2017 Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Genders and Sexualities

June 01 - 04, 2017

One hundred years ago, U.S. suffragists won the Nineteenth Amendment, ending decades of struggle for women’s voting rights.  In honor of the 100-year anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment, we assemble a panel to look back over the past century and ask, how much have women achieved in political participation in the ensuing decades? Our panelists have deep knowledge of women’s political engagement, including in both electoral politics and social movement activism.  What their observations uncover is that the influence of the Nineteenth Amendment along with the unfolding of women’s political engagement over the last 100 years, tells a diverse and complex story.  Sometimes developments since the Nineteenth Amendment are exhilarating for the progress women have made; at other times, this long view is discouraging because barriers to equality still need to be surmounted.  Celeste Montoya explores women’s voting rights, offering a century-long view but retelling the narrative bringing racial disparities and voter suppression into full view.  Heather Ondercin explores shifts overtime in women’s partisanship, comparing women’s support for the two major political parties to that of men’s.  Heather Hurwitz and Verta Taylor reveal gender conflicts in the Occupy-Wall-Street movement, conflicts that fueled a feminist collective identity among some participants.  Tracey-Jean Boisseau and Tracy Thomas follow the ERA from its earliest history to the present, as a new coalition of feminist activists continues to press for a guarantee of women’s equality.  Our panelists, based on their observations, also look forward, anticipating developments in women’s political engagement over the next 100 years.