CHECK IT OUT

With two weeks remaining in Women’s History Month, there’s still time

to go to the Newport libraries and read about female achievements often

overlooked in U.S. history.

If you think the struggle for women’s rights began in contemporary

times, you haven’t yet read “Joyous Greetings: The First International

Women’s Movement, 1830-1860.” In this introduction to modern feminism,

Bonnie Anderson reveals how women in the U.S. and abroad banded together

at the height of the Victorian era to advocate political, social and

economic equality with men.

Without e-mail, faxes and modern transportation, this was no easy

task. Adding language barriers and cultural mores that kept women

subjugated makes it all the more impressive. Anderson’s portraits of

champions who organized unions, published newspapers and advanced

then-radical notions is inspiring stuff for modern feminists.

Fast forward to 1902, when Susan B. Anthony wrote a letter to her

friend Elizabeth Stanton, lauding women’s newly obtained rights to attend

college and speak in public. Anthony also lamented the failure to gain

“the suffrage.”

PBS favorites Ken Burns and Geoffrey Ward tell the story of the two

great suffragettes in “Not for Ourselves Alone.” The dual biography

traces the 50-year alliance between two women who spearheaded the

movement for equal voting rights.

That twentieth century crusaders still had plenty of work to do is

made clear in “The World Split Open.” In this examination of the modern

women’s movement, Ruth Rosen reminds readers of discriminatory practices

that were common in pre-1960s America: “Harvard’s Lamont Library was

off-limits to women. . . Newspaper ads separated jobs by sex; bars often

refused to serve women; some states even excluded women from jury duty;

no women ran big corporations or universities [or] worked as firefighters

or police officers.”

Rosen delineates the changes that make such discrimination seem

shocking today. Through stories of feminists and thinkers, she traces how

the modern women’s movement transformed America and concludes, “The

struggle for women’s human rights has just begun.”

With “In Our Time: Memoir of a Revolution,” Susan Brownmiller covers

similar territory, focusing on the social movement of the late-20th

century. From profiles of such feminist icons as Betty Friedan and Gloria

Steinem to reports of landmark sit-ins and lawsuits, this is an

encyclopedic look at sisterhood’s contemporary call to arms.

Perhaps the most ambitious promise of all is made by “A Century of

Women: The Most Influential Events in Twentieth-Century Women’s History.”

In this impressive synthesis of information, Deborah Felder chronicles

events that have revolutionized womanhood, clearly revealing how

privileges perceived as inalienable today would never have been possible

without activists of yore fighting for them.

* CHECK IT OUT is written by the staff of the Newport Beach Public

Library. This week’s column is by Melissa Adams in collaboration with

Steven Short. All titles may be reserved from home or office computers by

accessing the catalog at o7 https://www.newportbeachlibrary.org.

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