Customer Reviews

Republican Women: Feminism and Conservatism from Suffrage through the Rise of the New Right (Gender and American Culture)

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Examining how different factions of women sought access to and within the GOP, this book was a gripping read.

Beginning in the aftermath of the 19th Amendment's ratification, the book chronicles women's political activity. Rymph then goes on to explain how different factions developed different definitions of 'women' and 'Republicanism' as the decades subsequently passed.

The rise of the modern conservative movement came through the 1964 campaign. Many of the women party activists independently mobilized behind Barry Goldwater's campaign. They demonstrated that they would not just rubber stamp whomever the party bosses had wanted to receive the nomination.

Such action also illustrated that conservative Republican women were (if not necessarily how I and colleagues would immediately think of it) leaders with political power of their own which would effectively be flexed. Researched from a strictly nonpartisan and scholarly perspective, this work concedes that conservative women are politically effective.

I've read many other books on women and politics, but this work provided a never-before-read perspective. Prior to reading this book, I honestly had no idea that women's role in the Republican party was so complex.

Growing up as one of Jane H Macauley's daughters, I heard all the great backroom and campaign stories, but I never put them in the wider context of the growing engagement of women in politics until reading Rymph's fascinating account. My mother and her friends are passionate believers in the grassroots and the precincts, and crisscrossed the country to get out the vote. Feminist slogans peppered my childhood, and the ERA was the grail. The hijacking of the progressive and moderate Republican women's organization is an enlightening chapter -- let's hijack it back, ladies!