Texas women broke barriers throughout the twentieth century, winning the right to vote, expanding their access to higher education, entering new professions, participating fully in civic and political life, and planning their families. Yet these major achievements have hardly been recognized in histories of twentieth-century Texas. By contrast, Texas Through Women's Eyes offers a fascinating overview of women's experiences and achievements in the twentieth century, with an inclusive focus on rural women, working-class women, and women of color. McArthur and Smith trace the history of Texas women through four eras. They discuss how women entered the public sphere to work for social reforms and the right to vote during the Progressive era (1900–1920); how they continued working for reform and social justice and for greater opportunities in education and the workforce during the Great Depression and World War II (1920–1945); how African American and Mexican American women fought for labor and civil rights while Anglo women laid the foundation for two-party politics during the postwar years (1945–1965); and how second-wave feminists (1965–2000) promoted diverse and sometimes competing goals, including passage of the Equal Rights Amendment, reproductive freedom, gender equity in sports, and the rise of the New Right and the Republican party.

The nineteenth century was a period of peak popularity for travel to Latin America, where a new political independence was accompanied by loosened travel restrictions. Such expeditions resulted in numerous travel accounts, most by men. However, because this period was a time of significant change and exploration, a small but growing minority of female voyagers also portrayed the people and places that they encountered. Women through Women's Eyes draws from ten insightful accounts by female visitors to Latin America in the nineteenth century. These firsthand tales bring a number of Latin American women into focus: nuns, market women, plantation workers, the wives and daughters of landowners and politicians, and even a heroine of the independence movement. Questions of family life, religion, women's labor, and education are addressed, in addition to the interrelationships of men and women within the structure of Latin American societies. Women through Women's Eyes is a perceptive look at Latin American women from various walks of life during this period. Within these pages, the reader catches lengthy glimpses of the women on both sides of the travel accounts-author and subject-and thereby may examine them all and their societies close-up.

Through Women’s Eyes: An American History with Documents was the first text to present a narrative of U.S. women’s history within the context of the central developments of the United States and to combine this core narrative with written and visual primary sources in each chapter. The authors’ commitment to highlighting the best and most current scholarship, along with their focus on women from a broad range of ethnicities, classes, religions, and regions, has helped students really understand U.S. history Through Women’s Eyes.

Nineteenth-century Russia has been known to the West mainly through the writings of men. Russian women, however, were far from silent and have left vivid testimony about their families, their education, their careers, and their country. This collection presents, for the first time in English, the lives of eleven remarkable Russian women as told in their own words. These autobiographies span the century and cover a wide range of classes and professions. Among the authors are women of the gentry (Natalia Grot), the merchant class (Aleksandra Kobiakova), the lower bureaucracy (Praskovia Tatlina), and the serf class (Liubov Nikulina-Kositskaia). They include writers (Elizaveta Lvova, Anastasia Verbitskaia), a journalist (Emilia Pimenova), an actress in the provincial theater (Liubov Nikulina-Kositskaia), and two physicians (Varvara Kashevarova-Rudneva, Ekaterina Slanskaia)--one the first woman to earn a medical degree in Russia, the other a doctor in the slums of St. Petersburg. Their memoirs show their fierce engagement in the debate over woman's nature, her duties and responsibilities, her upbringing, and her place in society. Each autobiography is introduced and annotated by Toby Clyman and Judith Vowles, who also provide a general introduction that situates these writings within the Russian and Western autobiographical traditions.

This book studies the travel accounts of five “lady travelers” to Mexico, the Southern Cone, Brazil, and the Caribbean. As eye-witness accounts, their books record the rise of independent republics in Spanish America. Women’s travels provide a fresh look at indigenous and African populations in the New World and analyze women’s social condition.

In this widely acclaimed landmark study, Joan Hoff illustrates how women remain second- class citizens under the current legal system and questions whether the continued pursuit of equality based on a one-size-fits-all vision of traditional individual rights is really what will most improve conditions for women in America as they prepare for the twenty-first century. Concluding that equality based on liberal male ideology is no longer an adequate framework for improving women's legal status, Hoff's highly original and incisive volume calls for a demystification of legal doctrine and a reinterpretation of legal texts (including the Constitution) to create a feminist jurisprudence.

[This text] integrate[s] women's history into U.S. history while ensuring a balanced sense of the broad diversity of American women.-Back cover.