Laws relating to women's rights, including laws passed and court decisions including Supreme Court decisions intepreting those laws. Includes legislation about woman suffrage (voting rights), laws about equal employment opportunity, laws about basic citizenship and property rights, and more women's rights laws.
AFDC - Aid to Families with Dependent Children - defined, and related to women's history.
Surrogate mother decision: Baby M, born to Mary Beth Whitehead but adopted by her natural parents, Elizabeth and William Stern, was at the center of this controversy over parental rights and surrogacy contracts.
In the 19th century, American and British women's rights -- or lack of them -- depended heavily on the commentaries of William Blackstone which defined a married woman and man as one person under the law.
Myra Bradwell biography - a profile of pioneer woman lawyer Myra Bradwell of Chicago.
Brief history and description of the concept of comparable worth: equal pay for work of equal value. From Jone Johnson Lewis.
The Comstock Law, an "Act for the Suppression of Trade in, and Circulation of, Obscene Literature and Articles for Immoral Use," was used not only to stop the trade in pornography after it was passed in 1873, but also to stop the distribution of birth control devices and written information on birth control.
A definition of coverture as it applies to the history of women's property rights.
Curtesy was a legal right of a widower regarding his wife's estate.
Dower is a legal right on the part of a widow to a share of her husband's estate.
Frothingham v. Mellon and Massachusetts v. Mellon - Supreme Court decision in 1923 addressing the expenditure of federal funds for infant and maternity health programs.
The basics of the 1848 law granting women more rights to property after marriage.
In 1813, for the first time a US court decided that custody of children did not automatically rest with the father.
Landmark case in sexual harassment.
In 1874, the US Supreme Court ruled that women were not entitled to voting rights, despite the protections of the Fourteenth Amendment.
A description of the Persons Case in Canada.
A history of the President's Commission on the Status of Women, 1961-1963, and its lasting effects.
Roe v. Wade is the historic Supreme Court decision overturning a Texas interpretation of abortion law and making abortion legal in the United States.
That a man was permitted to beat his wife with a switch no thicker than his thumb was a fact, though it was probably not a formal law anywhere nor stated in common law in just that form -- and was almost certainly not the origin of the phrase rule of thumb.
An explanation of Salic Law, which affected the history of several European countries and their royal lineage.
The Sheppard-Towner Act of 1921 was a ground-breaking law to fund maternity and infant health care.
Was Tailhook sexual harassment or wild partying? Summary of the Tailhook Trial and Settlement.
When Susan B. Anthony voted in 1871, she was arrested, tried, and convicted in this test of women's citizenship rights.
A landmark case in women's equality.
Thomas Wentworth Higginson. a 19th century activist and writer, was an advocate for women's rights. In this essay, first published in 1853 and addressed to the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention, Higginson presents an early argument for women's rights.
A history of the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution, as it has been applied to women's rights.
