10.6092/issn.2611-2752/12466
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2611-2752
12466
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USAbroad – Journal of American History and Politics
Gender and Empowerment in American History and Politics
Text.Serial.Journal
https://usabroad.unibo.it/
4
Editorial
2021-03-04
2021-02-26
2021-03-04
2021-03-04
I-II
USAbroad
Alice Ciulla
2021/03/04
10.6092/issn.2611-2752/12466
I
Università degli Studi Roma Tre
2611-2752
en
II
Gender and Empowerment in American History and Politics
https://usabroad.unibo.it/article/download/12466/12356
4
Editorial                                              USAbroad – Journal of American History and Politics. Vol. 4 (2021)
https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.2611-2752/12466                                                            ISSN 2611-2752




     Gender and Empowerment in American History and Politics


                                               Published: March 4, 2021




     One hundred years ago, the United States ratified the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution,
thus enfranchising 26 million women after years of struggle for their voting rights. While closing the
divisive issue of women’s suffrage, the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment gave rise to numerous
questions and set in motion new forms of activism for the liberation of all women, including those of
racial minorities and working-class women. Over time, it became clear that advancing gender justice
did not mean simply providing formal access to representation, but it required transforming gender
relations as a whole, beyond traditional male-female categories. Moreover, this meant recognizing the
overlapping identities of all those involved and overcoming the systemic and substantive barriers that
prevented—and still prevent—many women and gender minorities from acquiring a distinct voice.
     When we launched the call for papers, “Gender and Empowerment in American History and Pol-
itics,” for our fourth monographic issue, in March 2020, the American presidential campaign was still
ongoing. We opened our call by stating that witnessing a race between two white men running for
the highest office in the United States exemplified how gender equality in American politics was far
from being achieved. Almost one year after the call was sent out, Kamala Harris was sworn in as Joe
Biden’s vice-president, becoming the first woman in this office. The Biden-Harris cabinet is the most
gender-diverse as well as ethnic-diverse in American history, and women’s rights and gender issues
have been included among the top priorities of the new administration’s agenda. While all this cannot
be underestimated, a closer look at this picture—and one that addresses problems from a historical
perspective—indicates that gender equality in the United States is still far from being achieved, both
at political and social levels.
     Political representation of women and people in the LGTBQ+ community is only one of the many
unsolved questions that the essays in this monographic issue analyze. The broad spectrum of themes
includes intertwining between institutional change, political change and processes of empowerment
as well as the role of ideas and culture in shaping the understanding of gender and gender roles in
American society. While gender is the main focus of the issue, our goal has been to include essays
that have used intersectionality as a framework, thus looking at the interplay of gender and race, class,
religion, and social background in shaping individuals’ and groups’ activism and empowerment pro-
cesses.
     Howard Ashford’s “Not Another Master: African American Women, Divorce, and Establishment
of Black Women’s Independence in Central Mississippi, 1890–1940” uses the intersectional lens of
gender, race and social status to investigate the practice of divorce from the perspective of African


Copyright © 2021 USAbroad                                                                                               I
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Gender and Empowerment                                                               USAbroad. Vol. 4 (2021)




American women in Attala County, Mississippi, from the late nineteenth century to the early decades
of the twentieth century. In their broader quest for equality, justice and inclusion, African American
women have also fought a parallel struggle within the narrow boundaries of their private family lives,
using divorce as a tool for achieving emancipation in the domestic realm.
     Gender and class are central in Tommaso Rebora’s “From Turin to Boston (and back) Transla-
tions and cultures of protest in transnational feminist networks of the 70s,” which offers an innova-
tive transnational perspective on feminism and political consciousness in the context of Second-wave
Feminism, thus shedding light on the complex issue of the reception of American feminism in Italy.
The article closely follows the overseas activities of the Collettivo Cr, (Revolutionary Communications
Collective), a Turin-based Italian left-wing group dedicated primarily to the diffusion of material pro-
duced in the context of the American New Left. From 1970, women activists in the Collettivo became
involved in the translation and diffusion of articles and reflections about the American feminist move-
ment, introducing their experience into a wider transnational system of networks.
     Intersectional theory is pivotal in Anna Nasser’s “Borders as Crisis: Gloria Anzaldúa and women of
color feminisms in the 1980s United States,” which explores Gloria Anzaldúa’s contribution in combin-
ing multiracial feminism with borderlands theory. Analyzing the very notion of border in Anzaldúa’s
thought, Nasser underlines its importance in the shaping of a new vision of resistance and challenge
to racial, ethnic and sexual inequality. This “chaotic intertwining of different systems of oppression”,
which deeply reflects Anzaldua’s experience as a Chicano woman living on the border between Mex-
ico and Texas, challenges us to rethink every possible border as a place for encounter and reflection.
The ultimate goal, as Nasser illustrates, is identified by Anzaldúa as a need to create a new identity
across those many borders. This call to rethink the concept of border as space of resistance, and to
identify the political stance for multiracial feminism, is particularly important in the political context
of the United States during the 1980s.
     In “ ‘Stop Taking Our Privileges:’ Phyllis Schlafly’s Traditional Womanhood and the Fight for So-
ciocultural Domination in the 1970s–80s” Amélie Ribieras analyzes Phillyis Schafly’s leading role in
guiding white women in their attack on Second-wave Feminism. Ribieras frames her work within a
relatively recent strand of research that emphasizes the intersection of women’s history with that of
right-wing conservative movements. Class, in conjunction with gender, is also an important element
of Ribieras’ analysis. Borrowing the concept of “gendered class interest” from Susan Marshall, the
author investigates conservative women’s quest to preserve the status quo and their (alleged) privi-
leged position within society. The results emphasize the complexity inherent within these women’s
activism, which also involves an underlying paradox; which is, while advocating for the maintenance
of traditional gender roles, they were also claiming “a voice for themselves,” effectively stepping into
the political arena and, consequently, moving outside the same traditional domestic boundaries that
they proposed as ideals.
     In this issue’s column, Bringing the History Back in, Raffaella Baritono’s “From 2020 to 1920 and
back: One hundred years from the 19th Amendment” examines the actual meaning of Kamala Harris’
election as vice-president of the United States. While Baritono sees it as the outcome of years of
women’s struggle for representation in the political arena, she also questions the very idea of linear
progress in this domain. Providing ground for broad reflection on the struggle for women’s political
participation, and cross-examining the issues of gender, race, social condition and political affiliation,
the essay concludes that the actual possibility for a woman to reach the highest level in national politics
is far from being the obvious next step in women’s political representation in the United States.




https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.2611-2752/12466                                                              II
