Women in Texas History Series – serie

Women may not fit the common image of a rancher, but on the range and in the ranch office women are at home. With their parents, children, or spouses—or alone—women own, manage, and do the daily work of ranching, as they have since pioneer days. Increasingly, they also fill the productive roles of the highly technological industry growing up around beef cattle.Women of the Range describes the roles of women in the Texas cattle industry of the past, the present, and the likely future. Based on a decade of interviews, observation, and data analysis, Elizabeth Maret, a sociologist and rancher, tells the story of the women who serve as an often unpaid labour force in this classic American enterprise. Through profiles of typical (and some atypical) women, with photographs she took of them at work, Maret shows how women serve not only as “keepers of the land,” but also as a force for modernization in the cattle industry.The women she shows include a cattle fitter, sale barn manager, and herd health veterinarian. They are owners and managers of historic family ranches. They write computer software for planning optimal crossbreeding operations, they run equipment in artificial insemination companies, and they encourage industry emphasis on nutrition and consumer interests.Women have always been there, Maret shows, participating in ranching and the cattle industry as silent but active partners. Maret’s portrait of their involvement and analysis of its significance will fascinate readers with an interest in ranching, social history, women’s studies, and the sociology of work.

“There is so much to be learned from the documents collected here. . . . Where better than in this record to find the inspiration to achieve another high point of women’s political history?”—from the foreword by Anne Firor ScottCitizens at Last is an essential resource for anyone interested in the history of the suffrage movement in Texas. Richly illustrated and featuring over thirty primary documents, it reveals what it took to win the vote.

A leader in the successful fight for woman suffrage in Texas, Jane Yelvington McCallum (1878–1957) left an absorbing written record of an exceptionally productive life. McCallum was a wife, mother, and clubwoman; unlike most, she was also a suffrage leader, lobbyist, journalist, publicist, Democratic Party worker, and secretary of state.A Texas Suffragist brings to print two of Jane McCallum’s most important unpublished diaries, which cover the period from October 1916 through December 1919. They chronicle the struggle of Texas suffragists to win the vote from the viewpoint of one of the movement’s most active participants, and provide insight into a range of progressive causes—including prohibition, honest government, and the independence and integrity of the University of Texas—that women reformers supported in the World War I era.Editor Janet G. Humphrey has supplemented McCallum’s diaries with a selection of her letters, autobiographical fragments, and sketches that help round out the story of her personal and public life through 1919.