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No constitutional right to be ladies : women…
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No constitutional right to be ladies : women and the obligations of citizenship (edition 1998)

by Linda K. Kerber

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1473184,611 (4.2)None
"Struggles over women's suffrage and the ERA have publicized how much women have related their struggle for equality to rights. That the history of citizens' obligations is also linked to gender has been less understood." "In this landmark book, the historian Linda K. Kerber opens up this important and neglected subject for the first time. She begins during the Revolution, when married women did not have the same obligation as their husbands to be "patriots," and ends in the present, when men and women still have different obligations to serve in the armed forces. She also sets her historical imagination to work on the vastly different issues of men's and women's obligations to refrain from vagrancy, to pay taxes, and to serve on juries." "By turning upside down the traditional paradigm of women's history as one of rights, Kerber shows us that there is no "right" to be excused from the obligations of citizenship. Hers is an invaluable new way of understanding the history of women in America - and American history more generally."--Jacket.… (more)
Member:wgsuva
Title:No constitutional right to be ladies : women and the obligations of citizenship
Authors:Linda K. Kerber
Info:New York : Hill and Wang, 1998.
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No Constitutional Right to be Ladies by Linda K. Kerber

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Final Chapter discusses the obligations of military service, the connections to citizenship and what that means in contemporary American life. Points out entitlements that veterans receive (G.I. Bill, veterans preference in hiring, etc.) Discusses legal cases brought by women challenging veterans preferences and the Supreme Court decisions involving registration and the draft. Emphasizes the negative connotations brought on the ERA by the requirement to darft women.
  MWMLibrary | Jan 14, 2022 |
A really fascinating look at women's history in the United States from the late eighteenth century through to the nineties, framed not in terms of the struggle to gain equal rights, but in terms of the struggle to gain equal obligations under the law--whether to vote, to serve on juries, to fight on the front lines in combat situations, etc.

Meticulously researched and cogently argued, Kerber looks at how the refusal to legislate for women's obligations within these spheres had a negative impact on their ability to exercise what rights they did have, and on the movement to gain equal rights. It gave me a number of tools with which to re-evaluate the fields of women's history I've already studied, and gave me a basic education in American women's history, which I was only vaguely acquainted with before; not to mention that it made my jaw drop a number of times in sheer disbelief. I found the comparisons between the civil rights movement and the feminist movement to be especially interesting; how advocates from the two separate movements (or both) learned to identify with one another, their points of commonality and their differences with one another.

Highly, highly recommended if you have any interest at all in this area of history. Don't let the fact that it focuses on constitutional law put you off; normally, legal history ranks only slightly above economic history with me for topics to switch me off, and I still sped through this and wished for more ( )
  siriaeve | Apr 26, 2008 |
Kerber is the May Brodbeck Professor of History at the University of Iowa. In this book, she discusses how the history of the struggle for women's rights has been just as much a history of the struggle for the obligations of citizenship. By denying that women had such obligations as jury service, paying taxes, etc., men succeeded for a long time in treating women as second-class citizens.

An interesting, and not sufficiently considered, view.
  lilithcat | Oct 19, 2005 |
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"Struggles over women's suffrage and the ERA have publicized how much women have related their struggle for equality to rights. That the history of citizens' obligations is also linked to gender has been less understood." "In this landmark book, the historian Linda K. Kerber opens up this important and neglected subject for the first time. She begins during the Revolution, when married women did not have the same obligation as their husbands to be "patriots," and ends in the present, when men and women still have different obligations to serve in the armed forces. She also sets her historical imagination to work on the vastly different issues of men's and women's obligations to refrain from vagrancy, to pay taxes, and to serve on juries." "By turning upside down the traditional paradigm of women's history as one of rights, Kerber shows us that there is no "right" to be excused from the obligations of citizenship. Hers is an invaluable new way of understanding the history of women in America - and American history more generally."--Jacket.

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