Women’s Equality Day reading list

Just in time for Women’s Equality Day we have a list of books that help tell the full story of women’s fight for equality in the United States.

Women’s Equality Day has been celebrated on August 26 every year since 1973, after the passage of a bill in Congress introduced by Bella Abzug. The date was selected to commemorate the 1920 certification of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, granting women the right to vote.

The passage of the 19th Amendment was the culmination of a massive, peaceful civil rights movement by women that had its formal beginnings in 1848 at the world’s first women’s rights convention, in Seneca Falls, New York.

But it was just one step in the long battle for true equality, which is ongoing and continues today. We have selected a few books that help tell a more complete history of the women whose efforts have brought us to where we are, and whose legacies we are building on today.

Formidable: American Women and the Fight for Equality: 1920-2020
Elisabeth Griffith

Formidable chronicles the efforts of white and Black women to advance sometimes competing causes. Black women wanted the rights enjoyed by whites. They wanted to protect their communities from racial violence and discrimination. Theirs was not only a women’s movement. White women wanted to be equal to white men. They sought equal legal rights, political power, safeguards for working women and immigrants, and an end to confining social structures. There were also many white women who opposed any advance for any women.

We the Women: The Unstoppable Mothers of the Equal Rights Amendment
Julie C. Suk

Distinguished legal scholar Julie C. Suk tells the story of the ERA through the voices of the bold women lawmakers who created it. They faced opposition and subterfuge at every turn, but they kept the ERA alive. And, despite significant gains, the achievements of gender equality have fallen short, especially for working mothers and women of color. Suk excavates the ERA’s past to guide its future, explaining how the ERA can address hot-button issues such as pregnancy discrimination, sexual harassment, and unequal pay.

Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All
Martha S. Jones

In Vanguard, acclaimed historian Martha S. Jones offers a new history of African American women’s political lives in America. She recounts how they defied both racism and sexism to fight for the ballot, and how they wielded political power to secure the equality and dignity of all persons. From the earliest days of the republic to the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act and beyond, Jones excavates the lives and work of black women–Maria Stewart, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Fannie Lou Hamer, and more–who were the vanguard of women’s rights, calling on America to realize its best ideals.

Ordinary Equality digs into the fascinating and little-known history of the ERA and the lives of the incredible–and often overlooked–women and queer people who have helped shape the U.S. Constitution for more than 200 years. Based on author Kate Kelly’s acclaimed podcast of the same name, Ordinary Equality recounts a story centuries in the making.

Gendered Citizenship: The Original Conflict over the Equal Rights Amendment, 1920-1963
Rebecca DeWolf

Gendered Citizenship illuminates the ideological contours of the original struggle over the Equal Rights Amendment from 1920 to 1963. As the first comprehensive, full-length history of that struggle, this study grapples not only with the battle over women’s constitutional status but also with the more than 40-year mission to articulate the boundaries of what it means to be a citizen.

Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) women sparked the revolutionary vision of early feminists by providing a model of freedom at a time when American women experienced few rights. Women of the Six Nations Confederacy possessed decisive political power, control of their bodies, control of their own property, custody of their children, the power to initiate divorce, satisfying work and a society generally free of rape and domestic violence. Historian Sally Roesch Wagner recounts the struggle for freedom and equality waged by early American women documenting how Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, and Matilda Joslyn Gage were influenced by their Indigenous women neighbors.

We Demand The Right To Vote: The Journey to the 19th Amendment
Menesse Wall

Written in a conversational, easy-to-read style, this illustrated historical account commences with Native American cultural influences and continues with women’s conventions, arrests, trials, petitions, battles won, and those lost to reveal society’s slow acceptance of women’s involvement outside of their socially prescribed realm. Throughout the book’s journey, enchanting artwork—inspired by historical events, people, quotes, and memorabilia—visually illustrates the various pivotal moments chronicled in each chapter.

Suffrage at 100: Women in American Politics Since 1920
Edited by Leandra Zarnow and Stacie Taranto

Suffrage at 100 looks at women’s engagement in US electoral politics and government over the one hundred years since the ratification of the 19th Amendment. It explores why women’s access to, and influence on, political power remains frustratingly uneven, particularly for women of color and queer women. Examining how women have acted collectively and individually, both within and outside of electoral and governmental channels, Suffrage at 100 moves from the front lines of community organizing to the highest glass ceiling.

Public Faces, Secret Lives: A Queer History of the Women’s Suffrage Movement
Wendy L. Rouse

The women’s suffrage movement, much like many other civil rights movements, has an important and often unrecognized queer history. In Public Faces, Secret Lives Wendy L. Rouse reveals that, contrary to popular belief, the suffrage movement included a variety of individuals who represented a range of genders and sexualities. However, owing to the constant pressure to present a “respectable” public image, suffrage leaders publicly conformed to gendered views of ideal womanhood in order to make women’s suffrage more palatable to the public.

Edna Buckman Kearns was a young wife, mother and fledgling journalist when she joined New York suffragists demanding the vote. She campaigned from her “Spirit of ’76” wagon and picketed the White House with Alice Paul. Edna’s granddaughter penned this personal and inspiring glimpse into the life of one engaged woman of the time.

Winning The Vote: The Triumph of the American Woman Suffrage Movement
Robert P. J. Cooney, Jr.

This beautifully designed book presents the suffrage movement clearly and chronologically, with emphasis on the remarkable personalities and turbulent political campaigns of the early 20th century. Over 960 photographs, posters, leaflets, and portraits, as well as a fast paced text, Winning the Vote highlights key developments between 1848 and 1920, including over 50 state electoral campaigns and the final, controversial, and hard fought drive for the 19th Amendment.

American Jewish Women’s History: A Reader
Pamela S. Nadell

This anthology covering colonial times to the present illuminates that historical diversity. It shows women shaping Judaism and their American Jewish communities as they engaged in volunteer activities and political crusades, battled stereotypes, and constructed relationships with their Christian neighbors. It ranges from Rebecca Gratz’s development of the Jewish Sunday School in Philadelphia in 1838 to protest the rising prices of kosher meat at the turn of the century, to the shaping of southern Jewish women’s cultural identity through food.

A Vote for Women: Celebrating the Women’s Suffrage Movement and the 19th Amendment
St James’s House

This fully illustrated, beautifully designed hardback book charts the history of the women’s movement’s fight to claim the vote, and the advances that have resulted from that victory. In addition to relaying the extensive history of US women’s suffrage, the book brings together key stories of current best practice in the field of equality and women’s issues.

The National Women’s History Alliance has a long history of recommending books related to the study of women’s history. We have also relied on the sales of these books for a portion of our funding. In the modern era, we understand that many of our followers prefer to buy their books from other online sources, and so we have an affiliate agreement with Amazon and Bookshop. When you click one of the links above and make a purchase, we will receive a small payment (at no extra cost to you).