In honor of Women’s History Month, The Nation has compiled a collection of articles from the magazine’s archive dating back to 1865. We present them with an accompanying slide show that features milestones in women’s history and the courageous women behind them.
In honor of Women’s History Month, The Nation has compiled a collection of articles from the magazine’s archive dating back to 1865. We present them with an accompanying slide show that features milestones in women’s history and the courageous women behind them, from the early suffragettes (pictured) to today’s reproductive rights activists.
In 1867, The Nation responded to a resolution that would have restricted prostitution in New York that attempted to outlaw prostitution entirely. Three "honest" physicians argued that the resolution was "necessary for the control of those by whom the evil is encouraged and sustained." The Nation responded with an alternative: regulation. "Seeing then, that the evil can neither be eradicated nor suppressed, but one course remains," they wrote, "…to accept the mischief as a fact, to recognize its existence by the authorities, to place it under official inspection and regulation, with a view to the utmost possible diminution of its deadly effects."
When women got the right to vote in 1920, The Nation asked what women would do with their enfranchisement. In "Organizing for Social Change After Suffrage" Nation writer Stella Crossley Daljord wrote that "Just ‘Votes for Women’ may not account to much. But the votes of women cast intelligently in the struggle against the present sick economic order may make considerable difference."
The news that President Franklin Roosevelt appointed Frances Perkins (pictured) as the first-ever female cabinet member marked a historic victory for women in politics and the workforce. Ardent feminist and Nation writer Oswald Garrison Villard rejoiced at the news. "I am so bold as to believe also that the new President has set an example which will be followed in the years to come," he wrote.
In 1939 the German Labor Front offered a series of lectures about the role of women in family life to working women in Berlin. The intent of the lectures was to stifle any political ambitions the women might have. Toni Christen attended these speeches and reflects in this Nation article on the changes that have been imposed on women and families under Nazi rule. "Women of course are more affected by the change than men; their particular values, social and cultural, have had to give way before the onslaught of Nazi ideology, which makes other demands upon women now," he writes.
Less than a month after the Supreme Court ruled in Roe v. Wade in 1973, The Nation published an article supporting the decision. "Jane Roe" of Texas and "Mary Doe" of Georgia wanted abortions, but their states forbade them, and the women decided to challenge the illegality of the procedure. "They, and the seven Justices who voted in their favor, have performed a service of incalculable importance for American womanhood," wrote The Nation‘s editors. Still, the editors were wary of decision’s aftermath. "The Supreme Court decision does not go all the way," they wrote. "There will be renewed efforts to circumvent it."
In 1969 Nation writer Jo Freeman wrote "The New Feminists," one of the first looks into the women’s liberation movement. In 1974, she followed that article with "The New Feminism" (subscriber-only) and argued that the women’s movement had garnered some achievements, but was far from finished with its work. The movement was working toward diversification and fighting low participation. Freeman pinpointed a pressing dilemma impeding the movement: "The biggest battle of women’s liberation–as in general the biggest battle of women," she wrote, has been "the fight to be taken seriously."
Children in Afghanistan, here just four of the 60,000 that live on the streets of that country, collect trash to burn for firewood. Afganistan is one of several nations across the world whose anti-choice abortion laws coincide with poor conditions for children. Katha Pollitt debates the anti-choice argument that abortion supporters are anti-child by highlighting that countries with liberal abortion laws are the ones "with the world’s most extensive social provisions for children…The anti-choice camp is full of countries with astronomical infant mortality rates, no free schooling and no commitment to poor kids."
Since US soldiers entered Iraq, millions of Iraqi women have been left to fend for themselves amid widespread rape and kidnaps. In 2003, Lauren Sandler reported on the plight of these women, many of whom stay in their houses all day. Some activists have tried to address women’s needs, while the Coalition Provisional Authority has done little to address the issue at all.
On April 25, 2004 an estimated 1.5 million women gathered in Washington, D.C. for the March for Women’s Lives. In this editorial, The Nation deemed it the biggest pro-choice rally ever that made "women move like a movement again."
Rape has been used as a weapon of war throughout the Democratic Republic of Congo to destroy the fabric that holds families and communities together. Men whose wives have been raped often throw the women out of the house in order to gain back respect from their communities. Now with the help of Western aid groups, Congolese women are beginning to fight back against rape and repair their broken lives.
Jeanne Tiller, center, cries in the Kansas courtroom as Scott Roeder is charged with first-degree murder in the shooting death of her husband. Dr. George Tiller provided late-term abortions and was the subject of national anti-abortion protests. Pollit defends Tiller for trusting women, something that can’t be said for most male pundits who dominate the debate over reproductive rights.
Rebecca Solnit’s article profiles three women who have each "made a revolution" (subscriber only): Rachel Carson, Betty Friedan and Jane Jacobs. Each had left an indelible mark on women and the world. Jacobs criticized the post-war city and class segregation, Carson questioned big science and founded the environmental movement, and Friedan took on the American dream and women’s role in it. Solnit writes: "Thanks to the work of Friedan, Jacobs and Carson, the home, the city and the biosphere itself have never looked quite the same." Betty Friedan is pictured here.
