Casual shopping helped spur right to vote

Here’s a shocker: Shopping, that decidedly female pastime of perusing consumer goods with or without the intent to purchase, was actually a catalyst for the women’s rights movement. Erika Diane Rappaport writes in Shopping for Pleasure that “for many middle-class housewives in Victorian...

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FBI updates definition of rape

It took 82 years for the FBI to change its naive, chauvinistic definition of rape. That’s 10 years longer than the campaign to give women the right to vote. Once again, women’s rights advocates are credited with the change. Since 1929 the FBI has defined rape as “carnal knowledge...

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History books lie

“Women never did anything important. If they had it would be in the history books.” So claims the father-in-law of National Women’s History Museum founder Karen Staser. Can you imagine spending holidays with that guy? Still, he’s not alone. Most Americans grow up thinking men built the...

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Alice Paul Institute focuses on girls’ leadership

Alice Paul is my second favorite women’s rights hero after Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Still it is only today I learned about the Alice Paul Institute in Mount Laurel, New Jersey. Founded in 1984 to commemorate the centennial of Paul’s 1885 birth and to further her legacy, the organization was...

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Ellenville to restore Hunt Building on Women’s Heritage Trail

Ellenville, NY, is more than 200 miles from Seneca Falls, the heart of the women’s rights movement, and both are on the New York State Women’s Heritage Trail. Ellenville residents call their deteriorating Hunt Memorial Building the “heart of the village” and point to its historical...

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