Organized Women, Policy Initiatives, and American Political Development

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

While women have organized and mobilized around certain issues often identified as "women's issues," they have also helped push the American state to act on issues less closely identified with gender identity. Organized women played a significant role in 20th century state building, and there are lessons in successful and less successful efforts to move the state into new policy arenas. Some efforts targeted the national state and some were more focused on state-level innovation; all drew on legacies of past women's political involvement. The papers on this panel examine 20th century environmental activism and its impact on the state, and black women's efforts to move away from the discriminatory mothers' pensions model of childcare provision and toward day care for working mothers. The cases will consider consequences of and lessons from these movements for attempts to leverage policy change and for American political development. Discussants are experts in the history of race and gender mobilization in APD.

Sub Unit

• Division 7: Politics and History

Individual Presentations

• Congress, Clubwomen, and Water Resources: Collaborative Policymaking, 1950-1965 - Ann-Marie E. Szymanski, University of Oklahoma

• Women and Environmental Policy in California - Kathleen Ann Cairns, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo

• Organized Black Women, Policy Initiatives, and American Political Development - Carol Nackenoff, Swarthmore College

Chair

• Carol Nackenoff Swarthmore College

Discussants

• Kristin Goss Duke University

• Julie L. Novkov University at Albany, SUNY