This case study of health reform in Boston between 1830 and 1900 combines medical and social history to analyze the conflicting messages--both feminist and conservative--projected by the concept of "able-bodied womanhood."

As urban life and women's roles changed in the 19th century, so did attitudes towards physical health and womanhood. In this case study of health reform in Boston between 1830 and 1900, Martha H. Verbrugge examines three institutions that popularized physiology and exercise among middle-class women: The Ladies' Physiological Institute, Wellesley College, and the Boston Normal School of Gymnastics. Against the backdrop of a national debate about female duties and well-being, this book follows middle-class women as they learned about health and explored the relationship between fitness and femininity. Combining medical and social history, Verbrugge looks at the ordinary women who participated in health reform and analyzes the conflicting messages--both feminist and conservative--projected by the concept of "able-bodied womanhood."

During the twentieth century, opportunities for exercise and sports grew significantly for girls and women in the United States. Among the key figures who influenced this revolution were female physical educators. Drawing on extensive archival research, Active Bodies examines the ideas, experiences, and instructional programs of white and black female physical educators who taught in public schools and diverse colleges and universities, including coed and single-sex, public and private, and predominantly white and historically black institutions. Working primarily with female students, women physical educators had to consider what an active female could and should do in comparison to boys and men. Applying concepts of sex differences, they debated the implications of female anatomy, physiology, reproductive functions, and psychosocial traits for achieving gender parity in the gym. Teachers' interpretations were conditioned by the places where they worked, as well as developments in education, feminism, and the law, society's changing attitudes about gender, race, and sexuality, and scientific controversies over the nature and significance of sex differences. While deliberating fairness for their students, women physical educators also pursued equity for themselves, as their workplaces and nascent profession often marginalized female and minority personnel. Questions of difference and equity divided the field throughout the century; while some teachers favored moderate views and incremental change, others promoted justice for their students and themselves by exerting authority at their schools, critiquing traditional concepts of "difference," and devising innovative curricula. Exploring physical education within and beyond the gym, Active Bodies sheds new light on the enduring complexities of difference and equity in American culture.

journeying through the mind and consciousness of surface level realities created by women, it touches on and describes experiences of women all over. beginning as a diary and blossoming into something to share with the world, my only goal is to love and empower. take this journey with me. hold my hand. i love you.

There are many questions that surround Christian womanhood: What does it mean? When does it happen; at a certain age, status, or maturity? How do we know we're no longer girls? And when we've figured that out, how will others know how to recognise us as a woman rather than a girl? After all, Christian women don't usually get a rite of passage in which they are named a woman. Seeing this need, Amy Davis Abdallah has created such a rite, and this book accompanies it; there is no need to go through her rite of passage, however, to name yourself a woman. The Book of Womanhood creates a path through the confusion that surrounds the identity of women by its flexible framework, developing the reader's understanding of a woman's relationship with God, their self, others and creation. Amy writes simply as one perhaps further along in her journey of womanhood than most, and she doesn't write alone; she includes the stories of Biblical women, of friends young and old, and even more. The diverse voices come together as a cloud of witnesses encouraging us in our individual journeys. The Book of Womanhood is about recognition, reaching out not only to women, but also to men who seek to understand and empower their wives, daughters, andfriends to be the women God has formed them to be. Read for empowerment; read for transformation. Read and become the woman of God you were created to be.

Dhruvarajan and Vickers call into question feminism's presumed universality of gender analysis, and bring to the foreground the voices of marginalized women in Western society, and of women outside of the western world.