Jane Sherron De Hart – författare

Feminism has changed the United States -- but not to universal applause. The defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment in 1982 not only suggested the extent of anti-feminism in our nation; it also triggered a remarkable range of emotions. To its supporters, the amendment meant equal opportunity and individual freedom; it was the logical extension of the highest American ideals. To opponents, however, it meant the destruction of "womanhood"; it was "a dangerous virus cultured in the pathology of American life," an insidious outgrowth of the sixties. Partisans were shocked that a debate about equality should become a debate about gender, and that the ERA should become a symbol of impurity and danger. Sex, Gender, and the Politics of ERA is the most profound and sensitive discussion to date of the way in which women responded to feminism. Drawing on extensive research and interviews, Mathews and De Hart explore the fate of the ERA in North Carolina--one of the three states targeted by both sides as essential to ratification--to reveal the dynamics that stunned supporters across America. The authors insightfully link public discourse and private feelings, placing arguments used throughout the nation in the personal contexts of women who pleaded their cases for and against equality. Beginning with a study of woman suffrage, the book shows how issues of sex, gender, race, and power remained potent weapons on the ERA battlefield. The ideas of such vocal opponents as Phyllis Schlafly and Senator Sam Ervin set the perfect stage for mothers to confess their terror at the violation of their daughters in a post-ERA world, while the prospect of losing ratification to this terror impelled supporters to shed the white gloves of genteel lobbying for the combat boots of political in-fighting. In the end, however, the efforts of ERA supporters could neither outweigh the symbolic actions of its opponents--who reassured male legislators with gifts of homemade bread tagged "To the breadwinners from the breadbakers"--nor weaken the resistance of those same legislators to further federal guarantees of equality. Ultimately, opponents succeeded in making equality for women seem dangerous. In thus explaining the ERA controversy, the authors brilliantly illuminate the many meanings of feminism for the American people.

Women's history has never been as important as it is now. The overturning of Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court in 2022 has made it increasingly urgent for students to understand the long struggle women have waged for the right to make decisions about themselves and their bodies. The source-based approach of Women's America allows instructors to show students how ideas about women, gender, sexuality, and human rights have evolved over time -- in both law and in wider American society.The 10th edition of Women's America: Refocusing the Past remains an indispensable text for the study of US women's history. Featuring a mix of primary-source documents, scholarly articles, and illustrations, Women's America introduces students to many of the leading theorists and historians in the discipline. The 10th edition offers more material on the impact of ethnicity on American culture, the experiences of Indigenous women, the roles that women have played in the creation of male-dominated structures, the international dimensions of women's lives, and the conflicts over reproductive justice, sexuality, and personal freedom that have riven modern American society.

Women's history has never been as important as it is now. The overturning of Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court in 2022 has made it increasingly urgent for students to understand the long struggle women have waged for the right to make decisions about themselves and their bodies. The source-based approach of Women's America allows instructors to show students how ideas about women, gender, sexuality, and human rights have evolved over time -- in both law and in wider American society. The 10th edition of Women's America: Refocusing the Past remains an indispensable text for the study of US women's history. Featuring a mix of primary-source documents, scholarly articles, and illustrations, Women's America introduces students to many of the leading theorists and historians in the discipline. The 10th edition offers more material on the impact of ethnicity on American culture, the experiences of Indigenous women, the roles that women have played in the creation of male-dominated structures, the international dimensions of women's lives, and the conflicts over reproductive justice, sexuality, and personal freedom that have riven modern American society.

The first full life—private; public; legal; philosophical—of the 107th Supreme Court Justice, one of the most profound and profoundly transformative legal minds of our time; a book fifteen years in work, written with the cooperation of Ruth Bader Ginsburg herself and based on many interviews with the Justice, her husband, her children, her friends, and associates.In this large, comprehensive, revelatory biography, Jane De Hart explores the central experiences that crucially shaped Ginsburg’s passion for justice, her advocacy for gender equality, her meticulous jurisprudence: her desire to make We the People more united and our union more perfect. At the heart of her story and abiding beliefs—her Jewish background. Tikkun Olam, the Hebrew injunction to “repair the world,” with its profound meaning for a young girl who grew up during the Holocaust and World War II. We see the influence of her mother, Celia Amster Bader, whose intellect inspired her daughter’s feminism, insisting that Ruth become independent, as she witnessed her mother coping with terminal cervical cancer (Celia died the day before Ruth, at 17, graduated from high school).     From Ruth’s days as a baton twirler at Brooklyn’s James Madison High School, to Cornell University, Harvard and Columbia Law School (first in her class), to being a law professor at Rutgers University (one of the few women in the field and fighting pay discrimination), hiding her second pregnancy so as not to risk losing her job; founding the Women''s Rights Law Reporter, writing the brief for the first case that persuaded the Supreme Court to strike down a sex-discriminatory state law, then at Columbia (the law school’s first tenured female professor); becoming the director of the women’s rights project of the ACLU, persuading the Supreme Court in a series of decisions to ban laws that denied women full citizenship status with men.      Her years on the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, deciding cases the way she played golf, as she, left-handed, played with right-handed clubs—aiming left, swinging right, hitting down the middle. Her years on the Supreme Court . . .      A pioneering life and legal career whose profound mark on American jurisprudence, on American society, on our American character and spirit, will reverberate deep into the twenty-first century and beyond.

The definitive account of an icon who shaped gender equality for all women.In this comprehensive, revelatory biography — fifteen years of interviews and research in the making — historian Jane Sherron De Hart explores the central experiences that crucially shaped Ginsburg’s passion for justice, her advocacy for gender equality, and her meticulous jurisprudence. At the heart of her story and abiding beliefs was her Jewish background, specifically the concept of tikkun olam, the Hebrew injunction to ‘repair the world’, with its profound meaning for ayoung girl who grew up during the Holocaust and World War II.Ruth’s journey began with her mother, who died tragically young but  whose intellect inspired her daughter’s feminism. It stretches from Ruth’s days as a baton twirler at Brooklyn’s James Madison High School to Cornell University to Harvard and Columbia Law Schools; to becoming one of the first female law professors in the country and having to fight for equal pay and hide her second pregnancy to avoid losing her job; to becoming the director of the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project and arguing momentous anti-sex-discrimination cases before the US Supreme Court.All this, even before being nominated in 1993 to become the second womanon the Court, where her crucial decisions and dissents are still makinghistory. Intimately, personably told, this biography offers unprecedented insight into a pioneering life and legal career whose profound impact will reverberate deep into the twenty-first century and beyond.