Press Portrayals of Women Politicians: From ‘Lunatic’ Woodhull to ‘Polarizing’ Palin.

In Press Portrayals, Finneman explores how female politicians have been framed by the news media throughout history, including Victoria Woodhull, one of the leaders of the suffrage movement, who ran for President of the United States in 1872. Chapter 1 provides a broader overview of “politics, power, and the press.”

About the book:

Recent history suggests the United States is within reach of its first woman president. This book examines the media experiences of women political pioneers who helped pave the way to the breaking of the glass ceiling. It analyzes newspaper treatment of four pioneering politicians between the 1870s and 2000s and explores how media discourse of women politicians has and hasn’t changed over 150 years. The women featured are Victoria Woodhull, the first woman to run for president; Jeannette Rankin, the first woman elected to Congress; Margaret Chase Smith, the first woman to receive a presidential nomination at a major party’s convention; and Sarah Palin, the first Republican woman vice presidential candidate. The social, political, and journalistic cultures of each woman’s era are also explored to provide context for the women’s media coverage. The findings illustrate that the press has used a variety of discursive strategies to delegitimize the candidacies of women politicians throughout history, which might have contributed to negative voter attitudes toward women in politics. Gendered stereotypes, gendered news frames, and double binds utilized in news coverage served to protect a male-dominated status quo. Yet a significant finding in Palin’s coverage indicates that gender bias in news coverage is increasingly facing criticism, suggesting the tide may finally be turning in favor of more equalized discourse.

ISBN: 978-1-4985-2424-7

ISBN: 978-1-4985-2426-1

GoogleBooks offers a preview of excerpts from the book. You can buy a hardcover copy, a paperback copy, or an e-book version of Press Portrayals of Women Politicians from its publisher, Lexington Books. College and public libraries may also have a copy; check WorldCat to see if there is one near you.

Transatlantic Print Culture, 1880-1940: Emerging Media, Emerging Modernisms

About the book Transatlantic Print Culture:

Building on recent work on Victorian print culture and the turn toward material historical research in modernist studies, this collection extends the frontiers of scholarship on the ‘Atlantic scene’ of publishing, exploring new ways of grappling with the rapidly changing universe of print at the turn of the twentieth century.

This book includes a number of references to print media’s use in the suffrage movement, in chapters such as “Transatlantic Print Culture: The Anglo-American Feminist Press and Emerging ‘Modernities'”; and “Feminist Things.” Both chapters focus on newspapers, magazines, and advertisements from the suffrage era. For example, in chapter three (“Transatlantic Print Culture”), Lucy Delap and Maria DiCenzo discuss the transnational connections of feminist periodicals on suffrage, which were produced in and circulated between both Britain and the United States.

Significant excerpts of the book are available for free preview on Amazon.com and Google Books, and you can buy a full-length e-book version from the publisher’s website. Also, academic and public libraries may hold copies of the book; check WorldCat to see if there is one near you.

ISBN 978-0-230-22845-0

Never A Fight of Woman Against Man: What Textbooks Don’t Say about Women’s Suffrage

In this article for The History Teacher, an academic journal about history education published by the Society for History Education, Joe Miller aims to debunk a misconception that is widespread, particularly among students who consume history textbooks: that a battle of the sexes was a key political dynamic of women’s struggle for enfranchisement.

In fact, Miller shows, the divide was less between sexes than between political opponents. He notes that there were men who supported suffrage, and women who opposed it. Women’s opposition to suffrage—often based on the notion that partisan politics would not advance women’s status; hostility to black women getting the vote; the increase in the cost of elections that would result; and the belief that women could influence politicians without the vote—was not uncommon.

However, Miller writes, the fact that some prominent women opposed women’s suffrage is not well-covered in history textbooks, some of which portray the suffrage movement as one which pitted men and women against each other.

Miller closes by suggesting how history textbooks could correct the narrative, arguing that they should emphasize three points:

(1) that suffrage was never desired by a majority of women before 1920; (2) that more women were organized against suffrage than in favor of it until 1916; and (3) that for many years, men were on the whole more progressive on the issue than women were.

You can read the whole article here, free of charge.

Alice Paul and the American Suffrage Campaign

Katherine H. Adams and Michael L. Keene’s book Alice Paul and the American Suffrage Campaign tells the story of the rhetorical and activist strategies Alice Paul pioneered during the fight for suffrage.

About this book:

Past biographies, histories, and government documents have ignored Alice Paul’s contribution to the women’s suffrage movement, but this groundbreaking study scrupulously fills the gap in the historical record. Masterfully framed by an analysis of Paul’s nonviolent and visual rhetorical strategies, Alice Paul and the American Suffrage Campaign narrates the remarkable story of the first person to picket the White House, the first to attempt a national political boycott, the first to burn the president in effigy, and the first to lead a successful campaign of nonviolence.

Katherine H. Adams and Michael L. Keene also chronicle other dramatic techniques that Paul deftly used to gain publicity for the suffrage movement. Stunningly woven into the narrative are accounts of many instances in which women were in physical danger. Rather than avoid discussion of Paul’s imprisonment, hunger strikes, and forced feeding, the authors divulge the strategies she employed in her campaign. Paul’s controversial approach, the authors assert, was essential in changing American attitudes toward suffrage.

Of particular interest to readers of this website may be chapter three, which chronicles Paul’s 1913 founding of Suffragist, a journal with striking political cartoons that advocated for the passage of a federal amendment to grant women voting rights. It was published originally with the backing of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), though after Paul split from the association over strategic differences, the paper was published with the backing of the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage, and later, the National Woman’s Party, with which the Union eventually merged.

The fourth chapter details the parades for suffrage that Paul organized, with a focus on their symbolism and how they looked to the crowds watching them. The chapter also goes into the newspaper coverage of Paul’s suffrage parades and protests, with a focus on the famous 1913 parade in Washington, DC.

You can purchase the book from the publisher, or read it on JStor or at a library near you. You can also read excerpts on Google Books.

For more about Alice Paul, see this website’s entry on the film Iron Jawed Angels. 

Book: Representation of the British Suffrage Movement

About the book:

Focussing on The Times, this monograph uses corpus linguistics to examine how suffrage campaigners’ different ideologies were conflated in the newspaper over a crucial time period for the movement—1908 to 1914, leading up to the Representation of the People Act in 1918.

Looking particularly at representations of suffrage campaigners’ support of or opposition to military action, Gupta uses a range of methodological approaches drawn from corpus linguistics, discourse analysis and CDA. These include: collocation analysis, examination of consistent significant collocates and van Leeuwen’s taxonomy of social actors.

The book offers an innovative insight into contemporary public understanding of the suffrage campaign with implications for researchers examining large, complex protest movements.

The Perfect 36: Tennessee Delivers Woman Suffrage

The Perfect 36: Tennessee Delivers Woman Suffrage by Carol Lynn Yellin and Janann Sherman is “the most complete account of Tennessee’s pivotal role in the passage of the 19th Amendment.”

About the book:

Yellin and Sherman bring to life the struggle of suffragists to earn women the right to vote which culminated with the final vote needed for ratification in the Tennessee legislature. The Perfect 36 gives voice to those who were for and against the right of women to vote with a richly illustrated volume. The authors provide a great deal of writings of those who were involved in this important movement along with pictures and cartoons to give a vivid sense of what it was like to win enfranchisement.

A limited preview is available from Google Books. You can buy the book through the publisher’s website (Vote 70 Press).

There is also a companion DVD, Generations: American Women Win the Vote, a 12.5-minute film covering 72 years of history, available for purchase on the Perfect 36 website.

ISBN: 978-0-9742456-5-2

Seeing Suffrage: The 1913 Washington Suffrage Parade, Its Pictures, and Its Effects on the American Political Landscape

Seeing Suffrage chronicles the 1913 Suffrage Parade in Washington, DC, focusing on photographs from the parade.

On March 3, 1913, the day before Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration, leaders of the American suffrage movement organized an enormous march through the capital that served as an important salvo on the long road to the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. Coinciding with the widespread rise of photography in daily newspapers and significant shifts in journalism, the parade energized a movement that had been in the doldrums for nearly two decades. In Seeing Suffrage, James G. Stovall combines a detailed account of the parade with more than 130 photographs to provide a stunning visual chronicle of one of the most pivotal moments in the struggle for women’s rights.

You can purchase a copy of the book from its publisher’s website.

For more on the parade, see The Atlantic‘s Pictures of the 1913 Women’s Suffrage Parade, this academic article examining suffrage parades from 1910-1913, as well as this New York Tribune essay explaining why suffragists were parading, penned by Harriet Stanton Blatch (daughter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton).

ISBN: 978-1-57233-940-8

19th Century Suffrage Periodicals: Conceptions of Womanhood and the Press

In the fourth chapter of the book Ruthless Criticism: New Perspectives in U.S. Communication History, journalism scholar Linda Steiner delves into the history of 19th century women-run suffrage periodicals and how they provided an arena for collective action and the forging of new identities. Many men-run publications dismissed suffrage, or scarcely covered it, so prominent activists created their own publications.

The periodicals she covers wanted to change the image of women as meek subjects to people entitled to status and honor, which the right to vote represented.

Steiner details how suffrage periodicals were not concerned with the conventions of modern-day journalism. They were non-hierarchal, unconcerned with objectivity and did not separate their publishing and business departments.

Steiner focuses on seven different publications in her chapter: the Lily (1849-1856); the Una (1853-1855); Revolution (1868-1870); the Woman’s Journal (1870-1931); the New Northwest (1871-1887); the National Citizen and Ballot Box (1876-1881); and the Woman’s Tribune (1883-1909).

For more information on how periodicals covered suffrage, see the book Women’s Periodicals in the United States: Social and Political Issues;  Tracy Kulba and Victoria Lamont’s article “The Periodical Press and Western Woman’s Suffrage Movements in Canada and the United States: A Comparative Study“;  the book A Voice of Their Own: The Woman Suffrage Press, 1840-1910; Linda Steiner’s “Finding Community in Nineteenth Century Suffrage Periodicals“; “A New Generation,” in Women of the Washington Press: Politics, Prejudice; and Persistence; and Women and The Press: The Struggle for Equality.

Google Books has most of Steiner’s chapter for free. You can buy the book on Amazon here, or directly from the publisher here. The book is available in many libraries. Check WorldCat to see if a library near you has it.

ISBN 978-0-8166-2170-5.

Women’s Periodicals in the United States: Social and Political Issues 

Women’s Periodicals in the United States: Social and Political Issues is a collection of alphabetical entries written by different scholars on various women’s publications that existed in the 19th and 20th centuries. For each periodical that it covers, this book provides history and background information, circulation numbers, and a bibliography that points readers to more information about it. Periodicals in the United States shows the diversity of women’s voices on the political and social issues of the day.

The topics that the chosen periodicals covered vary, but a number of entries deal with suffrage.

Linda Steiner wrote the entry on the newspaperThe New Northwest, started by Abigail Scott Duniway, an Oregon suffragist.

Sherilyn Cox Bennion explores the publications The Pioneer and The Queen Bee, both of which were pro-suffrage publications in the western United States.

Agnes Hooper Gottilieb wrote on the National Women’s Suffrage Association-linked periodical The Revolution.

Therese L. Lueck, a co-editor of the book, authored the entry on Woman’s Journal, a publication of the American Woman Suffrage Association.

The book also covers two periodicals that opposed suffrage: Lueck wrote the entry on The Anti-Suffragist, created by the New York State Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage; and Elizabeth Burt wrote about The Remonstrance, a big voice in the anti-suffrage movement. Excerpts of book’s entry onThe Remonstrance can be found here.

For more information on how periodicals covered suffrage, see Tracy Kulba and Victoria Lamont’s article “The Periodical Press and Western Woman’s Suffrage Movements in Canada and the United States: A Comparative Study“;  the book A Voice of Their Own: The Woman Suffrage Press, 1840-1910; Linda Steiner’s “Finding Community in Nineteenth Century Suffrage Periodicals“; “A New Generation,” in Women of the Washington Press: Politics, Prejudice; and Persistence; and Women and The Press: The Struggle for Equality.

You can find excerpts of Women’s Periodicals in the United States on Google Books and Questia, and you can purchase the book on Amazon.

Women’s Suffrage Prison Narratives

Prison Narratives from Boethius to Zana examines selected works of writers, from the 6th century to the 21st, imprisoned for their beliefs. The book’s seventh chapter, “‘From Prison to People’: How Women Jailed for Suffrage Inscribed Their Prison Experience on the American Public,” focuses on Alice Paul and members of the National Woman’s Party (NWP) who were jailed for picketing for suffrage in Washington, DC.

Since most of the NWP suffragists who were “jailed for freedom”—to use member Doris Steven’s term—were denied personal items like pens and paper, they did not leave behind a large body of jailhouse writings. However, if we expand our definition of “prison writing” to include other forms of visual and verbal rhetoric designed to inscribe their experience upon public consciousness, a great deal of material is available, including picket messages, The Suffragist magazine, and the “Prison Special” speaking tour. The chapter examines these efforts in light of Paul’s approach to non-violent “militancy” and rhetorical strategies such as “political mimesis.”

A free excerpt is available through Google Books, where you can also purchase access to the full work. You can purchase a physical copy of the book through the publisher’s website.

ISBN: 978-1-349-49153-7