Creating the new woman
Subtitle: the rise of southern women's progressive culture in Texas, 1893-1918
By: Judith N. McArthur.
Series: Women in American history
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Published: 1998
Place of publication: Urbana
Language: eng
Number of pages: 199
Subjects: Women social reformers -- Texas -- History; Women in politics -- Texas -- History
Description: Regionally distinct yet influenced by national trends, women's progressive culture in Texas offers a valuable opportunity to analyze the evolution of women's voluntary associations, their challenges to southern conventions of race and class, and their quest for social change and political power.

Judith McArthur makes an important and accessible contribution to the study of women's activism by tracing in detail how general concerns of national progressive organizations - about pure food, prostitution, and education reform - shaped programs at state and local levels. Southern women differed from their northern counterparts by devising new approaches to settlement work and taking advantage of World War I to challenge southern gender and racial norms.

McArthur offers a unique analysis of how women in Texas succeeded in securing partial voting rights before passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. Throughout her study, McArthur provides valuable comparisons between North and South, among various southern states, and between black and white, male and female progressives.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [151]-192) and index.
Table of contents: title: "The coming woman in politics"; title: Domestic revolutionaries; title: Every mother's child; title: Cities of women; title: "I wish my mother had a vote"; title: "These piping times of victory"; title: Conclusion : gender and public cultures.