Marilyn J. Boxer

Women's suffrage and social politics in the French Third Republic

The Description for this book, Womens Suffrage and Social Politics in the French Third Republic, will be forthcoming.

Connecting spheres : women in the Western world, 1500 to the present

Combining modern feminist thought with the main themes of Western civilization, this book puts women back into history. From Italy to Kenya, from Britain to Russia, it examines the impact of religious reformation, political centralization, scientific, industrial, and political revolutions, world markets, and welfare states on women of diverse backgrounds, occupations, and classes, and demonstrates that they have indeed had a profound influence on Western history in the last 500 years.

‘First wave’ feminism in nineteenth-century France: Class, family and religion☆

Abstract The history of ‘first wave’ feminism in France raises several questions of relevance to the contemporary womens movement. Organized French feminism began during the struggle to replace a Catholic monarchy with a rationalistic, republican form of government. Because of the allegiance of most Frenchwomen to the church, however, even the republican and socialist supporters of feminist reform in educational institutions and in civil rights opposed political participation by women. Feminists, who themselves emphasized reforms in family law and economic opportunities, formed numerous organizations, published journals and held national and international meetings, but remained less a movement than a mosaic of leaders and groups divided by class, religion and personal rivalry. More importantly, they were estranged from the majority of Frenchwomen by questions pertaining to the relationship of women to the traditional patriarchal family, which continued to play a dominant role in the religious, economic and social life of the country. Internal conflict developed over protective legislation and womens ‘right to work’, while external opposition centered about the politically reactionary potential of religious women, and the alleged ‘anti-patriotic’ individualism of those who rejected motherhood as the ‘natural vocation’ and only career of women. By pitting feminism against a particular form of the family, antifeminists obscured the reality of womens oppression and succeeded in alienating the potential support for feminism of most Frenchwomen.

When Women ask the Questions: Creating Women's Studies in America

In this text, the author traces the successes and failures of womens studies, 25 years after the establishment of the first womens studies programme. She examines the fields induring impact on the world of higher education and concludes that the rise of womens studies has challenged the university in the same way that feminism has challenged society at large. Setting womens studies in the larger context of American higher education during a century of womens efforts to gain equality in the academic professions, Boxer narrates the history of the field and explores the philosophical and political goal of its practitioners. She examines the present status of womens studies in various types of institutions and traces the impact of a quarter century of feminist scholarship, teaching and academic advocacy since the founding of the first such programme at San Diego State University in 1970. She also comments on the fields increasing international presence. Drawing on experience as a historian, feminist, academic adminstrator and former chair of a womens studies programme, Boxer observes that by working for justice - and for changes necessary to make the attainment of justice a practical possibility - womens studies ensures that women are heard in the processes and places where knowledge is created, taught and preserved. The intellectual transformation behind the emergence of womens studies, Boxer concludes, is one of historic proportions. She asserts that, in common with other great moments in human experience, it has given rise to a flowering of art, literature and science, and to the challenging of previously accepted authorities of text and tradition.

French Women in Revolutionary Action and Thought

Doris and Paul Beik. Flora Tristan, Utopian Feminist: Her Travel Diaries and Personal Crusade. Selected, Translated, and with an Introduction to Her Life. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993. xxi +195 pp. ISBN 0-252-31163-2 (cl); 0-253-20766-5 (pb). Claire Goldberg Moses and LesUe Wahl Rabine. Feminism, Socialism, and French Romanticism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993.371 pp. ISBN 0-253-20818-1 (cl); 0-253-20818-1 (pb). Marilyn Yalom. Blood Sisters: The French Revolution in Womens Memory. New York: Basic Books, 1993. xi + 308 pp. ISBN 0-465-09263-2 (cl).