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A historical look at women in politics, told through inspiring quotes, illustrations, and photography.

A Liberal-Labour Lady restores British Columbia's first female MLA and the British Empire's first female cabinet minister to history. An imperial settler, liberal-labour activist, and mainstream suffragist, Mary Ellen Smith (1863-1933) demanded a fair deal for "deserving" British women and men in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. She strove to shift Liberal parties leftward to benefit women and workers, while still embracing global assumptions of British racial superiority and b...

In February 1900 a group of men representing trade unionists, socialists, Fabians and Marxists gathered in London to make another attempt at establishing an organisation capable of getting working-class men elected to Parliament. The body they set up was the Labour Representation Committee; six years later when 29 of its candidates were elected to the House of Commons, it changed its name to the Labour Party. No women took part in that first meeting, but several watched from the p...

For readers of Hidden Figures, A Woman of No Importance, and Eleanor: A Life, the first-ever biography of Anna Rosenberg, whose influence on American history, from the New Deal to the Cold War and beyond, has never before been told. Dubbed by Life Magazine as “the most important woman in the American government,” her life ran parallel to the front lines of history and her story, though forgotten for too long, is extraordinary, inspiring, and uniquely American. “Far and away the most important...

The Southern Strategy is traditionally understood as a Goldwater and Nixon-era effort by the Republican Party to win over disaffected white voters in the Democratic stronghold of the American South. To realign these voters with the GOP, the party abandoned its past support for civil rights and used racially coded language to capitalize on southern white racial angst. However, that decision was but one in a series of decisions the GOP made not just on race, but on feminism and religion as well, i...

Leslie Sorrell had success in growing a start-up to a successful and influential political consulting firm. This has transformed her understanding of the real world of politics-the one the media fails to cover. It's a world none of us want to believe in-Leslie included. Challenging a Congressman in a primary election race violates the political insider code, but Leslie did it anyway. Before that campaign ended, she would find herself stripped of every ideal she ever had about politics. It wasn't...

Parliamentary Pioneers : Labour Women MPs 1918-1945 is a compelling account of the trailblazers who laid the foundations for women having an influential voice in the House of Commons. Written by MEP and authoritative spokesperson on women's rights and gender equality Mary Honeyball, the book tells the story of the issues these first MPs championed, the challenges they faced and the lives they led. This doughty group of women, tough and individualistic as they all were, maintained their independ...

In 1919, Nancy Astor became the first woman to take a seat in Parliament.She was not what had been expected. Far from a virago who had suffered for the cause of female suffrage, she was already near the centre of the ruling society that had for so long resisted the political upheavals of the early twentieth century, having married into the family of one of the richest men in the world. She was not even British. She would prove to be a trailblazer and beacon for the generations of women who would...

The Political Life of Bella Abzug, 1920-1976: Political Passions, Women's Rights, and Congressional Battles, by Alan H. Levy, marks the first full biography of Bella Abzug. Abzug was one of woman in politics in mid- and late-twentieth-century America. Levy traces the New York City world of Russian-Jewish immigrants into which Abzug was born. He then examines her education through Columbia Law School, her marriage, and her early work both as a labor attorney and as an advocate for many controvers...

This book offers an analysis of how women's participation is conducted in Mexicos political sphere. Federalization and decentralization processes can have a significant impact on women's participation and discrimination. By questioning the form in which a democratic state is built (that is, the degree of (de)centralization) the book looks to a set of forms and processes affecting women's political life. A decentralized form of state-government implies three levels of government in which women (o...

This book investigates the experiences of women city councilors in India. It follows the careers of women in Jaipur, Rajasthan, who were brought into public office through a gender quota instituted over two decades ago. It reveals how, even in office, women continue to face stigma and normative restrictions imposed by a society not entirely willing to accept them in a public and independent position; and how men, technically blocked by the gender quota from holding office themselves, continue to...

Suffrage at 100 looks at women's engagement in US electoral politics and government over the one hundred years since the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment. In the 2018 midterm elections, 102 women were elected to the House and 14 to the Senate—a record for both bodies. And yet nearly a century after the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, the notion of congressional gender parity by 2020—a stated goal of the National Women's Political Caucus at the time of its founding in 1971—rema...

2020 marks the 25th anniversary of the adoption of the Beijing Platform for Action. It also marks the first time that progress on the implementation of the Platform is reviewed in light of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted in 2015. This report therefore takes an integrated approach to reporting on progress, gaps and challenges related to the advancement of gender equality and women's rights across six dimensions that link the Platform's critical areas of concern and the Sustai...