A Room at a Time: How Women Entered Party Politics [Paperback]

Jo Freeman (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 084769805X | ISBN-13: 978-0847698059 | Publication Date: January 29, 2002

FOR THE PAPERBACK RELEASE: The prominent political women of today stand upon the shoulders of those who spent the last two hundred years building a foundation for women's political participation. Jo Freeman brings to us the rich story of how American women entered into political life and party politics--well before suffrage and often completely separate from it. She shows that women's early political involvement was focused on the Republican party, very different from the situation today. And she builds up to the explosion of women's political activisim of the 1960s and 1970s, connecting past to future by tracing the roots of key political strategies still being debated in the early 21st century. Now for the first time in paperback, A Room at a Time is considered a landmark of original research into women's political history as well as party politics.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

You've come a long way baby--or so say the cigarette ads. In reality, the journey from 1920, when women won the vote, to Hillary Rodham Clinton's overt influence on her husband's presidency in the 1990s, and from conservative reform movements like the Women Christian Temperance Union of the early 1900s to today's Concerned Women for America, is far longer and more twisted than popular history accounts for. Dispelling such commonly held myths as that women engaged in more political activism before suffrage and that there is a secure "bloc" of women voters, Freeman (The Politics of Women's Liberation) focuses on how women's political groups enabled them to move into mainstream party politics by many routes. While the WCTU and YWCA promoted "social purity" ideals, providing the opportunity for some women to gain the political know-how to engage in the electoral side of the game, hard-line political and social reformers like Florence Kelley and Molly Dewson, working closely with Eleanor Roosevelt, brought average women into the Democratic party and into the New Deal and national politics. Freeman deftly weaves together the many intricate political, moral and social complications in her story--such as that the highly influential General Federation of Women's Clubs essentially banned the participation of African-American women--to fashion an insightful, fascinating portrait of the ongoing fight for women to partake fully in U.S. political life. (Feb.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

Freeman deftly weaves together the many intricate political, moral, and social complications of her story . . . to fashion an insightful, fascinating portrait of the ongoing fight for women to partake fully in U.S. political life. (Publishers Weekly )

Splendid. (Women's Review Of Books )

This comprehensively researched and cogently written book is the best account we have of the invasion of American politics by women—a process that has extensively influenced our past and may very likely transform our future. (Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. )

The untold story of American women’s sometimes successful efforts to gain access and influence in the major American political parties from the 1880s forward. A carefully researched, crisply written, illuminating account of progress and frustration. I recommend it. (Jeane Kirkpatrick )

Draws upon the experience of many different women—black and white, professional politicians, and amateurs, from all regions and types of parties—to illustrate how the major political parties tried to ignore women, and women’s strategies for being heard. (Shirley Chisholm )

Jo Freeman breaks new ground with her comprehensive account of the rise of women as active participants in American politics over more than a century. With a fine eye for human detail, she tells the story of women, many now largely forgotten, who not only gave leadership to reform movements, but also penetrated ruling party machines. Her findings will be illuminating to scholars and absorbing to general readers. (Reichley, A James )

Jo Freeman uncovers the hidden facts of women in twentieth-century party politics—whether feminists, reformers, or party women—and so creates an inside, readable, and non-partisan history of how politics really works. Every voter, politician, women’s studies course, and American history student needs this book. A Room at a Time is a landmark. (Gloria Steinem )

The book clearly marks a massive research effort and is thoroughly documented. It provides a comprehensive overview of women's political history integrated with that of American political parties. Freeman has a mastery of how politics works in America and accurately describes the historical development and operation of six different party systems. (American Review Of Politics )

A compendium of useful facts and many keen formulations. Freeman's book is conscientiously researched. (The Journal Of American History )

Jo Freeman's masterful A Room at a Time shares many of the good qualities of her earlier The Politics of Women's Liberation. Freeman has an amazing ability to gather enormous numbers of facts from varied and sometimes obscure places. Even more important, by simplifying and clarifying multifaceted phenomena she provides the reader with frameworks to make sence of complex processes. A Room at a Time develops a compelling argument about the ways that women's involvement in electoral politics developed out of moral reform and women's rights activities. (Women & Politics )

In A Room at a Time: How Women Entered Party Politics, prizewinning feminist scholar Jo Freeman follows the drama of women's participation in mainstream politics from the early nineteenth century up to the 1960s, with special attention to the period since the 1880s when the neglected political players she calls the "pary women"-those largely volunteer Democratic and Republican party workers-came into their own. (Signs )

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers (January 29, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 084769805X
• ISBN-13: 978-0847698059
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.9 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,578,125 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Room at a Time, March 26, 2000

By 

Shryl (Texas,USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Room at a Time: How Women Entered Party Politics (Hardcover)

This book is an excellent source for those who wish to read about Women in Politics. Freeman has completed extensive research for this project. A Room at a Time is an easy to read book, with wonderful information on the Womens' Suffrage Movement, and women in the powerful place of politics. I highly recommend this one!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Uncovering Hidden History, May 30, 2004

By 

Bob Simpson "Bob Simpson" (Oak Park, IL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Room at a Time: How Women Entered Party Politics (Hardcover)

As a young boy I was always fascinated with the tales of intrepid archaeologists, Schliemann at Troy or Carter in Egypt. I imagined myself accompanying them as they dramatically uncovered humanity's hidden history.

Many years later as an adult I volunteered for an archaeological survey. I followed a trail of Anasazi flint chips to the top of a hill and discovered an 13th century American tool factory with a great view of the Utah high desert. Not exactly the walls of Troy or the treasures of Tutankhamen, but a source of joy and wonder nevertheless

Accompanying Jo Freeman as she uncovers the hidden history of how women entered into the political parties gave me a similar sense of wonder and discovery. Her book begins with a section called "Myth As History". Freeman meticulously demolishes the convenient myth that the Suffrage Movement "failed" because women did not storm the barricades of American politics and vote as a revolutionary bloc.

As a political activist as well as a scholar, Freeman understands that political change is a complex process with many fits and starts. She explains that women political activists were a diverse group ranging from radical feminists to stalwart big city machine bosses. Sometimes these divergent groups worked in tandem when their interests coincided. More often they worked separately or even at cross-purposes.

Yet, as more women slowly entered politics "a room at a time", politics became more democratic. Voting moved from the saloon to the local grade school polling place. Issues like child labor and public health came to the forefront. Is it a coincidence that most of the significant social legslation in America came about after women entered politics as activists and voters?

Freeman dug deep into the sources to bring this hidden history to the surface. While doing so she uncovered a political tragedy worthy of a Sophocles or a Shakespeare-- the moral decline of the Republican Party.

It may surprise today's readers to learn that for most of its history, the Republican Party was the party of feminism and women's rights. The GOP began its life as party of radical reform, attracting feminists, abolitionists, free soilers and even socialists to its ranks. Susan B. Anthony, Ida B. Wells or Jane Addams would not recognize today's Republican Party with its deep disdain for gender equality and its opposition to all progressive social legislation.

Jo Freeman's book is a wonderful tool for uncovering the complex relationship that American women have had with our major political parties. Buy a copy and dig in.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a must for younger women, November 12, 2001

By 

Kathleen M. Knight "kathl" (New York NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Room at a Time: How Women Entered Party Politics (Hardcover)

This is an exceptionally detailed and well written history of women's slow inclusion in the traditional parties.