California Women and Politics

by Cherny, Robert W.; Irwin, Mary Ann; Wilson, Ann Marie

• ISBN13: 9780803235038
• ISBN10: 0803235038
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2011-05-01
• Publisher: Univ of Nebraska Pr

Summary

In 1911 as progressivism moved toward its zenith, the state of California granted women the right to vote. However, women's political involvement in California's public life did not begin with suffrage, nor did it end there. Across the state, women had been deeply involved in politics long before suffrage, and--although their tactics and objectives changed--they remained deeply involved thereafter.California Women and Politics examines the wide array of women's public activism from the 1850s to 1929--including the temperance movement, moral reform, conservation, trade unionism, settlement work, philanthropy, wartime volunteerism, and more--and reveals unexpected contours to women's politics in California. The contributors consider not only white middle-class women's organizing but also the politics of working-class women and women of color, emphasizing that there was not one monolithic "women's agenda," but rather a multiplicity of women's voices demanding recognition for a variety of causes.

Author Biography

Robert W. Cherny is a professor of history at San Francisco State University and the author, co-author, or editor of numerous books, including American Politics in the Gilded Age, 1868-1900, and, with William Issel, of San Francisco, 1865-1932: Politics, Power, and Urban Development. Mary Ann Irwin is an instructor in the California community college system and the author or coeditor of several books and articles, including Women and Gender in the American West: Jensen-Miller Essays from the Coalition for Western Women's History. Ann Marie Wilson is a College Fellow and Lecturer on History at Harvard University. Her first journal article received the 2010 Fishel-Calhoun Prize of the Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	p. vii
Preface and Acknowledgments	p. ix
Introduction	p. xi
"I Do Not Like the White Man...
He Is a Liar and a Thief": Testimonios and the Politics of Resistance	p. 1
"Going About and Doing Good"
The Lady Managers of San Francisco, 1850-1880	p. 27
"Woman Is Everywhere the Purifier"
The Politics of Temperance, 1878-1900	p. 59
"Continually Doing Good"
The Philanthropy of Phoebe Apperson Hearst, 1862-1919	p. 77
"Neutral Territory"
The Politics of Settlement Work in San Francisco, 1894-1906	p. 97
"Citizen Bird"
California Women and Bird Protection, 1890-1920	p. 123
Saving Redwoods
Clubwomen and Conservation, 1900-1925	p. 151
The Civitas of Women's Political Culture
The Twentieth Century Club of Berkeley, 1904-1929	p. 175
"We Want the Ballot for Very Different Reasons" Clubwomen, Union Women, and the Internal Politics of the Suffrage Movement, 1896-1911	p. 209
"Awed by the Women's Clubs"
Women Voters and Moral Reform, 1913-1914	p. 237
"We Are Not Keen about the Minimum Wage"
Union Women, Clubwomen, and the Legislated Minimum Wage, 1913-1931	p. 263
"No Undue Familiarity"
Gender, Vice, and the Campaign to Regulate Dance Halls, 1911-1921	p. 289
"Hearts Brimming with Patriotism"
Katherine Edson, Alice Park, and the Politics of War and Peace, 1914-1921	p. 309
Historians, Politics, and California Women	p. 339
Contributors	p. 369
Index	p. 373
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