In Her Own Name: The Politics of Women's Rights Before Suffrage

Co-Winner, 2024 V.O. Key Award, Southern Political Science Association

Long before American women had the right to vote, states dramatically transformed their status as economic citizens. In the early nineteenth century, a married woman had hardly any legal existence apart from her husband. By the twentieth, state-level statutes, constitutional provisions, and court rulings had granted married women a host of protections relating to ownership and control of property. Why did powerful men ext...