You have not been recognized as a subscriber to the AHR online. About 256 words from this article are provided below; about 539 words remain.
 
If you are a individual member of the American Historical Association, you may:
• login here if you have already registered for online access.
• Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
• Set up your online account for the first time. AHA members can go to the AHA individual membership section to locate their member numbers.

If you are not a member of the American Historical Association, you can:
• Join the AHA and receive many member benefits including print and electronic issues of the American Historical Review.
• Purchase a research pass to gain two hour access to the entire History Cooperative web site. You will have full access to current issues of the American Historical Review (104.3-present). Note: the Research Pass does not provide access to JSTOR's holdings of the American Historical Review.

Instititutions can:
• Subscribe to this journal and receive print and electronic issues.
• Activate your existing subscription so that we recognize your IP number ranges.
| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 107.5 | The History Cooperative
107.5  
Journals link Search link Partners link Information link
December, 2002
Previous
Table of Contents
Next
The American Historical Review

Table of contents
List journal issues
Home
Get a printer-friendly version of this page
 
 


Book Review

Canada and the United States



Sandra F. VanBurkleo. "Belonging to the World": Women's Rights and American Constitutional Culture. (Bicentennial Essays on the Bill of Rights.) New York: Oxford University Press. 2001. Pp. xix, 409. $24.95.

Sandra F. VanBurkleo executes brilliantly the difficult task of synthesizing the history of women's quest for liberty in the United States. Focusing on women's agency, she discusses activities usually ignored by scholars who confine constitutional history to case law and doctrinal developments. Detailing the progress of women through social action and legal developments, she documents successes in voting, reproductive freedom, higher wages, and more educational access. The book addresses persistent problems: the wage gap, the absence of comparable worth, occupational segregation, and the reigning male imperative for women who enter jobs for the first time. It also traces the feminization and racialization of poverty and a continued pattern of socialization that reinforces the gender differences underlying disparities. VanBurkleo reminds us that despite the Nineteenth Amendment and assorted supreme court rulings, women are still second-class citizens and absent from basic constitutional texts. 1
     The book uses the concepts of settlement and speech community as an interpretive framework. Settlement describes the legal developments that occur after a constitutional crisis. Speech community describes how citizenship and participation in a shared political culture extends beyond the state in a formal sense. Speech communities shared goals, fellowship, and the belief that through speech they could transform individuals as well as the republic. Speech communities tried to resolve social conflicts through voting. . . .


There are about 539 more words in this article. Please log in (or, if you are not yet an authorized user, please go to the User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.