BORN NEAR ROCHESTER, N.Y., in 1839, to a politically active father and a well-educated, deeply supportive mother, Frances Willard absorbed their ambition and learned about social responsibility. In 1871, she committed herself to the women’s movement and to education of women as the vehicle of progress. Willard became president of the women’s college associated with […]

ELIZABETH CADY STANTON: FEMINIST, WIFE AND MOTHER OF SEVEN When her seventh child, Henry, was born in 1859, early feminist Elizabeth Cady Stanton raised a flag in front of her home–scandalizing the Seneca Falls, N.Y., community by her public celebration of motherhood. The mid-19th century was a time when pregnancy and birth were still surrounded

Contemporary feminists bravely challenge a belief that causes so much violence against women — the notion that woman are the property of men, expressed for centuries in the common-law doctrine that “man and wife are one, and that one, the husband.” The feminist movement has begun to create authentic choices for breaking the cycle of

AS A YOUNG GIRL IN NEBRASKA IN THE 1870s, Susan LaFlesche watched helplessly as one of her fellow Omaha tribeswomen died for lack of medical care. During the long night, they sent for the doctor four times, but he had a turkey shoot the next day and did not want to be bothered. Besides, Susan