Women Of The Grange

Recent scholarship suggests that farm women have characteristically tried to improve their societal positions by pursuing strategies of mutuality with men, rather than by forming relationships of sisterhood with each other. Nowhere is this premise more clearly illustrated than in the rituals and programs of the Grange, the secret fraternal organization established to serve farmers. In this work, Donald Marti examines the important roles that women have always played in the Grange, and explores the opportunities for sociability and cooperation that fostered sisterhood and encouraged women to pursue their own distinctive interests. Marti's book offers a careful and detailed analysis of women's roles in the Grange, and introduces readers to thoughtful, articulate farm women who have been virtually ignored in historical literature. His well-balanced study deflates some of the claims that have been made for the order's liberating influence, but at the same time takes that influence very seriously. Along the way, he traces the growth of women's roles from the promise of equality made by the Grange's founders, to the turn-of-the-century strides that made women some of the leading state and local officers. Although mainly focusing on the years up to 1920, the study also surveys more recent developments such as Grange women's continued interest in public reform, their narrowed focus on domestic crafts beginning in the 1950s, and the striking changes of the 1980s. This work represents an important new chapter in the historical discussion of the Grange, and will be a welcome publication for students of American history, women's studies, and agricultural history.

Socialist women faced the often thorny dilemma of fitting their concern with women's rights into their commitment to socialism. Mari Jo Buhle examines women's efforts to agitate for suffrage, sexual and economic emancipation, and other issues and the political and intellectual conflicts that arose in response. In particular, she analyzes the clash between a nativist socialism influence by ideas of individual rights and the class-based socialism championed by German American immigrants. As she shows, the two sides diverged, often greatly, in their approaches and their definitions of women's emancipation. Their differing tactics and goals undermined unity and in time cost women their independence within the larger movement.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1874.