisely because such violence is central to maintaining men’s domination, and by limiting victims’ access to education, sexual violence in educational institutions perpetuates gendered domination in society.68 However, this strategy of relying on a civil rights framing of sexual violence in education has been at the center of culture wars since the 1980s and the legal interpretations of Title IX and its federal enforcement have changed depending on court decisions and presidential administrations. In response, activists and advocacy groups have theorized various strategies to strengthen Title IX and better address sexual violence in higher education. Most prominently, intersectional analyses of sexual violence point to the need for a broader power-​based framework connecting sex discrimination to other intersecting systems of oppression such as race, class, and sexual orientation.69 This is why organizations for college students, from Know Your IX to EROC and It’s on Us, insist that the voices and needs of survivors who have been historically marginalized in the movement against campus sexual violence—​people of color, those who are LGBTQ+​, low-​income, disabled, or undocumented—​must be centered when designing Title IX reforms to end sexual violence in higher education and achieve equality.70 Notes 1 Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, 20 U.S.C. §1681 et seq. 2 Catherine O. Jacquet, The Injustices of Rape: How Activists Responded to Sexual Violence, 1950–​1980 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2019), 4. 3 Jacquet, The Injustices of Rape, 3–​4. 4 Jacquet, The Injustices of Rape, 75. 5 Susan Griffin, “Rape: The All-​American Crime,” Ramparts (September 1971): 35.

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6 Susan Brownmiller, Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1975), 15. 7 Jacquet, The Injustices of Rape, 75. 8 Maria Bevacqua, Rape on the Public Agenda: Feminism and the Politics of Sexual Assault (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2000), 48. 9 Sherry Boschert, 37 Words: Title IX and Fifty Years of Fighting Sex Discrimination (La Vergne: The New Press, 2022). 10 This chapter uses both “victims” and “survivors” to refer to those who have experienced sexual violence. 11 Kate B. Carey et al., “Mental Health Consequences of Sexual Assault among First-​ Year College Women,” Journal of American College Health 66, no. 6 (August 18, 2018). 12 James Davidson Hunter, Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America (New York: Basic Books, 1991); Naomi Mann, “Forging a Future Title IX,” Boston University Law Review Online 103 (2023): 121. 13 Katherine Franke, “What’s Wrong with Sexual Harassment.” Stanford Law Review 49 (January 1, 1997): 693. 14 Liz Kelly, “The Continuum of Sexual Violence,” in Women, Violence and Social Control, ed. Jalna Hanmer and Mary Maynard (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1987), 46–​60. 15 Karen M. Tani, “An Administrative Right to Be Free from Sexual Violence? Title IX Enforcement in Historical and Institutional Perspective,” Duke Law Journal 66 (2017), 1856. 16 Reva B. Siegel, “Introduction: A Short History of Sexual Harassment,” in Directions in Sexual Harassment Law, ed. Catharine A. MacKinnon and Reva B. Siegel (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2004), 3–​8. 17 Lin Farley, Sexual Shakedown: The Sexual Harassment of Women on the Job (New York: McGraw-​Hill, 1978), 15. 18 Williams v. Saxbe, 413 F. Supp. 654 (D.D.C. 1976). 19 Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Guidelines on Sexual Harassment, 45 Federal Register 74676 codified in 29 C.F.R. §1604.11 (1980). 20 Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson, 477 U.S. 57 (1986). 21 Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Services, Inc., 523 U.S. 75 (1998). 22 Franke, “What’s Wrong with Sexual Harassment,” 693. 23 Alexander v. Yale University, 459 F. Supp. 1 (D. Conn. 1977). 24 Celene Reynolds, “Repurposing Title IX: How Sexual Harassment Became Sex Discrimination in American Higher Education,” American Journal of Sociology 128, no. 2 (September 2022). 25 Alexander v. Yale University, 1977. 26 Alexander v. Yale University, 631 F.2d 178 (2d Cir., 1980). 27 Letter from Floyd Pierce, director, Office for Civil Rights, Region IX, to Ruth Milkman, WOASH, July 12, 1979, quoted in Reynolds, “Repurposing Title IX,” 497. 28 Reynolds, “Repurposing Title IX,” 497. 29 Jodi Gold and Susan Villari, Just Sex: Students Rewrite the Rules on Sex, Violence, Activism, and Equality (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000). 30 Ellen Sweet, “Date Rape: The Story of an Epidemic and Those Who Deny It,” Ms. Magazine, October 1985, 56.

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1 Gold and Villari, Just Sex. 3 32 Terry Nicole Steinberg, “Rape on College Campuses: Reform through Title IX,” Journal of College and University Law 18, no. 1 (Summer 1991): 52. 33 Tani, “An Administrative Right to Be Free from Sexual Violence?” 34 Franklin v. Gwinnett County Public Schools, 503 U.S. 60 (1992). 35 Gebser v. Lago Vista Independent School District, 524 U.S. 274 (1998). 36 Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education, 526 U.S. 629 (1999). 37 Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education, 526 U.S. 629 (1999). 38 Tani, “An Administrative Right to Be Free from Sexual Violence?” 39 Bonnie S. Fisher, Francis T. Cullen, and Michael G. Turner, “The Sexual Victimization of College Women. Research Report,” Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, NCJ-​182369, Washington D.C., 2000, http://​eric. ed.gov/​?id=​ED449​712; Catherine Hill and Elena Silva, Drawing the Line: Sexual Harassment on Campus, Washington, D.C.: American Association of University Women Educational Foundation, 2005, www.aauw.org/​app/​uplo​ads/​ 2020/​02/​AAUW-​Draw​ing-​the-​line.pdf; Christopher P. Krebs et al., “Campus Sexual Assault (CSA) Study, Final Report,” National Institute of Justice, January 2007, https://​nij.ojp.gov/​libr​ary/​publi​cati​ons/​cam​pus-​sex​ual-​assa​ult-​csa-​study-​ final-​rep​ort. 40 R. Shep Melnick, The Transformation of Title IX: Regulating Gender Equality in Education (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2018), 48. 41 Melnick, The Transformation of Title IX. 42 U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights, Sexual Harassment Guidance: Harassment of Students by School Employees, Other Students, or Third Parties, Pub. L. No. 62 FR 12034 (1997). www2.ed.gov/​about/​offi​ces/​list/​ ocr/​docs/​sexha​r01.html; Sexual Harassment Guidance: Harassment of Students by School Employees, Other Students, or Third Parties, U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights, 2001, www2.ed.gov/​about/​offi​ces/​list/​ocr/​docs/​ sexha​r01.html. 43 Kristen Lombardi, “Education Department Touts Settlement as ‘Model’ for Campus Sex Assault Policies,” Center for Public Integrity, December 8, 2010, http://​publ​icin​tegr​ity.org/​educat​ion/​educat​ion-​dep​artm​ent-​touts-​set​tlem​ent-​as-​ model-​for-​cam​pus-​sex-​assa​ult-​polic​ies/​; Kristin Jones and Kristen Lombardi (Center for Public Integrity), “Sexual Assault on Campus: A Frustrating Search for Justice,” Center for Public Integrity, February 2010, www.publ​icin​tegr​ity.org/​ inv​esti​gati​ons/​cam​pus_​assa​ult/​. 44 Office for Civil Rights, “Dear Colleague Letter: Sexual Violence,” Department of Education, April 4, 2011, www2.ed.gov/​about/​offi​ces/​list/​ocr/​lett​ers/​collea​gue-​ 201​104.pdf. 45 Office for Civil Rights, “Dear Colleague Letter,” 1–​2. 46 Office for Civil Rights, “Dear Colleague Letter,” 1. 47 Office for Civil Rights, “Dear Colleague Letter,” 4. 48 Office for Civil Rights, “Dear Colleague Letter,” 9. 49 Office for Civil Rights, “Dear Colleague Letter,” 11. 50 Richard Pérez-​Peña, “College Groups Connect to Fight Sexual Assault,” The New York Times, March 19, 2013, www.nyti​mes.com/​2013/​03/​20/​educat​ ion/​activi​sts-​at-​colle​ges-​netw​ork-​to-​fight-​sex​ual-​assa​ult.html; Carole Bass, “Alexandra Brodsky ’12, ’16JD: ‘My School Betrayed Me,’  ” Yale Alumni

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Magazine, July 18, 2013, https://​yal​ealu​mnim​agaz​ine.org/​blo​g_​po​sts/​1517-​alexan​ dra-​brod​sky-​12-​16jd-​br-​my-​sch​ool-​betra​yed-​me; Rebecca Johnson, “Campus Sexual Assault: Annie E. Clark and Andrea Pino Are Fighting Back—​And Shaping the National Debate,” Vogue, October 9, 2014, www.vogue.com/​arti​cle/​coll​ ege-​sex​ual-​assa​ult-​har​assm​ent-​annie-​e-​clark-​and​rea-​pino; Alexandra Brodsky and Dana Bolger, “How Two Girls Are Teaching Students Their Rights to Fight Campus Sexual Assault,” Teen Vogue, January 14, 2016, www.teenvo​gue.com/​ story/​know-​your-​ix-​cam​pus-​sex​ual-​assa​ult. 51 Catherine E. Lhamon, “Securing Equal Educational Opportunity: Report to the President and Secretary of Education,” U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights, FY 2016, Washington, D.C., December 2016, 8. 52 Melnick, The Transformation of Title IX, 156. 53 The American Presidency Project, “2016 Republican Party Platform,” July 18, 2016, www.pre​side​ncy.ucsb.edu/​docume​nts/​2016-​rep​ubli​can-​party-​platf​orm. 54 Nancy Chi Cantalupo, “Written Comment: Title IX Public Hearing,” June 11, 2021, https://​ocr​cas.ed.gov/​sites/​defa​ult/​files/​stor​age/​cor​resp​onde​nce/​202​106-​titl​ eix-​public​hear​ing-​comme​nts/​nca​ntal​upo.pdf. 55 Office for Civil Rights, “Nondiscrimination on the Basis of Sex in Education Programs or Activities Receiving Federal Financial Assistance,” U.S. Department of Education, 34 CFR 106 § Washington, D.C., 2020. 56 Sarah Nesbitt and Sage Carson, “The Cost of Reporting: Perpetrator Retaliation, Institutional Betrayal, and Student Survivor Pushout,” Know Your IX, Advocates for Youth, 2021, https://​kno​wyou​rix.org/​wp-​cont​ent/​uplo​ads/​2021/​03/​Know-​ Your-​IX-​2021-​Rep​ort-​Final-​Copy.pdf. 57 Katherine Knott, “New Title IX Rules Get 235,000 Comments,” Inside Higher Ed, September 13, 2022, www.ins​ideh​ighe​red.com/​news/​2022/​09/​14/​thousa​ nds-​weigh-​new-​title-​ix-​rules. 58 Chloe Appleby, “Sexual Misconduct Reporting Under Title IX Confuses College Students,” Best Colleges, June 6, 2023, www.bestc​olle​ges.com/​news/​coll​ege-​stude​ nts-​sex​ual-​mis​cond​uct-​report​ing-​confus​ing-​untrus​twor​thy/​. 59 Shiwali Patel, Elizabeth X. Tang, and Hunter F. Iannucci, “A Sweep as Broad as Its Promise: 50 Years Later, We Must Amend Title IX to End Sex-​Based Harassment in Schools,” Louisiana Law Review 83, no. 3 (April 2023). 60 National Women’s Law Center, “A Call for Legislative Action to Support Student Survivors of Sexual Harassment,” April 2021, https://​nwlc.org/​resou​rce/​70-​gro​ ups-​call-​for-​legi​slat​ive-​act​ion-​to-​supp​ort-​stud​ent-​surviv​ors-​of-​sex​ual-​har​assm​ent/​ ; Patel et al., “A Sweep As Broad As Its Promise”. 61 L. B. Klein et al., “Campus Interpersonal Violence Survivor Advocacy Services,” Journal of American College Health (May 11, 2023): 1–​ 10. https://​doi.org/​ 10.1080/​07448​481.2023.2209​188. 62 Catharine A. MacKinnon, “In Their Hands: Restoring Institutional Liability for Sexual Harassment in Education,” The Yale Law Journal 125, no. 7 (May 2016): 2041. 63 MacKinnon, “In Their Hands,” 2092. 64 Carrie N. Baker, The Women’s Movement Against Sexual Harassment (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 190. 65 Baker, The Women’s Movement Against Sexual Harassment, 191.

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66 Elizabeth A. Armstrong, Miriam Gleckman-​Krut, and Lanora Johnson, “Silence, Power, and Inequality: An Intersectional Approach to Sexual Violence,” Annual Review of Sociology 44, no. 1 (July 30, 2018). 67 Sarah DeGue et al., “A Systematic Review of Primary Prevention Strategies for Sexual Violence Perpetration,” Aggression and Violent Behavior 19, no. 4 (July 1, 2014). 68 Alexandra Brodsky, Sexual Justice: Supporting Victims, Ensuring Due Process, and Resisting the Conservative Backlash (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2022). 69 Jessica C. Harris and Chris Linder, Intersections of Identity and Sexual Violence on Campus: Centering Minoritized Students’ Experiences (Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing, LLC, 2017). 70 Tracey Vitchers, “Five Ways The Department Of Education Can Create A Trauma-​ Informed, Survivor-​Centered Title IX Policy,” Forbes, March 8, 2021, www.for​ bes.com/​sites/​civi​cnat​ion/​2021/​03/​08/​five-​ways-​the-​dep​artm​ent-​of-​educat​ion-​ can-​cre​ate-​a-​tra​uma-​infor​med-​survi​vor-​cente​red-​title-​ix-​pol​icy/​.

Reference List Appleby, Chloe. “Sexual Misconduct Reporting Under Title IX Confuses College Students.” Best Colleges, June 6, 2023. www.bestc​olle​ges.com/​news/​coll​ege-​stude​ nts-​sex​ual-​mis​cond​uct-​report​ing-​confus​ing-​untrus​twor​thy/​. Armstrong, Elizabeth A., Miriam Gleckman-​Krut, and Lanora Johnson. “Silence, Power, and Inequality: An Intersectional Approach to Sexual Violence.” Annual Review of Sociology 44, no. 1 (July 30, 2018): 99–​122. Baker, Carrie N. The Women’s Movement Against Sexual Harassment. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Bevacqua, Maria. Rape on the Public Agenda: Feminism and the Politics of Sexual Assault. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2000. Boschert, Sherry. 37 Words: Title IX and Fifty Years of Fighting Sex Discrimination. La Vergne: The New Press, 2022. Brodsky, Alexandra. Sexual Justice: Supporting Victims, Ensuring Due Process, and Resisting the Conservative Backlash. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2022. Brownmiller, Susan. Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1975. Carey, Kate B., Alyssa L. Norris, Sarah E. Durney, Robyn L. Shepardson, and Michael P. Carey. “Mental Health Consequences of Sexual Assault among First-​ Year College Women.” Journal of American College Health 66, no. 6 (August 18, 2018): 480–​486. DeGue, Sarah, Linda Anne Valle, Melissa K. Holt, Greta M. Massetti, Jennifer L. Matjasko, and Andra Teten Tharp. “A Systematic Review of Primary Prevention Strategies for Sexual Violence Perpetration.” Aggression and Violent Behavior 19, no. 4 (July 1, 2014): 346–​362. Farley, Lin. Sexual Shakedown: The Sexual Harassment of Women on the Job. New York: McGraw-​Hill, 1978. Fisher, Bonnie S., Francis T. Cullen, and Michael G. Turner. “The Sexual Victimization of College Women. Research Report.” Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, NCJ-​182369. Washington D.C., 2000. http://​eric.ed.gov/​?id=​ED449​712. Franke, Katherine. “What’s Wrong with Sexual Harassment.” Stanford Law Review 49 (January 1, 1997): 691–​772.

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Gold, Jodi, and Susan Villari. Just Sex: Students Rewrite the Rules on Sex, Violence, Activism, and Equality. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000. Griffin, Susan. “Rape: The All-​American Crime.” Ramparts (September 1971): 26–​35. Harris, Jessica C., and Chris Linder. Intersections of Identity and Sexual Violence on Campus: Centering Minoritized Students’ Experiences. Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing, LLC, 2017. Hill, Catherine, and Elena Silva. Drawing the Line: Sexual Harassment on Campus. Washington, D.C.: American Association of University Women Educational Foundation, 2005. www.aauw.org/​app/​uplo​ads/​2020/​02/​AAUW-​Draw​ing-​the-​ line.pdf. Hunter, James Davidson. Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America. New York: Basic Books, 1991. Jacquet, Catherine O. The Injustices of Rape: How Activists Responded to Sexual Violence, 1950–​1980. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2019. Jones, Kristin, and Kristen Lombardi. “Sexual Assault on Campus: A Frustrating Search for Justice.” Center for Public Integrity. February 2010. www.publ​icin​tegr​ ity.org/​inv​esti​gati​ons/​cam​pus_​assa​ult/​. Kelly, Liz. “The Continuum of Sexual Violence.” In Women, Violence and Social Control, edited by Jalna Hanmer and Mary Maynard, 46–​60. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1987. Klein, L. B., Nathan Q. Brewer, Cherita Cloy, Holly Lovern, Michelle Bangen, Kiley McLean, Rachel Voth Schrag, and Leila Wood. “Campus Interpersonal Violence Survivor Advocacy Services.” Journal of American College Health (May 11, 2023): 1–​10. https://​doi.org/​10.1080/​07448​481.2023.2209​188. Knott, Katherine. “New Title IX Rules Get 235,000 Comments.” Inside Higher Ed, September 13, 2022. www.ins​ideh​ighe​red.com/​news/​2022/​09/​14/​thousa​ nds-​weigh-​new-​title-​ix-​rules. Krebs, Christopher P., Christine H. Lindquist, Tara D. Warner, Bonnie S. Fisher, and Sandra L. Martin. “Campus Sexual Assault (CSA) Study, Final Report.” National Institution of Justice, January 2007. https://​nij.ojp.gov/​libr​ary/​publi​cati​ons/​cam​ pus-​sex​ual-​assa​ult-​csa-​study-​final-​rep​ort. Lhamon, Catherine E. “Securing Equal Educational Opportunity: Report to the President and Secretary of Education.” U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights, FY 2016. Washington, D.C., December 2016. Lombardi, Kristen. “Education Department Touts Settlement as ‘Model’ for Campus Sex Assault Policies.” Center for Public Integrity, December 8, 2010. http://​publ​ icin​tegr​ity.org/​educat​ion/​educat​ion-​dep​artm​ent-​touts-​set​tlem​ent-​as-​model-​for-​ cam​pus-​sex-​assa​ult-​polic​ies/​. MacKinnon, Catharine A. “In Their Hands: Restoring Institutional Liability for Sexual Harassment in Education.” The Yale Law Journal 125, no. 7 (May 2016): 1820–​2181. —​—​—​. The Sexual Harassment of Working Women: A Case of Sex Discrimination. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979. Mann, Naomi. “Forging a Future Title IX.” Boston University Law Review Online 103 (2023): 121–​130. Melnick, R. Shep. The Transformation of Title IX: Regulating Gender Equality in Education. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2018. Nesbitt, Sarah and Sage Carson. “The Cost of Reporting: Perpetrator Retaliation, Institutional Betrayal, and Student Survivor Pushout.” Know Your IX, Advocates

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for Youth, 2021. https://​kno​wyou​rix.org/​wp-​cont​ent/​uplo​ads/​2021/​03/​Know-​ Your-​IX-​2021-​Rep​ort-​Final-​Copy.pdf. Patel, Shiwali, Elizabeth X. Tang, and Hunter F. Iannucci. “A Sweep as Broad as Its Promise: 50 Years Later, We Must Amend Title IX to End Sex-​Based Harassment in Schools.” Louisiana Law Review 83, no. 3 (April 2023): 939–​1016. Reynolds, Celene. “Repurposing Title IX: How Sexual Harassment Became Sex Discrimination in American Higher Education.” American Journal of Sociology 128, no. 2 (September 2022): 462–​514. Siegel, Reva B. “Introduction: A Short History of Sexual Harassment.” In Directions in Sexual Harassment Law, edited by Catharine A. MacKinnon and Reva B. Siegel, 1–​42. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2004. Steinberg, Terry Nicole. “Rape on College Campuses: Reform through Title IX.” Journal of College and University Law 18, no. 1 (Summer 1991): 39–​72. Sweet, Ellen. “Date Rape: The Story of an Epidemic and Those Who Deny It.” Ms. Magazine, October 1985. Tani, Karen M. “An Administrative Right to Be Free from Sexual Violence? Title IX Enforcement in Historical and Institutional Perspective.” Duke Law Journal 66 (2017): 1847–​1903. Vitchers, Tracey. “Five Ways The Department Of Education Can Create A Trauma-​ Informed, Survivor-​Centered Title IX Policy.” Forbes, March 8, 2021. www.for​ bes.com/​sites/​civi​cnat​ion/​2021/​03/​08/​five-​ways-​the-​dep​artm​ent-​of-​educat​ion-​can-​ cre​ate-​a-​tra​uma-​infor​med-​survi​vor-​cente​red-​title-​ix-​pol​icy/​.

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

The 20th century witnessed many occasions when American women fought to obtain better access to educational and professional opportunities which have resulted in increased economic and political independence today. Yet, feminist activist and political theorist Silvia Federici recently lamented that, “The massive entrance of women into wage labor has by no means afforded the majority the economic autonomy and social empowerment that feminists expected.”1 She said this, in part, as a response to the perseverance of the idea that domestic and care work remain “women’s work.” While the sharing of such tasks has improved since the mid-​20th century, the domestic division of labor and attitudes about it still skew toward “traditional ideals” about men’s and women’s roles in the home: women do the care work and men provide.2 And yet, there has been a significant change in the ways that married-​heterosexual couples support their families. In 1967, 44 percent of these families had earnings from both the husband and the wife, including part-​time paid work; in 2018 this number had risen to 53 percent. Over this same period of time, the number of married-​heterosexual-​couple families living off a single income was halved. In 1967, 36 percent of married-​ heterosexual-​couple families had a husband/​father breadwinner as the only provider, whereas in 2018, only 18 percent did.3 Furthermore, the percentage of American women working between the ages of 16 and 64 increased from 48.96 percent in 1970 to 73.22 percent in 2022 and the number of working women between the ages of 26 and 64 holding a college degree quadrupled between 1970 and 2019.4 Despite these professional and educational changes, women did 15 hours a week of housework to men’s nine in 2011 and mothers with children under the age of 6 “spend significantly more total time on paid and household labor” than fathers.5 With so much progress taking place in DOI: 10.4324/9781003425380-11

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the “public sphere,” the question becomes: why has the “private sphere” lagged so far behind? Journalist and feminist political activist Gloria Steinem was quoted in an interview in 2009 with The Philadelphia Inquirer saying, “The idea of having it all, never meant doing it all. Men are parents, too, and actually women will never be equal outside the home until men are equal inside the home.”6 In an attempt to bridge this persistent gap in domestic gender arrangements, it is important to return to the culturally salient model on which the gendered division of domestic labor has been based and contested in the United States. The familial model that came out of the post-​World War II era promoted hegemonic gender, sexual, racial, and class norms. The 1950s American housewife was a pillar of this model. She was meant to provide the American middle-​class family with emotional security and material comfort. Her job was to make her house a home. While the suburban, affluent, middle-​class family’s way of life became central to demands for civil rights, the housewife emerged as a source of angst and criticism for feminists. Being able to afford to live off a single wage indicated a certain amount of wealth and privilege, something that those who had been left out of this vision of postwar life felt should have been more widely available. For those who saw this nuclear family norm as oppressive, the housewife needed to be retrieved from the home, and her mental capacities and physical efforts recognized and valued. This latter critique has been a major part of the legacy of the women’s movements of the 1960s and 1970s. Feminists fought to advance the very real need for rights to political representation, equality before the law, income parity, as well as equal access to education and employment. What is clear in the feminist literature from the 1960s and 1970s is that feminists were overwhelmingly aware of women’s exploitation as wives and mothers, and they thought that this was a fundamental part of the struggle. In this chapter, I will return to some of the canonical texts of the women’s movement that offer a critique of the domestic model of mid-​century womanhood. While galvanizing for some, the attack on American womanhood as it related to the family alienated many and became the fodder for antifeminists to decry the cause. In response to the women’s movement of the 1960s and 1970s, conservative activists were able to mobilize these critiques to distance the feminist cause from the identities that women continued to occupy in their families and homes. Being able to place domestic and care work within a feminist framework is essential for women’s full equality in the U.S. While gaining political, educational, and economic opportunities has been no small feat, and has yet to fully materialize, housework and care work should also be recognized as politically, economically, and socially valuable in the feminist fight for equality. I argue that, in spite of their feminist stance, the discourse of 1960s and 1970s militants has in its own way contributed to the devaluation of

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women’s domestic work in some of its treatment of the American housewife. As Louise Toupin describes in her book on the International Wages for Housework movement, “The women’s movement as a whole […] rejected the Wages for Housework strategy. It was seen as a step backward in the demand for women’s equality rather than one of its essential conditions […].”7 Diametrically opposing work done in the home and paid work has continued hegemonic discourses that limit access to equality and marginalize mothers and wives, as well as other members of the family who perform this work. Returning to Second-​ Wave feminists’ and Women’s liberationists’ representations of motherhood and domesticity, this chapter looks to what can be recovered from the feminist critique of domesticity and what can be used to give credence to the claim that housework and care work are not marginal, but real and valuable work. In doing so, the hope is that American womanhood as it pertains to wifeliness and motherhood can come to encompass more than traditionalist visions of domesticity and gender essentialism. The domestic and care work that help create healthy and functional families should not only be valued by society as a whole but held up as a necessary social good. First, though, a history of the “1950s woman” and “the culture of the home” that was at the heart of this critique is necessary to understand how much the domestic arrangement of the nuclear family after World War II was a manifestation of many economic, political, social, and cultural trends coming together coherently for the first time.8 A historicization of the doctrine of separate spheres in the U.S. should demonstrate how the gendering of domesticity continues to affect gender equality well beyond the bounds of the home. I will then focus on how the 1950s white, middle-​class, heterosexual, suburban wife model was conceived, or rather who was this idealized woman that Women’s Liberation activists thought needed to be shaken from the doldrums in the 1960s and 1970s. Finally, I will analyze how in their attempts to empower women, these militants quite specifically cast the housewife as needing to divorce herself from her domestic roles and identities. How the Doctrine of Separate Spheres Shaped Domesticity

Historian, Lillian Faderman has recently described the “return to normalcy” that became so representative of the postwar era as being responsible for the erasure of “much of the linear progress toward women’s agency made in the first part of the twentieth century.”9 While not alone in casting the 1950s woman and familial model as “retrograde,” this critique tends to obfuscate the constructed nature of this “return” to “the separate spheres” ideology.10 The doctrine of separate spheres is frequently looked at as a stand-​alone social norm that emerges punctually, rather than as existing side-​by-​side and

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morphing along with other economic, political, and demographic realities of the times that ultimately legitimated it. Its foundations are rooted in a middle-​class ideology that came out of the 19th century, revering “domestic love” and positioning the home as a refuge, a haven of peace, a shelter from the storm that could be found beyond the home’s doors.11 Until the 1880s, agriculture was the dominant occupation in the United States. The majority of farms relied on family labor, which meant most wives worked on the family farm, and those who did not, usually because of financial instability, sought wage labor in manufacturing in addition to performing all of their other domestic duties.12 The rise of wage labor in the 18th century and a shift away from agrarianism toward industrialization by the end of the 19th century resulted in an increasingly urbanized population by 1920.13 These different phenomena contributed to repositioning men’s and women’s roles in the family and this differentiation was very much rooted in class.14 Women had traditionally combined the labor-​intensive tasks of farming and housekeeping with childrearing, but the financial necessity for actual money complicated this dynamic for some women. By the end of the 19th century, lower-​and working-​class women were going into wage-​labor until their children could take jobs, while the economically better off began to exalt the virtues of the wife as a homemaker. Although the middle-​class doctrine of separate spheres did not immediately trickle down to the working classes, a differentiation between the public and private spheres became more distinct, an example of which was the increasing sentimentalization of the home.15 Stephanie Coontz characterizes this phenomenon, thus, “[…A]s housekeeping became ‘homemaking,’ it came to be seen as an act of love rather than a contribution to survival.”16 Homemaking, consequently, became a marker of middle-​ class status, but it also redefined women’s relationship to the economy in setting domestic work apart from or outside of “economically productive” work. Over the course of the 19th century, this ideology slowly spread. With the introduction of the family wage at the beginning of the century, the middle-​ class man’s familial role was increasingly cast as one in which he was the sole economic provider for his wife and children.17 The family wage was a prerogative of mainly white, middle-​class men for much of the 19th century and should therefore be understood as exclusive in terms of gender, class, and race. However, by the end of the 19th century, the struggle for a family wage, or a wage that an individual man could earn to support his family, was integral to organized labor’s demands. It necessarily meant that the familial unit was to become economically dependent on a husband breadwinner, thus underwriting the economic and gender arrangement of separate public and private spheres that defined the upper-​and middle-​class way of life into the lower and working classes. This understanding was predicated on two

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sociocultural assumptions. On the one hand, it was presumed that all women would become wives, while, on the other, it consigned ideal womanhood to the “non-​economically productive” home. Women who worked outside of the home were seen as challenging men’s access to a family wage and undermining their role as the provider. “Working women were believed to devalue wages, making a ‘living wage’ difficult to achieve and upsetting a natural sexual order.”18 It is perhaps no accident that the rhetoric for this family-​wage, breadwinner–​homemaker model purported its normativity at the same time that women’s participation in the labor force began to grow.19 In spite of clear indicators of women’s participation in wage labor and the domestic economy throughout the 19th and the early 20th centuries, what remains most salient of this era is the emergence of this middle-​class norm that ultimately became the basis for 20th-​century conceptions of a “traditional” division of labor and gender roles in the household.20 Between the last decade of the 19th century and the beginning of the Great Depression the rhetoric of a family wage gained ground and women’s domestic contributions continued to lose their monetary importance, while they gained in social and emotional significance.21 The ascendance of this model was facilitated by the economic, political, and social conditions of the postwar era: widespread prosperity and abundance, the supposed superiority of the American way of life during the Cold War, and the cultural importance of marriage in accessing “the good life.”22 Concurrently, a stream of political thought was emerging in the wake of World War II that coalesced around new conservative principles articulated as early as 1964, when Barry Goldwater represented the Republican ticket. Initially, these were the promotion of states’ rights, a desire to modify or completely repeal New Deal institutions, and fervent anti-​ communism.23 However, the outright rejection of Goldwater with the 1964 landslide election of Lyndon Johnson has been used to explain this early conservatism as being too “rigid” and as a “crusade [taken] up too early.”24 It has been argued, nonetheless, that it was the successful integration of social and cultural issues into political discourse taken up by figures like Spiro Agnew a few years later that successfully mainstreamed the New Right’s political way of thinking. In advocating for “traditional values,” Agnew, in particular, and the New Right, in general, were able to position themselves as defenders of “a natural order” in which men were patriarchs and women nurturers.25 These would become the basis of “family values” as they were set in opposition to feminism, homosexuality, and abortion.26 The bulwarking of the patriarchal traditional family was certainly integral to the Cold War logic of containment in the 1950s that promoted this as central to the American way of life, but this continued into the 1960s and 1970s on the Right while Second-​Wave feminists and the Women’s Liberation movement contested this. When the

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institutions of marriage and family were being questioned as particular sites of oppression for women and the idyllic home was being challenged as a place of racial, class, and heteronormative exclusion, shoring up these institutions became a motivating cause of the New Right. Understanding the politicization of this domestic model during this era sheds light on what it represented, and continues to represent, and how culturally important it was, and still is, for many American political and social actors. Radical feminists attacked the “natural order” of the “separate spheres ideology.” In 1969, Marxist feminist scholar, Margaret Benston, described the effects of the doctrine of separate spheres not just in economic terms but as a justification for women’s subordination in American society: In sheer quantity, household labor, including child care, constitutes a huge amount of socially necessary production. Nevertheless, in a society based on commodity production, it is not usually considered “real work” since it is outside of trade and the market place. […] This assignment of household work as the function of a special category “women” means that this group does stand in a different relation to production than the group “men.” We will tentatively define women, then, as the group of people who are responsible for the production of simple use-​values in those activities associated with the home and family. […] The material basis for the inferior status of women is to be found in just this definition of women. In a society in which money determines value, women are a group who work outside the money economy. Their work is not worth money, is therefore valueless, is therefore not even real work. And women themselves, who do this valueless work, can hardly be expected to be worth as much as men, who work for money.27 Importantly, in her essay “The Political Economy of Women’s Liberation,” Benston explained women’s oppression as being inherently linked to their class as women and the work they performed as “valueless” in the capitalist system. She noted the immensity of domestic and care work at the same time that she acknowledged that such work is “socially necessary.”28 While Benston’s terminology depicted women’s lot as devalued, she was not diminishing domestic and care work. She was even careful to say that “Such work is not marginal, however; it is just not wage labor and so is not counted.”29 As a Marxist feminist, Benston presented the stakes as being the material conditions of women’s subordination in the capitalist system and proposed that for women to achieve liberation not only would they need equal access to jobs, but domestic and care work would also have to be done in the public, not private, economy.30 Such a radical proposal called for the dissolution of the doctrine of separate spheres and with it the nuclear family as well as capitalism.

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Similarly, in The Dialectic of Sex, radical feminist Shulamith Firestone challenged the precepts on which this model was supposedly based. She devotes an entire chapter to “the culture of romance” which she describes as being a byproduct of the “sex class system.” In societies such as the United States, Firestone argued that institutions were being used to shore up the gender hierarchy. One such way of doing this was “romanticism”—​executed through three cultural mechanisms, according to Firestone: eroticism, the sexual privatization of women, and the beauty ideal—​ which Firestone condemned as “a cultural tool of male power to keep women from knowing their condition.”31 In a way, Firestone praised the fact that the Victorian model of separate spheres was based at least on pragmatic self-​interest for both parties: To him, it was simply an economic arrangement of some selfish benefit, one that would most easily satisfy his physical needs and reproduce his heirs. His wife, too, was clear about her duties and rewards: ownership of herself and of her full sexual, psychological, and housekeeping services for a lifetime, in return for long-​term patronage and protection by a member of the ruling class, and—​in her turn—​limited control over a household and over her children until they reached a certain age.32 In stripping the economic, sexual, and productive functions of marriage down to their bare bones, Firestone revealed the subordinate position of the woman in this exchange. However, Firestone also maintained that marriage afforded women certain freedoms: by leveraging their subordination, they could have access to the gender and class privileges of their spouses. Such a description is decidedly unromantic. Firestone contested romanticism being used to shore up “a crumbling family structure,”33 rooted in the separate spheres and a gender class system. Obfuscating the intentions of the institution and its inherent power imbalances ultimately kept many women in positions of subordination. In looking first to the history of “the doctrine of separate spheres,” it is apparent that it reached a certain ascendency in the postwar era because it had a relatively long history of being held up as a desirable and respectable model. It might have been all the more anticipated in the 1950s because of the cultural, political, and economic climate that made it accessible for more Americans than it had ever been before. The resulting “traditional” nuclear family became a cause around which progressive and radical feminists, as well as conservative political actors, would rally because of its structural importance for the American economy, society, and political culture. Challenging it meant questioning the very foundations of American identity. The goal in contesting the family for many of the feminists of this time, nevertheless, meant liberating the wife from its grasp.

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“Why I Want a Wife”: The Unquantifiable Nature of Housework and Care Work

Radical feminist Judy Syfer delivered a speech in August 1970 at a rally in commemoration of women gaining the right to vote fifty years prior, in which she minutely described the tasks of the typical wife. After having explained that she had just had a conversation with a friend, a recently divorced man who was back on the marriage market, she decided that she, too, would like a wife. To describe what a wife has to offer, she poses a rhetorical question “Why do I want a wife?” She then launched into the response: I would like to go back to school so that I can become economically independent, support myself, and, if need be, support those dependent upon me. I want a wife who will work and send me to school. And while I am going to school, I want a wife to take care of my children. I want a wife to keep track of the children’s doctor and dentist appointments. And to keep track of mine, too. I want a wife to make sure my children eat properly and are kept clean. I want a wife who will wash the children’s clothes and keep them mended. I want a wife who is a good nurturant attendant to my children, who arranges for their schooling, makes sure that they have an adequate social life with their peers, takes them to the park, the zoo, etc. I want a wife who takes care of the children when they are sick, a wife who arranges to be around when the children need special care, because, of course, I cannot miss classes at school. My wife must arrange to lose time at work and not lose the job. It may mean a small cut in my wife’s income from time to time, but I guess I can tolerate that. Needless to say, my wife will arrange and pay for the care of the children while my wife is working.34 This is the third paragraph of the relatively short, nine-​paragraph essay reprinted in Notes from the Third Year (1971). Her description seems entirely complete in its ability to convey the complexity of the second shift and the mental load, terms developed more recently to describe the continued expectations and weight of women’s domestic and care work. According to Syfer’s narration marriage begins by women giving of themselves financially, physically, psychologically, emotionally, while also providing practical support and logistical organization for their husbands and children. Care work is specifically defined here as including all the needs of every family member, with the exception of the wife’s, hence the irony of the piece. The consequence of such work is precisely that it frees up the other partner to become educated, to enjoy the pleasures of parenting, to devote their time and energies to school and work, to appreciate company, to have alone time, to become financially independent, to explore their full potential at the

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expense of their wife. Not only is Syfer detailing a list of expectations here, she has also articulated just how much the husband and children benefit socially and economically from women’s work. One aspect of Second-​Wave feminism and Women’s Liberation that has been perhaps lost with time is how much focus there was on the burden of women’s domestic roles, and this critique often came from a radical, thoroughly socialist perspective. As such, embracing, even trying to elevate, women’s contributions in the home was seen by many as a threat to the larger feminist project, which was to liberate women from the confines of the home. Louise Toupin has thus concluded in her work on the International Wages for Housework movement, that: The women’s movement saw [the Wages for Housework movement] as a renunciation of the objective of socialization of domestic work (daycare centres, community services, and so on). In the labour field, the movement preferred to invest its efforts in women’s access to the labour market, improvements in working conditions, the obtaining of parental leave, and the creation of community services to facilitate access to paid labour.35 This idea was shared by Silvia Federici who has argued that by the early 1970s “[…] the energies of the movement were increasingly being directed to gaining equality with men and the so-​called right to work.”36 This can be seen in the work of renowned feminist activist Betty Friedan, who penned an essay for The New York Times Magazine published on March 4, 1973, in which she returned to the conundrum of being an American wife and mother in the postwar era. Ten years after the publication of her ground-​ breaking book The Feminine Mystique, she reminisced about how she slowly became aware of the “woman problem,” which she identified as the disconnect between the fulfillment women were supposed to find in performing menial domestic tasks and taking care of their children and the nagging feeling that there “should be more in life.”37 Friedan discusses the fact that nearly half of American women were working, contributing to the bills, but that this was a source of guilt rather than a point of pride. With hindsight, she was able to address criticisms of The Feminine Mystique that pointed out that Friedan was mostly describing the situation of white, middle-​class women. She reframed women’s paid labor, too, within the “mystique,” explaining that this was understood as “betraying their femininity, undermining their husband’s masculinity, and neglecting their children by daring to work for money at all—​no matter how much it was needed.”38 In Friedan’s description it becomes obvious that what she called the “feminine mystique” ten years earlier was holding housewives hostage to an ideal of womanhood that defied economic realities for many women and that dismissed women’s humanity and need for purpose. A woman’s status as wife and mother superseded all

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that she was, even when she was more than “just a housewife.”39 Friedan describes a scenario in which a neighbor encouraged her to see herself as something more: A suburban neighbor of mine named Gertie was having coffee with me when the census taker came as I was writing “The Feminine Mystique.” “Occupation?” the census taker asked. “Housewife,” I said. Gertie, who had cheered me on in my efforts at writing and selling magazine articles, shook her head sadly: “You should take yourself more seriously.”40 This anecdote is a powerful representation of how predominant the roles of wife and mother were at this time but also casts the role and work of housewives as unserious, and perhaps even inconsequential. Friedan was describing what she might have seen as her primary function at that time and yet, her neighbor, who likely was a housewife as well, encouraged her to give herself more credit, to be something more than a housewife. This is because Friedan was also a writer, but there is a negative connotation in the idea that she saw her main role as only being a housewife. She explains in this essay that women’s human potential can be reached when they are given the opportunities to shape the decisions that affect them in society and this includes being economically independent, which would go hand in hand with greater training, skills, and opportunities.41 For Friedan, then, being a working woman, and not a housewife, was the way for women to achieve equality. She even claimed that this was the revolutionary step toward “a sex-​role revolution” that would “restructure all our institutions: childrearing, education, marriage, the family, medicine, work, politics, the economy, religion, psychological theory, human sexuality, morality” and the “evolution of the race.”42 While feminists like Friedan called for such restructuring within the private sphere, they set about ensuring that their economic and political interests were being represented in the public sphere. The National Organization for Women (NOW) held the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission responsible for not taking the guarantees for women in Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act seriously.43 The courts later ensured that the new legislation was being enforced by declaring the practice of job typing by gender illegitimate and effectively ending protective labor legislation for women.44 The renewed battle for the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) in the 1970s shifted much of the dialogue in regards to women’s labor away from protective labor legislation toward equal opportunity.45 Women’s groups and labor unions who had been supportive of protective legislation eventually ceded that “[a]‌rguing against equality [wa]s enormously difficult especially when an ‘equality’ law [was] already in place.’”46 One justification for holding out can be found in the argument made by Ruth Miller of the Clothing Workers’

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Union, who said the “ERA did not account for the unequal sexual division of labor at home.”47 Between 1970 and 1974, labor activists and their supporters, who had formerly made arguments against the ERA, fell in line to support it; this included The Citizens’ Advisory Council on the Status of Women and the Newspaper Guild in 1970, the Women’s Bureau, the League of Women Voters, the American Association of University Women, the International Union of Electrical Workers, and the American Federation of Teachers in 1972, the AFL-​CIO in 1973, and the Garment and Clothing Workers in 1974.48 While Friedan was attempting to be inclusive of working women, her critique was not widely embraced by working-​class women. As American Studies and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies professor Dennis Deslippe explains, union women were quite skeptical of mainstream middle-​ class feminism because, to them, it was “highly individualistic” and because feminists in unions saw their fight as being part of a larger struggle with employers who looked to divide the working classes along “sexual, racial and age lines.”49 We can see in the yearning for a life beyond the home that Friedan described that she was indeed painting a very individualistic image of personal achievement, which was out of reach for a large proportion of working women in the services and industry. Additionally, a person’s need for purpose, while quite personal, could also come from the very roles that Friedan was contesting. In fact, in her 1970 essay “Two Jobs: Women who Work in Factories,” Jean Tepperman described motherhood as a motivator for the women with whom she worked in a factory. She wrote, “This is the other main way women defend themselves against being ground down by the factory: motherhood gives them a feeling of moral strength in confronting it.”50 This difference in perception of wifely duty, motherhood, and work is an important one and was a common point of resistance amongst women of color in embracing Friedan’s variety of feminism at that time. Lillian Faderman notes that the Black Women’s Liberation Committee, established as part of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, refused to use the term feminist precisely because it meant “women who put female first.”51 Similarly, Chicana women who were members of the Adelitas de Aztlan made a point to distance themselves from this type of critique as it “narrowly focused on the rights of the individual woman.”52 Women of color and working-​class women saw their struggle against patriarchy as a concomitant fight against White supremacy and the exploitative nature of capitalism. Their intersecting identities did not afford them the luxury of fighting for a right that only concerned one part of their identity and had no effect on the others. For some racialized women, the radical feminists’ calls for the abolition of the family or “anti-​male tone” asked women of color to turn against an institution, the family, that “ ‘has been a source of unity and our major defense against oppression’ ” for Chicana

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feminists or to not take into account the abuses of which Black “husbands, fathers, brothers and sons” were victims in a racist society.53 As historian Lucy Delap has explained about feminism more broadly, Friedan’s positing of the “woman problem” in many ways reflects the “imagined communit[ies] of […] womanhood” for whom feminists often intend to speak, but fail to contend with the “central paradox of feminism”: despite its desire to be inclusive of all women and to transform exclusionary structures, “hegemonic feminism” “has its own forms of marginalization and has struggled to extend its boundaries to all women on equal terms.”54 Even though domestic work was integral to the struggle, many of the most celebrated texts from this era put down women’s domestic and care work in their demand for better inclusion of women in the public sphere. In their descriptions of women, and despite their attempts to empower them, activists had a tendency to cast non-​movement women as something retrograde, as “dupes” to the patriarchy. The Home as the Site of Women’s Oppression

In many ways this was done through the portraits given of the housewife. At that time, there were many witty essays like Syfer’s, to which women could relate and that induced a “[…]click! A moment of truth. The shock of recognition. Instant sisterhood” as Jane O’Reilly described it in her article “The Housewife’s Moment of Truth.”55 Perhaps the most well-​ known description can be found amongst the opening lines of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique: As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night—​she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question—​“Is this all?”56 Second-​ Wave feminists attempted to create communion between women over the recognition of their disaffection. The supposed dissatisfaction of the American housewife—​largely based on the white middle-​class experience of womanhood—​as they went through their daily routine, pondering whether they would ever be fulfilled was meant to jar women to action, but in pointing this out, very often these feminists used descriptions of domestic roles and women’s domestic identities that voided them of any meaning. Friedan did so in claiming, “These women had had no dreams of career, no visions of a world larger than the home, all energy was centered on their lives as housewives and mothers; their only ambition, their only dream already realized” and described “the glorification of ‘woman’s roles’ ” by society, by women themselves, as a means “to conceal [the] emptiness [of woman’s

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roles].”57 Friedan did not see anything redeeming in the tasks of domesticity imparted to women. A similar portrait is given by Beverly Jones in “The Dynamics of Marriage and Motherhood,” published in the radical feminists’ anthology Sisterhood Is Powerful. Jones insists on the insidious nature of these two institutions. She puts wives at odds with their husbands precisely because men were “so power-​oriented [that they could not] stop” demeaning their wives long enough to acknowledge how they must suffer in their time spent alone, amongst children, and in taking care of the home.58 Jones compares this dance between husband and wife to “solitary confinement,” but shortly thereafter acknowledges her own hyperbole.59 She gives quite a bit of importance to systemic cultural and social influences in writing about the conditions of wives when she explains that a lack of communication and a partner with whom to communicate can have deleterious effects on one’s psychological well-​being and how the fatigue and demands of new motherhood expose women to exploitation. In a similar way to Friedan though she also sets women up to be dupes of the patriarchy through their domestic roles as wives and mothers. She writes: If enforced wakefulness is the handmaiden and necessary precursor to serious brainwashing, a mother—​after her first child—​is ready for her final demise. […] She relies more heavily than ever on her husband’s support, helping hand, love. And he in turn guides her into the further recesses of second-​class citizenship.60 For Jones, then, breaking the chains that romantic love imposes upon women was the path to liberation. The critique of white, middle-​ class housewifery was not solely a prerogative of White feminists. African American activist Frances Beal’s depiction of it was not any less scathing. In “Double Jeopardy: To Be Black and Female,” Beal did not describe this model as something that Black women were looking to emulate; rather, like Friedan, she emptied it of all purpose, “[…] a woman is to be surrounded by hypocritical homage and estranged from all real work, spending idle hours primping and preening, obsessed with conspicuous consumption, and limiting life’s functions to simply a sex role.”61 She further insisted on the partial existence of the woman in the throes of such a life, describing her as “a satellite of her mate,” unable to “develop herself as an individual,” and leading “a parasitic existence.”62 A difference between Black and White women, for Beal, though, was that Black women were never in a position where such a standard for womanhood would have been possible. She conceded that there might be a tendency amongst some Black women to romanticize this model, but she reminded them that their contribution to the cause extended

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beyond the home, motherhood, and housewifery—​beyond any expected role of normative womanhood.63 It is important to insist on Friedan and her position amongst these more radical feminists—​she is the only “conservative feminist” discussed here. I am drawing on Shulamith Firestone’s use of “conservative feminism,” which she described as activism that focuses its efforts on the “superficial systems of sexism,” that is, advancing women’s rights in the law and in politics.64 Friedan did not call for an end to marriage, nor did she hope to abolish romance. She staunchly opposed herself to the “disrupters” whom she labelled as “push[ing] lesbianism” and “hat[ing] men.”65 Nevertheless, feminists like Friedan posited that even while many women had more than one role, that of housewife tended to subsume all others and it was never really much of a choice. In her mind, it was something with which many American women identified, when she wrote, “But of course, I then was, and still am, like all women in America, no matter what else we do between 9 and 5, a housewife.”66 She was not describing the housewife as she was conventionally understood at that time—​a full-​time stay-​at-​home mother, caretaker, and housekeeper—​nor was she talking about the housewife that was being decried. Rather she was referring to women’s broader roles in the home that limited their identities from extending beyond it. Regardless of the previous decade’s work, Friedan still held that the “mystique” permeated American society. Is it possible that because feminists of the 1960s and 1970s chose to pursue equality in the public sphere and to attack women’s roles as wives and mothers there could be no recovery of domestic and care work, which inevitably resulted in “having it all” becoming “doing it all”? For working-​class women, this was already their truth. Jean Tepperman described the women she worked with in factories as having “to do everything else women are supposed to do,” which included maintaining their hair and make-​up while at work, taking care of children, cooking, and cleaning before and after work, because their husbands “were too tired from working eight hours a day.”67 And while these women said themselves “ ‘it’s like having two jobs,’ ”68 the feminist movement tended to question the domestic division of labor in one of two ways: the more conservative approach examined why housework and child care was “women’s work” and the more radical one proposed an abolishment of marriage, love, even the nuclear family. Neither of which resulted in a wholesale reevaluation of domestic and care work. Conclusion

The women’s movements of the 1960s and 1970s have led to tremendous advances for women in American society. Women’s participation in the labor force across all age groups went from about one third of all women to nearly half in 2016; the gender pay gap has shrunk; more women enroll

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and finish college; even more egalitarian attitudes about “women’s careers, motherhood, and the domestic division of labor” have emerged.69 However, economist Martha Bailey and sociologist Thomas DiPrete have warned that “evidence suggests that women’s progress has slowed or stalled” and “the groundswell of support for women’s equality is ebbing.”70 Second-​Wave feminists’ and Women’s Liberationists’ recognition of the problematic nature of the separate spheres doctrine was a step in the direction of equality. The portrayals of the extent of the housewife’s work and the oppressive conditions that it maintained could have been an attempt to give value to “women’s work.” But the more conservative parts of the women’s movement fought for access to opportunities outside the home only and the more radical segments called for revolution. Today, many women are still going home to a second shift and carrying the majority of the mental load, precisely because domestic work has not been given social, political, or economic value. This did not figure into the campaign to render the personal political.71 The work that women as wives and mothers used to do is still mainly being performed by women in heterosexual couples, whether they have paid work or not. I have tried to show that 1960s and 1970s feminists recognized these burdens, but their treatment of them and the importance put on economic and political equality did not result in a total revolution in the home. In their attempt to empower women in the public sphere they asked women to abandon their domestic roles and identities by taking aim at the housewife. Attacking her gave fuel to conservative actors to appropriate the housewife as an elevated symbol of womanhood, imbued with religious, political, and moral importance, while maintaining her economic dependence. A step forward would be the feminist struggle taking up domestic and care work as socially, economically, and politically valuable for society as a whole. Such a recognition would lift up all those who participate in the work of creating a home, regardless of gender. Notes 1 Silvia Federici, “On Margaret Benston: The Political Economy of Women’s Liberation,” Monthly Review 71, no. 4 (2019): 38. 2 For statistics about time spent on child care see, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Average hours per day spent in selected activities on days worked by employment status and sex,” Graphics for Economic News Releases, 2019, www.bls.gov/​ cha​rts/​ameri​can-​time-​use/​activ​ity-​by-​work.htm; U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “American Time Use Survey –​May to December 2019 and 2020 Results,” Economic News Release, July 22, 2021, www.bls.gov/​news.rele​ase/​archi​ves/​atus_​ 0​7222​021.htm. For studies about roles within the home and their accompanying attitudes, see for example, Brittany N. Dernberger and Joanna R. Pepin, “Gender Flexibility, but not Equality: Young Adults’ Division of Labor Preferences,” Sociological Science 7 (2020): 37, doi: 10.15195/​v7.a2 or Pew Research Center,

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“Most Americans Say Children Are Better off with a Parent at Home,” Washington, D.C.: Pew Research Center, Oct. 10, 2016, www.pewr​esea​rch.org/​fact-​tank/​2016/​ 10/​10/​most-​americ​ans-​say-​child​ren-​are-​bet​ter-​off-​with-​a-​par​ent-​at-​home/​. 3 U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Women in the Labor Force: A Databook,” BLS Reports, Report 1092, April 2021, www.bls.gov/​opub/​repo​rts/​wom​ens-​datab​ook/​ 2020/​home.htm. 4 Mitra Toosi, “A Century of Change: The U.S. Labor Force, 1950–​2050,” Monthly Labor Review (May 2002), Table 4: 22; U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Women in the Labor Force: A Databook,” BLS Reports, Report 1092, April 2021, www. bls.gov/​opub/​repo​rts/​wom​ens-​datab​ook/​2020/​home.htm. 5 Pew Research Center, “Modern Parenthood, Roles of Moms and Dads Converge as They Balance Work and Family,” Washington, D.C.: Pew Research Center, March 14, 2013, 32, www.pewr​esea​rch.org/​soc​ial-​tre​nds/​2013/​03/​14/​mod​ern-​ par​enth​ood-​roles-​of-​moms-​and-​dads-​conve​rge-​as-​they-​bala​nce-​work-​and-​fam​ily/​ ; Sarah Jane Glynn, “An Unequal Division of Labor: How Equitable Workplace Policies Would Benefit Working Mothers,” Washington, D.C.: Center for American Progress, May 2018, 4, https://​ameri​canp​rogr​ess.org/​wp-​cont​ent/​uplo​ ads/​2018/​05/​Par​ent-​Time-​Use.pdf?_​ga=​2.111408​004.183​7339​378.164​7446​568-​ 151​8636​000.164​7446​568 . 6 Lissa Atkins, “Who Are You Calling a Feminist? ’60s Activist Gloria Steinem Talks Liberty, Equality and Sisterhood,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, April 10, 2009, www.inqui​rer.com/​phi​lly/​liv​ing/​Who_​are_​you_​calling_​a_​feminist_​60s_​ activist_​Gloria_​Steinem_​talks_​libe​rty_​equa​lity​_​and​_​sis​terh​ood.html. 7 Louise Toupin, Wages for Housework: A History of an International Feminist Movement, 1972–​77 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2018), 3. International in scope having groups in Italy, Germany, Switzerland, England, the U.S., and Canada, this movement is described as focusing on “the specific question of housework and campaigning to demand pay for that work.” Toupin, Wages for Housework, 2. 8 “1950s woman” see ch. 11 “Sending Her Back to the Place Where God Had Set Her: Woman in the 1950s” by Lillian Faderman, Woman: The American History of an Idea (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2022). “The culture of the home” see Margaret Benston “The Political Economy of Women’s Liberation,” Monthly Review 71, no. 4 ([1969] 2019): 7. For a comprehensive look at the 1950s domestic family model being “an ahistorical amalgam of structure, values and behaviors” see Stephanie Coontz, The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap (New York: Basic Books, 1992): 9. 9 Faderman, Woman, 7. 10 For more on the doctrine of separate spheres, see Mary Louise Roberts, “True Womanhood Revisited,” The Journal of Women’s History 14, no. 1 (Spring 2002): 150–​155 or Barbara Welter, “The Cult of True Womanhood, 1820–​1860,” American Quarterly 18, no. 2, pt. 1 (Summer 1966): 151–​174. 11 Stephanie Coontz, Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage (London: Penguin, 2005), 164–​165. 12 Christopher Clark, “Rural America and the Transition to Capitalism,” Journal of the Early Republic (Summer 1996): 223, 232. 13 Clark, “Rural America and the Transition to Capitalism,” 223. 14 Coontz, Marriage, a History, 146. 15 Julia Grant, Raising Baby by the Book: The Education of American Mothers (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 16; Steven Mintz and Susan Kellogg,

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Domestic Revolutions: A Social History of American Family Life (New York: The Free Press, 1988), 50–​51. 16 Coontz, Marriage, a History, 155, 154–​156. 17 Martha May, “The Historical Problem of the Family Wage: The Ford Motor Company and the Five Dollar Day,” Feminist Studies 8, no. 2 (1982): 400–​401. 18 May, “The Historical Problem of the Family Wage,” 402–​403. 19 See for example, Kim England and Kate Boyer, “Women’s Work: The Feminization and Shifting Meanings of Clerical Work,” Journal of Social History (Winter 2009): 307–​ 340; Claudia Goldin, “The Quiet Revolution That Transformed Women’s Employment, Education, and Family,” The American Economic Review 96, no. 2 (2006): 1–​21, www.jstor.org/​sta​ble/​30034​606. 20 Mintz and Kellogg, Domestic Revolutions, 50–​51. 21 May, “The Historical Problem of the Family Wage,” 402–​404. 22 See Christen Bryson, “The ‘All-​American Couple’: Dating, Marriage, and the Family during the long 1950s, with a Foray into Boise, Idaho and Portland, Oregon,” PhD diss., (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2016). 23 Jeffrey Matthews, “To Defeat a Maverick: The Goldwater Candidacy Revisited, 1963–​1964,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 27, no. 4 (1997): 662. 24 Peter B. Levy, “Spiro Agnew, the Forgotten Americans, and the Rise of the New Right,” The Historian 75, no. 4 (2013): 709. 25 Levy, “Spiro Agnew,” 715. 26 Seth Dowland, “ ‘Family Values’ and the Formation of the Christian Right Agenda,” Church History 78, no. 3 (2009): 607. 27 Benston, “The Political Economy of Women’s Liberation,” 3, 4. 28 Silvia Federici criticizes Benston’s reduction of women’s work to non-​commodity production arguing that “housework is a central element of the reproduction of the workforce and, as such, an essential condition of capitalist production.” Federici, “On Margaret Benston,” 36–​37. 29 Benston, “The Political Economy of Women’s Liberation,” 4. 30 Benston, “The Political Economy of Women’s Liberation,” 8. 31 Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution (New York: Bantam Books, 1970): 146–​147. For her discussion on romanticism see pages 147–​152. 32 Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex, 222. 33 Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex, 27. 34 Judy Syfer, “Why I Want a Wife,” in Notes from the Third Year: Women’s Liberation, eds. Anne Koedt and Shulamith Firestone (New York: Radical Feminism, 1971), 13. 35 Toupin, Wages for Housework, 3. 36 Federici, “On Margaret Benston,” 37. 37 Betty Friedan, “Up from the Kitchen Floor,” The New York Times Magazine, March 4, 1973, 8. 38 Friedan, “Up from the Kitchen Floor,” 8. 39 Friedan, “Up from the Kitchen Floor,” 9. 40 Friedan, “Up from the Kitchen Floor,” 8. 41 Friedan, “Up from the Kitchen Floor,” 30. 42 Friedan, “Up from the Kitchen Floor,” 30. 43 Faderman, Woman, 317–​318.

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44 Faderman, Woman, 317; Dennis Deslippe, “Organized Labor, National Politics, and Second-​ Wave Feminism in the United States, 1965–​ 1975,” International Labor and Working-​Class History 49 (1996): 144. 45 Deslippe, “Organized Labor.” 46 Anne Draper as cited in Deslippe, “Organized Labor,” 153. 47 Deslippe, “Organized Labor,” 155. 48 Deslippe, “Organized Labor,” 156–​158. 49 Deslippe, “Organized Labor,” 159–​160. 50 Jean Tepperman, “Two Jobs: Women who Work in Factories,” in Sisterhood Is Powerful, ed. Robin Morgan (New York: Vintage Books, 1970), 123. 51 Faderman, Woman, 322. 52 Faderman, Woman, 328. 53 “has been …” cited in Faderman, Woman, 329; “husbands, fathers…” Frances M. Beal, “Double Jeopardy: To Be Black and Female,” Meridians 8, no. 2 (2008 [1969]): 174, 168 54 Lucy Delap, Feminisms: A Global History (London: Pelican, 2020), 1, 5. 55 Jane O’Reilly, “The Housewife’s Moment of Truth,” New York Magazine, [December 20, 1971] reprinted April 14, 2008, https://​nymag.com/​news/​featu​res/​ 46167/​. 56 Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (New York: Norton, 1963). 57 Friedan, The Feminine Mystique, 206, 210. 58 Beverly Jones, “The Dynamics of Marriage and Motherhood,” in Sisterhood Is Powerful, ed. Robin Morgan (New York: Vintage Books, 1970), 50. 59 Jones, “The Dynamics of Marriage and Motherhood,” 49–​51. 60 Jones, “The Dynamics of Marriage and Motherhood,” 58. 61 Beal, “Double Jeopardy,” 167. 62 Beal, “Double Jeopardy,” 167. 63 Beal, “Double Jeopardy,” 169–​170. 64 Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex, 32. 65 Friedan, “Up from the Kitchen Floor,” 33. 66 Friedan, “Up from the Kitchen Floor,” 8. 67 Tepperman, “Two Jobs,” 120–​121. 68 Tepperman, “Two Jobs,” 121. 69 Martha J. Bailey and Thomas A. DiPrete, “Five Decades of Remarkable but Slowing Change in U.S. Women’s Economic and Social Status and Political Participation,” RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 2, no. 4 (2016): 1, 19. 70 Bailey and DiPrete, “Five Decades of Remarkable but Slowing Change,” 1, 2. 71 Carol Hanish’s essay “The Personal Is Political” famously framed women’s struggle for equality as a political issue, see Carol Hanish, “The Personal Is Political,” in Notes from the Second Year: Women’s Liberation, eds. Shulamith Firestone and Anne Koedt (New York: Radical Feminist, 1970), 76–​78.

Reference List Atkins, Lissa. “Who Are You Calling a Feminist? ’60s Activist Gloria Steinem Talks Liberty, Equality and Sisterhood.” The Philadelphia Inquirer, April 10, 2009.

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www.inqui​rer.com/​phi​lly/​liv​ing/​Who_​are_​you_​calling_​a_​feminist_​60s_​activist_​ Gloria_​Steinem_​talks_​libe​rty_​equa​lity​_​and​_​sis​terh​ood.html. Bailey, Martha J., and Thomas A. DiPrete. “Five Decades of Remarkable but Slowing Change in U.S. Women’s Economic and Social Status and Political Participation.” RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 2, no. 4 (2016): 1–​32. Beal, Frances M. “Double Jeopardy: To Be Black and Female.” Meridians 8, no. 2 ([1969] 2008): 166–​176. Benston, Margaret. “The Political Economy of Women’s Liberation.” Monthly Review 71, no. 4 ([1969] September 2019): 1–​10. Bryson, Christen. “The ‘All-​American Couple’: Dating, Marriage, and the Family during the long 1950s, with a Foray into Boise, Idaho and Portland, Oregon.” PhD dissertation, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2016. Clark, Christopher. “Rural America and the Transition to Capitalism.” Journal of the Early Republic (Summer 1996): 223–​236. Coontz, Stephanie. Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage. London: Penguin, 2005. —​—​—​. The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap. New York: Basic Books, 1992. Delap, Lucy. Feminisms: A Global History. London: Pelican, 2020. Dernberger, Brittany N., and Joanna R. Pepin. “Gender Flexibility, but not Equality: Young Adults’ Division of Labor Preferences.” Sociological Science 7 (2020): 36–​56. doi: 10.15195/​v7.a2. Deslippe, Dennis. “Organized Labor, National Politics, and Second-​Wave Feminism in the United States, 1965–​1975.” International Labor and Working-​Class History 49 (1996): 143–​165. Dowland, Seth. “‘Family Values’ and the Formation of the Christian Right Agenda.” Church History 78, no. 3 (2009): 606–​631. England, Kim, and Kate Boyer. “Women’s Work: The Feminization and Shifting Meanings of Clerical Work.” Journal of Social History (Winter 2009): 307–​340 Faderman, Lillian. Woman: The American History of an Idea. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2022. Federici, Silvia. “On Margaret Benston: The Political Economy of Women’s Liberation.” Monthly Review 71, no. 4 (2019): 35–​39. Firestone, Shulamith. The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution. New York: Bantam Books, 1970. Friedan, Betty. The Feminine Mystique. New York: Norton, 1963. —​—​—​. “Up from the Kitchen Floor.” The New York Times Magazine. March 4, 1973. Glynn, Sarah Jane. “An Unequal Division of Labor: How Equitable Workplace Policies Would Benefit Working Mothers.” Washington, D.C.: Center for American Progress, May 2018. https://​ameri​canp​rogr​ess.org/​wp-​cont​ent/​uplo​ads/​2018/​05/​ Par​ent-​Time-​Use.pdf?_​ga=​2.111408​004.183​7339​378.164​7446​568-​151​8636​ 000.164​7446​568. Goldin, Claudia. “The Quiet Revolution that Transformed Women’s Employment, Education, and Family.” The American Economic Review 96, no. 2 (2006): 1–​21. www.jstor.org/​sta​ble/​30034​606”www.jstor.org/​sta​ble/​30034​606. Grant, Julia. Raising Baby by the Book: The Education of American Mothers. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998.

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Hanish, Carol. “The Personal Is Political.” In Notes from the Second Year: Women’s Liberation, edited by Shulamith Firestone and Anne Koedt, 76–​78. New York: Radical Feminist, 1970. Jones, Beverly. “The Dynamics of Marriage and Motherhood.” In Sisterhood Is Powerful, edited by Robin Morgan, 46–​61. New York: Vintage Books, 1970. Levy, Peter B. “Spiro Agnew, the Forgotten Americans, and the Rise of the New Right.” The Historian 75, no. 4 (2013): 707–​739. Matthews, Jeffrey. “To Defeat a Maverick: The Goldwater Candidacy Revisited, 1963–​1964.” Presidential Studies Quarterly 27, no. 4 (1997): 662–​678. May, Martha. “The Historical Problem of the Family Wage: The Ford Motor Company and the Five Dollar Day.” Feminist Studies 8, no. 2 (1982): 399–​424 Mintz, Steven, and Susan Kellogg. Domestic Revolutions: A Social History of American Family Life. New York: The Free Press, 1988. O’Reilly, Jane. “The Housewife’s Moment of Truth.” New York Magazine, April 14, 2008 [December 20, 1971]. https://​nymag.com/​news/​featu​res/​46167/​. Pew Research Center. “Modern Parenthood, Roles of Moms and Dads Converge as They Balance Work and Family.” Washington, D.C.: Pew Research Center, March 14, 2013. file://​/​Users/​utilisateur/​Downloads/​FINAL_​modern_​parenthood_​03-​ 2013.pdf. Pew Research Center. “Most Americans Say Children Are Better off with a Parent at Home.” Washington, D.C.: Pew Research Center, Oct. 10, 2016. www.pewr​esea​ rch.org/​fact-​tank/​2016/​10/​10/​most-​americ​ans-​say-​child​ren-​are-​bet​ter-​off-​with-​a-​ par​ent-​at-​home/​. Syfer, Judy. “Why I Want a Wife.” In Notes from the Third Year: Women’s Liberation, edited by Anne Koedt and Shulamith Firestone, 13–​ 14. New York: Radical Feminism, 1971. Tepperman, Jean. “Two Jobs: Women who Work in Factories.” In Sisterhood Is Powerful, edited by Robin Morgan, 115–​124. New York: Vintage Books, 1970. Toosi, Mitra. “A Century of Change: The U.S. Labor Force, 1950–​2050.” Monthly Labor Review (May 2002): 15–​28. Toupin, Louise. Wages for Housework: A History of an International Feminist Movement, 1972–​77. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2018. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “American Time Use Survey –​May to December 2019 and 2020 Results.” Economic News Release, July 22, 2021. www.bls.gov/​ news.rele​ase/​archi​ves/​atus_​0​7222​021.htm. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. “Average Hours per Day Spent in Selected Activities on Days Worked by Employment Status and Sex.” Graphics for Economic News Releases, 2019. www.bls.gov/​cha​rts/​ameri​can-​time-​use/​activ​ity-​by-​work.htm. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. “Women in the Labor Force: A Databook.” BLS Reports, Report 1092. April 2021. www.bls.gov/​opub/​repo​rts/​wom​ens-​datab​ook/​ 2020/​home.htm.

8 LEGAL FRAMES, SCIENTIFIC “EXPERTISE,” AND ABORTION DEBATES IN THE UNITED STATES Michael Stambolis-​Ruhstorfer

In 2012, the World Health Organization (WHO) published an extensive guidebook, entitled Safe Abortion: Technical and Policy Guidance for Health Systems, with the stated goal of providing policymakers with the most up-​to-​ date information about abortion care.1 According to the executive summary, access to safe and legal abortion, along with comprehensive sex education and family planning, would prevent the deaths of tens of thousands of women annually. For the WHO, abortion is justified as much by its implications for human rights as it is by advances in evidence-​based medicine and technological progress that make it effective and without significant risk. This unambiguous stance in favor of abortion by one of the United Nations’ (UN) specialized agencies led to strongly negative reactions from right-​wing anti-​abortion groups in the United States. While these reactions took many forms, one countermove took aim at the quality of the report itself. Staff at the deceptively named Center for Family and Human Rights (C-​FAM) attempted to debunk the WHO’s guidance by publishing their own counter report, or “briefing paper,” that mobilized what they claimed was scientific research showing that abortion is dangerous to women’s health.2 This religious think tank based in Washington, D.C. and New York, which lobbies against abortion and LGBTQ rights globally, is an especially prominent organization that was even granted special consultative status by the NGO committee of the United Nations Economic and Social Council in 2014.3 Their rebuttal report follows a style of argument that C-​FAM has deployed systematically as it attempts to shape public policy. It mimics a scientific-​ sounding framework to give its arguments a secular and authoritative veneer. For example, the authors prominently display their PhDs on the title page of the report as if to signal their capacity to respond to the WHO experts on DOI: 10.4324/9781003425380-12

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equal terms. Yet upon further investigation, neither Susan Yoshihara, with a doctorate in law and policy, nor Rebecca Oas, with a doctorate in genetics and molecular biology, is qualified in the medical fields to which their claims speak. Nevertheless, it is clear that leaders at C-​FAM intended to draw on scientific authority to give their anti-​abortion messaging more credibility. The C-​FAM attack on the WHO report is just one example of the interplay between scientific and moral discourse that undergirds abortion debates in the United States. While it has classically been understood as an “easy issue”—​ one that does not require any technical knowledge for people to formulate strong opinions—​this chapter argues instead that biomedical elements of abortion make it as much a technical debate as a moral one.4 Indeed, as Ted Jelen and Clyde Wilcox have suggested, “The ‘medicalization’ of questions […] of the ontological status of unborn ‘life’ may strip issues such as abortion of their status as ‘easy’ issues, and bring questions of medicine and science to the forefront of public debate.”5 Since the mid-​20th century, answers to the question of when or if the State should prohibit women and pregnant people from voluntarily terminating a pregnancy have become increasingly complex. The debate about abortion has many overlapping layers. On the one hand, it is an “easy issue” about bodily autonomy, women’s rights, and deeply held beliefs, whether religious or ethical. It can—​and some would argue should—​be answered by legal principle. Either one agrees with the principle of total bodily autonomy for pregnant or potentially pregnant people, or one does not. For proponents of the first view, defending womanhood is about ensuring self-​determination. For the latter, womanhood is a special status that justifies state control over pregnant people’s bodies. On the other hand, it has become more difficult to focus on the normative question of whether abortion ought to be legal—​or not—​as the medical aspects become more central. These technical dimensions pose empirical questions that, in theory, can be answered by experts. Some of these questions are addressed by the social sciences and public health. These include, for example, research on abortion rates increasing or decreasing in response to legalization or criminalization of access or research about which groups, such as poor people and women of color, are the most negatively impacted by abortion restrictions. Other questions are addressed by medical research. How safe are different abortion techniques? Do fetuses feel pain? At what point is a fetus viable outside the womb? Is abortion a part of comprehensive healthcare or is it a dangerous threat to women’s health and wellbeing? A final question, one that anti-​abortion activists insist is medical, but which scientists do not claim to answer: at what point during gestation does human life begin? Given its scope and complexity, it is clear that abortion is anything but an easy issue. The difficulty and uncertainty generated by the interweaving of these normative and empirical questions poses specific challenges and opportunities

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for advocates on both sides of the abortion debate. They need to make arguments they hope will help their side win. Persuasion in political arenas rests on contested truth claims that mingle disputed facts, such as those mentioned above, and deeply held moral beliefs. Decision-​makers and those who pressure them confront technical, ethical, and political uncertainty when facing controversial issues like abortion. To gain traction, they seek information that has the authority to change minds and justify decisions. Certain experts have the moral or scientific authority—​ and sometimes both—​to impose their version of the truth in front of lawmakers, judges, and the media. Inasmuch as abortion has been argued in empirical terms, the authority of scientific expertise appears especially useful to activists on either side. This chapter examines some of the ways in which these “technical” aspects of abortion became part of the political and legal debate in the United States. It also discusses some of the potential impacts the scientization of the debate has on experts working in fields whose research is implicated in the debates and on the organizations that represent them. To do so, the chapter will first detail how sociological research on expertise and scientization of politics is helpful for analyzing these questions. It will then provide a brief overview of the history of abortion law in the United States, pointing out specific points at which Supreme Court decisions created legal opportunity structures that increasingly favored technical arguments. Finally, through the examples of Texas Senate Bill 8 (2021) and Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022), it will show how pro- and anti-​abortion rights groups mobilized medical knowledge within legal frames to try to disqualify one another. Politicized Science, Morality Politics, and Abortion Expertise

When addressing controversial political issues at the intersection of technical expertise and moral convictions, sociological research has often taken two approaches. The first, which can generally be described as the analysis of politicized science, looks at the way scientific fields are shaped by the pressures of political issues. This work focuses primarily on academic knowledge producers and studies how their research, which deals with politically contentious topics, is constrained and enabled by demands from lawmakers and activists. Examples include the restrictions placed by Republican administrations on climate scientists working in public laboratories in the United States as well as federal regulations, usually enacted by conservatives, that prevent the public funding of research on stem cells.6 The second puts the emphasis on the deeply held religious or ethical views that people have of contentious issues, such as LGBTQ rights and gun violence, and explains mobilizations according to that framework. This “morality politics” approach, assumes that people react to issues based on their convictions and

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focuses primarily on social movements, political opportunities structures, and other dimensions of collective action. Abortion is often thought of as the paradigmatic morality politics issue.7 This dichotomy, however, has its limits.8 Indeed, this chapter seeks to combine these two approaches by placing the “technical” dimension of abortion debates in the United States at the center of the analysis. It takes into account the dynamics of contention central to morality politics, including the role of political institutions and mobilization, based on the premise that exploring the intersection between scientific and political fields is necessary to best understand the content of contemporary abortion debates. It thus builds on the call by the political sociologist, Mieke Verloo, for scholarship to analyze the “epistemic dimension” of contentious politics by asking how stakeholders create and distribute knowledge to shape debates.9 Research on feminist activists—​and their opponents—​shows how these groups engage in “knowledge work” to create information, including science, to gain traction.10 Key to this approach is identifying the way activists create coalitions with lawmakers and experts as they push for social change.11 Moreover, people in these networks share policy goals and, as the research on morality politics suggests, may also share worldviews that encompass strong positions on abortion.12 These “epistemic communities” facilitate the exchange of ideas, strategies, and resources for organizing against opponents,13 constituting academic–​activist “knowledge networks”14 with similar outlooks and “epistemic cultures.”15 Alliances between doctors and their allies in pro and anti-​abortion organizations who struggle over claims about abortion’s impact on women’s health are an example of this kind of coalition building within shared ideological groups.16 Among conservatives in the United States, even as their movement has worked to undermine the credibility of scientists in general, because it has developed claims grounded in the language of empirical research to support the conservative political agenda—​such as banning pornography, abortion, and transgender healthcare—​ conservative voters still claim to support science, especially when produced by people they think share their values.17 To produce that anti-​abortion expertise, conservatives have developed a network of well-​ funded think tanks and other lobbying groups to coordinate their efforts.18 To analyze how certain kinds of knowledge, such as public health research, come to matter in abortion debates, I use the concept of expert capital, developed in my previous research on “experts” in same-​sex marriage debates in the U.S. and France.19 Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of cultural capital,20 I argue that expert capital is the power that imbues its users with legitimacy that augments their claims in specific institutions. It is a scarce resource produced by people whose profile and productivity varies by context. They can share it—​or not—​with people in other fields, including politicians and activists. I define “experts” and “expertise” inductively,

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analyzing all people heard by institutions as “experts.” I theorize “expertise” as an intervention21 in a political field organized by dynamics conferring legitimacy, access, and power unequally. Furthermore, as competing epistemic communities fight against one another to influence lawmakers, they engage in what Steven Epstein calls credibility struggles, “the competition to establish knowledge claims as believable and their claimants as authoritative.”22 They try to augment the legitimacy and authority of their own expert capital while undermining that of their opponents in specific political, legal, and historical contexts. The institutions where decision-​ makers discuss abortion—​ including legislatures and courts—​ is one of these contexts. This chapter identifies certain “institutional logics”23 within them that constrain and enable the role of information, such as scientific expertise. In particular, it considers how legal institutions and the Federal system in the United States, have played a key role in determining the kinds of arguments and knowledge that activists fighting for and against abortion bring to them. The complex and rapidly changing nature of abortion law in the United States is a reflection of successful campaigns by activists to expand or contract abortion rights. At the same time, this changing legal and political landscape forces them to adapt their strategies as the stakes and particular issue at hand have changed.24 In particular, rulings in federal courts from Roe v. Wade (1973) to Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022) created “legal opportunity structures,”25 that emphasized a variety of legal tests and conditions, such as fetal viability, for determining the constitutionality of abortion restrictions. These structures can be called legal frames: specific legal arguments based on the interpretation of law, including the United States Constitution, that structure both public discourse and downstream legal arguments. In turn, the language of these opinions led activists and their allies within think tanks and professional or academic organizations to produce expertise that could speak to the specific legal questions the courts laid out. Not only did these legal decisions shape the kinds of expert information that would become legally pertinent but also contributed to the way activists framed the issue of abortion more broadly. Examples, include the pro-​choice versus pro-​life framing26 or the framing of fetuses as “victims” or as “pre-​born humans.”27 While distinct from types of expertise, these frames contribute to their validity and the overall messaging of groups on either side. Legal Framing Junctures and Their Effect on Scientific Expertise

The long history of the political and legal struggle of abortion in the United States involves, among other things, a complex interplay between the federal and state governments. Rather than attempt to detail this story, which other scholars have done,28 this section draws our attention to a few specific legal

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junctures, or what are also called “institutional and cultural access points”29 along the trajectory from the constitutional protection of access to abortion in 1973 as a result of Roe v. Wade and the whittling away of those protections. When the Supreme Court rendered its opinion in Roe and then in later cases including Webster v. Reproductive Health Services (1989) and Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), it did so using legal frames that would have multiple effects. As legal opportunity structures, these key decisions had the effect of both distorting the medical science related to prenatal care and also shaping research in that field by tracking legal arguments into certain paths around which activists mobilized, incentivizing them to draw on medical experts. In the decades between 1973 and 2022, when the Supreme Court would ultimately overturn Roe, activism around abortion involved starkly contrasting frames, informed by opposing worldviews on either side, as well as arguments about facts. Table 8.1 lays out these elements, which have been identified by a variety of scholars who have studied the public messaging of activist groups, political campaigns, and briefs submitted to the courts.30 Anti-​abortion groups frame abortion as murder, fashioning themselves as “pro-​life” defenders of the rights of the “unborn child” whose personhood begins at the moment of conception. Moreover, they often claim that abortion is racist—​an extension of slavery and a project to hurt women of color—​attempting to cash in on civil rights discourse about racial equality and coopting, more or less intentionally, Black feminist critiques over the scientific racism of Progressive-​ era birth-​ control efforts linked to figures 31 such as Margaret Sanger. More recently, they have also appropriated the consensual idea of women’s health—​ usually associated with progressive

TABLE 8.1 Frames and Arguments about Fact in U.S. Abortion Debates

Framing /​Worldviews

Arguments over Empirical Claims

Anti-​Abortion

“Pro-​life” • Murder •  A fetus is a human being (and has rights) • Racist

•  Dangerous and risky •  Leads to negative social and health outcomes •  Expensive to society and to families •  Banning will reduce the number of abortions

Pro-​Abortion Rights

“Pro-​choice” •  Bodily autonomy • Healthcare •  Sovereignty of pregnant people

•  Safe and effective •  Limits the negative effects of unwanted pregnancy •  Women’s life and health •  Legalization will reduce the number of abortions

Legal Frames, Scientific “Expertise”  189

and feminist causes—​stating that abortion puts them at serious risk. Among other features, this frame is difficult to attack because it allows anti-​abortion groups to claim that its adversaries oppose women in general and women’s health in particular.32 In contrast, pro-​ abortion rights groups center the bodily autonomy and sovereignty of pregnant people to make determinations about all aspects of their physical selves, including abortion. In addition to this human rights frame that juxtaposes that of “unborn children’s rights,” they argue that abortion is a matter of reproductive health. Along with these broad frames, which are by now rather familiar, abortion debates, because of the legal paths that have shaped their trajectories, are also about specific empirical claims. Arguments are thus also about factual matters, each side producing expertise, some of which is grounded in scientific research, such as the WHO report mentioned in the introduction, and some of which, such as the C-​FAM report, is not. These disputes boil down to several large claims. Anti-​abortion groups, such as the Family Research Council and the Alliance Defending Freedom, state that voluntarily terminating one’s pregnancy is dangerous and risky, leading to negative social and health outcomes for women, that it has high costs for families and for society at large. They also argue that banning it will reduce the number of abortions, which is their objective. These groups often continue to make claims despite their having no basis in evidence, such as the idea that abortion will render those who have them sterile and mentally ill. They insist that restricting or banning abortion will protect women’s health. Pro-​ abortion groups, in contrast, mobilize scientific research that undermines the claims of the opponents. They cite the research showing that abortion is safe and effective, that it is an important component of reproductive healthcare that is essential for limiting the negative effects associated with an unwanted pregnancy, and that it can be necessary to protect women’s health. Organizations such as the Guttmacher Institute also point to research showing that legal abortion does not lead to an increase in their number but can, in fact, be associated with lower rates of unintended pregnancy when associated with comprehensive reproductive healthcare.33 These frames and arguments about the facts of abortion can be explained in part by legal framing junctures created by Supreme Court decisions that imposed legal opportunity structures with which activists on both sides had to contend. Among the many cases the federal judiciary has heard, three major ones are highlighted here because of their significance but should not be interpreted as exhaustive. Table 8.2 summarizes the rulings in these cases and how they set up legal arguments that have implications for the role of expertise. The first case to impose a national standard to which state-​level abortion laws would have to conform was Roe v. Wade. Germane to the argument in this chapter is the fact that justices in the majority wrote an opinion that

190  Michael Stambolis-Ruhstorfer TABLE 8.2 Legal Framing Junctures in U.S. Abortion Debates

Legal framework and impact on abortion access

Roe v. Wade (1973)

Webster v. Reproductive Health Services (1989)

Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992)

Trimester framework (debated at great length). Related to viability (at the time). • Trimester 1 –​ States can neither prohibit nor restrict abortion • Trimester 2 –​ States can enact “reasonable” regulations • Trimester 3 –​ States can restrict or prohibit abortion except if a woman’s life or health is at stake

• Upholds certain restrictions • Requiring tests of viability after 20 weeks is not unconstitutional • But outright bans on 2nd trimester abortions are unconstitutional

• Creates the “undue burden” standard for abortion restrictions • Overturns the trimester framework in favor of viability, allowing restrictions that are not “undue burdens” in the first trimester • States can promote their interest in preserving human life

explicitly laid out a precise system under which laws restricting abortion going forward would be evaluated. After much debate, which archives of memos between the justices and some of their clerks reveal, they established what has come to be understood as the “trimester framework.”34 This standard was based on the justices’ interpretation of what they believed to be the prevailing, but still loosely defined, concept of fetal viability. The definition of viability has varied over time and varies by context, its meaning open to some interpretation even by medical professionals.35 For the Roe decision, the justices drew the line of viability somewhat arbitrarily at 28 weeks of pregnancy, or roughly the beginning of the third trimester. They then established a framework that balanced individual rights with state interests to limit them at different stages of pregnancy (see Table 8.2). While in the first trimester no prohibition could be placed on people seeking to terminate their pregnancy, in the second, lawmakers could enact “reasonable” restrictions, and in the third they could ban the procedure as long as exceptions were made to protect the life and the health of the pregnant person. Setting viability as the legal threshold for constitutional determinations put into place a legal frame that would shape activist organizing. For

Legal Frames, Scientific “Expertise”  191

example, as the medical techniques improved, increasing the likelihood that a fetus would survive outside the womb earlier than in previous eras, anti-​ abortion activists, legal scholars, and intellectuals made arguments pushing judges and lawmakers to change the point in pregnancy when abortion could be restricted.36 Judicial interpretations of medical information became increasingly central to the debates. Later decisions would only reinforce its importance. In the 1989 case Webster v. Reproductive Health Services, the justices ruled in favor of the state of Missouri that enacted legislation with several provisions restricting access to abortion in ways that appeared to go against Roe’s trimester scheme. Among other provisions—​including prohibiting public financing or employees from facilitating, performing, or counseling abortion except where the life of the mother was in danger—​the Missouri statute required doctors to perform “viability tests” at 20 weeks of pregnancy and prohibited state-​ employed doctors from terminating a pregnancy if they believed the fetus was viable. The law also included a preamble stating that “the life of each human being begins at conception.”37 In a plurality decision, the justices allowed these restrictions to stand as long as the state did not prohibit abortion before the end of the second trimester. Because 20-​week viability tests would intervene before the end of the second trimester, they could not be used as a justification to fully ban abortion access. Nevertheless, despite the fact that 20 weeks was much earlier than a fetus could survive outside the womb, the intervention was upheld as constitutional. This further entrenched the legal frame of viability and gave anti-​abortion activists and their opponents more reason to organize around this medical definition. By the time the Supreme Court took up abortion again in 1992 in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, the composition of the court had changed. The new majority was prepared to fully abandon the trimester framework, which had the merits of a clearly delineated way of counting weeks of pregnancy, in favor of the relatively vague and changing idea of viability. The justices in the plurality argued that advancements in medical science had allowed the survival of the fetus outside the womb at approximately 23 to 24 weeks. After that threshold, states were free to ban abortion except when necessary to preserve the life of the woman. In the period before fetal viability, they could impose restrictions that did not pose an “undue burden” on a women’s fundamental right to an abortion. Because of the medical blurriness of viability and the imprecision of the notion of “undue burden,” the Casey decision unleashed a wave of state-​ level legislation aimed at preventing abortion. Anti-​abortion lawmakers, activists, and their expert allies took advantage of these new circumstances to push the envelope, enacting laws that, for example, required patients seeking abortions to undergo transvaginal ultrasounds and complex

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waiting periods, ordered doctors to search for fetal heart beats, and imposed that clinics have the same standards as surgical centers even for non-​surgical abortions. Other states passed laws aiming to criminalize stillbirths.38 The federal government also passed laws, such as the 2003 Partial-​ Birth Abortion Act, which prohibited the technique of “intact dilation and extraction,” later upheld by the Supreme Court in Gonzalez v. Carhart (2007), as well as the Unborn Victims of Violence Act of 2004. These laws developed the legal frame of viability by expanding its scope to conceptualize fetuses as “unborn children” whose “right to life” must be protected.39 These laws, and the court decisions validating them, whittled away at the constitutional right to abortion established in Roe, laying the groundwork of the Supreme Court’s ultraconservative majority to overturn it entirely 49 years later. Medical Knowledge and Credibility Struggles: Texas SB 8 and Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization

The legal framing junctures that centered viability and disputes over medical knowledge provided further opportunities for anti-​abortion activists to push their agenda forward successfully into the 21st century. Texas’s Senate Bill 8 is exemplary of the many state laws that increasingly restricted abortion before the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022) ruling that overturned Roe. The law, also known as the Texas Heartbeat Act, was signed by Governor Greg Abbott in 2021 and outlawed abortion once a fetal heartbeat could be detected, which occurs at approximately six weeks of pregnancy. Although pro-​abortion rights groups challenged the law in federal courts, the Supreme Court refused to block the law and had already granted a writ of certiorari to the appellants in the Dobbs case, allowing it to go into force. SB 8 also introduced a very unusual enforcement mechanism, barring state officials from enforcing it via criminal law and empowering ordinary citizens to use civil law to sue any person they believe was involved, facilitating, or preforming an illegal abortion. This law was intentionally designed to be difficult to challenge in court and used pseudo-​ medical arguments as a justification. In particular, the language makes clear that lawmakers are claiming that the medical science supports their measures repressing abortion care, explicitly mobilizing medicalized frames. For example, Section 3 of the Texas Heartbeat Act sets up a number of definitions, including that “ ‘unborn child’ means a human fetus or embryo in a state of gestation from fertilization until birth.”40 The same section also states that the state has “compelling interests from the outset of a woman’s pregnancy in protecting the health of the woman and the life of the unborn child.” In so doing, the legislature builds on the—​unfounded—​idea that abortion is dangerous to pregnant people. In

Legal Frames, Scientific “Expertise”  193

addition, Section 171.202, “Legislative Findings,” lays out the lawmakers’ claims that unambiguous expertise justifies their policy. They write: The legislature finds, according to contemporary medical research, that: (1) fetal heartbeat has become a key medical predictor that an unborn child will reach live birth; (2) cardiac activity begins at a biologically identifiable moment in time, normally when the fetal heart is formed in the gestational sac; (3) Texas has compelling interests from the outset of a woman’s pregnancy in protecting the health of the woman and the life of the unborn child; and (4) to make an informed choice about whether to continue her pregnancy, the pregnant woman has a compelling interest in knowing the likelihood of her unborn child surviving to full-​term birth based on the presence of cardiac activity.41 The bill’s authors coopt medical language, writing as if the extant scientific research demonstrated that heartbeats detected at very early points in pregnancy accurately predict the likelihood that the pregnancy would come to term successfully. This argument, following and extending the viability framework, is meant to provide sufficient reason for the state to have a compelling interest in blocking access to abortion to preserve the life of the “unborn child.” They do so despite what the empirical research actually shows. And they could make these claims because legislatures are not bound by rules of evidence that might prevent them from making decisions from specious arguments based in mischaracterizations of expertise. In theory, the institutional logics of courts are better set up to debunk poor equality expertise or political opinions disguised as science.42 However, Supreme Court justices can ultimately choose from whatever information, whether scientific expertise, moral claims, or their own constitutional interpretations, to justify their opinions. Because of that freedom, advocates on either side provide them with information they hope will be persuasive. The Dobbs case, in which the majority of the justices voted to overturn Roe, was illustrative of the credibility struggles over expertise between groups on either side of the abortion debate. Analysis of the approximately 145 amicus curiae briefs, which interest groups and individuals file in the hopes that they will persuade the justices, support one of the parties, or simply inform the court, reveal these dynamics.43 Table 8.3 summarizes arguments developed by some brief authors, with a focus on those explicitly speaking to “medical questions,” which brings to light how this legal frame has grown and developed since Roe. Brandishing similar kinds of misleading “expertise” put forth by the sponsors of SB 8, the anti-​abortion side made several claims they argued were supported by the science. One brief, for example, attempted to show that the leading view among specialists is that human life begins at the moment of fertilization. Under

194  Michael Stambolis-Ruhstorfer TABLE 8.3 Legal Frames and Medical Science in Dobbs Amicus Briefs

Anti-​Abortion

Argument

Authors

Viability framework is medically inaccurate and no longer tracks with medical technology and understanding of the fetus

National Right to Life Committee, American College of Pediatricians, Association of American Physicians & Surgeons, three women physicians with the Catholic Association Foundation, Catholic Medical Association44 The American Association of Pro-​Life Obstetricians & Gynecologists45

Abortions after 15 weeks are risky Nominally Neutral

Most biologists say life begins at fertilization

70 biologists from 15 different countries46

Pro-​Abortion Rights

15-​week abortion bans have no grounding in medical science

American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, American Medical association, and many other major professional groups47 American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, American Medical association, and many other major professional groups48 Society for Maternal-​Fetal Medicine and other groups49

Abortions are safe and bans put women’s health in danger

Fetuses cannot experience pain before 24 weeks

the coordination of a graduate student in comparative human development at the University of Chicago, the 70 authors, who emphasize their credentials as biologists and affiliations with institutions in 15 countries, claim that their view is representative of the prevailing research. They draw on a methodologically flawed study by the brief coordinator, Steven Andrew Jacobs, to support their claim.50 While they claim to be neutral as to the outcome of the case and aiming only to “promote science awareness,” the purpose of their brief is to provide expert capital to anti-​abortion arguments that life begins at conception.51 In another example, the brief submitted by The American Association of Pro-​ Life Obstetricians & Gynecologists states that “peer-​reviewed studies show that later-​term abortions are significantly tied to abortion-​related deaths” and

Legal Frames, Scientific “Expertise”  195

provides data that they assert shows bans on abortion would protect women’s health. Several other briefs authored by well-​known organizations argued that viability frameworks guiding abortion restrictions are medically inaccurate because the technology and research related to fetal health and development have rendered them obsolete. Two groups that make this claim, the American College of Pediatricians and the Association of American Physicians & Surgeons, adopt the branding and codes of mainstream professional organizations but are in fact conservative lobbying organizations that pass themselves off as legitimate alternatives to their mainstream equivalents who they denounce as biased in favor of women and LGBTQ people.52 Attempting to establish their authority as scientific experts, these groups composed in part by doctors and other medical professionals who oppose abortion—​as well as same-​sex marriage, transgender care, and other issues related to sexual democracy—​are engaged in a credibility struggle against what appears to be the majority of their colleagues and, in particular, the professional organizations that represent them. Indeed, one amicus brief on the pro-​abortion rights side was devoted to debunking the claim that Mississippi’s ban on abortion after 15 weeks—​the Dobbs case came before the Supreme Court after that state appealed a decision by the Fifth Circuit which had declared its law in contravention of Roe—​was justified by medical research. The brief was authored by 25 of the most prominent professional organizations specializing in health and medicine, including, for example the American Medical Association, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the American Psychiatric Association. Taking aim at Mississippi’s claims, and by extension the expertise provided to it by anti-​abortion groups, the brief methodically lays out how each medical question has already been thoroughly studied in ways that cannot be used to support anti-​abortion legislation. On the issue of whether abortion itself is dangerous to women’s health, the brief states: “The overwhelming weight of medical evidence conclusively demonstrates that abortion is a very safe medical procedure.”53 It goes on to address how the Mississippi 15-​week cut-​off has no scientific grounding. The authors emphasize that there is “[…] an undisputed scientific, medical, and clinical consensus that fifteen-​weeks LMP [since last menstrual period] is months before fetal viability is possible.”54 After demonstrating the baselessness of the law’s calendar, the major medical organizations discuss the issue of whether abortion should be limited on the grounds that the procedure is painful to fetuses, a common argument put forth by anti-​abortion groups. On this question, the brief states, “there is no credible scientific evidence of fetal pain perception pre-​viability, and certainly none at fifteen weeks LMP, approximately two months before a fetus approaches viability.”55 On each of these questions, the authors bring their authority as the institutionally legitimate representatives of medical professionals and deploy the idea of scientific consensus to undermine the credibility of their opponents.

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Conclusion

Does “the science” authorize or prohibit abortion? For some, including the University of Texas philosopher of biology, Sahotra Sarkar, the question misses the point. Whether or not life begins at conception, for example, is “a question of politics –​not biology,” he argues.56 Abortion is indisputably a political—​and legal—​matter, one that could, in theory, be dealt with in terms of values, ethical convictions, and social norms. Abortion debates are undeniably about frames and incompatible worldviews. Both sides vie for the primacy to impose their competing definitions of womanhood, one that centers autonomy and self-​determination against another that empowers the State to violate pregnant people’s bodily integrity in the name of their own protection and that of the fetus. Yet, in the United States, the appeal to the “technical” dimensions of abortion, such as biological definitions of fetal development, viability thresholds, and women’s health has been a central feature of the debates. As a result, lawmakers, judges, and the media have created high demand for scientific and medical expertise that can address those issues. In turn, that demand has both constrained and enabled experts within think tanks, institutes, professional organizations, universities, and other institutions to produce information in response. This chapter has argued that these appeals to expertise, as well as the belief that it can or ought to answer the question of whether a person should be allowed to terminate their pregnancy, is the result, in part, of legal frames. Once the Supreme Court based its reasoning in Roe v. Wade on the trimester framework, itself grounded in a relatively approximate understanding of fetal viability in the early 1970s, the justices imposed a medicalized frame that would shape abortion debates for generations. Later court decisions and bills in state legislatures would refine those frames, solidifying the importance of medical expertise, rather than diminishing it. Indeed, the depth and complexity of medical arguments appear to have increased over time. The medicalization of abortion debates has significant consequences. This chapter has explored how anti-​abortion organizers have solidified their epistemic communities within organizations they created, such as C-​FAM or the American College of Pediatricians, to coordinate between lawmakers, medical professionals, and activists. Hoping to generate expert capital that carries the legitimacy of scientific neutrality and academic rigor, they deploy the language and codes of research. In response, mainstream professional organizations organize to prevent them from claiming the mantle of expertise to support anti-​abortion stances. These credibility struggles are important because they demonstrate how political and legal questions about abortion shape the scientific field. Researchers studying maternal health, embryonic development, gestational abnormalities, and many other questions with potential implications for debates on abortion are exposed both directly

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and indirectly to political pressures. In other words, medical frames that structure abortion debates are important because of how they shape the production of science itself. In the wake of the Dobbs decision overturning Roe and allowing states to ban abortion, it is clear that the legal landscape will become increasingly more complex.57 It is less clear whether or not anti-​ abortion activists will continue to rely on a veneer of scientific expertise to justify their ongoing efforts to ban or restrict abortion going forward. Because of their success, anti-​abortion groups may no longer feel the need to justify their position in technical terms. That will depend on the degree to which lawmakers and judges continue to rely on medicalized frames in their rulings. Either way, the knowledge networks created to provide expertise on both sides of the abortion debates will no doubt endure as the fight continues, shaping both science and legal outcomes along the way. Notes 1 World Health Organization, “Safe Abortion: Technical and Policy Guidance for Health Systems, Second Edition,” Geneva: World Health Organization, 2012, https://​apps.who.int/​iris/​han​dle/​10665/​70914. 2 Susan Yoshihara and Rebecca Oas, “Eleven Problems with the 2012 WHO Technical Guidance on Abortion,” Washington, DC: Center for Family and Human Rights, November 7, 2012, https://​c-​fam.org/​bri​efin​g_​pa​per/​ele​ven-​probl​ ems-​with-​the-​2012-​who-​techni​cal-​guida​nce-​on-​abort​ion-​3/​. 3 United Nations, “United Nations Search Results for CSos,” United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, May 6, 2023, https://​esa​ngo.un.org/​ civil​soci​ety/​disp​layC​onsu​ltat​iveS​tatu​sSea​rch.do . 4 Edward G. Carmines and James A. Stimson, “The Two Faces of Issue Voting,” The American Political Science Review 74, no. 1 (1980): 78–​91, https://​doi.org/​ 10.2307/​1955​648. 5 Ted G. Jelen and Clyde Wilcox, “Causes and Consequences of Public Attitudes Toward Abortion: A Review and Research Agenda,” Political Research Quarterly 56, no. 4 (December 1, 2003): 497, https://​doi.org/​10.1177/​106​5912​9030​ 5600​410. 6 Richard Redding, “Politicized Science,” Society 50, no. 5 (October 2013): 439–​ 446, https://​doi.org/​10.1007/​s12​115-​013-​9686-​5. 7 Isabelle Engeli, Christoffer Green-​ Pedersen, and Lars Thorup Larsen, eds., Morality Politics in Western Europe (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). 8 John H. Evans, Morals Not Knowledge: Recasting the Contemporary U.S. Conflict Between Religion and Science (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2018). 9 Mieke Verloo, “Gender Knowledge, and Opposition to the Feminist Project: Extreme-​ Right Populist Parties in the Netherlands,” Politics and Governance 6, no. 3 (September 14, 2018): 20–​30, https://​doi.org/​10.17645/​pag. v6i3.1456. 10 Pauline Cullen, Myra Marx Ferree, and Mieke Verloo, “Introduction to Special Issue: Gender, Knowledge Production and Knowledge Work,” Gender, Work & Organization 26, no. 6 (2019): 765–​771, https://​doi.org/​10.1111/​gwao.12329.

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11 Elizabeth A. Armstrong and Mary Bernstein, “Culture, Power, and Institutions: A Multi-​Institutional Politics Approach to Social Movements,” Sociological Theory 26, no. 1 (2008): 74–​99, https://​doi.org/​10.1111/​j.1467-​9558.2008.00319.x; Gil Eyal, “For a Sociology of Expertise: The Social Origins of the Autism Epidemic,” American Journal of Sociology 118, no. 4 (January 1, 2013): 863–​907, https://​doi. org/​10.1086/​668​448; Scott Frickel and Kelly Moore, The New Political Sociology of Science: Institutions, Networks, and Power (Madison WI: Univ of Wisconsin Press, 2006). 12 Kristin Luker, Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1984). 13 Marianna Y. Smirnova and Sergey Y. Yachin, “Epistemic Communities and Epistemic Operating Mode,” International Journal of Social Science and Humanity 5, no. 7 (2015): 646–​650. 14 Sally Jones, Angela Martinez Dy, and Natalia Vershinina, “ ‘We Were Fighting for Our Place’: Resisting Gender Knowledge Regimes through Feminist Knowledge Network Formation,” Gender, Work & Organization 26, no. 6 (2019): 789–​804, https://​doi.org/​10.1111/​gwao.12288. 15 Karin Knorr-​Cetina, Epistemic Cultures: How the Sciences Make Knowledge (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999). 16 Carole E. Joffe, Tracy A. Weitz, and Clare L. Stacey, “Uneasy Allies: Pro-​Choice Physicians, Feminist Health Activists and the Struggle for Abortion Rights,” Sociology of Health & Illness 26, no. 6 (2004): 775–​796, https://​doi.org/​10.1111/​ j.0141-​9889.2004.00418.x. 17 Marcus Mann and Cyrus Schleifer, “Love the Science, Hate the Scientists: Conservative Identity Protects Belief in Science and Undermines Trust in Scientists,” Social Forces 99, no. 1 (September 2020): 305–​332, https://​doi.org/​ 10.1093/​sf/​soz​156; Samuel L Perry, “Banning Because of Science or In Spite of It? Scientific Authority, Religious Conservatism, and Support for Outlawing Pornography, 1984–​2018,” Social Forces, no. soab024 (March 22, 2021), https://​ doi.org/​10.1093/​sf/​soab​024; Kelsy Burke and Alice MillerMacPhee, “Constructing Pornography Addiction’s Harms in Science, News Media, and Politics,” Social Forces 99, no. 3 (March 2021): 1334–​1362, https://​doi.org/​10.1093/​sf/​soaa​035. 18 Mary Ziegler, Dollars for Life: The Anti-​Abortion Movement and the Fall of the Republican Establishment (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2022); Amanda Hollis-​Brusky, Ideas with Consequences: The Federalist Society and the Conservative Counterrevolution (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2019). 19 Michael Stambolis-​Ruhstorfer, “Producing Expert Capital: How Opposing Same-​Sex Marriage Experts Dominate Fields in the United States and France,” Social Movement Studies 19, no. 1 (January 2, 2020): 38–​62, https://​doi.org/​10.1080/​14742​837.2018.1482​ 206; Michael Stambolis-​ Ruhstorfer, “The Culture of Knowledge: Constructing ‘Expertise’ in Legal Debates on Marriage and Kinship for Same-​Sex Couples in France and the United States,” PhD diss., (Los Angeles, CA, University of California Los Angeles and Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, 2015). 20 Pierre Bourdieu, “The Specificity of the Scientific Field and the Social Conditions of the Progress of Reason,” Social Science Information 14, no. 6 (December 1, 1975): 19–​47, https://​doi.org/​10.1177/​053​9018​4750​1400​602. 21 Gil Eyal and Larissa Buchholz, “From the Sociology of Intellectuals to the Sociology of Interventions,” Annual Review of Sociology 36, no. 1 (2010): 117–​ 137, https://​doi.org/​10.1146/​annu​rev.soc.012​809.102​625.

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22 Steven Epstein, “The New Attack on Sexuality Research: Morality and the Politics of Knowledge Production,” Sexuality Research and Social Policy 3, no. 1 (2006): 2. 23 Roger Friedland and Robert Alford, “Bringing Society Back In: Symbols, Practices and Institutional Contradictions,” in The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis, ed. Walter Powell and Paul Dimaggio (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 232–​263. 24 Drew Halfmann, Doctors and Demonstrators: How Political Institutions Shape Abortion Law in the United States, Britain, and Canada (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2011); Jennifer Merchant, Procréation et politique aux Etats-​ Unis (1965–​2005) (Paris: Belin, 2005). 25 Ellen Ann Andersen, Out of the Closets & into the Courts: Legal Opportunity Structure and Gay Rights Litigation (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005). 26 Luker, Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood. 27 April Nicole Huff, “Constructing Abortion’s Second Victim: Science and Politics in the Contemporary Antiabortion Movement,” PhD diss., (University of California San Diego, 2014), https://​escho​lars​hip.org/​uc/​item/​4rr2f​96t. 28 Merchant, Procréation et politique aux Etats-​Unis (1965–​2005); Luker, Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood; Mary Ziegler, Abortion and the Law in America: Roe v. Wade to the Present (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2020); Katie Watson, Scarlet A: The Ethics, Law, and Politics of Ordinary Abortion (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018). 29 Myra Marx Ferree et al., Shaping Abortion Discourse: Democracy and the Public Sphere in Germany and the United States (London: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 62. 30 Ziegler, Abortion and the Law in America; Watson, Scarlet A; Myra Marx Ferree, “Resonance and Radicalism: Feminist Framing in the Abortion Debates of the United States and Germany,” The American Journal of Sociology 109, no. 2 (2003): 304–​ 344; Deana A. Rohlinger, “Framing the Abortion Debate: Organizational Resources, Media Strategies, and Movement-​ Countermovement Dynamics,” Sociological Quarterly 43, no. 4 (September 1, 2002): 479–​507, https://​doi.org/​10.1111/​j.1533-​8525.2002.tb00​063.x; Jelen and Wilcox, “Causes and Consequences of Public Attitudes Toward Abortion”; Andrea L. Press and Elizabeth R. Cole, “Reconciling Faith and Fact: Pro-life Women Discuss Media, Science and the Abortion Debate,” Critical Studies in Mass Communication 12, no. 4 (December 1, 1995): 380–​402, https://​doi.org/​ 10.1080/​152950​3950​9366​947; Dorothy McBride Stetson, Abortion Politics, Women’s Movements, and the Democratic State: A Comparative Study of State Feminism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). 31 Dorothy E Roberts, Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty, 1st ed. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1997). 32 The author would like to thank Anne Légier for making this important observation and suggesting it be mentioned here. 33 Jonathan Bearak et al., “Unintended Pregnancy and Abortion by Income, Region, and the Legal Status of Abortion: Estimates from a Comprehensive Model for 1990–​2019,” The Lancet Global Health 8, no. 9 (September 1, 2020): e1152–​ 1161, https://​doi.org/​10.1016/​S2214-​109X(20)30315-​6. 34 James Robenalt, “The Unknown Supreme Court Clerk Who Single-​Handedly Created the Roe v. Wade Viability Standard,” The Washington Post, November

200  Michael Stambolis-Ruhstorfer

29, 2021, www.was​hing​tonp​ost.com/​hist​ory/​2021/​11/​29/​viabil​ity-​stand​ard-​abort​ ion-​supr​eme-​court-​hamm​ond/​. 35 Astrid Christoffersen-​Deb, “Viability: A Cultural Calculus of Personhood at the Beginnings of Life,” Medical Anthropology Quarterly 26, no. 4 (2012): 575–​594, https://​doi.org/​10.1111/​maq.12008. 36 Ruth Porter and Maeve O’Connor, Abortion: Medical Progress and Social Implications (London: John Wiley & Sons, 2009). 37 “Text of U.S. Supreme Court Decision: Webster v. Reproductive Health Services,” Journal of Church & State 32, no. 1 (Winter 1990): 187, https://​doi.org/​10.1093/​ jcs/​32.1.187; Kathryn Kolbert, “The Webster Amicus Curiae Briefs: Perspectives on the Abortion Controversy and the Role of the Supreme Court,” American Journal of Law & Medicine 15, no. 2/​3 (June 1989): 153, https://​doi.org/​10.1017/​ s00988​5880​0009​837. 38 Lucy Downing, “The Smokescreen Problem in Abortion Jurisprudence: How the Undue Burden Standard and Long-​Term Legislative Tactics Allow Courts to Turn a Blind Eye to True Legislative Intent,” Missouri Law Review 85, no. 4 (Fall 2020): 1139–​1170. 39 Howard Minkoff and Lynn M. Paltrow, “The Rights of ‘Unborn Children’ and the Value of Pregnant Women,” Hastings Center Report 36, no. 2 (April 3, 2006): 26–​ 28, https://​doi.org/​10.1353/​hcr.2006.0031. 40 Bryan Hughes, “Texas SB 8: Relating to Abortion, Including Abortions after Detection of an Unborn Child’s Heartbeat; Authorizing a Private Civil Right of Action,” Pub. L. No. 8 (2021). 41 Hughes, “Texas SB 8.” 42 David S. Caudill and Lewis H. LaRue, “Why Judges Applying the Daubert Trilogy Need to Know about the Social, Institutional, and Rhetorical—​and Not Just the Methodological Aspects of Science,” Boston College Law Review 45 (2004 2003): 1. 43 Ellena Erskine, “We Read All the Amicus Briefs in Dobbs so You Don’t Have to,” SCOTUSblog (blog), November 30, 2021, www.sco​tusb​log.com/​2021/​11/​ we-​read-​all-​the-​ami​cus-​bri​efs-​in-​dobbs-​so-​you-​dont-​have-​to/​. 44 “Brief of Amici Curiae National Right to Life Committee and Louisiana Right to Life Federation Supporting Petitioners,” 2022; “Brief of the Catholic Medical Association, The National Association of Catholic Nurses-​Usa, Idaho Chooses Life and Texas Alliance for Life as Amici Curiae in Support of Petitioners,” 2022; “Brief for Monique Chireau Wubbenhorst, M.D., M.P.H., Grazie Pozo Christie, M.D., Colleen Malloy, M.D., and The Catholic Association Foundation as Amici Curiae in Support of Petitioners,” 2022; “Brief for The American College Of Pediatricians and The Association of American Physicians & Surgeons as Amici Curiae in Support of Petitioners,” 2022. 45 “Brief for American Association of Pro-​Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists as Amicus Curiae in Support of Petitioners,” 2022. 46 “Brief of Biologists as Amici Curiae in Support of Neither Party,” 2022. 47 “Brief of Amici Curiae American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, American Medical Association, American Academy of Family Physicians, American Academy of Nursing, American Academy of Pediatrics, American Association of Public Health Physicians, et al. in Support of Respondents,” 2022. 48 “Brief of Amici Curiae American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, American Medical Association, American Academy of Family Physicians,

Legal Frames, Scientific “Expertise”  201

American Academy of Nursing, American Academy of Pediatrics, American Association of Public Health Physicians, et al. in Support of Respondents.” 49 “Brief Of Society for Maternal-​Fetal Medicine, Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, U.S. Association for the Study of Pain and 27 Scientific and Medical Experts as Amici Curiae in Support of Respondents, Dobbs v. Jackson, 597 U.S.,” 2022. 50 Steven Andrew Jacobs, “The Scientific Consensus on When a Human’s Life Begins,” Issues in Law & Medicine 36, no. 2 (2021): 221–​233. 51 “Brief of Biologists as Amici Curiae in Support of Neither Party,” 1. 52 Alexander F. C. Webster, “Do You Know Your Child’s Doctor? The Politicization of Pediatrics in America,” Touchstone: A Journal of Mere Christianity 33, no. 1 (February 1, 2020): 34–​39; Mary Anne Case, “Trans Formations in the Vatican’s War on ‘Gender Ideology,’ ” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 44, no. 3 (March 2019): 639–​664, https://​doi.org/​10.1086/​701​498. 53 “Brief of Amici Curiae American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, American Medical Association, American Academy of Family Physicians, American Academy of Nursing, American Academy of Pediatrics, American Association of Public Health Physicians, et al. in Support of Respondents,” 9. 54 “Brief of Amici Curiae American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, American Medical Association, American Academy of Family Physicians, American Academy of Nursing, American Academy of Pediatrics, American Association of Public Health Physicians, et al. in Support of Respondents,” 13. 55 “Brief of Amici Curiae American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, American Medical Association, American Academy of Family Physicians, American Academy of Nursing, American Academy of Pediatrics, American Association of Public Health Physicians, et al. in Support of Respondents,” 14. 56 Sahotra Sarkar, “When Human Life Begins Is a Question of Politics—​ Not Biology,” Ms. Magazine (blog), September 4, 2021, https://​msm​agaz​ine.com/​ 2021/​09/​04/​when-​does-​human-​life-​begin-​polit​ics-​biol​ogy-​abort​ion-​baby-​fetus/​. 57 David S. Cohen, Greer Donley, and Rachel Rebouché, “The New Abortion Battleground,” Columbia Law Review 123, no. 1 (January 2023): 1–​100.

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INDEX

Note: Page numbers in bold refer to tables. abortion xvii, 1, 5, 45, 91, 94; access to 102–​103; expertise 185–​187; and human rights 183, 189; later-​term 194; legal junctures 187–​197; as a political and legal matter 196; right to xviii, 104, 191–​192; “technical” aspects of 185–​186, 196; see also abortion clinics; abortion debates; anti-​abortion movement; pro-​abortion rights groups Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood 91 abortion clinics 96–​98, 102–​103, 192 abortion debates 9–​10, 183–​197; complexity of the issue 184–​185; frames and arguments 188–​189; medical arguments 192–​196; see also abortion Abzug, Bella 43 Adams, John Henry 67 advertising 39, 49, 53, 63, 69–​71, 74–​78 African American music 26 African Americans 26, 62–​63, 65, 66, 69, 75; see also African American women; Black men; Black women African American women 7, 26, 29, 63, 64, 67–​68, 70, 72–​74; see also African Americans; Black women Against Our Will 44

agriculture 166 Agua Prieta 120–​124, 126 Alexander, Ronni 141 Alexander v. Yale University 142 Ali, Russlynn 146, 147, 149 Allmer, Patricia 50 Andrews, Joan 97–​99, 101–​103 anti-​abortion movement 7–​8, 89–​105, 183–​184, 188–​189, 191–​196 anti-​rape movement 137–​138, 143, 145 Appleby, Earl 102 archetypes 7 art 8, 122–​125 Association of American Universities 144 asylum seekers 115, 118–​119, 121–​122, 124–​126 Aunt Jemima 66 authority 20, 26; and abortion debates 184, 185, 187, 195 Bailey, Martha J. 5, 177 Baldwin, Davarian 63 Beal, Frances 175 Beard, Mary 19 beauty: care 68; as a commodity 69; as a conservative value 92–​96; cult 95–​104; culture 7, 62–​63, 68–​72, 78; depictions of 46; ideals 6, 46, 77; industry 63; as the privilege of White

Index  207

Womanhood 66, 72; stereotypes 93; see also beauty products; beauty standards beauty products 63–​64, 69–​71, 74, 77; see also cosmetics beauty standards 6; conventional 8, 66, 95; Eurocentric 63–​66 Benston, Margaret 168 Bethune, Mary McLeod 26–​27 Biden, Joe 126, 146, 151 biological essentialism 18 birth control 103, 117–​118; see also contraception Black men xxiii, 67, 100, 101 Blackness 66, 69, 71 “Black Victoria” 65 Black women 175; advertisements for 62–​64, 74–​78; bodies of 7, 62–​63, 66–​71, 77–​78; and ERA xx, xxii–​xxiii; and Racial Uplift 62; sexuality 67–​68; stereotypes of 7, 62–​68, 71, 76; “ugliness” 66–​68; visibility 72; see also African American women; hair Black Women Liberation Committee 173 Blanchet, Kate xvii Bluetooth 20 bodies: of Black women 7, 62–​63, 66–​71, 77–​78; conservative attitudes to 92; “ideal” 49; legal power over 90; see also bodily agency; bodily autonomy bodily agency 9 bodily autonomy 184, 189 border art 122–​125 Border Arts Corridor (BAC) 123 Border Art Workshops/​Taller de Arte Fronterizo (BAW/​TAF) 123 border enforcement strategy 119 Bourdieu, Pierre 186 Brownmiller, Susan 6, 42–​45, 137 Brzezinski, Mika 96 busing programs 92 CAME (Centro de Atención al Migrante Exodus) 120, 121 Campus Accountability and Safety Act 2014 152 Campus Sexual Violence Elimination Act (SaVE Act) 2013 148 Canadian Broadcasting Corporation 27 capitalism 168, 173

care work 9, 22, 163, 165, 168, 170–​174 Carlson, Gretchen 95 Carlson, Shirley 65 Catholic Church 98 Catholic women 89, 91–​92, 97, 99 Catt, Carrie Chapman 24 Celler, Emanuel xvi, xx–​xxi Center for Family and Human Rights (C-​FAM) 183–​184, 189 Central America 114–​116, 118, 124 Certeau, Michel de 49 C-​FAM see Center for Family and Human Rights chastity 65 Chicago’s New Negros 63 Chicana women 173–​174 childcare xvi, xvii, xxiii, 2 child migrants 117, 118, 124 Chisholm, Shirley xvi, 43 Church 68, 73, 98 citizenship 29 civic educators 23 civic responsibility 90 civil disobedience 99 Civil Rights Act 1964 4, 140, 142, 143, 172 Civil Rights Act 2008 153 civil rights violations 8, 139 Civil War 66 class 2, 41, 90 Clery, Jeanne 144 Clery Act see Crime Awareness and Campus Security Act clothing 68, 77 clubwomen 64–​65, 68 Cold War 167 college campuses 8, 138–​139, 143–​154 colonization 66 Colored American, The 70 colorism 65 color stigma 67 common law 90 conservative values 8, 92–​96 conservative women 89–​93, 102 constitutional equality 1, 2 consumer groups 39 consumerism 39 contraception 2, 91, 117; see also birth control Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment 122

208 Index

Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees 1951 126 CORE 43 cosmetics 62–​63, 69, 71–​78; see also beauty products coverture 90–​92, 100 Covid-​19 125 Craik, Jennifer 39 Crane, Diana 48 “credibility struggles” 187, 192–​196 Crime Awareness and Campus Security Act (Clery Act) 1990 144, 148 crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) 94 CRM (Centro de Recursos para Migrantes) 120, 121 cultural differentialism 18 “culture of dissemblance” 67–​68 “culture of romance” 169 date rape 143, 144 Davis v. Monroe County Schools 145 “Dear Colleague Letter” 146–​151 Delap, Lucy 5, 174 “deliberate indifference” 145, 152, 153 Democratic Party xvi, 92 Deslippe, Dennis 173 DeVos, Betsy 150 Dialectic of Sex, The 169 DiPrete, Thomas A. 5, 177 discrimination: gender 8; against mothers xvi; in the workplace 140–​141; racial 65; sex 138–​147, 154 diversity 41 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization xxii, 5, 104, 187, 192–​195 docility 8, 66 domesticity 65, 66, 72, 165 domestic violence 116, 148 domestic work 22, 163–​165, 168, 170; see also housework DouglaPrieta Trabaja 124 Douglas 8, 115, 120–​123, 126 drug trafficking 120 “due diligence” 153 due process 9, 138, 150, 153 Earle, Genevieve 24 Eastman, Crystal xv Eastwood, Mary xxiii “Ed Act Now” campaign 149 educational attainment 5 Education Amendments Act 8, 137, 142

Eighteenth Street Gang (M-​18) 116 electronic media 17 El Salvador 116–​117 End Rape on Campus (EROC) 148, 150, 151, 153 enslavement 66–​68; see also slavery epistemic communities 186–​187 epistemic cultures 186 Epstein, Steven 187 Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) 140, 141 equal pay 4, 91 Equal Pay Act 1963 4 Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) xiv–​xxiv, 1–​2, 4, 91, 172–​173 ERA see Equal Rights Amendment Ervin, Sam xvi–​xviii ethnicity 2 expert capital 186, 187, 196 expertise: abortion 185–​187; scientific 185, 187–​193, 195, 197 experts 186–​187 extremism 8, 96, 100–​104 Facebook 119 Faderman, Lillian 165, 173 Family and Medical Leave Act 1993 4 family planning 5 family values 167 family wage 166–​167 Farley, Lin 140 fascist movements 92 fashion: images 49–​51; and morality 68, 77; photography 44, 46, 49; see also fashion magazines fashion magazines 6, 37–​53, 72; format and power dynamics 39–​41 Federici, Silvia 171 Feimster, Crystal 99 Felton, Rebecca Latimer 99–​100 femicides 116–​117, 119 Feminine Mystique, The 37, 171–​172, 174 femininity 3, 25, 43; alternative models of 41; definitions 15; idealized 6; representation in women’s magazines 38–​41, 46–​47, 51–​53 feminism 9; “central paradox” of 174; “glamorized” 43; “hegemonic” 174; “mosaic” 5; representation in fashion magazines 42–​46; “Second-​Wave” 37, 42, 165, 167, 171, 174, 177; see also feminist movements; feminists

Index  209

feminist movements 37–​38 feminists: and beauty stereotypes 93; of color 138; “conservative” 175; on the doctrine of separate spheres 168; on the domestic model of womanhood 164–​165; Marxist 168; radical 43, 168–​170, 173, 175–​176; on rape 138–​139; on sexual harassment 140, 153 fetal viability 190–​193, 196 Firestone, Shulamith 169, 176 Fischer, Eleanor 27, 28 food security 124 Ford, Judith Anne 28 Fox News 95, 104 “framing” 52–​53 Frank, Gillian 92 Franke, Katharine 141 Franklin v. Gwinnett County Public Schools 145 Frederick, Pauline 25–​26 Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act 102 Friedan, Betty 37, 44, 47, 171–​176 Gannon, Frances Foley 25 Gates Jr., Henry Louis 64 Gebser v. Lago Vista Independent School District 145 gender: and color stigma 67; construction of 17; discrimination 8; and fashion 37; and Great Depression 23, 167; identity 18; and legal rights 90–​91; and migration 115; norms 6, 7, 21, 24, 46, 141; occupational segregation by 5; pay gap 5, 176; and political ideology 90; radio as a technology of 15–​16, 21; roles 3, 23, 104, 114, 167; and sexual harassment 141; stereotypes 8, 21, 141; voice in the performance of 21; see also gender-​based violence; gender equality; gender-​nonconforming students Gender Advertisements 37 gender-​based violence 1, 7–​8, 114–​126, 145 gender equality xiv, 1, 4–​5, 16, 90, 138–​140, 165 Gender Equity in Education Act 2018 152 gender-​nonconforming students 152 Gibson, Charles Dana 77, 78 Gibson Girl 77, 78

Gillian, Carol 44 Ginsburg, Ruth Bader xxi Gladstone, Brooke 20 Glamour 42 Goffman, Erving 37 Goldwater, Barry 167 Gonzalez v. Carhart 192 GOP 99, 104; see also Republican Party Grazia 48 Great Depression 23, 167 Greene, Marjorie Taylor 104 Griffin, Michael 102 Griffin, Susan 137 Griffiths, Martha xvi, xvii Guatemala 116–​117 Gunn, David 102 Haberman, Maggie 96 hair 7, 62–​65, 68–​71; care 73–​75; straightening 69–​71, 75 Hair Raising 63 Halper, Donna 18 haptic readings 50 Hargreaves, Duane 49 Harper’s Bazaar 6, 38–​46, 51–​52 Hartona 63–​64, 70–​71 Hayes, Lola 26 Hayes, Shirley 27 Haytko, Diana 49, 51 healthcare 184; for mothers and infants xvi; reproductive 102, 189; transgender 186 Heckler, Margaret xvi, xxi Hermes, Joke 48, 49 Hernandez, Vicki 117 Higginbotham, Evelyn Brooks 65, 73 higher education 8, 137–​139, 142–​144, 148–​154 Hilmes, Michele 18 Hine, Dalene Clark 67 Hobson, Janell 66, 67 Holtzman, Liz xxi home economics 23 homemakers 92 homemaking xxiii, 166 Honduras 116–​118 Hope in a Jar 68 hostile environment 140, 144, 153 House Judiciary Committee xvi, xxi housewives 9, 163–​177 housework 5, 9, 163, 165, 167, 170–​174; see also domestic work; housewives

210 Index

human rights xxi, 98, 119, 123, 153, 183, 189 human trafficking 120, 126 humor 19 immigration 8, 115–​119, 123–​126; see also migration inequalities 3, 68, 90–​91, 104, 123; gender 5, 16, 114; pay 2 International Wages for Housework movement 165, 171 intersectionality 4, 6, 173 Irish Republican Army (IRA) 97 “It’s On Us” 148–​149, 151 Jacobs, Steven Andrew 194 Jezebel stereotype 67, 77 “Jim Crow” laws xxiii jobs: access to xv; as a continuation of domestic work 22; factors driving women from 91; see also paid work; wage labor Jones, Beverley 175 Jordan, Barbara xxi journalists 95–​96 JR 23 Kelley, Florence xv–​xvi kidnapping 101, 119–​121, 126 Kikito 123 Kirsten, Nielsen 118 knowledge networks 196 Know Your IX 148, 150, 151, 153 labor: laws xv; market participation 5; protections xv–​xvi; unions xvi; see also wage labor Ladies’ Home Journal 42 Ladies Pages, the Ringwood Afro-​ American Journal of Fashion 68 La Guardia, Fiorello 22, 25, 27 Lake, Kari 104 Latin America 92, 116, 117 laziness 66 legal personhood xv legal rights 90–​91 LGBTQIA+​ communities 117, 121, 154 Lhamon, Catherine E. 146, 149 liability standards 145, 153 longevity 5 Loviglio, Jason 21 Luker, Kristen 91

MacKinnon, Catharine 140, 153 male gaze 37, 46, 78 Malone, Annie 6–​7, 62–​65, 68, 71–​78 Mammy stereotype 66–​67, 72 Mara Salvatrucha (MS-​13) 116 Marcus, Ruth 95 marginalization 16, 17, 18, 138, 174 “marketplace intellectuals” 63 market research 39 Marks, Albert 28 marriage 90, 163, 167, 169 Marx, Karl 17 mass culture 47–​48 Massey, Douglas S. 126 McCaskill, Claire 152 McWilliams, Sarah Breedlove 74 Mecklenburg, Marjory 93–​95 men: legal rights 90–​91; in magazines’ teams 41; as radio speakers 19; see also Black men; men’s rights groups men’s rights groups 149 Mendes, Kaitlynn 46, 52 Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson 140 #MeToo movement xviii, xix, 1 Metzner, Sheila 43 Mexico 114–​125 migrant caravans 115, 117–​122 Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) 114, 115, 118–​122, 125 migration 8, 114–​126; and violence 115–​120, 122–​126; see also immigration minimum wages xv Mink, Patsy Takemoto xvi minstrel shows 66 Miss America pageant 27–​28, 42 Miss Black America 28 Mix, Jennie Irene 19 modernity 39, 63, 64, 77–​78 morality politics 185–​187 morbidity rates 5 “mosaic feminism” 5 motherhood xxiii, 8, 91, 104, 165, 173 mothers xvi, xxii, 1, 65, 92, 150 mp3 20 Mrs. America xiv, xvii Ms. 43, 45 Mulvey, Laura 37 Murray, Pauli xxii–​xxiii National Association for Colored Women 67–​68

Index  211

National Organization for Women (NOW) 144, 172 National Women’s Law Center (NWLC) 144, 151 NBC 25 Neuwirth, Jessica 4 New Negro for a New Century: An Accurate and Up-​to-​Date Record of the Upward Struggles of the Negro Race, A 64, 65 New Negro Man 67 New Negro Movement 62, 68, 78 New Negro Womanhood 62–​65, 67, 71–​72, 74–​78 New Right 167–​168 news readers 7, 21, 25–​26 New York Times, The 21, 24, 25, 27 Nixon, Richard xxi, 92 non-​refoulment principle 119, 122, 126 Northern Triangle 114–​117, 125 Norval, Emily 48 Notes from the Third Year 170 NPR 16, 21, 27 nuclear families 91, 165, 168, 169 Obama, Barack 139, 145, 146, 148–​149 Odgers-​Ortiz, Olga 116 odor killers 71 Office for Civil Rights (OCR) 138, 139, 143–​150, 152 O’Leary, Anna Ochoa 114 Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Services 141 op-​eds 45 Operation Faithful Patriot 118 Operation Rescue 97, 101 O’Reilly, Jane 6, 42, 45, 174 organized crime 8, 120, 122 paid work 22, 24, 91, 163, 165–​177; see also jobs; wage labor parental leave 2 Partial Birth Abortion Act 2003 192 patriarchy xv, 9, 90, 137, 174, 175 Paul, Alice xv Peiss, Kathy 68 permaculture 124 personal care 68–​69 personality 19, 20 physicality 90 Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey 188, 190, 191 pleasure 50–​51

“poaching” 49 podcasts 16, 20 political action committees (PACs) 94 politicized science 185–​187 politics 24; “of respectability” 65, 68, 77 Polivy, Janet 49 Pollack, Frances D. 23 Pope, A. M. 74–​76; see also Malone, Annie PORO 74–​75 positionalities 2, 7, 9 power, abuse of xx, 140 pregnancy 184, 189, 192–​193, 196; “trimester framework” 190–​191, 196 Pregnancy Discrimination Act 1978 4 press industry 39–​40 private sphere 2, 24, 172 pro-​abortion rights groups 189, 192, 195 public debates 2, 22–​25, 184 public health research 186 public life 24, 91, 139 public speaking 19 public sphere 2, 24, 164, 172, 174, 176, 177 Rabine, Leslie 51 race 2, 41, 92 racial discrimination 65 racial norms 6 racial polarization 66, 69, 71 Racial Uplift 7, 62, 73, 78 racial violence 65 racism 1, 7, 64, 65, 66, 72; and abortion 188; “scientific” 66; systemic 2; see also racist stereotypes racist stereotypes 70 radio 7, 15–​29; emergence of 18; and gender 15–​16, 21; news talk shows 16 Radio Broadcast 19 Rankin, Rebecca B. 22–​23 rape xxiii, 8, 44, 67, 124, 126, 138–​139; crisis centers 143; date 143, 144; marital 90; prevention programs 143–​144; see also “rape trees”; sexual violence “rape trees” 117 Reagan, Ronald 92, 99 reform movements 25 Refugee Convention 1951 122 “Remain in Mexico” policy see Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP)

212 Index

reproductive health xv, 189 reproductive justice 2, 92 reproductive rights 2 Republican Party xvi, 92, 150, 185; see also GOP “rescue operations” 97–​98, 102–​103 respectability 7, 62, 64–​65, 68, 74, 77–​78 right-​wing movements 92, 183 Ringwood’s Journal 72 Roberts, Laura 74–​78 Roe v. Wade xxii, 10, 94, 98, 105, 187–​192, 196 role models 37, 41, 42, 49 romanticism 169 romantic love 175 Rooks, Nolive 63, 68, 72, 74 Roosevelt, Eleanore 24, 26–​27, 29 Safe Abortion: Technical and Policy Guidance for Health Systems 183 Sanchez, Jena 123–​125 Sanders, Sarah Huckabee 96 Sanger, Margaret 188 Sarkar, Sahotra 196 #SayHerName 1 Schlafly, Phyllis xvii–​xix, 91, 93 schools 92, 145–​147, 149–​151 Scott, Joan 3 self-​censorship 41 self-​expression 72 Senate Bill 8 (SB8) 192–​193 sensory readings 50 separate spheres, doctrine of 2, 18, 165–​169, 177 “sex class system” 169 sex discrimination 138–​147, 154 sex education 94, 183 sex equality xviii, 1, 153 sexism 1, 7, 19–​20, 64, 72, 96, 137, 141, 176 sexual abuse 67, 138; see also rape; sexual assault; sexual violence sexual assault 8, 67, 117–​118; see also rape; sexual abuse; sexual violence sexual harassment xx, 95, 139–​144; definition 140, 151; and gender 141; grievance procedure 142–​143, 146, 147; as a technology of sexism 141; and Title IX 142–​147, 149, 151 Sexual Harassment of Working Women: A Case of Sex Discrimination, The 140

sexuality 67–​68 sexual purity 65, 68 Sexual Shakedown: The Sexual Harassment of Women on the Job 140 sexual violence xxiii, 8–​9, 100, 114, 117, 137–​154; definition 147; student movement against 147–​149; see also rape; sexual abuse; sexual assault Siegal, Reva 104 silencing 16, 29 Sinaloa cartel 120 Sisterhood is Powerful 175 skin lighteners 69–​71 slavery xxiii, 66, 67, 68–​69 social change 186 social identities 6 social media 38, 53, 119 stalking 101, 139, 148 state control 184 state violence 114–​115, 119, 122–​123, 125 Steinberg, Terry Nicole 144 Steinem, Gloria 6, 42–​43, 45, 164 stem cells 185 stereotypes: of African Americans 62; beauty 93, 95; of Black women 7, 62–​68, 71, 76; gender-​based 8, 21, 141; racist 70; of “ugliness” 66–​68 Sterne, Jonathan 17 stigma 67, 69 stillbirths 192 STOP-​ERA movement xvii–​xix street theater 97 Students’ Access to Freedom & Educational Rights Act (SAFER Act) 153 Students Active for Ending Rape (SAFER) 147, 153 Suk, Julie C. 4 Supove, Lilian 25–​26 Syfer, Judy 170–​171, 174 Symond, Alexandra 44 tabular readings 49 Tallon, Tina 20 teeth 78 Tepperman, Jean 173, 176 Terry, Randall 97, 101 Texas Heartbeat Act see Senate Bill 8 think tanks 186 Thompson, Craig 49, 51 Tiggemann, Marika 49

Index  213

Title IX 8, 137–​154; backlash against 139, 149–​152; and sexual harassment 142–​147, 149, 151, 153 Title VII 4, 140–​142, 172 Tone Pictures of the Negro in Music 26 torture 122 Toupin, Louise 165, 171 trade cards 70–​71 trans homicides 117 transgender women 8, 91, 114, 117, 118, 122 Trump, Donald 104, 114, 115, 118–​119, 139, 150, 151 “ugliness” 66–​69 Unborn Victims of Violence Act 2004 192 United Nations (UN) 183 United States v. Morrison 145 universities 8–​9, 141–​143, 147, 148; see also college campuses; higher education U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) 119 U.S. Congress xv–​xviii, xxi, xxiii, 1, 137, 152–​153 U.S. Constitution xv, xvii–​xix; Fourteenth Amendment 104; Nineteenth Amendment 4, 18; see also Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) U.S. Court of Appeals 142 U.S. Senate xvii, 100 U.S. Supreme Court xv–​xvi, xviii–​xix, xxi–​xxii, 4, 5, 104, 139–​141, 145, 151, 188, 189, 191–​193, 195, 196 values 8, 65, 77; conservative 8, 92–​96 vaudevilles 66 Verloo, Mieke 186 Vietnam war 97 Violence Against Women Act 1994 4, 144, 145 violence: on college campuses 8, 138–​154; domestic 116, 148; gender-​based 1, 7–​8, 114–​126, 145; and migration 115–​120, 122–​126; political 116; racial 65; state 114–​115, 119, 122–​123, 125; urban 116; women using 7–​8, 89–​105; see also sexual violence vocal fry 20 vocational training 23

Vogue 6, 38–​46, 51, 52 Voice of the Negro 67 voices 21; see also women’s voices wage labor 163, 166–​168, 172; see also jobs; paid work Walker, Madam C. J. 63, 73, 74 Wanjuki, Wagatwe 147, 149 Washington, Booker T. 64, 67 Washington, Margaret Murray 64–​65 Washington Post 95 Webster, William 101 Webster v. Reproductive Health Services 188, 190, 191 Wells, Ida B. 99 Welzmiller, Blanche Irene 23, 25 White House 148 white supremacy 90, 99, 137 Williams, Fannie Barrier 64 Williams, Saundra 28 Williams, Tara 3 Williams v. Saxbe 140 Winship, Janice 50 WNYC 16–​17, 20–​29 Wolf, Michelle 96 womanhood, emergence of the term 3–​4 “woman problem” 171, 174 women: Catholic 89, 91–​92, 97–​99; Chicana 173–​174; as civic educators 23; conservative 89–​93, 102; interest in politics 24; legal rights 90–​91; in magazines’ teams 40–​41; media representations 38; migrants 8, 29, 114–​122; objectification of 19, 96; perception of the roles of 3; perceptions of themselves 48; progressive 90–​92; and radio 7, 16–​21, 25–​26; transgender 8, 91, 114, 117, 118, 122; using violence 7–​8, 89–​105; see also African American women; Black women; women of color Women against Abortion 89, 102 women of color 173; in Congress xvi; reproductive justice 2; see also African American women; Black women Women Organized Against Sexual Harassment (WOASH) 142–​143 women’s health 186, 188–​190, 192–​196 women’s liberation movement 90, 97, 137, 167, 171, 177 women’s magazines 6, 37–​53; “domestic” 39; editorial teams

214 Index

40–​41; public correspondence 51–​52; reception studies 47–​52 Women’s March of 2017 xviii Women’s Movement 41–​47 women’s rights xv–​xvii, xxi, xxiii, 9 Women’s Strike for Equality xvii women’s suffrage xv, xvii, 18, 24, 25, 91 women’s voices 15–​29; disembodied 19; perception of 17; and sound transmission technology 20

Wonderful Hair Grower 64, 73–​75 Wood, Norman Barton 64 working conditions xv workplace 140–​141 World Health Organization (WHO) 183–​184, 189 “World of Women” 25 World War II 25, 27, 165, 167 “zero tolerance policy” 124