In this volume, editors Holly McCammon and Lee Ann Banaszak and the contributing authors have seized upon the centennial anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment as an opportunity to reflect upon what women, as voters, public officials, and movement activists have contributed to American politics since this constitutional right was enshrined. An interdisciplinary roster of scholars address the historical and contemporary complexity of women’s political engagement, clarifying for whom the Nineteenth Amendment was intended and how those racial divisions still affect women’s movements today. While rightfully documenting how the movement for women’s suffrage fell short of enfranchising all women, the volume recognizes the importance of this historical moment and how it opened electoral politics to women as voters and elected officials, as well as the power of collective action as demonstrated by American women (and some men).
Within 100 Years of the Nineteenth Amendment, McCammon and Banaszak continue their scholarly approach by including pieces on both electoral politics and social movements, and demonstrating their interconnection. Considering how these different political approaches relate assures that the expansion of “politics”—an expansion often attributed to women’s entrance into politics—will remain broad-minded and acknowledge the value of both mainstream and alternative political engagements. In so doing, the editors and contributors demonstrate the diversity of women’s political strategies, identities, and ultimate goals. Several chapters illustrate why attention to the subsequent struggle for access to the ballot by women of color following adoption of the amendment matters for our understanding of today’s gender politics and the very real threats to marginalized groups’ right to vote that persist across the United States in the contemporary electoral environment. With a critical eye to the original fight for women’s suffrage, the contributors keep the focus on how white women have fallen short, where women’s movements continue to fall short, and where the points of connection and activism lie for today’s suffragists. The volume is comprised of three sections: Women’s Participation in Electoral Politics, Feminism and Women’s Movement Activism, and Diversity in Women’s Social Movement Activism.
In the first section, the chapters offer innovative takes on perennial concepts of gender and politics. Examinations of the gender gap, partisanship, participation, and women’s unique experiences as officeholders feel fresh with innovative methods and data, as well as important theoretical reframings of concepts thought to be well understood—like the Voting Rights Act of 1965. For example, in her chapter, Heather Ondercin utilizes Gallup survey data from 1950 to 2012 to examine women’s partisan attachment. Ondercin argues that by looking at subgroups of women, we are better able to understand the emergence and origins of the gender gap recognized between all women and men in 1980. Similarly, J. Kevin Corder and Christina Wolbrecht use ecological inference of U.S. Census and election return data to determine if newly enfranchised women voters backed progressive candidates, as would have been expected given their alliance in the fight for suffrage. Their unique approach finds that women voters actually strengthened local parties rather than destabilizing traditional party structures/alliances. Celeste Montoya argues, importantly, for an intersectional analysis of the Voting Rights Act that illuminates challenges that persist for women of color following the Shelby v. Holder (2013) decision.
The role that race plays within women’s political history is carefully documented throughout the volume. This intersectional approach clearly illustrates the tragedy of the racism present in the first wave of the women’s movement, as well as how this historical damage continues to have consequences for today’s social movements and politicians. Montoya’s chapter, in particular, might inspire another volume that would take a similarly intersectional approach to the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
In the second section, scholars consider women’s collective action and take on the question of whether the wave metaphor accurately captures women’s political activity. This section in particular looks at women’s mobilization around feminism and gender equality. It specifically considers how women have advocated for themselves since the Nineteenth Amendment, sometimes through traditional political means but sometimes with their own unique strategies. These chapters consider the whole hundred-year time span with significant insights into the history of feminism and how it characterizes our present.
In one chapter, for example, Laura K. Nelson traces the history of feminists rather than suffragists more narrowly from the 1910s until today, demonstrating that the personal politics of hashtags and online communities is not a degeneration of the feminist movement but, rather, characteristic of a political consciousness raising that has always played a part in feminist development. The other chapters in this section look at more traditional political practice, including Kristin Goss’s impressive congressional data set of testimony between 1880 and 2000 that addresses the question of whether or not women’s policy activism died between the first- and second-wave feminist movements. A third chapter by Tracey Jean Boisseau and Tracey A. Thomas revisits the history of the equal rights amendment, illustrating the differences among women on the constitutional amendment meant to ensure that “equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.”
If anything, this section left me wanting more. With only three chapters, it was not on balance with the other two. Additional chapters might have covered more specifically the development of the third-wave women’s movement, womanism, or other such breaks deserving of historical introspection on their connection with the establishment of voting rights.
In the final section, authors present evidence of the wide-ranging influence of women on movements and causes beyond gender equality, and discuss how women’s inclusion into these movement narratives changes the history we think we know about environmentalism, nonviolence, white supremacy, Civil Rights, and economic inequality. This section is critical for understanding how the Nineteenth Amendment affected not only women’s political history but also our shared American history.
Within this section, Selina Gallo-Cruz uses scholarly accounts of women in social movements, interviews with activists, and archival materials to establish the history of women’s implementation of nonviolence in political movements. In another chapter, Kathleen Blee documents the role of women in white supremacist movements before and since suffrage, particularly important in today’s political climate in which the political behavior of white women is credited with enabling President Donald Trump’s rise to power, a rise that included multiple racist appeals.
I commend the editors for gathering such a range of approaches to women’s political engagement over the last hundred years. Beyond its substantive impact, the volume is an incredibly rich display of feminist methodological innovation and would be valuable to political methodologists everywhere. The women’s history documented here at once illustrates the great victories of political women as it also reminds us of the challenges that remain. The editors reassert the chorus of feminist institutionalists within social science that politics and political institutions are and have always been gendered.
100 Years of the Nineteenth Amendment contains innovative methodological approaches to old concepts, enabling readers to reconsider what they thought they knew about the amendment, the activists who fought for it, and those citizens it left behind. With so many chapters taking an interdisciplinary and/or intersectional approach, a hundred years of women’s political engagement are refreshed within a single work. This volume is an invitation to critical retrospection on traditional concepts and questions of gendered political participation and a clarion call to engage in the fight today for expanded access to the ballot and, with it, women’s political voice. As we all join in the celebrations awaiting us in 2020, these authors rightfully remind us to stay vigilant as all kinds of women’s rights remain contested, and even century-old constitutional rights must be safeguarded by the political activists of today.
