This study analyzes how Jill Ker Conway, first woman president of Smith College, implemented programmatic initiatives and changes to Smith's institutional culture that fit with her vision for higher education.

Here Christina Wolbrecht boldly demonstrates how the Republican and Democratic parties have helped transform, and have been transformed by, American public debate and policy on women's rights. She begins by showing the evolution of the positions of both parties on women's rights over the past five decades. In the 1950s and early 1960s, Republicans were slightly more favorable than Democrats, but by the early 1980s, the parties had polarized sharply, with Democrats supporting, and Republicans opposing, such policies as the Equal Rights Amendment and abortion rights. Wolbrecht not only traces the development of this shift in the parties' relative positions--focusing on party platforms, the words and actions of presidents and presidential candidates, and the behavior of the parties' delegations in Congress--but also seeks to explain the realignment. The author considers the politically charged developments that have contributed to a redefinition and expansion of the women's rights agenda since the 1960s--including legal changes, the emergence of the modern women's movement, and changes in patterns of employment, fertility, and marriage. Wolbrecht explores how party leaders reacted to these developments and adopted positions in ways that would help expand their party's coalition. Combined with changes in those coalitions--particularly the rise of social conservatism within the GOP and the affiliation of social movement groups with the Democratic party--the result was the polarization characterizing the parties' stances on women's rights today.

This novel was the major inspiration for the Women's Movement and continues to be a powerful and illuminating analysis of the position of women in Western society___

The role of women in higher education, as in many other settings, has undergone dramatic changes during the past two decades. This significant period of progress and transition is definitively assessed in the landmark volume, Women in Academe. Crowded out by returning veterans and pressed by social expectations to marry early and raise children, women in the 1940s and 1950s lost many of the educational gains they had made in previous decades. In the 1960s women began to catch up, and by the 1970s women were taking rapid strides in academic life. As documented in this comprehensive study, the combined impact of the women's movement and increased legislative attention to issues of equality enabled women to make significant advances as students and, to a lesser extent, in teaching and academic administration. Women in Academe traces the phenomenal growth of women's studies programs, the notable gains of women in non-traditional fields, the emergence of campus women's centers and research institutes, and the increasing presence of minority and re-entry women. Also examined are the uncertain future of women's colleges and the disappointingly slow movement of women into faculty and administrative positions. This authoritative volume provides more current and extensive data on its subject than any other study now available. Clearly and objectively, it tells an impressive story of progress achieved—and of important work still to be done.

Twenty-six original essays look at contemporary feminist organizations.

The feminist movement has become an established force on the American political and social scene. Both the small consciousness-raising group and the large, formal organization command the attention of our legislative bodies, media, and general public. Maren Lockwood Carden's new book is the first to look beyond feminist ideas and rhetoric to give a detailed study of the movement—its structure, membership, and history of the organizations that form a major part of present-day feminism. Fair, objective, and comprehensive, her study is based on participant observation and in-depth interviews with rank and file members and local and national leaders in seven representative cities during 1969-1971. In Dr. Carden's analysis, the movement has two divisions. First, the hundreds of small, informal "Women's Liberation" consciousness-raising and action groups. Second, the large, formally structured "Women's Rights" organizations like the National Organization for Women (NOW) and the Women's Equity Action League. For both types of organizations, Dr. Carden covers members' reasons for participation; organizational structure; strategies and actions; and the relationship between ideology and structure, including the attempts by many groups to work as "participatory democracies." She also discusses the development of the movement from the mid-sixties to the present, and evaluates the long-term prospects for achieving the objectives of the various new feminist groups. Anyone interested in organizations, personality and society, and social change will welcome this detailed description and history of a complex and rapidly changing social movement. Highly readable and free of technical jargon, The New Feminist Movement tells us what's been happening to women in the last decade, what they want now, and where they may be headed in the future.

Writing in an age when the call for the rights of man had brought revolution to America and France, Mary Wollstonecraft produced her own declaration of female independence in 1792. Passionate and forthright, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman attacked the prevailing view of docile, decorative femininity and instead laid out the principles of emancipation: an equal education for girls and boys, an end to prejudice, and the call for women to become defined by their profession, not their partner. Mary Wollstonecrafts work was received with a mixture of admiration and outrageWalpole called her a hyena in petticoatsyet it established her as the mother of modern feminism.