500 Years of Chicana Women's History / 500 años de la Mujer Chicana by
"The history of Mexican Americans spans more than five centuries and varies from region to region across the United States. Yet most of our history books devote a chapter at best to Chicano history, with even less attention to the story of Chicanas." "500 Years of Chicana Women's History offers a powerful antidote to this omission with a vivid, pictorial account of struggle and survival, resilience and achievement, discrimination and identity. The bilingual text, along with more than 800 photos and other illustrations, ranges from female-centered stories of pre-Columbian Mexico to profiles of contemporary social justice activists, labor leaders, youth organizers, artists, and environmentalists, among others." "Students, teachers, librarians, and community activists will all discover a remarkable combination of scholarship and youthful appeal."--Jacket.
American Women's History: a Very Short Introduction by
"This Very Short Introduction explores the major transformations in American women's lives, ranging from political activism to popular culture, the workforce, and the family. Beginning in early America, it places gender at the center of American history, making it clear that women's experiences were not always the same as men's. Susan Ware shows how women's domestic and waged labor shaped the northern economy and how slavery affected the lives of both free and enslaved southern women. She moves through the tumultuous decades of industrialization and urbanization, describing the nineteenth-century movements led by women (temperance, moral reform, and suffrage). The book culminates in twentieth-century female activism for civil rights and successive waves of feminism. From Anne Bradstreet to Ida B. Wells to Eleanor Roosevelt, this book recognizes women as a force in American history and, more important, tells women's history as American history."--Front cover flap
Black Women in American History by 
A Companion to American Women's History by 
Feminism and History by
The question of difference - between women and men and among women - is at the heart of feminist theory and the history of feminism. Feminists have long debated the meanings of sexual difference: is it an underlying truth of nature or the result of changing social belief? Are women the same as or different from men? Feminism and History argues that sexual difference, indeed that all forms of social differentiation, cannot be understood apart from history. It brings together the best critical articles available to analyze the ways in which differences among women (along the lines of class, ethnicity, race, and sexuality) and between women and men have been produced. The articles range across many countries and time periods (from the Middle Ages to the present) and they include analyses of western and non-western experiences. There are discussions of race in the United States and in colonial contexts. A variety of theoretical approaches to the question of difference is included; but in all cases, difference is the focus of the historian's analysis.
Handbook of American Women's History by
This exceptional reference presents short articles on key people, events, and ideas that have shaped the history of women in the United States. Thoroughly revised and updated, the second edition features more than 100 new entries as well as, for the first time, photographs and artwork illustrating key concepts. Aimed at librarians, students, and teachers, the Handbook of American Women's History provides a comprehensive, interdisciplinary view of a fascinating field of study. Arranged alphabetically, each entry is accompanied by a bibliography of primary and secondary sources to which interested readers can turn for more information. Editors Angela M. Howard and Frances M. Kavenik also provide an extensive subject/name index and end-of-entry cross-referencing to make the book an invaluable resource.
The Women's West by
The American West looms large in popular imagination-a place where men were rugged and independent, violent and courageous. In this mythic West all the men were white, and the women were largely absent. The few female actors played supporting roles around the edges of the drama. Molded by the Victorian Cult of True Womanhood, they were passive, dependent, reluctant, and out of place. Men "won" the West. Women, against their better judgement, followed them to this "newly discovered" place and tried to re-create the amenities of the urban East. Or so the myth goes. The Women?s West challenges this picture as racist, sexist, and romantic and rejects the customary emphasis of traditional western history on the nineteenth-century frontier, discovered and defined by Anglo men. In its place The Women?s West begins the construction of a new western history as complex and varied as the people who lived it. This collection of twenty-one articles creates a multidimensional portrait of western women. The pioneer women presented here were actors in their own lives, not passive participants in their husbands? ventures. They were hardy seekers who came west, sometimes alone, in search of jobs, freedom, or land to homestead. They were political activists who worked tirelessly to win the right to vote and to hold political office. They adapted in practical ways to their own and their families? economic and personal needs in a new environment.