White Women's Rights The Racial Origins of Feminism in the United States

by Newman, Louise Michele

• ISBN13: 9780195086928
• ISBN10: 0195086929
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-02-04
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Louise Newman reinterprets an important period (1870s-1920s) in the history of women's rights, focusing attention on a core contradiction at the heart of early feminist theory. At a time when white elites were concerned with imperialist projects and civilizing missions, progressive white women developed an explicit racial ideology to promote their cause, defending patriarchy for "primitives" while calling for its elimination among the "civilized." Exploring how progressive white women at the turn of the century laid the intellectual groundwork for the feminist social movements that followed, Newman's book thus speaks to contemporary debates concerning the effect of race on current feminist scholarship.

Author Biography

Louise Michele Newman is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Florida.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Woman's Rights, Race, and Imperialism	3	(19)
1 Evolution, Woman's Rights, and Civilizing Missions	22	(34)
2 The Making of a White Female Citizenry: Suffragism, Antisuffragism, and Race	56	(30)
3 The Politics of Patriarchal Protection: Debates over Coeducation and Special Labor Legislation for Women	86	(16)
4 A Feminist Explores Africa: May French-Sheldon's Subversion of Patriarchal Protection	102	(14)
5 Assimilating Primitives: The "Indian Problem" as a "Woman Question"	116	(16)
6 Eliminating Sex Distinctions from Civilization: The Feminist Theories of Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Mary Roberts Smith Coolidge	132	(26)
7 Coming of Age, but Not in Samoa: Reflections on Margaret Mead's Legacy to Western Liberal Feminism	158	(23)
Conclusion: Coming to Terms	181	(6)
Notes	187	(42)
Selected Bibliography	229	(24)
Index	253