Seattle Suffrage

Seattle women formed their first suffrage association after hearing Susan B. Anthony speak at Brown Church in 1871. During their struggle for the vote, they were subjected to the usual criticisms of being inappropriate, unnatural, and threats to the establishment....

Artemisia Gentileschi: On Her Own Terms

You can read about a painter, but none of it makes any real sense until you see her paintings. I read a little bit about Artemisia Gentileschi in Uppity Women of Medieval Times by Vicki Leon (buy it! read it!), and then I read some more. But none of it made...

The New Struggle for Abortion Rights

We often think of abortion rights as a significant advancement in the feminist movement for equality. And it is — but only if you start measuring progress from the late 1800s, when women lost their assumed right to abort. Women healers in many parts of Western Europe...

From Property to Almost Human

Until several decades ago, the U.S. treated women as men’s property, and regulated violence against women accordingly. Violence against women was considered illegal only when men transgressed the “property rights” of other men. Transplanted from...