This engaging narrative synthesizes more than 20 years of historical writing on the history of women in the American West. Twenty years after many Western historians first turned their attention toward women, Women in the American West synthesizes the development of women's history in the region, introduces readers to current thinking on the real experiences of Western women, and explores their influence on the course of expansion and development since the 19th century. Women in the American West offers vivid portrayals of women as pioneers, prostitutes, teachers, disguised soldiers, nurses, entrepreneurs, immigrants, and ordinary citizens caught up in extraordinary times. Organized chronologically, each chapter emphasizes important themes central to gender and women's history, including women's mobility, women at home, wage labor, immigration, marriage, political participation, and involvement in wars at home and abroad. With this revealing volume, readers will see that women had a far more profound effect on the course of history in the Western United States than is commonly thought.

The Joan Jensen-Darlis Miller Prize recognizes outstanding scholarship on gender and women's history in the West. The winning essays are collected here for the first time in one volume.

Men are usually the heroes of Western stories, but women also played a crucial role in developing the American frontier, and their stories have rarely been told. This anthology of biographical essays on women promises new insight into gender in the 19C American West. The women featured include Asian Americans, African-Americans and Native American women, as well as their white counterparts. The original essays offer observations about gender and sexual violence, the subordinate status of women of color, their perseverance and influence in changing that status, a look at the gendered religious legacy that shaped Western Catholicism, and women in the urban and rural, industrial and agricultural West.

"Did the West offer women a place to grow, providing opportunities for more equitable social relationships, greater political rights, and economic independence? The answer is found in this unique blend of more than 90 primary documents, in which the women's own words tell the story, combined with 11 selected essays by noted historian Glenda Riley. A number of themes pervade the articles and documents presented here. The selections discuss stereotypes of western women, the ethnic and racial backgrounds of western women, women's migration experiences, female migrants' relations with Native Americans, and women's contributions inside and outside the home as the West was settled."--Goodreads

A riveting and previously untold history of the American West, as seen by the pioneering women who advocated for their rights amidst challenges of migration and settlement, and transformed the country in the process Between 1840 and 1910, hundreds of thousands of men and women traveled deep into the underdeveloped American West, lured by adventure, opportunity, and the spirit of Manifest Destiny. These settlers soon realized that survival in a new society required women to compromise eastern sensibilities and take on some of their husbands’ responsibilities. At a time when women had very few legal or economic--much less political--rights, these women soon proved just as essential as men to westward expansion. During the mid-nineteenth century, the traditional domestic model of womanhood shifted to include public service, with the women of the West becoming town mothers who established schools, churches, and philanthropies, while also coproviding for their families. They claimed their own homesteads and graduated from new, free coeducational colleges that provided career alternatives to marriage. In 1869, the men of the Wyoming Territory gave women the right to vote--partly to persuade more of them to move west--but with this victory in hand, western suffragists fought relentlessly until the rest of the region followed suit. By 1914 western women became the first American women to vote--a right still denied to women in every eastern state. In New Women in the Old West, Winifred Gallagher brings to life the riveting history of the little-known women--the White, Black, and Asian settlers, and the Native Americans and Hispanics they displaced--who played monumental roles in one of America's most transformative periods. Drawing on an extraordinary collection of research, Gallagher weaves together the striking legacy of the persistent individuals who not only created homes on weather-wracked prairies, but also played a vital, unrecognized role in the women's rights movement and forever redefined the "American woman."

This essential primer describes the lives of some brave women who became known during the western expansion in nineteenth century America.

American lore has slighted the cowgirl, although at least one can still be found in nearly every ranching community. Like her male counterpart, she rides and ropes, understands land and stock, and confronts the elements. The writer and photographer Teresa Jordan traveled sixty thousand miles in the American West, talking with more than a hundred authentic cowgirls running ranches and performing in rodeos. The result is a fascinating book that also situates the cowgirl in history and literature. A new preface and updated bibliography have been added to this Bison Book edition.