22. Women and the Cold War
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Women throughout the Cold War were pivotal in many aspects. They were soldiers, pilots, code breakers, nurses, and more. They supported the Cold War either on the front lines or from home. Of course not every women supported war, in the Vietnam war many found themselves sympathetic with the Vietnamese women. Towards the end of the Cold War women found their social stances changing constantly but never growing beyond a mans.
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Angelina Nanni, National Archives
Following WWII, the US and its former ally, the Soviet Union, or USSR, entered into a Cold War. Somehow, though they were at odds, fighting between these two nuclear superpowers was avoided. Although, an “iron curtain” fell on Europe dividing the eastern, totalitarian communists from the western, democratic capitalists. For the US, the war was to stop the domino spread of totalitarianism and defend capitalism. For the Soviets, it was to stop the corruption and exploitation of capitalism. Although the failures of communism would prove impossible to overcome, it was a long journey to the collapse of the USSR. In the meantime, the two superpowers backed opposite sides of many hot conflicts of the Cold War. Some conflicts between the USSR and the US included the situations in Korea, Cuba, Vietnam, and many other disagreements. And guess who played an important role in taking down the authoritarian regimes? You guessed it: women.
Although tensions between the US and the USSR had long been present, the shivering cold tension didn’t have a name until the end of WWII. They defeated the Axis powers together…but the US beat the Soviets to nuclear power–-and then used it on Japan. Both countries’ rapidly advancing technologies launched them into a race for nuclear proliferation, control of space, and passive influence around the world. The first major hot spot of the cold war was in Korea.
Many women were already working as cryptologists from WWII, so in the Cold War, the US took women’s roles a step farther and employed them as spies. Since the US was doing it, the USSR was likely using women too. Some of the most well known Soviet spies were women--including Ethel Rosenberg, executed with her husband in 1953 for passing atomic secrets to the Soviet Union. And it was American women working in counter intelligence who helped bring them down, including one particular woman Angeline Nanni. Women like Nanni unmasked many now infamous Soviet spies embedded in the British and German government. These spies’ work was so highly classified that President Harry Truman likely didn’t even know about it. Despite these women being absolute legends, they didn’t “look” like spies, or at least the way spies are portrayed in movies. They carried handbags, played bridge, and liked to picnic. Most started out as school teachers with a deep mastery of language and math.
Although tensions between the US and the USSR had long been present, the shivering cold tension didn’t have a name until the end of WWII. They defeated the Axis powers together…but the US beat the Soviets to nuclear power–-and then used it on Japan. Both countries’ rapidly advancing technologies launched them into a race for nuclear proliferation, control of space, and passive influence around the world. The first major hot spot of the cold war was in Korea.
Many women were already working as cryptologists from WWII, so in the Cold War, the US took women’s roles a step farther and employed them as spies. Since the US was doing it, the USSR was likely using women too. Some of the most well known Soviet spies were women--including Ethel Rosenberg, executed with her husband in 1953 for passing atomic secrets to the Soviet Union. And it was American women working in counter intelligence who helped bring them down, including one particular woman Angeline Nanni. Women like Nanni unmasked many now infamous Soviet spies embedded in the British and German government. These spies’ work was so highly classified that President Harry Truman likely didn’t even know about it. Despite these women being absolute legends, they didn’t “look” like spies, or at least the way spies are portrayed in movies. They carried handbags, played bridge, and liked to picnic. Most started out as school teachers with a deep mastery of language and math.
American Woman with a Korean child during the Korean War, Korean War Legacy Foundation
But peace was not a reality. After Japan collapsed, the US tried to defend the formerly Japanese-occupied Korea from communist takeover.
At the time, 120,000 women were on active duty in Korea. A third of them were healthcare providers, while the remainder were Women’s Army Corps (WACs), Women in the Air Force (WAFs), Navy Women’s Reserves and Women Marines. One reason for all the women was so many had already been involved in WWII, they simply continued their duty. Also, Congress passed the Women’s Armed Services Integration Act in 1948, just two years before the outbreak of hostilities in Korea. The act opened the door for women to serve in the armed services on a more permanent basis. Sadly, 18 women died during the Korean War in service to the US.
A war medic, Shirley Gates McBride observed that the army treated women pretty equally, at least in regard to pay. “[We got] the same pay. You were not a female soldier, you were a soldier. And, you were a ‘corpsman’, not a ‘corpswoman.’ It was ‘yes, ma’am and ‘no, ma’am,’ and ‘yes, sir’ and ‘no, sir.’”
Here’s a fun little story, Private Doris Porpiglia served in the Army at this time. Her immediate family was proud of her….but her aunt was not thrilled and told her it wasn’t a ladies place. Porpiglia replied, “I am more of a lady than you’ll ever be!” Does war have anything to do with being a lady or a man?
A Navy recruiter, Patricia Johnson of Sterling, VA, believed that the growing acceptance of women in this traditionally male field was not only significant to the military field itself--but led to women’s advancement in broader society. Basically, a rising tide lifts all boats.
Korea was long and horrible. The war started and ended with neither side gaining much territory. However, Korea was only the opening act to the Vietnam war that would almost immediately follow.
At the time, 120,000 women were on active duty in Korea. A third of them were healthcare providers, while the remainder were Women’s Army Corps (WACs), Women in the Air Force (WAFs), Navy Women’s Reserves and Women Marines. One reason for all the women was so many had already been involved in WWII, they simply continued their duty. Also, Congress passed the Women’s Armed Services Integration Act in 1948, just two years before the outbreak of hostilities in Korea. The act opened the door for women to serve in the armed services on a more permanent basis. Sadly, 18 women died during the Korean War in service to the US.
A war medic, Shirley Gates McBride observed that the army treated women pretty equally, at least in regard to pay. “[We got] the same pay. You were not a female soldier, you were a soldier. And, you were a ‘corpsman’, not a ‘corpswoman.’ It was ‘yes, ma’am and ‘no, ma’am,’ and ‘yes, sir’ and ‘no, sir.’”
Here’s a fun little story, Private Doris Porpiglia served in the Army at this time. Her immediate family was proud of her….but her aunt was not thrilled and told her it wasn’t a ladies place. Porpiglia replied, “I am more of a lady than you’ll ever be!” Does war have anything to do with being a lady or a man?
A Navy recruiter, Patricia Johnson of Sterling, VA, believed that the growing acceptance of women in this traditionally male field was not only significant to the military field itself--but led to women’s advancement in broader society. Basically, a rising tide lifts all boats.
Korea was long and horrible. The war started and ended with neither side gaining much territory. However, Korea was only the opening act to the Vietnam war that would almost immediately follow.
Juanita Moody, Public Domain
The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Juanita Moody was one of the few US women who had risen the ranks in cryptology and was actually in charge of a unit. It was her team that discovered that there was something sketchy going on in Cuba. She could see ships from the USSR bringing in supplies under the cover of night. Plus microwave towers were being installed. It was Moody’s report that was taken to the White House. President JFK read it, but she worried not enough was being done. So she pressed the NSA to make an unprecedented move–publishing the info to the larger intelligence community. She said, “It has reached the point that I am more worried about the trouble we’re going to get in having not published it, because someday we’re going to have to answer for this. And if we do....” How foreboding is that!?
The report thankfully pushed the government to investigate. They flew U2 planes over Cuba and saw nuclear launch sites! Cuba was not a nuclear country, so where were the nukes coming from? If Cuba actually had nukes… they could hit every major city in the continental US.
As the crisis continued, Moody spent sleepless nights on a cot in her office. The Soviets sailed for Cuba with nukes. The US installed a naval blockade. Moody used a new technology called teletype to pass the most current, relevant, top secret information from her team to the powers that be. With ships facing off and active war as close as it could be, Kennedy struck a deal with the Soviet’s leader Khrushchev. He would remove weapons from Turkey so long as the Soviets would not bring their weapons to Cuba. Major crisis averted.
Moody received the Federal Woman’s Award, established to honor “leadership, judgment, integrity, and dedication” among female government employees. Despite being the brains behind the most dangerous moment in human history when she was asked about her past by those outside the intelligence community, Moody would humbly say, “Oh, I’ve done lots of interesting things for a country girl from North Carolina.”
But being a woman at the National Security Agency wasn’t all awards and saving the day. Female leaders were often alone in a world of men and subject to sexual harassment or worse by their male colleagues. To make matters worse, women typically had few options for complaint and often felt they couldn’t even have each others’ backs. Even Juanita Moody was frequently harassed, overlooked for promotion, and once spoon fed at a party as a joke.
The report thankfully pushed the government to investigate. They flew U2 planes over Cuba and saw nuclear launch sites! Cuba was not a nuclear country, so where were the nukes coming from? If Cuba actually had nukes… they could hit every major city in the continental US.
As the crisis continued, Moody spent sleepless nights on a cot in her office. The Soviets sailed for Cuba with nukes. The US installed a naval blockade. Moody used a new technology called teletype to pass the most current, relevant, top secret information from her team to the powers that be. With ships facing off and active war as close as it could be, Kennedy struck a deal with the Soviet’s leader Khrushchev. He would remove weapons from Turkey so long as the Soviets would not bring their weapons to Cuba. Major crisis averted.
Moody received the Federal Woman’s Award, established to honor “leadership, judgment, integrity, and dedication” among female government employees. Despite being the brains behind the most dangerous moment in human history when she was asked about her past by those outside the intelligence community, Moody would humbly say, “Oh, I’ve done lots of interesting things for a country girl from North Carolina.”
But being a woman at the National Security Agency wasn’t all awards and saving the day. Female leaders were often alone in a world of men and subject to sexual harassment or worse by their male colleagues. To make matters worse, women typically had few options for complaint and often felt they couldn’t even have each others’ backs. Even Juanita Moody was frequently harassed, overlooked for promotion, and once spoon fed at a party as a joke.
Women Strike for Peace, Wikimedia Commons
The Cuban Missile Crisis was terrifying to live through. It led many people to join the growing peace movement opposed to nuclear proliferation– after all, Earth could not survive a hot conflict between the US and USSR. Claudia Jones, became a leader in the peace movement. She was an immigrant communist herself and an outspoken advocate for peace. She believed that war and nuclear weapons were capitalist tools to limit freedom struggles, contain non-white populations globally, and undermine women's liberties. She argued women’s leadership was essential in the peace movement.
As actual war was becoming more of a reality around the globe, women worked tirelessly toward anti-proliferation.
In 1959, Members of the Greater St. Louis Citizens Committee for Nuclear Information, along with some schools of dentistry worked to show how radioactive fallout from nuclear testing in Nevada was entering the food and milk supply and significantly impacting children’s health. Women across the country collected and donated 320,000 baby teeth for the research. In 1963, they release the titled “Tooth Fairy” study that showed babies born after testing began were 50 times more likely to have cancer causing chemicals in their teeth.
Bella Abzug and Dagmar Wilson were founders of Women Strike for Peace, a peace activist group with the goal of stopping nations from nuclear testing to slow down the arms race.
On November 1, 1961 Women Strike for Peace got 50,000 badass women marching onto the streets. It was the largest national women’s peace protest of the 20th century!
Leading ladies, Jackie Kennedy and Nina Khrushchev both supported this work.
As actual war was becoming more of a reality around the globe, women worked tirelessly toward anti-proliferation.
In 1959, Members of the Greater St. Louis Citizens Committee for Nuclear Information, along with some schools of dentistry worked to show how radioactive fallout from nuclear testing in Nevada was entering the food and milk supply and significantly impacting children’s health. Women across the country collected and donated 320,000 baby teeth for the research. In 1963, they release the titled “Tooth Fairy” study that showed babies born after testing began were 50 times more likely to have cancer causing chemicals in their teeth.
Bella Abzug and Dagmar Wilson were founders of Women Strike for Peace, a peace activist group with the goal of stopping nations from nuclear testing to slow down the arms race.
On November 1, 1961 Women Strike for Peace got 50,000 badass women marching onto the streets. It was the largest national women’s peace protest of the 20th century!
Leading ladies, Jackie Kennedy and Nina Khrushchev both supported this work.
Coretta Scott King, The Guardian
Coretta Scott King was a delegate for Women Strike for Peace at disarmament conference, stating, “We are on the brink of destroying ourselves through nuclear warfare.” King convinced the USSR and the west into signing the Limited Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty.
This work was incredibly important to disrupting gender norms, women were pushing themselves into topics of national security policy. And on that topic there were HUGE gender divides. Only 38 percent of American women supported nuclear testing, compared to 58 percent of men.
In 1962, newspapers said, “[f]or the most part, they stress femininity rather than feminism.” Their feminine and maternal demeanor got attention and allowed them to achieve radical change. They were empowered by success of effectively working together and many became involved in the second wave feminist movement.
American involvement in the Vietnam war was complicated. Vietnam’s struggle for independence against their colonizer, France, was severely drawn out. When France withdrew from Vietnam in 1954, the US feared the spread of communism in Southeast Asia. They began low key financial and covert initiatives to defend South Vietnam from its northern communist neighbor. When one of the US’s secret missions in the Gulf of Tonkin was uncovered, the Communists attacked. In an unprecedented move, Congress approved the Tonkin Resolution, which allowed the US to begin fighting an undeclared war: a war that involved a whole lot of women on both sides of the globe.
The reasons for US involvement in Vietnam were ambiguous, even to US citizens at the time. The 1950’s and 60’s showed an interesting blend of generational differences, with many older WWII Veterans raised on the patriotic ideal that when your country called, you responded. But younger generations, mothers, and civil rights activists were challenging the norms of their parents and women were certainly in the mix.
This work was incredibly important to disrupting gender norms, women were pushing themselves into topics of national security policy. And on that topic there were HUGE gender divides. Only 38 percent of American women supported nuclear testing, compared to 58 percent of men.
In 1962, newspapers said, “[f]or the most part, they stress femininity rather than feminism.” Their feminine and maternal demeanor got attention and allowed them to achieve radical change. They were empowered by success of effectively working together and many became involved in the second wave feminist movement.
American involvement in the Vietnam war was complicated. Vietnam’s struggle for independence against their colonizer, France, was severely drawn out. When France withdrew from Vietnam in 1954, the US feared the spread of communism in Southeast Asia. They began low key financial and covert initiatives to defend South Vietnam from its northern communist neighbor. When one of the US’s secret missions in the Gulf of Tonkin was uncovered, the Communists attacked. In an unprecedented move, Congress approved the Tonkin Resolution, which allowed the US to begin fighting an undeclared war: a war that involved a whole lot of women on both sides of the globe.
The reasons for US involvement in Vietnam were ambiguous, even to US citizens at the time. The 1950’s and 60’s showed an interesting blend of generational differences, with many older WWII Veterans raised on the patriotic ideal that when your country called, you responded. But younger generations, mothers, and civil rights activists were challenging the norms of their parents and women were certainly in the mix.
Doughnut Dollies
American nurses began training South Vietnamese nurses as early as 1956. Over the course of Vietnam, five nurses died, including 52-year-old Lieutenant Colonel Annie Ruth Graham, who served as a military nurse in both World War II and Korea before Vietnam. Sharon Ann Lane of Canton, Ohio was the only nurse killed in Vietnam as a result of enemy fire. Lane was posthumously awarded the Vietnamese Gallantry Cross with Palm and the Bronze Star for Heroism.
Five Navy nurses were wounded when the Communist Viet Cong bombed an officer’s quarters in the southern capital of Saigon on Christmas Eve 1964. They were each awarded the Purple Heart and became the first female members of the U.S. Armed Forces to receive that award in the war.
Commander Elizabeth Barrett became the first female naval line officer to hold command in a combat zone in 1972.
The motivations for joining varied from military benefits to pay for nursing school to fulfilling the challenge posed by President Kennedy to “ask what you can do for your country.” Astoundingly, nurses in the military were all volunteers.
In 1962, the American Red Cross began sending volunteers to Vietnam to provide medical support and “a touch of home” to soldiers in the field. Affectionately called “Doughnut Dollies” by the troops, more than 1,200 women served on major bases and remote landing zones. They brought games, refreshments, and activities to tired soldiers who needed a break from the war. Women were sexually objectified and asked to act the “girl next door” to uplift the depleted soldiers.
Five Navy nurses were wounded when the Communist Viet Cong bombed an officer’s quarters in the southern capital of Saigon on Christmas Eve 1964. They were each awarded the Purple Heart and became the first female members of the U.S. Armed Forces to receive that award in the war.
Commander Elizabeth Barrett became the first female naval line officer to hold command in a combat zone in 1972.
The motivations for joining varied from military benefits to pay for nursing school to fulfilling the challenge posed by President Kennedy to “ask what you can do for your country.” Astoundingly, nurses in the military were all volunteers.
In 1962, the American Red Cross began sending volunteers to Vietnam to provide medical support and “a touch of home” to soldiers in the field. Affectionately called “Doughnut Dollies” by the troops, more than 1,200 women served on major bases and remote landing zones. They brought games, refreshments, and activities to tired soldiers who needed a break from the war. Women were sexually objectified and asked to act the “girl next door” to uplift the depleted soldiers.
Bob Hope with Raquel Welch, Public Domain
Women also served as members of the U.S. Air Force Nurse Corps and the Women’s Air Force (WAF) during the Vietnam conflict. Captain Mary Therese Klinker was killed in a crash in April 1975 near Saigon, 138 people were killed including many Vietnamese children and a number of female civilians working for U.S. government agencies. Captain Klinker was posthumously awarded the Airman’s Medal for Heroism and the Meritorious Service Medal.
Within the military, some women spoke out against the war, but they also articulated more general grievances, including sexual harassment and unequal treatment in all branches of the service. They criticized the pervasive sexism that regarded women as inferior soldiers and kept them in subordinate positions. Many women who voiced their concerns were subjected to surveillance, restrictions, undesirable job assignments, and excessive charges filed against them for minor infractions.
The United Service Organization provided entertainment and programs to support military morale in combat zones since 1941. The best-known provider of USO entertainment programs was Bob Hope. Starting in 1964, Hope brought his shows to Vietnam nine times. While he was the main event, Hope’s shows featured female stars who were sexualized as rewards for the brave men at arms. Hope brought those ladies, but those ladies brought hope.
On the home front, some women supported the war effort as a crusade against communism. They engaged in protests and called on the military to achieve total victory. Women in conservative organizations such as Young Americans for Freedom, along with women whose interest in the war was in bringing their loved ones home, raised their voices in support of soldiers and the politics of anti-communism.
Vietnam impacted the lives of so many Americans, but it was also a distant war. New technologies like TV helped bring the faraway conflict home to the American people. Americans on the nightly news could actually see how the conflict was impacting everyday citizens in Vietnam–especially the women.
Within the military, some women spoke out against the war, but they also articulated more general grievances, including sexual harassment and unequal treatment in all branches of the service. They criticized the pervasive sexism that regarded women as inferior soldiers and kept them in subordinate positions. Many women who voiced their concerns were subjected to surveillance, restrictions, undesirable job assignments, and excessive charges filed against them for minor infractions.
The United Service Organization provided entertainment and programs to support military morale in combat zones since 1941. The best-known provider of USO entertainment programs was Bob Hope. Starting in 1964, Hope brought his shows to Vietnam nine times. While he was the main event, Hope’s shows featured female stars who were sexualized as rewards for the brave men at arms. Hope brought those ladies, but those ladies brought hope.
On the home front, some women supported the war effort as a crusade against communism. They engaged in protests and called on the military to achieve total victory. Women in conservative organizations such as Young Americans for Freedom, along with women whose interest in the war was in bringing their loved ones home, raised their voices in support of soldiers and the politics of anti-communism.
Vietnam impacted the lives of so many Americans, but it was also a distant war. New technologies like TV helped bring the faraway conflict home to the American people. Americans on the nightly news could actually see how the conflict was impacting everyday citizens in Vietnam–especially the women.
"Napalm Girl" Phan Thi Kim Phuc, Wikimedia Commons
Diane Nash, a civilian leader in the civil rights movement, visited Vietnam in December 1966 along with 3 other American women and each brought back stories to the media describing what they saw. This was just one of many such "fact-finding" missions undertaken by US citizens early in the conflict in order to report on a war that wasn't receiving the kind of coverage they wanted.
Like WWII before it, there were many ways women proved integral to the Vietnam War. Despite the precedent set by female correspondents in prior wars, people kept trying to hold women back. Nevertheless, women reported, including Gloria Emerson for The New York Times. She received many awards and was praised for her stories.
Pictures of struggling Vietnamese people helped turn the war into one of the most controversial periods of US history. By 1972 many were turned against the war and one particularly powerful image that affected Americans was the photograph of a young Vietnamese girl running to escape napalm, the “liquid fire” that had severely burned her back. Nine years old at the time, the naked and vulnerable “Napalm Girl” symbolized the impact of American war technology on everyday Vietnamese people. This photo solidified the imbalance power dynamic between the United States and the small Southeast Asian nation, already torn by civil war. We now know that the girl in the photograph is Phan Thi Kim Phuc from Trang Bang in South Vietnam. While visuals of Vietnam were and are startling, the horrors of war could not so easily be glorified when US citizens now had evidence of so many innocent women and children suffering.
Vietnam became increasingly unpopular. Tens of thousands of Americans were being drafted and dying every month in a war few could identify a purpose for. As the Vietnam War dragged on into the late-1960s and early 70s, women, especially college women and middle-aged, middle-class white mothers, were increasingly active in the anti-war movement. Organizations such as Students for a Democratic Society, founded in 1960 and active at as many as three hundred colleges, staged campus demonstrations against military recruitment, war research, the war altogether. Their opposition stemmed from their opposition to broader Cold War logic.
Like WWII before it, there were many ways women proved integral to the Vietnam War. Despite the precedent set by female correspondents in prior wars, people kept trying to hold women back. Nevertheless, women reported, including Gloria Emerson for The New York Times. She received many awards and was praised for her stories.
Pictures of struggling Vietnamese people helped turn the war into one of the most controversial periods of US history. By 1972 many were turned against the war and one particularly powerful image that affected Americans was the photograph of a young Vietnamese girl running to escape napalm, the “liquid fire” that had severely burned her back. Nine years old at the time, the naked and vulnerable “Napalm Girl” symbolized the impact of American war technology on everyday Vietnamese people. This photo solidified the imbalance power dynamic between the United States and the small Southeast Asian nation, already torn by civil war. We now know that the girl in the photograph is Phan Thi Kim Phuc from Trang Bang in South Vietnam. While visuals of Vietnam were and are startling, the horrors of war could not so easily be glorified when US citizens now had evidence of so many innocent women and children suffering.
Vietnam became increasingly unpopular. Tens of thousands of Americans were being drafted and dying every month in a war few could identify a purpose for. As the Vietnam War dragged on into the late-1960s and early 70s, women, especially college women and middle-aged, middle-class white mothers, were increasingly active in the anti-war movement. Organizations such as Students for a Democratic Society, founded in 1960 and active at as many as three hundred colleges, staged campus demonstrations against military recruitment, war research, the war altogether. Their opposition stemmed from their opposition to broader Cold War logic.
Jane Fonda, Public Domain
By 1969, frustration with America’s continuing involvement in Vietnam led SDS to demand more direct action. Bernardine Dohrn led an SDS faction that published a manifesto entitled, “You Don’t Need a Weatherman to Know Which Way the Wind Blows” in New Left Notes. This document made the case for revolution. Dohrn was also active in the Weather Underground, a group committed to answering the violence of the war with violence here at home, including bombings at university buildings.
By 1970, Dohrn was on the FBI’s Most Wanted List, where she remained for several years. Participation in SDS and the Weather Underground inspired some women to join radical feminist groups, as they frequently felt that their voices in the radical anti-war movement were not heard or heeded.
Some celebrity women protested American involvement in the Vietnam War. The most prominent of these women were Joan Baez and Jane Fonda.
Joan Baez was vocal in the anti-draft movement. She helped promote the slogan, “Girls say yes to boys who say no.” This use of female sexuality was semi-problematic, but gave root to the feminist movement of the 1970s.
Fonda participated in a troupe of actors and musicians that performed under the name, ”Free the Army”” (more frequently, “F the Army”) that provided entertainment for soldiers in coffee houses near military bases. In May of 1970, Fonda distributed copies of a GI anti-war newspaper, “Fatigue Press,” at Ford Hood. She was arrested and barred from the base, but she spoke out against the fact that soldiers were prohibited from possessing anti-war literature.
By 1970, Dohrn was on the FBI’s Most Wanted List, where she remained for several years. Participation in SDS and the Weather Underground inspired some women to join radical feminist groups, as they frequently felt that their voices in the radical anti-war movement were not heard or heeded.
Some celebrity women protested American involvement in the Vietnam War. The most prominent of these women were Joan Baez and Jane Fonda.
Joan Baez was vocal in the anti-draft movement. She helped promote the slogan, “Girls say yes to boys who say no.” This use of female sexuality was semi-problematic, but gave root to the feminist movement of the 1970s.
Fonda participated in a troupe of actors and musicians that performed under the name, ”Free the Army”” (more frequently, “F the Army”) that provided entertainment for soldiers in coffee houses near military bases. In May of 1970, Fonda distributed copies of a GI anti-war newspaper, “Fatigue Press,” at Ford Hood. She was arrested and barred from the base, but she spoke out against the fact that soldiers were prohibited from possessing anti-war literature.
Gwen Patton, Public Domain
In 1972, Fonda traveled to North Vietnam and posed with soldiers, both men and women, on an anti-aircraft gun used against American bombing raids. She spent two weeks in the north and spoke on the Voice of Vietnam radio, imploring the United States to stop the bombing that was destroying farmland, eliminating the livelihood of local farm families. She also spoke with American prisoners of war and reported that they urged their families to vote for George McGovern in the 1972 presidential election. Upon her return, Fonda was hailed as a hero by some but also broadly accused of treason. Even now, years later, her critics decry her as “Hanoi Jane.”
Civil Rights: For women of color the war in Vietnam was difficult. Black Power groups had long adopted an anti-imperialist agenda and found that American policies had always exploited people of color globally. They had no quarrel with the indigenous people of Vietnam.
One of the most far reaching and effective black anti-war groups was the National Black Anti-War Anti-Draft Union spearheaded by Gwen Patton. She had long been involved in Civil Rights work and felt activists needed an organization that fought at the intersection of racism and imperialism.
Civil Rights: For women of color the war in Vietnam was difficult. Black Power groups had long adopted an anti-imperialist agenda and found that American policies had always exploited people of color globally. They had no quarrel with the indigenous people of Vietnam.
One of the most far reaching and effective black anti-war groups was the National Black Anti-War Anti-Draft Union spearheaded by Gwen Patton. She had long been involved in Civil Rights work and felt activists needed an organization that fought at the intersection of racism and imperialism.
Valentina Tereshkova, Wikimedia Commons
Elaine Brown, the only female chairperson for the Black Panther Party, traveled to Vietnam. Her trip helped shape the Panther position on Vietnam. She said, “we were not anti-war activists in the sense that we thought there should just be peace in Vietnam. Our position became very clear and very strong as it evolved. And that was victory for the Viet--Vietnamese, victory for the Vietcong, which was not a very popular position.”
On a broad scale, the relationship of women to the War in Vietnam reflected the relationships of all Americans to the conflict that took more than 58,000 American lives. Whether Vietnamese or American, women fought hard in Vietnam. Meanwhile, some women at home supported and others opposed the war, Some were willing to carry their convictions to radical acts. Most importantly, the actions of American women in the late 1960s and 70s paved the way for changes in society including feminist fervor that created the world we live in today.
Alright, let’s get to something a little more fun--the space race! As Soviet space exploration was far exceeding American capabilities, President Kennedy set the challenge of getting a “man” on the moon by the end of the decade. Meanwhile over in the USSR, Soviet Cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, had already become the first woman in space in 1963! Excitingly, thousands of women were still behind the space race in the US. Women computers (not female laptops, but women who computed) helped to solidify the math that made the accomplishment possible. Those women included women of color like Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson, and Dorothy Vaughan, who faced the double challenge of race and gender in a white-male dominated world. Another woman, Margaret Hamilton, led the team behind the code that took the spacecraft to the moon. Much later in life, she was awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama for her work on Apollo.
On a broad scale, the relationship of women to the War in Vietnam reflected the relationships of all Americans to the conflict that took more than 58,000 American lives. Whether Vietnamese or American, women fought hard in Vietnam. Meanwhile, some women at home supported and others opposed the war, Some were willing to carry their convictions to radical acts. Most importantly, the actions of American women in the late 1960s and 70s paved the way for changes in society including feminist fervor that created the world we live in today.
Alright, let’s get to something a little more fun--the space race! As Soviet space exploration was far exceeding American capabilities, President Kennedy set the challenge of getting a “man” on the moon by the end of the decade. Meanwhile over in the USSR, Soviet Cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, had already become the first woman in space in 1963! Excitingly, thousands of women were still behind the space race in the US. Women computers (not female laptops, but women who computed) helped to solidify the math that made the accomplishment possible. Those women included women of color like Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson, and Dorothy Vaughan, who faced the double challenge of race and gender in a white-male dominated world. Another woman, Margaret Hamilton, led the team behind the code that took the spacecraft to the moon. Much later in life, she was awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama for her work on Apollo.
Mae Jemison, Wikimedia Commons
Because of the challenge set by Kennedy, Women were nowhere near the astronaut corps and therefore NASA had to work with the pilots they had—all men. But! Desegregation laws and Title IX in the 60s and 70s finally gave women greater access to space. In 1983, Sally Ride became the first American woman in space. Ride was followed by other women, including Mae Jemison, who in 1992, became the first Black woman to go to space.
In retrospect, an irony of the Cold War is that the two feuding superpowers often proclaimed competitively to care about many social issues--including women’s rights. In reality, neither country did much for their underserved populations. The East Block championed the world’s workers while treating their own citizens like slaves. The United States campaigned for political freedoms abroad while systematically and horribly oppressing or Black and native communities within their borders.
The 1975 UN World Conference on Women in Beijing however, did result in 189 countries unanimously adopting an agenda for women’s empowerment and was considered the key global policy document on gender equality. Today global women’s rights is considered the greatest human rights issue of our time.
By the end of this era, so much remained in question. How would women domestically use this international dialog to demand better rights domestically? Would the equal pay found in the armed forces spread to other parts of the economy? Can you imagine if it were a literal iron curtain? How heavy!
In retrospect, an irony of the Cold War is that the two feuding superpowers often proclaimed competitively to care about many social issues--including women’s rights. In reality, neither country did much for their underserved populations. The East Block championed the world’s workers while treating their own citizens like slaves. The United States campaigned for political freedoms abroad while systematically and horribly oppressing or Black and native communities within their borders.
The 1975 UN World Conference on Women in Beijing however, did result in 189 countries unanimously adopting an agenda for women’s empowerment and was considered the key global policy document on gender equality. Today global women’s rights is considered the greatest human rights issue of our time.
By the end of this era, so much remained in question. How would women domestically use this international dialog to demand better rights domestically? Would the equal pay found in the armed forces spread to other parts of the economy? Can you imagine if it were a literal iron curtain? How heavy!
Draw your own conclusions
Women in WWII, Library of Congress
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Post war, how did military leaders try to recruit women into national defense?
In this inquiry by Dr. Tanya Roth, students explore recruitment posters from the decades following WWII to see what strategies worked to recruit women into war jobs. 
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Vietnam Protests, Library of Congress
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Were communists more open to women's equality?
During the Cold War, women's rights became an odd talking point where countries tried to appear more feminist than one another. But were communists actually more progressive than in the west?
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Eleanor Roosevelt, Library of Congress
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Did the Cold War improve women's rights around the world?
With all the focus on women's rights on both sides of the Iron Curtain, did women's lived experiences actually improve. Sort of.
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Women in the Vietnam War, Library of Congress
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Did American women support or oppose the Vietnam War?
Women are not a monolithic group, this inquiry explores the diversity of women's support for Vietnam.
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Napalm Girl, Library of Congress
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How did the Vietnam War impact Vietnamese women?
Vietnamese women faced complicated alliances, the horrors of living in a war-torn country, and the loss of countless countrymen. In this inquiry, students hear from the voices of Vietnamese women to more deeply understand the conflict.
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Lesson Plans from Other Organizations
- The National Women's History Museum has lesson plans on women's history.
- The Guilder Lehrman Institute for American History has lesson plans on women's history.
- The NY Historical Society has articles and classroom activities for teaching women's history.
- Unladylike 2020, in partnership with PBS, has primary sources to explore with students and outstanding videos on women from the Progressive era.
- The Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media has produced recommendations for teaching women's history with primary sources and provided a collection of sources for world history. Check them out!
- The Stanford History Education Group has a number of lesson plans about women in US History.
Period Specific Lesson Plans from Other Organizations
- Women in the 1950s:
- Stanford History Education Group: The happy housewife is a common image of the 1950s. The lives of most women at this time, however, did not resemble this image because of economic and racial barriers. For those who were housewives, was this ideal a fulfilling reality? In this lesson plan, students consider economic and social conditions in the 1950s and question the happy housewife stereotype.
- Gilder Lehrman: This lesson explores the Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan and asks What roles were women expected to play during the 1950s?
- Unladylike: Learn how Louise Arner Boyd defied expectations and gender roles to become a world famous Arctic explorer in this video from Unladylike2020. Boyd mapped unexplored regions of Greenland, studied and photographed topography, sea ice, glacial features, land formations and ocean depths, and made dozens of botanical discoveries. One of her innovations was the use of a heavy aerial mapping camera to document the glacial landscape at ground level, which served as the basis for new and more detailed maps of the region. Her photographs of glaciers provide critical information to climate change researchers today. Using video, discussion questions, vocabulary, and classroom activities, students learn about Boyd's contributions to science, geography, and our collective imagination about exploring new worlds.
- Eleanor Roosevelt:
- Gilder Lehrman: Students will be asked to read and analyze primary and secondary sources about Eleanor Roosevelt and the work she did to support social justice issues both in the United States and around the world. They will look at the role of first lady and see how Mrs. Roosevelt expanded that role to influence the political, social, and economic issues of the twentieth century. Students will increase their literacy skills as outlined in the Common Core Standards as they explore the social justice actions taken by Eleanor Roosevelt, which at times changed the course of world events.
- Edcitement: This lesson asks students to explore the various roles that Eleanor Roosevelt took on, among them: First Lady, political activist for civil rights, newspaper columnist and author, and representative to the United Nations. Students will read and analyze materials written by and about Eleanor Roosevelt to understand the changing roles of women in politics. They will look at Eleanor Roosevelt's role during and after the New Deal as well as examine the lives and works of influential women who were part of her political network. They will also examine the contributions of women in Roosevelt's network who played critical roles in shaping and administering New Deal policies.
- National Womens History Museum: The purpose of this lesson is to learn about Eleanor Roosevelt as an agent of social change as the First Lady of the United States and later as a representative to the United Nations. Moreover, students will learn how Mrs. Roosevelt used her position as the First Lady to become a champion of human rights which extended after her time in the White House. Students will read primary sources to better understand the legacy of Mrs. Roosevelt.
Remedial Herstory Editors. "22. WOMEN AND THE COLD WAR." The Remedial Herstory Project. November 20, 2022. www.remedialherstory.com.
Primary AUTHOR: |
Dr. Barbara Tischler and Kelsie Brook Eckert
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Primary ReviewerS: |
Dr. Jessica Frazier and Dr. Tanya Roth
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Consulting TeamKelsie Brook Eckert, Project Director
Coordinator of Social Studies Education at Plymouth State University Dr. Barbara Tischler, Consultant Professor of History Hunter College and Columbia University Dr. Alicia Gutierrez-Romine, Consultant Assistant Professor of History at La Sierra University Jacqui Nelson, Consultant Teaching Lecturer of Military History at Plymouth State University Dr. Deanna Beachley Professor of History and Women's Studies at College of Southern Nevada |
EditorsReviewersColonial
Dr. Margaret Huettl Hannah Dutton Dr. John Krueckeberg 19th Century Dr. Rebecca Noel Michelle Stonis, MA Annabelle L. Blevins Pifer, MA Cony Marquez, PhD Candidate 20th Century Dr. Tanya Roth Dr. Jessica Frazier Mary Bezbatchenko, MA |
Survey's on U.S. Women's History
Berry and Gross tell a survey of black women in the United States.
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Susan Ware tells a short introduction to women's history in the United States.
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Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz tells a survey of indigenous people in the United States.
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Jill Lepore tells a survey of the United States.
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Gail Collins tells a survey of Women in the United States.
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Daina Ramey Berry and Leslie M. Harris place sexuality at the center of slavery studies, spanning early colonialism through the civil war.
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In From Back Alley to the Border, Alicia Gutierrez-Romine examines the history of criminal abortion in California.
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Jan Manion tells the history of women in male clothing who married other women between the Colonial Era and WWI.
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Native American Cultures
Stockel interviews Apache women and stories are told of women warrior ancestors.
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A collection of essays examining power and gender status in native cultures.
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Dive into the history of Cherokee women, and their long standing traditions.
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A collection of historical and contemporary women of Indigenous heritage who have contributed to the survival and success of their families, communities--and the United States of America.
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Colonial Era 1600-1775
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By examining the lives of six specific women in the Salem Witch Trials, Marilynne Roach shows readers what it was like to be present throughout this horrific time and how it was impossible to live through it unchanged. Roach believes that the individuals involved are too often reduced to stock characters and stereotypes when accuracy is sacrificed to indignation.
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In The Jamestown Bride, Jennifer Potter recounts the lives of the women in Jamestown, but without the resource of letters or journals she turns to the Virginia Company's merchant lists -- which were used as a kind of sales catalog for prospective husbands -- as well as censuses, court records, the minutes of Virginia's General Assemblies, letters to England from their male counterparts, and other such accounts of the everyday life of the early colonists.
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Kathleen Brown examines the origins of racism and slavery in British North America from the perspective of gender. Both a basic social relationship and a model for other social hierarchies, gender helped determine the construction of racial categories and the institution of slavery in Virginia.
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Carol Berkin's multicultural history reconstructs the lives of American women in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries-women from European, African, and Native backgrounds-and examines their varied roles as wives, mothers, household managers, laborers, rebels, and, ultimately, critical forces in shaping the new nation's culture and history.
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Revolutionary Period 1763-1783
Women of all classes and races were not only supporters and opponents of the American Revolution, they actively promoted, engaged, wrote, fought, and were deeply impacted by the outcome of the American Revolution. There are a lot of perspectives to consider, and we can only brush the surface.
Liberty's Daughters is widely considered a landmark book on the history of American women and on the Revolution itself. Norton brilliantly portrays a dramatic transformation of women's private lives in the wake of the Revolution. This fascinating human story includes lively anecdotes and revealing details from the personal papers of 450 eighteenth-century families.
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Holton describes the origins and crucial battles of the Revolution from Lexington and Concord to the British surrender at Yorktown, always focusing on marginalized Americans—enslaved Africans and African Americans, Native Americans, women, and dissenters—and on overlooked factors such as weather, North America’s unique geography, chance, misperception, attempts to manipulate public opinion, and (most of all) disease.
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They baked New England's Thanksgiving pies, preached their faith to crowds of worshippers, spied for the patriots during the Revolution, wrote that human bondage was a sin, and demanded reparations for slavery. Black women in colonial and revolutionary New England sought not only legal emancipation from slavery but defined freedom more broadly to include spiritual, familial, and economic dimensions.
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The American Revolution was a home-front war that brought scarcity, bloodshed, and danger into the life of every American. In this book, Carol Berkin shows us how women played a vital role throughout the conflict. This incisive and comprehensive history illuminates a fascinating and unknown side of the struggle for American independence.
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Mercy Otis Warren’s book is one of the earliest histories of the American Revolution, and the first to be written by a woman. It charts the progress of the entire revolution, from the imposition of the Stamp Act in 1765 through to ratification of the Constitution in 1787.This book provides brilliant insight into the history of the American Revolution from the perspective of a contemporary who was able to talk to the key figures involved. This book should be essential reading for anyone interested in the Revolutionary period and how the United States was founded.
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Early Republic 1783-1815
Following the American Revolution, US culture morphed and shifted. Women in this new republic found new roles and expectations as mothers: for to give power to the masses in a democracy, meant men needed to be educated, and their mothers needed to do it. The ideal of a Republican Mother emerged and the dynamic women of the colonial and revolutionary eras became a thing of the past.
"A New England Girlhood" is the autobiography of poet Lucy Larcom. Arriving in Lowell, Massachusetts, in the 1830s after the death of her shipmaster father, eleven-year-old Lucy Larcom went to work in a textile mill to help her family make ends meet. Originally published in 1889, her engaging autobiography offers glimpses of the early years of the American factory system as well as of the social influences on her development.
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In 1762, John Adams penned a flirtatious note to “Miss Adorable,” the 17-year-old Abigail Smith. In 1801, Abigail wrote to wish her husband John a safe journey as he headed home to Quincy after serving as president of the nation he helped create. The letters that span these nearly forty years form the most significant correspondence―and reveal one of the most intriguing and inspiring partnerships―in American history.
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In Mere Equals, Lucia McMahon narrates a story about how a generation of young women who enjoyed access to new educational opportunities made sense of their individual and social identities in an American nation marked by stark political inequality between the sexes.
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Antebellum 1815-1861
The Antebellum Period is full of historical events and movements. From the rise of the abolitionist movement, the Mexican-American War, and the Trail of Tears.
In Patriots, Prostitutes, and Spies, John M. Belohlavek tells the story of women on both sides of the Mexican-American War (1846-48) as they were propelled by the bloody conflict to adopt new roles and expand traditional ones.
American women "back home" functioned as anti-war activists, pro-war supporters, and pioneering female journalists. Others moved west and established their own reputations for courage and determination in dusty border towns or bordellos. |
Bridging women's history, the history of the South, and African American history, this book makes a bold argument about the role of white women in American slavery. Historian Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers draws on a variety of sources to show that slave‑owning women were sophisticated economic actors who directly engaged in and benefited from the South's slave market.
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This book traces the lived experiences of women lawbreakers in the state of Pennsylvania from 1820 to 1860 through the records of more than six thousand criminal court cases. By following these women from the perpetration of their crimes through the state’s efforts to punish and reform them, Erica Rhodes Hayden places them at the center of their own stories.
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The brave pioneers who made a life on the frontier were not only male—and they were not only white. The story of African-American women in the Old West is one that has largely gone untold until now. The stories of ten African-American women are reconstructed from historic documents found in century-old archives. Some of these women slaves, some were free, and some were born into slavery and found freedom in the old west.
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Civil War & Reconstruction 1861-1877
The role of women throughout the American Civil War was diverse and widespread. No matter whether one was black or white, southern or northern, women were vital in the war efforts. Some were soldiers, nurses, or took control over their farms and families stations that the men usually would.
Through richly detailed letters from the time and exhaustive research, Wickenden traces the second American revolution these women fought to bring about, the toll it took on their families, and its lasting effects on the country. Riveting and profoundly relevant to our own time, The Agitators brings a vibrant, original voice to this transformative period in our history.
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This lively and authoritative book opens a hitherto neglected chapter of Civil War history, telling the stories of hundreds of women who adopted male disguise and fought as soldiers. It explores their reasons for enlisting; their experiences in combat, and the way they were seen by their fellow soldiers and the American public.
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Historians of the Civil War often speak of "wars within a war"—the military fight, wartime struggles on the home front, and the political and moral battle to preserve the Union and end slavery. In this broadly conceived book, Thavolia Glymph provides a comprehensive new history of women's roles and lives in the Civil War—North and South, white and black, slave and free—showing how women were essentially and fully engaged in all three arenas.
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When Confederate men marched off to battle, southern women struggled with the new responsibilities of directing farms and plantations, providing for families, and supervising increasingly restive slaves. Drew Faust offers a compelling picture of the more than half-million women who belonged to the slaveholding families of the Confederacy during this period of acute crisis, when every part of these women's lives became vexed and uncertain.
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Freedom's Women examines African American women's experiences during the Civil War and early Reconstruction years in Mississippi. Exploring issues of family and work, the author shows how African American women's attempts to achieve more control over their lives shaped their attitudes toward work, marriage, family, and community.
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Emilie Davis was a free African American woman who lived in Philadelphia during the Civil War. She lived an average life in her day, but what sets her apart is that she kept a diary. Her daily entries from 1863 to 1865 touch on the momentous and the mundane: she discusses her own and her community’s reactions to events of the war, such as the Battle of Gettysburg, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the assassination of President Lincoln, as well as the minutiae of social life in Philadelphia’s black community.
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Karen Abbott illuminates one of the most fascinating yet little known aspects of the Civil War: the stories of four courageous women—a socialite, a farmgirl, an abolitionist, and a widow—who were spies. Using a wealth of primary source material and interviews with the spies’ descendants, Abbott seamlessly weaves the adventures of these four heroines throughout the tumultuous years of the war.
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Women in the Reconstruction Era, which followed the American Civil War, faced many new challenges. Freedwomen struggled to find their place in society due to separated families, mistreatment from former masters, racism, and no substantial help. Some White Northern women helped with the Freedman's Bureau and fought to help African American's where they could. Whereas, White Southern women worked towards honoring their dead and mythologizing the Confederacy.
This book examines the problems that Southern women faced during the Reconstruction Era, in Part I as mothers, wives, daughters or sisters of men burdened with financial difficulties and the radical Republican regime, and in Part II with specific illustrations of their tribulations through the letters and diaries of five different women.
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In this first critical study of female abolitionists and feminists in the freedmen's aid movement, Carol Faulkner describes these women's radical view of former slaves and the nation's responsibility to them. Moving beyond the image of the Yankee schoolmarm, Women's Radical Reconstruction demonstrates fully the complex and dynamic part played by Northern women in the design, implementation, and administration of Reconstruction policy.
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The advocates of woman suffrage and black suffrage came to a bitter falling-out in the midst of Reconstruction, when Elizabeth Cady Stanton opposed the 15th Amendment because it granted the vote to black men but not to women. How did these two causes, so long allied, come to this? Based on extensive research, Fighting Chance is a major contribution to women's history and to 19th-century political history--a story of how idealists descended to racist betrayal and desperate failure.
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The Wild West 1876-1897
On May 30, 1899, history was made when Pearl Hart, disguised as a man, held up a stagecoach in Arizona and robbed the passengers at gunpoint. A manhunt ensued as word of her heist spread, and Pearl Hart went on to become a media sensation and the most notorious female outlaw on the Western frontier.
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Hard-drinking, hard-living poker players and prostitutes of the new boom towns; wives and mothers traveling two and a half thousand miles across the prairies in covered-wagon convoys, some of them so poor they walked the entire route.
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Born a slave in eastern Tennessee, Sarah Blair Bickford (1852–1931) made her way while still a teenager to Montana Territory, where she settled in the mining boomtown of Virginia City. Race and the Wild West is the first full-length biography of this remarkable woman, whose life story affords new insight into race and belonging in the American West around the turn of the twentieth century.
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In Women of the Northern Plains, Barbara Handy-Marchello tells the stories of the unsung heroes of North Dakota's settlement era: the farm women. Enlivened by interviews with pioneer families as well as diaries, memoirs, and other primary sources, Women of the Northern Plains uncovers the significant and changing roles of Dakota farm women who were true partners to their husbands, their efforts marking the difference between success and failure for their families.
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Soiled Doves tells the story of the grey world of prostitution and the women who participated in the oldest profession. Colorful, if not socially acceptable, these ladies of easy virtue were a definite part of the early West--wearing ruffled petticoats with fancy bows, they were glamorous and plain, good and ad and many were as wild as the land they came to tame.
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Daughters of Joy will prove to be a gold mine of information, since the author's massive research makes the book a primary source as well as a thoughtful study of soiled doves on the frontier.....Butler has portrayed the stark realities of prostitution in the American West With sensitivity and insight.
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The Progressive Era 1897-1920
Following the Civil War, Americans were still divided on many many socio-political topics--including universal suffrage. Although female suffragist fought tooth and nail for the right other women fought just as hard against it. Women of all backgrounds played important roles on both sides of the journey to suffrage.
Women of color, especially African American women, were fighting for their right to vote and to be treated as full, equal citizens of the United States. Their battlefront wasn't just about gender. African American women had to deal with white abolitionist-suffragists who drew the line at sharing power with their black sisters. They had to overcome deep, exclusionary racial prejudices that were rife in the American suffrage movement. And they had to maintain their dignity--and safety--in a society that tried to keep them in its bottom ranks.
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Woodrow Wilson lands in Washington, DC, in March of 1913, a day before he is set to take the presidential oath of office. He is surprised by the modest turnout. The crowds and reporters are blocks away from Union Station, watching a parade of eight thousand suffragists on Pennsylvania Avenue in a first-of-its-kind protest organized by a twenty-five-year-old activist named Alice Paul. The next day, The New York Times calls the procession “one of the most impressively beautiful spectacles ever staged in this country.”
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Comprised of historical texts spanning two centuries, The Women's Suffrage Movement is a comprehensive and singular volume with a distinctive focus on incorporating race, class, and gender, and illuminating minority voices. At a time of enormous political and social upheaval, there could be no more important book than one that recognizes a group of exemplary women--in their own words--as they paved the way for future generations.
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Ever wonder what our foremothers were doing while our forefathers were making recorded history? And what did these women do to claim their social and political power to change their circumstances? We Demand the Right to Vote: The Journey to the 19th Amendment introduces readers to American women's first civil rights movement known as "Women's Suffrage"--women's 72-year struggle for social and political equality that culminated in their winning the right to vote via the 19th Amendment.
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Early in the twentieth century, maternal and child welfare evolved from a private family responsibility into a matter of national policy. Molly Ladd-Taylor explores both the private and public aspects of child-rearing, using the relationship between them to cast new light on the histories of motherhood, the welfare state, and women's activism in the United States.
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During the Progessive Era, a period of unprecedented ingenuity, women evangelists built the old time religion with brick and mortar, uniforms and automobiles, fresh converts and devoted protégés. Across America, entrepreneurial women founded churches, denominations, religious training schools, rescue homes, rescue missions, and evangelistic organizations.
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World War I 1914-1918
The significant roles women played during World War I implored Americans to take a hard look at gender equality. The contributions and sacrifices made by women during this time ignited the demand for social change, which ultimately led to the ratification of the 19th Amendment.
Into the Breach uses excerpts from diaries, memoirs, letters, and newspaper accounts to depict the experiences of wartime nurses, entertainers, canteen workers, interpreters, and journalists
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The Curies’ newly discovered element of radium makes gleaming headlines across the nation as the fresh face of beauty, and wonder drug of the medical community. From body lotion to tonic water, the popular new element shines bright in the otherwise dark years of the First World War.
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In 1916, at the height of World War I, brilliant Shakespeare expert Elizebeth Smith went to work for an eccentric tycoon on his estate outside Chicago. The tycoon had close ties to the U.S. government, and he soon asked Elizebeth to apply her language skills to an exciting new venture: code-breaking. Fagone unveils America’s code-breaking history through the prism of Smith’s life, bringing into focus the unforgettable events and colorful personalities that would help shape modern intelligence.
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When World War I began, war reporting was a thoroughly masculine bastion of journalism. But that did not stop dozens of women reporters from stepping into the breach, defying gender norms and official restrictions to establish roles for themselves—and to write new kinds of narratives about women and war.
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Roaring 20's & The Great Depression 1920-1939
Macy offers a rare and fascinating glimpse into the journey of women's rights through the lens of women in sports during the pivotal decade of the 1920s. With elegant prose, poignant wit, and fascinating primary sources, Macy explores the many hurdles presented to female athletes as they stormed the field, stepped up to bat, and won the right to compete in sports.
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By the 1920s, women were on the verge of something huge. Jazz, racy fashions, eyebrowraising new attitudes about art and sex—all of this pointed to a sleek, modern world, one that could shake off the grimness of the Great War and stride into the future in one deft, stylized gesture.
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The passage of the 18th Amendment (banning the sale of alcohol) and the 19th (women's suffrage) in the same year is no coincidence. These two Constitutional Amendments enabled women to redefine themselves and their place in society in a way historians have neglected to explore. Liberated Spirits describes how the fight both to pass and later to repeal Prohibition was driven by women, as exemplified by two remarkable women in particular.
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In this first study of Black radicalism in midwestern cities before the civil rights movement, Melissa Ford connects the activism of Black women who championed justice during the Great Depression to those involved in the Ferguson Uprising and the Black Lives Matter movement.
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Daughters of the Great Depression is a reinterpretation of more than fifty well-known and rediscovered works of Depression-era fiction that illuminate one of the decade's central conflicts: whether to include women in the hard-pressed workforce or relegate them to a literal or figurative home sphere.
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Making Choices, Making Do is a comparative study of Black and white working-class women’s survival strategies during the Great Depression. Based on analysis of employment histories and Depression-era interviews of 1,340 women in Chicago, Cleveland, Philadelphia, and South Bend and letters from domestic workers.
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World War II 1939-1945
Wartime is often regarded as the province of men. But contrary to popular belief, women don’t disappear during war. During World War II, American women’s individual and collective contributions to the war effort, at home and at the front, proved essential to victory.
Despite the participation of African American women in all aspects of home-front activity during World War II, advertisements, recruitment posters, and newsreels portrayed largely white women as army nurses, defense plant workers, concerned mothers, and steadfast wives. This sea of white faces left for posterity images such as Rosie the Riveter, obscuring the contributions that African American women made to the war effort. In Bitter Fruit, Maureen Honey corrects this distorted picture of women's roles in World War II by collecting photos, essays, fiction, and poetry by and about black women from the four leading African American periodicals of the war period: Negro Digest, The Crisis, Opportunity, and Negro Story.
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At the height of World War II, the US Army Airforce faced a desperate need for skilled pilots—but only men were allowed in military airplanes, even if the expert pilots who were training them to fly were women. Through grit and pure determination, 1,100 of these female pilots—who had to prove their worth time and time again—were finally allowed to ferry planes from factories to bases, to tow targets for live ammunition artillery training, to test repaired planes and new equipment, and more.
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In 1942, the Gestapo sent out an urgent transmission: "She is the most dangerous of all Allied spies. We must find and destroy her." The target in their sights was Virginia Hall, a Baltimore socialite who talked her way into Special Operations Executive, the spy organization dubbed Winston Churchill's "Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare." She became the first Allied woman deployed behind enemy lines and--despite her prosthetic leg--helped to light the flame of the French Resistance, revolutionizing secret warfare as we know it.
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Recruited by the U.S. Army and Navy from small towns and elite colleges, more than ten thousand women served as codebreakers during World War II. While their brothers and boyfriends took up arms, these women moved to Washington and learned the meticulous work of code-breaking. Their efforts shortened the war, saved countless lives, and gave them access to careers previously denied to them.
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Historians identify Mildred Harnack as the only American in the leadership of the German resistance, yet her remarkable story has remained almost unknown until now. Born and raised in Milwaukee, Mildred Harnack was twenty-six when she enrolled in a PhD program in Germany and witnessed the meteoric rise of the Nazi party. In 1932, she began holding secret meetings in her apartment—a small band of political activists that by 1940 had grown into the largest underground resistance group in Berlin.
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With the threat of the Third Reich looming, Eleanor Roosevelt employs the history of human rights to establish the idea that at the core of democracy is a spiritual responsibility to other citizens. Roosevelt then calls on all Americans, especially the youth, to prioritize the well-being of others and have faith that their fellow citizens will protect them in return. She defines this trust between people as a trait of true democracy.
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Post War America 1946-1960
Using evidence from primary sources as well as over seven years of interviews with sixteen women, Yamaguchi provides a feminist, intergenerational, and historical study of how unequal the justice system has been to this group of people and how it has affected their quality of life, sense of identity, and relationship with future generations.
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In the popular stereotype of post-World War II America, women abandoned their wartime jobs and contentedly retreated to the home. These mythical women were like the 1950s TV character June Cleaver, white, middle-class, suburban housewives. Not June Cleaver unveils the diversity of postwar women, showing how far women departed form this one-dimensional image.
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Homeward Bound tells the story of domestic containment - how it emerged, how it affected the lives of those who tried to conform to it, and how it unraveled in the wake of the Vietnam era's assault on Cold War culture, when unwed mothers, feminists, and "secular humanists" became the new "enemy."
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The Montgomery Bus Boycott, which ignited the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, has always been vitally important in southern and black history. With the publication of this book, the boycott becomes a milestone in the history of American women as well.
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Reducing Bodies: Mass Culture and the Female Figure in Postwar America explores the ways in which women in the years following World War II refashioned their bodies―through reducing diets, exercise, and plastic surgery―and asks what insights these changing beauty standards can offer into gender dynamics in postwar America.
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Civil Rights Movement and Social Reform 1960-1980
The bold actions and sacrifices made by many women involved with the Civil Right Movement are frequently overlooked or overshadowed by the contributions of their male counterparts. The pivotal impacts made by notable women like Rosa Parks and JoAnn Robinson were credited to the achievements by figures such as Martin Luther King Jr. Female civil rights activists were subjected to unlawful detainment, assault, torcher, and murder. These heroic women, and their stories, generated momentum for the cause, often with little to no acknowledgement.
Berdis Baldwin, Alberta King, and Louise Little were all born at the beginning of the 20th century and forced to contend with the prejudices of Jim Crow as Black women. These women used their strength and motherhood to push their children toward greatness, all with a conviction that every human being deserves dignity and respect despite the rampant discrimination they faced.
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In this inspiring collection of true stories, thirty African-Americans who were children or teenagers in the 1950s and 1960s talk about what it was like for them to fight segregation in the South-to sit in an all-white restaurant and demand to be served, to refuse to give up a seat at the front of the bus, to be among the first to integrate the public schools, and to face violence, arrest, and even death for the cause of freedom.
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In this groundbreaking and important book, Danielle McGuire writes about the rape in 1944 of a twenty-four-year-old mother and sharecropper, Recy Taylor, who strolled toward home after an evening of singing and praying at the Rock Hill Holiness Church in Abbeville, Alabama. Seven white men, armed with knives and shotguns, ordered the young woman into their green Chevrolet, raped her, and left her for dead. The president of the local NAACP branch office sent his best investigator and organizer—Rosa Parks—to Abbeville. In taking on this case, Parks launched a movement that exposed a ritualized history of sexual assault against Black women and added fire to the growing call for change.
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Organized around a rich blend of oral histories, Going South follows a group of Jewish women―come of age in the shadow of the Holocaust and deeply committed to social justice―who put their bodies and lives on the line to fight racism. Actively rejecting the post-war idyll of suburban, Jewish, middle-class life, these women were deeply influenced by Jewish notions of morality and social justice. Many thus perceived the call of the movement as positively irresistible.
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In Lighting the Fires of Freedom Janet Dewart Bell shines a light on women's all-too-often overlooked achievements in the Movement. Through wide-ranging conversations with nine women, several now in their nineties with decades of untold stories, we hear what ignited and fueled their activism, as Bell vividly captures their inspiring voices. Lighting the Fires of Freedom offers these deeply personal and intimate accounts of extraordinary struggles for justice that resulted in profound social change, stories that are vital and relevant today.
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Unbought and Unbossed is Shirley Chisholm's account of her remarkable rise from young girl in Brooklyn to America's first African-American Congresswoman. She shares how she took on an entrenched system, gave a public voice to millions, and sets the stage for her trailblazing bid to be the first woman and first African-American President of the United States.
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On June 28, 1969, the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York's Greenwich Village, was raided by police. But instead of responding with the typical compliance the NYPD expected, patrons and a growing crowd decided to fight back. The five days of rioting that ensued changed forever the face of gay and lesbian life.
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Before John Glenn orbited the earth, or Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, a group of dedicated female mathematicians known as “human computers” used pencils, slide rules and adding machines to calculate the numbers that would launch rockets, and astronauts, into space.
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Norman tells the dramatic story of fifty women—members of the Army, Navy, and Air Force Nurse Corps—who went to war, working in military hospitals, aboard ships, and with air evacuation squadrons during the Vietnam War. Here, in a moving narrative, the women talk about why they went to war, the experiences they had while they were there, and how war affected them physically, emotionally, and spiritually.
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cold war 1947-1991
While Rosie the Riveter had fewer paid employment options after being told to cede her job to returning World War II veterans, her sisters and daughters found new work opportunities in national defense. The 1948 Women's Armed Services Integration Act created permanent military positions for women with the promise of equal pay. Her Cold War follows the experiences of women in the military from the passage of the Act to the early 1980s.
In this exciting work of historical recovery, Dayo F. Gore unearths and examines a dynamic, extended network of black radical women during the early Cold War, including established Communist Party activists such as Claudia Jones, artists and writers such as Beulah Richardson, and lesser known organizers such as Vicki Garvin and Thelma Dale. These women were part of a black left that laid much of the groundwork for both the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and later strains of black radicalism. Radicalism at the Crossroads offers a sustained and in-depth analysis of the political thought and activism of black women radicals during the Cold War period and adds a new dimension to our understanding of this tumultuous time in United States history.
In the early twentieth century, homophobic discourse had focused on gender identity: the lesbian was a masculine woman. During the Cold War, the lesbian was reconceived as a woman attracted to other women. Corber develops his argument by analyzing representations of lesbianism in Hollywood movies of the 1950s and 1960s, and in the careers of some of the era’s biggest female stars. He examines treatments of the femme in All About Eve, The Children’s Hour, and Marnie, and he explores the impact of Cold War homophobia on the careers of Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, and Doris Day.
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Cold War Women examines how the internationalist ambitions of American women’s organizations in the years 1945 to 1960 gave way to other concerns. In the emerging Cold War, American women abandoned their relationship with their foreign sisters in favor of solidarity with their national brothers. Far from being advocates of internationalism, American women had become agents for Americanism. Confronting a propaganda campaign from Soviet-backed women’s organizations, American women tried to export a vision of the American way of life and of women’s proper place within it.
This book examines the role of the Women's International Defense Federation (WIDF) in transnational women’s activism in the context of the Cold War, and in connection to the rights of women from Asia, Africa and Latin America.
In Where Is Juliet Stuart Poyntz?, Denise M. Lynn argues that Poyntz's sudden disappearance was the final straw for many on the American political left, who then abandoned Marxism and began to embrace anti-communism. In the years to follow, the left crafted narratives of her disappearance that became central to the Cold War. While scholars have thoroughly analyzed the influence of the political right in the anti-communism of this era, this captivating and compelling study is unique in exploring the influence of the political left.
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This study analyses how Amerika was used to appeal to Soviet women. Portrayed in the US media as "babushkas," they were considered unfeminine, overworked, and deprived of consumer goods and services by a repressive regime. Diana Cucuz provides a gendered analysis of the USIA and of Amerika, whose propaganda campaign relied heavily on postwar conservative gender norms and images of domestic contentment to convey positive messages about the American way of life in the hopes of undermining the Soviet regime. Winning Women’s Hearts and Minds sheds light on the significance of women, gender, and consumption to international politics during the Cold War.
In this innovative and engaging study, Mire Koikari recasts the US occupation of Okinawa as a startling example of Cold War cultural interaction in which women's grassroots activities involving homes and homemaking played a pivotal role in reshaping the contours of US and Japanese imperialisms. Drawing on insights from studies of gender, Asia, America and postcolonialism, Koikari analyzes how the occupation sparked domestic education movements in Okinawa, mobilizing an assortment of women - home economists, military wives, club women, university students and homemakers - from the US, Okinawa and mainland Japan
Hanoi Jane is a book about the making of Hanoi Jane by those who saw a formidable threat in the Jane Fonda who supported soldiers and veterans opposed to the war they fought, in the postcolonial struggle of the Vietnamese people to make their own future, and in the movements of women everywhere for gender equality.
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Native American women
Based on an Athabascan Indian legend passed along for many generations from mothers to daughters of the upper Yukon River Valley in Alaska, this is the suspenseful, shocking, ultimately inspirational tale of two old women abandoned by their tribe during a brutal winter famine.
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In this haunting and groundbreaking historical novel, Danielle Daniel imagines the lives of women in the Algonquin territories of the 1600s, a story inspired by her family’s ancestral link to a young girl who was murdered by French settlers.
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Daunis Fontaine must learn what it means to be a strong Anishinaabe kwe (Ojibwe woman) and how far she’ll go for her community, even if it tears apart the only world she’s ever known.
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Colonial Women
Amari's life was once perfect. Engaged to the handsomest man in her tribe, adored by her family, and fortunate enough to live in a beautiful village, it never occurred to her that it could all be taken away in an instant. But that was what happened when her village was invaded by slave traders. Her family was brutally murdered as she was dragged away to a slave ship and sent to be sold in the Carolinas. There she was bought by a plantation owner and given to his son as a "birthday present".
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A riveting historical novel about Peggy Shippen Arnold, the cunning wife of Benedict Arnold and mastermind behind America’s most infamous act of treason.
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A young Puritan woman—faithful, resourceful, but afraid of the demons that dog her soul—plots her escape from a violent marriage in this riveting and propulsive novel of historical suspense.
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Revolutionary Era Women
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Rebellious Frannie Tasker knows little about the war between England and its thirteen colonies in 1776, until a shipwreck off her home in Grand Bahama Island presents an unthinkable opportunity. The body of a young woman floating in the sea gives Frannie the chance to escape her brutal stepfather--and she takes it.
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Antebellum Women
Born on a plantation in Charles City, Virginia, Pheby Delores Brown has lived a relatively sheltered life. Shielded by her mother’s position as the estate’s medicine woman and cherished by the Master’s sister, she is set apart from the others on the plantation, belonging to neither world.
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The House Girl, the historical fiction debut by Tara Conklin, is an unforgettable story of love, history, and a search for justice, set in modern-day New York and 1852 Virginia.
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Moments after Lisbeth is born, she’s taken from her mother and handed over to an enslaved wet nurse, Mattie, a young mother separated from her own infant son in order to care for her tiny charge. Thus begins an intense relationship that will shape both of their lives for decades to come.
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The Civil War and Reconstruction
Conjure Women is a sweeping story that brings the world of the South before and after the Civil War vividly to life. Spanning eras and generations, it tells of the lives of three unforgettable women: Miss May Belle, a wise healing woman; her precocious and observant daughter Rue, who is reluctant to follow in her mother’s footsteps as a midwife; and their master’s daughter Varina.
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Set in the midst of the Civil War, The Thread Collectors follows two very different women whose paths collide unexpectedly. In New Orleans, Stella, a young Black woman, sews maps that help enslaved men escape and join the Union Army. Lily, a Jewish woman in New York City, creates a quilt for her husband, a Union soldier stationed in Louisiana. When she goes months without hearing from him, she decides to journey to Louisiana to find him.
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Josephine N. Leary is determined to build a life of her own and a future for her family. When she moves to Edenton, North Carolina, from the plantation where she was born, she is free, newly married, and ready to follow her dreams.
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The wild West and Second Industrial Revolution
The day of her wedding, 17 year old Ada’s life looks good; she loves her husband, and she loves working as an apprentice to her mother, a respected midwife. But after a year of marriage and no pregnancy, in a town where barren women are routinely hanged as witches, her survival depends on leaving behind everything she knows.
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When Kate Thompson’s father is killed by the notorious Rose Riders for a mysterious journal that reveals the secret location of a gold mine, the eighteen-year-old disguises herself as a boy and takes to the gritty plains looking for answers and justice.
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In this gripping historical, Chance exposes the horrors women faced in late 19th-century New York when they dared to show passion of any kind or repudiate society's norms.
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The Progressive Era
Since childhood, Anita Hemmings has longed to attend the country’s most exclusive school for women, Vassar College. Now, a bright, beautiful senior in the class of 1897, she is hiding a secret that would have banned her from admission: Anita is the only African-American student ever to attend Vassar. With her olive complexion and dark hair, this daughter of a janitor and descendant of slaves has successfully passed as white, but now finds herself rooming with Louise “Lottie” Taylor, the scion of one of New York’s most prominent families.
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It's 1913 and Laura Lyons lives with her husband, superintendent of the New York Public Library building, and their two children in an apartment located in the grand building on 5th Avenue. But Laura wants more—she applies to the Columbia Journalism School and her world is cracked open. She discovers a radical, all-female group where women loudly share their opinions on suffrage, birth control, and women's rights. Soon, Laura finds herself questioning her traditional role as wife and mother.
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In City of Lies, con woman Elizabeth Miles is desperately trying to escape men that are after her in 1917 Washington D.C. so she joins a suffragist parade in front of the White House only to get swept up, arrested and sent to the Occoquan, VA women’s prison with the other marchers.
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World War 1
Inspired by real women, this powerful novel tells the story of two unconventional American sisters who volunteer at the front during World War I.
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A group of young women from Smith College risk their lives in France at the height of World War I in this sweeping novel based on a true story—a skillful blend of Call the Midwife and The Alice Network—from New York Times bestselling author Lauren Willig.
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December 1917. As World War I rages in Europe, twenty-four-year-old Ruby Wagner, the jewel in a prominent Philadelphia family, prepares for her upcoming wedding to a society scion. Like her life so far, it’s all been carefully arranged. But when her beloved older brother is killed in combat, Ruby follows her heart and answers the Army Signal Corps’ call for women operators to help overseas.
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The roaring 20's and The Great Depression
In 1923, fifteen-year-old Hattie Shepherd, swept up by the tides of the Great Migration, flees Georgia and heads north. Full of hope, she settles in Philadelphia to build a better life. Instead she marries a man who will bring her nothing but disappointment, and watches helplessly as her firstborn twins are lost to an illness that a few pennies could have prevented. Hattie gives birth to nine more children, whom she raises with grit, mettle, and not an ounce of the tenderness they crave. She vows to prepare them to meet a world that will not be kind. Their lives, captured here in twelve luminous threads, tell the story of a mother’s monumental courage—and a nation's tumultuous journey.
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In 1935, Dottie Krasinsky is the epitome of the modern girl. A bookkeeper in Midtown Manhattan, Dottie steals kisses from her steady beau, meets her girlfriends for drinks, and eyes the latest fashions. Yet at heart, she is a dutiful daughter, living with her Yiddish-speaking parents on the Lower East Side. So when, after a single careless night, she finds herself in a family way by a charismatic but unsuitable man, she is desperate: unwed, unsure, and running out of options. After the birth of five children—and twenty years as a housewife—Dottie’s immigrant mother, Rose, is itching to return to the social activism she embraced as a young woman. With strikes and breadlines at home and National Socialism rising in Europe, there is much more important work to do than cooking and cleaning. So when she realizes that she, too, is pregnant, she struggles to reconcile her longings with her faith.
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Harlem, 1926. Young Black women like Louise Lloyd are ending up dead. Following a harrowing kidnapping ordeal when she was in her teens, Louise is doing everything she can to maintain a normal life. She’s succeeding, too. She spends her days working at Maggie’s Café and her nights at the Zodiac, Harlem’s hottest speakeasy. Louise’s friends, especially her girlfriend, Rosa Maria Moreno, might say she’s running from her past and the notoriety that still stalks her, but don’t tell her that.
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World War Ii
Grace Steele and Eliza Jones may be from completely different backgrounds, but when it comes to the army, specifically the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC), they are both starting from the same level. Not only will they be among the first class of female officers the army has even seen, they are also the first Black women allowed to serve.
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It's 1944, and World War II is raging across Europe and the Pacific. The war seemed far away from Margot in Iowa and Haruko in Colorado--until they were uprooted to dusty Texas, all because of the places their parents once called home: Germany and Japan.
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New York socialite Caroline Ferriday has her hands full with her post at the French consulate and a new love on the horizon. But Caroline’s world is forever changed when Hitler’s army invades Poland in September 1939—and then sets its sights on France.
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Post War America
In 1959 Virginia, the lives of two girls on opposite sides of the battle for civil rights will be changed forever. Sarah Dunbar is one of the first black students to attend the previously all-white Jefferson High School. Linda Hairston is the daughter of one of the town's most vocal opponents of school integration. Forced to work together on a school project, Sarah and Linda must confront harsh truths about race, power and how they really feel about one another.
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In the Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo we hear the wildly addictive journey of a reclusive Hollywood starlet as she reflects on her relentless rise to the top and the risks she took, the loves she lost, and the long-held secrets the public could never imagine.
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America in 1954 is not a safe place for two girls to fall in love, especially not in Chinatown. Red-Scare paranoia threatens everyone, including Chinese Americans like Lily. With deportation looming over her father—despite his hard-won citizenship—Lily and Kath risk everything to let their love see the light of day
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Civil Rights Movement
At the end of a sweltering summer shaped by the tragic assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Bobby Kennedy, race riots, political protests, and the birth of Black power, three coeds from New York City—Zelda Livingston, Veronica Cook, and Daphne Brooks—pack into Veronica’s new Ford Fairlane convertible, bound for Atlanta and their last year at Spelman College.
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It is the summer of 1964. In Tupelo, Mississippi, the town of Elvis’s birth, tensions are mounting over civil-rights demonstrations occurring ever more frequently–and violently–across the state. But in Paige Dunn’s small, ramshackle house, there are more immediate concerns. Challenged by the effects of the polio, Paige is determined to live as normal a life as possible and to raise her daughter, Diana.
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Montgomery, Alabama, 1973. Fresh out of nursing school, Civil Townsend intends to make a difference, especially in her African American community. At the Montgomery Family Planning Clinic, she hopes to help women shape their destinies, to make their own choices for their lives and bodies.
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the Cold war
The Widow Spy is the firsthand account of a true Cold War spy operation in Moscow told exclusively by the CIA case officer who lived this experience. Martha D. Peterson was one of the first women to be assigned to Moscow, a very difficult operational environment. Her story begins in Laos during the Vietnam War where she accompanied her husband, a CIA officer. She describes their life in a small city in Laos, ending with the tragic death of her husband. Then her own 30-year career begins in Moscow, where she walks the dark streets alone, placing dead-drops and escaping the relentless eye of the KGB.
Experience her arrest and detention in Lyubianka Prison, as only she can relate it. What she reveals in The Widow Spy has never been told. |
In the thick of the Cold War, a betrayal at the highest level risks the lives of two courageous female spies: MI6’s best Soviet agent and the CIA’s newest Moscow recruit. Alternating points of view keep listeners on their toes as the past catches up to the present when an unprecedented act of treachery in 1985 threatens all undercover agents operating within the Soviet Union, and both Ingrid and Anya find themselves in a race for their lives against time and the KGB.
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It is 1990 when Melvina Donleavy arrives in Soviet Belarus on her first undercover mission with the CIA, alongside three fellow agents—none of whom know she is playing two roles. To the prying eyes of the KGB, she is merely a secretary; to her CIA minders, she is the only one who can stop the flow of nuclear weapons from the crumbling Soviet Union into the Middle East.
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How to teach with Films:
Remember, teachers want the student to be the historian. What do historians do when they watch films?
- Before they watch, ask students to research the director and producers. These are the source of the information. How will their background and experience likely bias this film?
- Also, ask students to consider the context the film was created in. The film may be about history, but it was made recently. What was going on the year the film was made that could bias the film? In particular, how do you think the gains of feminism will impact the portrayal of the female characters?
- As they watch, ask students to research the historical accuracy of the film. What do online sources say about what the film gets right or wrong?
- Afterward, ask students to describe how the female characters were portrayed and what lessons they got from the film.
- Then, ask students to evaluate this film as a learning tool. Was it helpful to better understand this topic? Did the historical inaccuracies make it unhelpful? Make it clear any informed opinion is valid.
Documentaries
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Ascent of Woman: is a documentary about prehistoric and Ancient women's history across cultures.
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Witches: A Century of Murder is about the witch trials that plagued England under Kings James IV and I and Charles I.
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Taking Root is a documentary about the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize, Wangari Maathai. She was from Kenya and her work was on environmental protection.
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Feature Length Movies
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The Last Duel highlights the way that rape was handled in medieval Europe. It barely passes the Bechdel Test, with main actors being the male characters, but the whole theme of sex, sexuality, and gender dynamics cannot be ignored.
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Elizabeth tells the story of Elizabeth's Golden era.
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Mary Queen of Scots is a film about the relationship between the Protestant Queen Elizabeth I of England and her Catholic cousin Mary Queen of Scots who challenged her throne.
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Catherine the Great is about the career of Catherine of Russia and her challenges as a female leader.
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The Favorite is about the interesting palace life of Queen Anne and her closest female confidants. This film expands upon rumors of lesbianism within the court.
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The Woman King is a film about the Dahomey "Amazons," women warriors who fought European imperialism in West Africa.
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Albert Nobbs is a film about the life of a poor woman living in 19th century Ireland who cross dresses in order to improve her station.
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Victoria and Abdul is a film about the interesting relationship between Queen Victoria and Abdul Karim, an Indian man who earned her confidence.
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Suffragette tells the stories of English women who grappled with a way to have their voices heard in the early movement.
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The Danish Girl is historical fiction based losely on the life and marriage of a transgender pioneer.
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A Call to Spy is about the first British and American women spies that worked on the ground in France during WWII.
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Frida is a film about the first Mexican woman to have her work displayed at the Louvre in Paris, FR.
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Television Series
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The White Queen and the series that follow are based on a historical fiction novel about the rise of the Tudor family in England. The main characters are the women, who through marriage gain and lose the crown.
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The Serpent Queen tells the story of Queen Catherine de Medici of France and the complexities of being a queen regent.
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The Tudors tells the story of Henry VIII and each of his six wives. Remember the old school tale: divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived.
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Victoria is a TV series about the rise and career of Queen Victoria, whose reign spanned much of the 19th century.
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The Crown is a TV series that shows the rise and career of the current Queen of England, Elizabeth II. Her reign began shortly after WWII.
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Bibliography
Brown, Elaine. Louis Massiah and Terry Rockefeller, interviewers. “Interview with Elaine Brown.” Eyes on the Prize. October 14, 1988. http://digital.wustl.edu/e/eii/eiiweb/bro5427.0311.022marc_record_interviewer_process.html.
Burbank, Megan. “Women played crucial roles in the space program, yet we don't know much about them. Why?” The Seattle Times. July 10, 2019.
https://phys.org/news/2019-07-women-crucial-roles-space-dont.html#:~:text=This%20group%20included%20Mary%20Jackson,film%20of%20the%20same%20name.
Collins, Gail, America's Women: Four Hundred Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines. New York, William Morrow, 2003.
DuBois, Ellen Carol, 1947-. Through Women's Eyes : an American History with Documents. Boston :Bedford/St. Martin's, 2005.Indians Editors. “NATIVE AMERICAN WOMEN.” Indians. N.D. http://indians.org/articles/Native-american-women.html.
Farmer, Ashley. “Heed the Call!”: Black Women, Anti-imperialism, and Black Anti-War Activism.” August 3, 2016. https://www.aaihs.org/heed-the-call-black-women-anti-imperialism-and-black-anti-war-activism/.
Ghodsee, Kristen. “Women’s Rights and the Cold War: Case study of senior Communist official
Elena Lagadinova reveals unexpected aspects of superpower confrontation.” Harvard Scholar. Legacies of Communism. https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/kristenghodsee/files/vb96_lagadinova5.pdf.
Korean War Legacy Editors. “The Role of Women in the Korean War.” Korean War Legacy. N.D. https://koreanwarlegacy.org/chapters/the-role-of-women-in-the-korean-war/.
Lynn, Denise. “Women Crusade for Peace: Claudia Jones and the Cold War Peace Movement.” The Journal of Intersectionality 3, no. 1 (2019): 67–81. https://doi.org/10.13169/jinte.3.1.0067.
Martinez, Isabel. “Women have protested nuclear weapons throughout history.” Arms Control Center. March 31, 2020. https://armscontrolcenter.org/women-have-protested-nuclear-weapons-throughout-history/
Mundy Liza. 2017. Code Girls : The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers of World War Ii First ed. New York: Hachette Books.
Mundy, Liza. “The Women Code Breakers Who Unmasked Soviet Spies: At the height of the Cold War, America’s most secretive counterespionage effort set out to crack unbreakable ciphers.” Smithsonian. September 2018. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/women-code-breakers-unmasked-soviet-spies-180970034/.
Robinson, Kathy Crandall. “The Power of the Women Strike for Peace.” Arms Control Today. November, 2021. https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2021-11/features/power-women-strike-peace.
Swarthmore Editors. “Women Strike for Peace, 1961-1975.” Swarthmore. N.D. https://www.swarthmore.edu/library/peace/Exhibits/Dorothy%20Marder/MarderExhibit1A_files/MarderExhibit1A.html
UN Women. “World Conferences on Women.” UN Women. N.D. https://www.unwomen.org/en/how-we-work/intergovernmental-support/world-conferences-on-women.
Ware, Susan. American Women’s History: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.
Wittner, Lawrence. “Gender Roles and Nuclear Disarmament Activism.” Cornell University Panel for Judith Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies. September 14, 2018.) https://cornellpress.manifoldapp.org/system/resources/attachments/5/0/d/original-562070f38978c9206d2a6df5fe197cc8791dcb96.pdf.
Wolman, David. “The Once-Classified Tale of Juanita Moody.” Smithsonian Magazine. March 2021.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/juanita-moody-woman-helped-avert-nuclear-war-180976993/.
Burbank, Megan. “Women played crucial roles in the space program, yet we don't know much about them. Why?” The Seattle Times. July 10, 2019.
https://phys.org/news/2019-07-women-crucial-roles-space-dont.html#:~:text=This%20group%20included%20Mary%20Jackson,film%20of%20the%20same%20name.
Collins, Gail, America's Women: Four Hundred Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines. New York, William Morrow, 2003.
DuBois, Ellen Carol, 1947-. Through Women's Eyes : an American History with Documents. Boston :Bedford/St. Martin's, 2005.Indians Editors. “NATIVE AMERICAN WOMEN.” Indians. N.D. http://indians.org/articles/Native-american-women.html.
Farmer, Ashley. “Heed the Call!”: Black Women, Anti-imperialism, and Black Anti-War Activism.” August 3, 2016. https://www.aaihs.org/heed-the-call-black-women-anti-imperialism-and-black-anti-war-activism/.
Ghodsee, Kristen. “Women’s Rights and the Cold War: Case study of senior Communist official
Elena Lagadinova reveals unexpected aspects of superpower confrontation.” Harvard Scholar. Legacies of Communism. https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/kristenghodsee/files/vb96_lagadinova5.pdf.
Korean War Legacy Editors. “The Role of Women in the Korean War.” Korean War Legacy. N.D. https://koreanwarlegacy.org/chapters/the-role-of-women-in-the-korean-war/.
Lynn, Denise. “Women Crusade for Peace: Claudia Jones and the Cold War Peace Movement.” The Journal of Intersectionality 3, no. 1 (2019): 67–81. https://doi.org/10.13169/jinte.3.1.0067.
Martinez, Isabel. “Women have protested nuclear weapons throughout history.” Arms Control Center. March 31, 2020. https://armscontrolcenter.org/women-have-protested-nuclear-weapons-throughout-history/
Mundy Liza. 2017. Code Girls : The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers of World War Ii First ed. New York: Hachette Books.
Mundy, Liza. “The Women Code Breakers Who Unmasked Soviet Spies: At the height of the Cold War, America’s most secretive counterespionage effort set out to crack unbreakable ciphers.” Smithsonian. September 2018. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/women-code-breakers-unmasked-soviet-spies-180970034/.
Robinson, Kathy Crandall. “The Power of the Women Strike for Peace.” Arms Control Today. November, 2021. https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2021-11/features/power-women-strike-peace.
Swarthmore Editors. “Women Strike for Peace, 1961-1975.” Swarthmore. N.D. https://www.swarthmore.edu/library/peace/Exhibits/Dorothy%20Marder/MarderExhibit1A_files/MarderExhibit1A.html
UN Women. “World Conferences on Women.” UN Women. N.D. https://www.unwomen.org/en/how-we-work/intergovernmental-support/world-conferences-on-women.
Ware, Susan. American Women’s History: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.
Wittner, Lawrence. “Gender Roles and Nuclear Disarmament Activism.” Cornell University Panel for Judith Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies. September 14, 2018.) https://cornellpress.manifoldapp.org/system/resources/attachments/5/0/d/original-562070f38978c9206d2a6df5fe197cc8791dcb96.pdf.
Wolman, David. “The Once-Classified Tale of Juanita Moody.” Smithsonian Magazine. March 2021.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/juanita-moody-woman-helped-avert-nuclear-war-180976993/.
