The Grounding of Modern Feminism

Nancy F. Cott...offers a new interpretation of American feminism during the early decades of this century—a period traditionally viewed as one in which women won the right to vote and then lost interest in feminist issues. Cott argues instead that his period was a time of crisis and transition from the nineteenth-century "woman movement’ to the beginning of modern feminism. Cott focuses on the suffrage-campaign milieu in which feminism arose, giving particular attention to the character and role of the National Woman’s Party from its militant suffrage days to its advocacy of the equal right amendment in the 1920s. Against prevailing interpretations of the decline of women’s political activities after 1920, Cott counterposes the swelling numbers in women’s voluntary associations and their political efforts. She also analyzes the pitfalls that awaited women who tried for effectiveness in the male-dominated political parties. She sets the controversy over the equal rights amendment in new context, discussing the full dimensions of the conflict as not merely over personalities, tactics, or class loyalties, but as a signal example of the modern problem of capturing sexual equality and sexual difference in law.