"'You've Come a Long Way, Baby': Historical Perspectives" is an essay by Connie Brown and Jane Seitz that was included in the important 1970 feminist anthology Sisterhood Is Powerful: An Anthology of Writings From the Women's Liberation Movement (Vintage Books).
History and Herstory
"'You've Come a Long Way, Baby': Historical Perspectives" offers a look at women's history in the United States. It refers to books such as Eleanor Flexner's Century of Struggle and Aileen Kraditor's Up From the Pedestal to examine how women's stories have been shut out of official historical records. In their piece, Connie Brown and Jane Seitz make the case for the goals of feminism and women's liberation, including the goal of better understanding women's history (or "herstory," as some in the movement would say).
This passage opens the essay:
"The difficulty of learning about the history of women in America is that, for the most part, it is an unwritten history of millions of private lives, whose voices, those that were recorded at all, are scattered and buried in journals and letters. It isn't hard to find out what men thought of us-their ideas about women are accessible through the laws they passed and maintained, denying or restricting women's civil and property rights, through the religions they organized and practiced, through their literature."
- From "'You've Come a Long Way, Baby': Historical Perspectives"
What follows is an exploration of the way women's so-called roles developed in the United States, from colonial times through the 1960s. Deriving basic concepts from English common law, the structure of U.S. society limited what women could do. According to Connie Brown and Jane Seitz, patriarchal society took for granted women's physical, legal, social and intellectual inferiority to men, no matter how misguided the assumption might be.
Famous Figures and Important Issues
"You've Come a Long Way, Baby" quotes writers such as Thomas Paine and Frances Trollope about the severe limitations women historically faced in American society. The essay then examines the work of the Grimke sisters, Sarah and Angelina Grimke, who fought against slavery and for women's equality. Other important historical figures mentioned are Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone and Carrie Chapman Catt.
"'You've Come a Long Way, Baby': Historical Perspectives" also examines the racism of the 19th century women's rights movement, the relationship between sexism and racism, the relevance to feminism of union activists and the difficulty in uniting working class women with upper and middle class women in the struggle for women's rights.
Who Has Come a Long Way?
The phrase "you've come a long way, baby" was frequently used in relation to the women's movement of the 1960s and 1970s. At its most basic, the phrase attempts to express that women had achieved a great deal in society, perhaps due to feminism. If women had "come a long way" they now had access to more opportunities and equality than women of previous generations. The phrase has been used as a catchy headline in many stories about women's rights and feminism. It has also been seen by some social historians as inaccurate and condescending.
Sisterhood is Powerful begins with editor Robin Morgan's explanation of women's liberation and her personal ruminations on the creation of the anthology. Robin Morgan's introduction is immediately followed by the Connie Brown and Jane Seitz essay "'You've Come a Long Way, Baby': Historical Perspectives."