| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 93.3

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 93.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Republican Women: Feminism and Conservatism from Suffrage through the Rise of the New Right. By Catherine E. Rymph. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006. xvi, 338 pp. Cloth, $59.95, ISBN 0-8078-2984-6. Paper, $24.95, ISBN 0-8078-5652-5.)

Catherine E. Rymph furnishes an insightful, well-nuanced history of female activism associated with the twentieth-century Republican party. Her story begins with nationwide woman suffrage in 1920 and ends when Ronald Reagan's 1980 election cemented the relationship between Republicans and the antifeminist New Right. Rymph's theme is the Republican women's dilemma, whether to stress female integration into male-dominated structures such as the Republican National Committee (RNC) or to stress female distinctiveness (exemplified by morality-centered politics) in all-female clubs. Rymph begins by examining organizational manifestations of these two choices. She devotes her first two chapters to the uneven incorporation of women into party conventions and the RNC starting in the 1920s, and to the quasi-independent National Federation of Republican Women's Clubs, formed in 1937 from preexisting groups. Rymph's story then moves chronologically. Especially before the 1970s, Republican women lacked both power and influence within the party. Rymph demonstrates the party's dependence in the 1950s on a white, suburban, female rank-and-file to perform the "housework of government" (p. 4)—voter outreach on the local level, extending to election-day childcare.

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