Customer Reviews

A Room at a Time: How Women Entered Party Politics

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.

I much prefer Susan Brownmiller's In Our Time.