Divided We Stand: The Battle Over Women's Rights and Family Values That Polarized American Politics

by Marjorie J. Spruill

Overview

The fascinating true story of the characters in Hulu's "Mrs. America" and a broader portrait of the two women's movements that spurred an enduring rift between liberals and conservatives.

"The many admirers of 'Mrs. America' . . . will find great satisfaction in [Divided We Stand] . . . a clear, compelling and deeply insightful volume." -The Washington Post

One of Smithsonian Magazine's Ten Best History Books of the Year

In the early 1970s, an ascendant women's rights movement enjoyed strong support from both political parties and considerable success, but was soon challenged by a conservative women's movement formed in opposition. Tensions between the two would explode in 1977 at the congressionally funded National Women's Conference in Houston, Texas. As Bella Abzug, Gloria Steinem, and other feminists endorsed hot-button issues such as abortion rights, the ERA, and gay rights, Phyllis Schlafly and Lottie Beth Hobbs rallied with conservative women to protest federally funded feminism and launch a pro-family movement.

Divided We Stand reveals how crucial women and women's issues have been in the shaping of today's political culture. After the National Women's Conference, Democrats continued to back women's rights in cooperation with a more diverse feminist movement while the GOP abandoned its previous support for women's rights and defined itself as the party of family values, irrevocably affecting the course of American politics.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781632863157
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	02/28/2017
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	448
File size:	8 MB

About the Author

Marjorie J. Spruill is Distinguished Professor Emerita of History from the University of South Carolina. She is the author of New Women of the New South and the editor of numerous anthologies including One Woman, One Vote. Spruill's research for Divided We Stand was supported by fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. She lives in South Carolina.

Table of Contents

1 Four Days That Changed the World 1

2 The Rise of the Feminist Establishment 14

3 To Form a More Perfect Union 42

4 What's Wrong with "Equal Rights" for Women? 71

5 An Alternative to "Women's Lib" 93

6 The Gathering Storm 114

7 Armageddon State by State 140

8 Our of the Kitchen and into the Counterrevolution 166

9 Mama Said There'd Be Days Like This 189

10 Crest of the Second Wave 205

11 Launching the Pro-Family Movement 235

12 We Shall Go Forth 262

13 Onward Christian Soldiers 292

Epilogue: A Nation Divided 314

Acknowledgments 345

Notes 350

Index 425

Editorial Reviews

12/19/2016
In this parable of how sensible and practical paths toward broader equality get overwhelmed by threat, fear, and bigotry, historian Spruill (New Women of the New South) suggests that the current political landscape of paralyzing divisiveness, hateful rhetoric, and persistent obstructionism took form in 1977, when the two women’s movements of the 1970s, each side purporting to represent the majority or speak for “real” American women, came to a head at the National Women’s Conference in Houston. Incensed that political equality would infringe on their privileges, a small group of opponents to the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) organized and mobilized a bloc of religious and socially conservative women with the threat that an overreaching government was out to destroy the American family and traditional, Bible-based morals. Meanwhile, those in favor of the ERA rallied diverse women with a victorious vision of full human rights. Spruill remains evenhanded in her treatment, tracing the tensions within each group and among their supporters. The lasting outcome of the failed ERA, Spruill reveals, was the embrace of social conservatives into the Republican party. They brought an antiabortion, profamily platform that propelled Reagan to the presidency and has since been a GOP mainstay. Spruill’s narrative is detailed and precise; her blow-by-blow accounts and alternating chapters of moves and countermoves allows for repetition and lacks meaningful analysis, but her rigorous research and intense accuracy will make this an indispensible handbook on the history of the National Women’s Conference and its enduring legacy on American politics. Agent: Lisa Adams, Garamond Agency. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

Spruill…convincingly traces today's schisms to events surrounding the National Women's Conference, a four-day gathering in Houston in November 1977. These divergent narratives from 40 years ago offer many lessons to those hoping to maintain the momentum of the Jan. 21 women's marches.” —New York Times Book Review

“Marjorie Spruill describes a polarized America that will be recognizable to any consumer of today's news…A story crucial to understanding American politics over the past 40 years…The question raised by the battle of 1977—who speaks for women?—still bedevils American politics.” —Wall Street Journal

“This timely history anatomizes two bitterly opposed women's movements, tracing a connection between 1977 and 2016.” —The New Yorker

“While the shortcomings of the women's movement in protecting their advances is well-documented in this book, it is the rise of conservative women and how they redirected the Republican Party's positions that makes the book so interesting. Feminists and supporters of women's rights will find this difficult to swallow, but this is an important book for them to read.” —New York Journal of Books

“Fascinating…DIVIDED WE STAND evokes two movements, two equal mobilizations, struggling over the role of women in America.” —The Nation

“The NWC [National Women's Conference] featured people and political trends whose significance is all the greater given the election's outcome. The book details how the conference provoked a bitter debate between feminists and conservative women activists…[Spruill's] interviews of key participants both illuminate the narrative and preserve first-hand accounts for future scholars.” —Washington Independent Review of Books

“Spruill strives to be evenhanded, pointing out the mistakes and excesses of both sides…DIVIDED WE STAND lucidly explains just how we got so divided.” —Dallas Morning News

“Spruill's project of historical reclamation is an important one … The value of reconstructing those days [of the 1977 National Women's Conference] and pondering their meaning for the light they might shed on ours is unquestionable.” —New York Review of Books

“Noted historian Marjorie J. Spruill has written a well-researched, detailed history of the modern-day fight over women's rights and its 'essential role' in bringing the United States to the fractious state we currently endure . . . Divided We Stand is essential for understanding the recent past as well as the present.” —Southwestern Historical Quarterly

“An outstanding study of the National Women's Conference (NWC). Published to coincide with the conference's fortieth anniversary, Divided We Stand is the first book to fully explore this momentous event . . . [Spruill] places readers in strategy sessions and frontline skirmishes, allowing them to feel what it was like to be a part of the buildup to and the aftermath of the NWC.” —Journal of Southern History

From the Publisher

01/01/2017
To celebrate the seminal 1977 Houston National Women's Conference (NWC) 40th anniversary, Spruill (history, Univ. of South Carolina) covers decades of the fight for women's rights and the current resulting political polarization. In the 1970s, the need for increased rights rose to the forefront of political and societal consciousness, but it also splintered liberals and conservatives over intrinsic beliefs about women's familial role. According to Spruill, the positive changes peaked at the NWC, and then regressed, causing increased strife in the present day. She specializes in documenting the pivotal role women played during key moments in American history, and her analysis of the NWC is a much-needed update to Alice S. Rossi's Feminists in Politics: A Panel Analysis of the First National Women's Conference. However, without the results of the 2016 presidential race, her thesis on the gradual diminishment of hard-won rights lacks punch. Additionally, the density of information, both biographical and political, all but guarantees the book's relegation to researchers and students, for which it is a seminal work. Index not seen. VERDICT An authoritative history of the women's rights movement across decades arriving at its current incarnation.—Jessica Bushore, Xenia, OH

Library Journal

★ 2016-11-21
A history of the federal push to bolster women's rights from successive presidents since John F. Kennedy—and the resulting clashes with traditional conservative constituencies.With the culmination of the feminist political agenda in 1977 at Houston's National Women's Conference, there was a swift conservative reaction, led by Illinois political activist Phyllis Schlafly and her organized minions. In this highly detailed but well-focused account, Spruill (History/Univ. of South Carolina; New Women of the New South: The Leaders of the Woman Suffrage Movement in the Southern States, 1993, etc.) reminds us that in the late 1970s, there were two women's movements. The first, supported by both Democrats and Republicans, got its impetus from federally sponsored programs like the Kennedy Commission (1963), which revealed "the inequities in public institutions, and the vulnerable situation of homemakers." Furthermore, writes the author in her assiduously researched narrative, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 became "one of the most important pieces of legislation in advancing gender equity, the basis for many subsequent feminist victories." On the other hand, more conservative and religious women became alarmed by the tilt toward "liberation" from home and hearth as well as the determination by "libbers" to work alongside men, countenance abortion, and, shockingly, love each other. (The support of lesbianism would rive even the most liberal feminist agenda.) For the feminists, the move to become a party with real political clout occurred with the election of Bella Abzug to Congress in 1971 and the forming of the National Women's Political Caucus around the leadership of Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, Shirley Chisholm, and others. As women made staggering inroads into government agencies and other areas under the administrations of Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford (largely thanks to his wife, Betty), the anti-feminists staged a backlash by blocking the Comprehensive Child Development Act of 1971 (publicly funded child care) as the "horrifying first step on the slippery slope toward a godless government invasion of the family." There are countless kernels of amazing achievement and courage throughout this jam-packed, engaging history.

Kirkus Reviews