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Megan Costello is executive director of the Mayor's Office of Women's Advancement, which is working with Boston-area employers to try to reduce pay inequity between women and men. Credit... Tony Luong for The New York Times

Through pay-negotiation workshops and partnerships with more than 100 companies, the city is trying to help female workers match the salaries of male counterparts.

Megan Costello is executive director of the Mayor's Office of Women's Advancement, which is working with Boston-area employers to try to reduce pay inequity between women and men. Credit... Tony Luong for The New York Times

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Ashley Paré, left, and Danielle Lucido lead salary negotiation workshops in Boston. "Companies have to do the right thing, because talent is not going to stay with them," Ms. Paré told a recent gathering of women who believed they were being underpaid compared with their male peers. Credit... Tony Luong for The New York Times

On a recent April night at a Back Bay co-working space, around the corner from the tony shops of Newbury Street, Ms. Paré and her co-facilitator, Danielle Lucido, walked a group of 16 women through the basics of negotiation. Ms. Paré, who volunteers as part of Work Smart, a nationwide program administered by the American Association of University Women, started by reminding them that companies had good business reasons to treat female employees fairly.

Ms. Lucido guiding a group of women through the basics of pay negotiation. Credit... Jesika Theos for The New York Times

"It looks like you're not a team player," one woman in the back suggested.

"If you're a woman, yeah," another chimed in, to laughs from the room.

Boston was the first city to officially team up with the American Association of University Women, which now also offers Work Smart training in Tempe, Ariz.; Washington, D.C.; San Francisco; Long Beach, Calif.; and other locations in Massachusetts. The group says it plans to train 10 million women nationally in salary negotiation by 2022, with the addition of an online Work Smart course in English and Spanish, said Kimberly Churches, its chief executive officer, who noted that 39 states had equal pay legislation under consideration this year.

Robert Petrucelli, the head of Associated General Contractors of Massachusetts, said, "If there's one advice I can give my peers, it's listen." Credit... Tony Luong for The New York Times

The Building Women in Construction Committee is now the organization's fastest-growing committee.

"If it's one advice I can give my peers, it's listen," Mr. Petrucelli said. "Just listen, listen, listen, because the times they are a-changing."

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How Boston Is Trying to Close the Gender Pay Gap

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Through pay-negotiation workshops and partnerships with more than 100 companies, the city is trying to help female workers match the salaries of male counterparts. Megan Costello is executive director of the Mayor's Office of Women's Advancement, which is working with Boston-area employers to try to reduce pay inequity between women and men.

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gender pay gap

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The gender pay gap varies substantially from state to state, due to factors such as:

The primary industries in the state and the opportunities they create

Demographics such as race/ethnicity, age, and education level

Regional differences in attitudes and beliefs about work and gender

Differences in the scope and strength of state pay discrimination laws and policies

Explore Your State STATE WAGE GAP DATA
The gender pay gap occurs across almost all occupations and industries:

Male-dominated industries tend to have higher wages than industries and occupations made up mostly of female workers;

In a comparison of occupations with at least 50,000 men and 50,000 women in 2017, 107 out of 114 had statistically significant gaps in pay that favored men; six occupations had no significant gap; and just one had a gap favoring women.

In some occupations, women collectively are receiving billions less than they would with equal pay; for instance, women working as physicians and surgeons are paid $19 billion less annually than if they were paid the same as men in that occupation.

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The gender pay gap varies substantially from state to state, due to factors such as: The primary industries in the state and the opportunities they create Demographics such as race/ethnicity, age, and education level Regional differences in attitudes and beliefs about work and gender Differences in the scope and strength

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sweep record number + firsts

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In this edition, we report on the historic number of women being elected to the US Congress, including many women of colour. Also we meet Manon Garcia, a French philosopher, who has just written a book about why the idea of "submitting to your man" still resonates here in France. Plus how a Rohingya teenage girl has taken it upon herself to document the tales of suffering her community has faced in Myanmar.

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The 51% - U.S. midterms sweep record number of women into power

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In this edition, we report on the historic number of women being elected to the US Congress, including many women of colour. Also we meet Manon Garcia, a French philosopher, who has just written a book about why the idea of "submitting to your man" still resonates here in France.

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a night of firsts

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midterm elections: women and lgbt candidates make history in 2018 - cnnpolitics

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Women and LGBT candidates make history in 2018 midterms

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From a pair of Native American women to a Somali refugee to the first openly gay man elected governor, the 2018 midterm elections brought a series of history-making votes that marked major accomplishments for women and LGBT candidates.

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A record number of women will serve in the House of Representatives as a result of yesterday's midterm election contests, with several making history due to their race, religious beliefs or sexual orientation.

Some 95 women have won, or are projected to win, their House races as of Wednesday, which is up from the current 84 women in the House. In addition, at least 13 women won Senate seats. That's on top of the 10 female senators who were not up for re-election this year.

Among the notable names on the new House roster: Deb Haaland of New Mexico and Sharice Davids of Kansas are the first Native American women elected to Congress, and Rashida Tlaib and will be the first Muslim women in the House. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Abby Finkenauer of Iowa, both 29, will become the youngest women to serve in the House.

Other firsts: In Texas, Veronica Escobar and Sylvia Garcia became the first Latinas to represent the state in Congress. Jahana Hayes of Connecticut and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts also became the first women of color elected to represent their respective states.

According to the Rutgers University Center for American Women and Politics, the next Congress will feature a record of women of color, and a record number of non-incumbent women.

In the Senate, Kyrsten Sinema was elected as Arizona's first female senator. She is also the first openly bisexual person to serve in the Senate.

Most of the women in Congress will be Democrats. But Republican women registered their own firsts as well. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee will be first woman representing that state. And if she wins a run-off, Cindy Hyde-Smith will remain the first woman to represent Mississippi. She was appointed to replace Thad Cochran earlier this year.

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Record number of women to serve in Congress following 2018 midterm elections

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A record number of women will serve in the House of Representatives as a result of yesterday's midterm election contests, with several making history due to their race, religious beliefs or sexual orientation. Some 95 women have won, or are projected to win, their House races as of Wednesday, which is up from the current 84 women in the House.

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US midterm elections are set to be the year of the woman

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US midterm elections are set to be the year of the woman

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Guardi

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Latest US midterms 2018 news, comment and analysis from the Guardian, the world's leading liberal voice

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During the 2016 US presidential election, American social media was flooded with images of Hillary Clinton wearing a black hat and riding a broom, or else cackling with green skin. Her opponents named her The Wicked Witch of the Left, claimed they had sources testifying that she smelled of sulphur, and took particular delight in depictions of her being melted. Given that the last witch trial in the US was more than 100 hundred years ago, what are we to make of this?

In the late 19th century, the suffragette Matilda Joslyn Gage asserted something revolutionary. The persecution of witches, she said, had nothing to do with fighting evil or resisting the devil. It was simply entrenched social misogyny, the goal of which was to repress the intellect of women. A witch, she said, wasn't wicked. She didn't fly on a broomstick naked in the dark, or consort with demons. She was, instead, likely to be a woman "of superior knowledge". As a thought experiment, she suggested that for "witches" we should read instead "women". Their histories, she intimated, run hand in hand.

Obviously, she was on to something. When we say witch, we almost exclusively mean woman. Sure, men have also been accused of witchcraft, but they are by far the minority. Further, the words used to describe men with magical powers - warlock, magus, sorcerer, wizard - don't carry the same stigma.

A witch transgresses norms of female power - punishing her makes others afraid to follow in an unruly woman's footsteps

A better parallel to "witch" is the word "whore". Both are time-honoured tools for policing women, meant to shame them into socially prescribed behaviour. A whore transgresses norms of female sexuality; a witch transgresses norms of female power. Witches are often called unnatural because of their ability to threaten men. With her spells, a witch can transform you into a pig, or defeat you in battle. She can curse you, blight your crops, ignore you, refuse you, correct you. Punishing witches accomplishes two things: it ends the threat and makes others afraid to follow in the unruly woman's footsteps.

Yet, despite all the attempts to stamp out witches, they are as strongly with us as ever, from Wanda Maximoff, the Scarlet Witch in the Avengers movies, to the recent film The Love Witch, to the television series American Horror Story, to non-fiction books such as Stacy Schiff's The Witches: Salem, 1692. The stereotypical image of the witch - green skin, pointed hat, warts, black cat - has become entrenched, but beneath that surface lies a dazzling variety; a rich diversity of women who have frightened, possessed and inspired us over the centuries.

Let's start with the classic: the evil, aged crone. This image took firm root in the Christian era, when witches were women who consorted with the devil; but old and ugly witches predated Jesus. Roman literature portrayed witches as pathetic creatures with false teeth and grey hair, who dug in the ground by moonlight, tore animals with their teeth and used the organs of boys they starved to death for their spells. They had two main pastimes: making love potions, and casting curses. The poet Ovid blamed a disappointing sexual performance on a witch using a sort of Roman voodoo doll to take away his potency. (Sure Ovid, that was my first thought, too.)

The most famous of this type must be Shakespeare's weird sisters from . They are repulsive "midnight hags", with skinny lips, chapped fingers and beards. Their spells - eye of newt and toe of frog - are as disgusting as their appearances and curse anyone who crosses them. The classic fairytale witch, like the one in the story of Hansel and Gretel who eats children, also fits into this category, as does the Slavic Baba Yaga, and the Wicked Witch of the West from L Frank Baum's Oz series, made famous by actor Margaret Hamilton. The role was originally offered to the glamorous Gale Sondergaard, but she turned it down because she didn't want to appear ugly.

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Spellbound ... Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra, who was accused of witchcraft. Photograph: Allstar/20th Century Fox

And ugliness, of course, is key. The haggish outsides of these witches are meant to match their evil insides, and testify to their unnaturalness, since women are supposed to be as neat, attractive and young as possible. But the association with age also contains a kernel of truth: many of the women accused of witchcraft were so-called "wise women", older figures, often poor widows, who scratched out a living in the community with their experience as midwives, herbalists and hedge-doctors. Their solitary, vulnerable status and unusual knowledge made them perfect targets for people's rage and fear when crops failed or babies died.

Foreign women were also vulnerable to accusations of witchcraft, and the association between immigrants and sorcery goes back at least to Greek mythology. The witch Medea was the princess of Colchis, on the eastern edge of the Black Sea, which to the notoriously xenophobic ancient Greeks was alien and suspect. When Jason and his Argonauts came to claim the Golden Fleece from her father, Medea fell in love with Jason and aided him with her spells, so that he and the Argonauts were able to seize the fleece and escape. In gratitude, Jason married Medea, but back home in his kingdom she was shunned, her witchcraft and foreignness merging into a single undesirable trait. The idea seems to have been: no wonder she's a murderous sorceress, she's from the east.

This type of nativism also pops up in Shakespeare's The Tempest. Sycorax, the witch mother of Caliban, is from Algiers, and though she never appears in the play, she is a harrowing, hideous figure, a "blue-eyed hag", who is hunched over with "age and envy". She was cast out from Algiers (the implication is that she was too wicked even for them), and came to the island, where she "litter[ed]" her deformed son, practised her magic and worshipped her pagan-sounding god, Setebos. Towards the end of the 17th century, the slave Tituba, who may have been South American, was blamed for leading the innocent (white) girls of Salem into evil. Her experience as an outsider among the witch-hysterical Puritans is brilliantly imagined in Maryse Condé's novel, I Tituba, Black Witch of Salem.

Fears of witchcraft grounded in racism persist even today. The Roma, longtime outcasts in Europe, have frequently been accused of evil magic. And African-influenced voodoo is routinely used by Hollywood as a horror movie plot point.

But it wasn't just vulnerable women who drew accusations of witchcraft. It was also women with serious political power. Joan of Arc led the French to victory against the English and was renowned in France for her purity, cleverness and faith in her "voices". When the English leadership couldn't beat her, they undermined her, crediting her success to demonic means, since, of course, a young woman could never perform such wonders on her own. When she was captured, they tried her for witchcraft, citing as partial proof of her unnaturalness the tremendous bravery she showed in battle, and her ability to outwit her examiners in debate.

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Magic circle ... the new Wrinkle in Time film features Mrs Which, Mrs Who and Mrs Whatsit. Photograph: Atsushi Nishijima/Disney/Kobal/Rex/Shutterstock

Cleopatra and Anne Boleyn were likewise accused of witchcraft, with rumours that Anne even bore physical marks of her compact with the devil, such as a third nipple, moles and a sixth finger on her right hand. Such accusations were a clever and effective way for a woman's political enemies to smear her since, as countless other women accused of witchcraft learned, it is impossible to offer definitive proof that one is not a witch. Perhaps what is most shocking about this catch-22 is the way in which it continues to be played out today. Aside from Hillary Clinton, who has been called a witch since she was first lady, there was also the case of Julia Gillard, first female prime minister of Australia, who met with taunts of "ditch the witch" from protesters. Nancy Pelosi, the minority speaker of the US House of Representatives, has faced similar witch-related insults, and recently Theresa May was filmed laughing loudly, and her so-called "witch's cackle" quickly went viral. The misogyny of all this is obvious. Debating and defeating these leaders politically isn't enough - as women who show ambition, they are abominations who must be deemed evil and cast out.

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From JW Waterhouse's portrait of Circe Invidiosa. Photograph: Alamy

The tradition of the sexy witch, who lures men with her beauty, is beloved by modern-day adult costume-makers, but goes all the way back to the first witch in western literature: the divine sorceress Circe. She first appears in Homer's Odyssey, after Odysseus and his crew have washed up on her island, exhausted and grieving for the loss of their comrades. They go searching for inhabitants and find a palatial house with tame lions and wolves lolling around in the garden. A shining goddess comes to the door, and invites them in. She gives them food and wine which she has drugged with spell-herbs, then lifts her wand and turns them into pigs.

Circe's story brings together many classic witchy motifs: a skill with herbs and potions, a magic wand, control over animals. But what is most notable is her moral ambiguity - though she begins the episode as a figure of menace, after she and Odysseus become lovers, she transforms his men back and offers vital resources and advice to Odysseus for his journey home. Not all seductive witches show a similar ambiguity (CS Lewis's White Witch certainly does not), but Morgan le Fay, Morticia Addams and Melisandre from Game of Thrones all fall into this category.

The image of the good witch is ascendant in popular culture at a time when women have made strides towards equality

This brings us to our last type: the good witch. Before we get to the famous examples, let's start with the unknown ones - the countless women of history who used their knowledge of herbs, healing and midwifery to serve their communities as de facto doctors and chemists. In times when reliable medical treatment was scarce and expensive, they offered the first, and often only, help a suffering person would receive. Matilda Joslyn Gage, in her treatise Woman, Church and State, hailed this local herb-woman as "the profoundest thinker, the most advanced scientist" of her age. Gage's name is largely unknown now, but her work lives vibrantly on: she was the mother-in-law of Baum, and directly influenced his creation of Glinda, one of the most iconic good witches in popular culture. Glinda is a sparkly, memorable presence in the 1939 movie, and plays a meaty role in the books, protecting the good people of Oz with passion and wisdom. We may likewise see Gage's spirit in Gregory Maguire's novel Wicked, which reimagines the Wicked Witch of the West, Elphaba, as a heroic, misunderstood character.

Of course no discussion of good witches can be complete without the superlative Hermione Granger. Throughout JK Rowling's Harry Potter series, Hermione's intellect, kindness, sense of justice and determination make her a role model for young girls - and boys - everywhere. And she's only one of dozens of fascinating witches Rowling created, who run the gamut from good (Minerva McGonagall) to cruelly wicked (Bellatrix Lestrange).

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Rupert Grint, left, and Daniel Radcliffe with Emma Watson as Hermione Granger in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004). Photograph: Allstar/Warner Bros

Which brings us back to the multiplicity and diversity of witches. The truth is that witches cannot really be contained by types; they leap over boundaries, bursting out of categories as fast we make them. They are constantly changing as we change, reflecting our ideas about women back to ourselves.

If this is so, then there is much to feel encouraged by. The image of the good witch is ascendant in popular culture (aside from Hermione, as exemplified by the Scarlet Witch, Willow from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and the new A Wrinkle in Time movie, prominently featuring Mrs Which, Mrs Who and Mrs Whatsit). Women have made powerful strides towards equality, and we are seeing an unprecedented awareness of sexual harassment, assault and the silencing of women. More of these secret abuses are coming to light every day, and more of the perpetrators are being removed from power.

Despite this progress, there is also sobering news. In the last decade, United Nations officials have reported a rise in women killed for witchcraft across the globe. In India the problem is particularly well-documented, with older women being targeted as scapegoats or as a pretext for seizing their lands and goods. In Saudi Arabia, women have been convicted of witchcraft in the courts, and in Ghana they have been exiled to so-called "witch camps", an injustice movingly addressed in the award-winning film, I Am Not a Witch. And in the United States, a Gallup poll found that 21% of people believed in witches (and not the Hermione Granger kind).

We stand therefore at a crossroads - which is fitting, since crossroads are sacred to Hecate, Greek goddess of witchcraft. Will we continue to fear and punish women with power? To call them evil? Or perhaps we can at last celebrate female strength, recognising that witches - and women - are not going away *
by Madeline Miller is published by Bloomsbury (£16.99). To b uy it for £12.99 go to guardianbookshop.com. Topics

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From Circe to Clinton: why powerful women are cast as witches

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During the 2016 US presidential election, American social media was flooded with images of Hillary Clinton wearing a black hat and riding a broom, or else cackling with green skin. Her opponents named her The Wicked Witch of the Left, claimed they had sources testifying that she smelled of sulphur, and took particular delight in depictions of her being melted.

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The Equal Rights Amendment is a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution designed to guarantee equal legal rights for all American citizens regardless of sex. It seeks to end the legal distinctions between men and women in terms of divorce, property, employment, and other matters.

"Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex."

We give you the tools you need to be an effective advocate for the ERA. Check out our ERA Toolkit for ready-to-post social media items, white papers, presentations, and much more to help you ratify the ERA to the U.S. Constitution. All items are FREE for you to download!

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The Equal Rights Amendment is a constitutional amendment that will guarantee legal gender equality for women and men. This website is dedicated to educating and inspiring citizens to ratify the ERA, which was written by equal rights activist Alice Paul in 1923.

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The next Equal Pay Day is Tuesday, March 31, 2020. This date symbolizes how far into the year women must work to earn what men earned in the previous year.

Equal Pay Day was originated by the National Committee on Pay Equity (NCPE) in 1996 as a public awareness event to illustrate the gap between men's and women's wages. (It was originally called "National Pay Inequity Awareness Day" and changed to Equal Pay Day in 1998.)

Since Census statistics showing the latest wage figures will not be available until late August or September, NCPE leadership decided years ago to select a Tuesday in April as Equal Pay Day. (Tuesday was selected to represent how far into the next work week women must work to earn what men earned the previous week.) The date also is selected to avoid religious holidays and other significant events.

Because women earn less, on average, than men, they must work longer for the same amount of pay. The wage gap is even greater for most women of color.

For more information, see NCPE's Equal Pay Day Kit
or contact the NCPE.

Wear RED on Equal Pay Day to symbolize how far women and minorities are "in the red" with their pay!

On previous Equal Pay Days, grassroots organizing on fair pay swept local communities. Women's business and professional associations, labor groups, civil rights organizations and others committed to equal pay coordinated activities to raise awareness about how to solve wage inequity.

Equal Pay Day 2012: NCPE honored Betty Dukes, who became the face of pay equity as the key plaintiff charging Wal-Mart with sex-based discrimination in pay and promotion.
>> Other 2012 activities

Equal Pay Day 2011: NCPE honored Citizens Across Wisconsin for defending public workers' rights -- the root of fair pay. Press release
>> Other 2011 activities

Equal Pay Day 2010: NCPE urged passage of the Paycheck Fairness Act.
>> Press release

Equal Pay Day 2009: NCPE joined AAUW and BPW in a Congressional briefing.

Equal Pay Day 2008: NCPE held a press conference on Capitol Hill, an event chaired by CLUW in support of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.
>>PHOTOS
>> Press release

Equal Pay Day 2007: NCPE teamed with Women Work and BPW-USA to stage a rally for equal pay on the West Lawn of the US Capitol on April 24.
>>PHOTOS
>> Press release

Equal Pay Day 2006: NCPE joined forces with The WAGE Project to encourage the formation of WAGE Clubs.

Read about Equal Pay Day events around the nation and the world.

If we didn't have a wage gap,
we wouldn't need this coupon!

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The next Equal Pay Day is Tuesday, March 31, 2020. This date symbolizes how far into the year women must work to earn what men earned in the previous year. Equal Pay Day was originated by the National Committee on Pay Equity (NCPE) in 1996 as a public awareness event to illustrate the gap between men's and women's wages.

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Betty Friedan, the godmother of the postwar US women's movement, was an accidental feminist. "Until I started writing [The Feminine Mystique]" she confessed in 1973, "I wasn't even conscious of the woman problem." Friedan had begun her research into "the problem that has no name" - a catchy homage to "the love that dare not speak its name" of Oscar Wilde's fin-de-siècle disgrace - as part of her work for a questionnaire of her former college classmates on their 15th reunion in 1957, thinking that she would "disprove the current notion that education had fitted us ill for our role as women".

Few books in this series have enjoyed such a direct and immediate influence on their readership

When Friedan discovered that many of her former classmates were unhappy with their lives as women in society she pitched an article based on the questionnaire to McCall's magazine, which "turned the piece down in horror". By now, she was sure she was "on the track of something. But what?" Gradually, "from somewhere deep within me", a project that was now becoming a book began to take shape. "I have never experienced anything as powerful, truly mystical, as the forces that seemed to take me over when I was writing The Feminine Mystique ", she wrote later, in an almost perfect summary of that peculiar literary phenomenon, the zeitgeist book.

As the critic Jay Parini has written, Friedan's work "almost single-handedly ignited a revolutionary phase that has deeply affected the lives of countless American women and men". Or, as Alvin Toffler put it, hers was a book "that pulled the trigger on history". Rarely has a title in this series flown off the shelves as this did, selling 300,000 copies within the first year. Thirteen foreign language translations followed. Within three years of the book's publication, Friedan had sold more than 3m copies.

Friedan herself professed puzzlement about what it was she had identified, right up to publication. After five years research and hard work in the New York Public Library, she continued to see herself as the prisoner of "that mystique, which kept us passive". Indeed, in common with many American women of the early 1960s, she "thought there was something wrong with me because I didn't have an orgasm waxing the kitchen floor. I was a freak, writing that book."

Today, The Feminine Mystique seems far from freaky, at times even staid verging on reactionary. Still, it retains a polemical undertow that's plainly designed to shift the minds of her readers. Compared to the other classic postwar statement of feminism, The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir, Friedan speaks quite practically to the concerns of middle-class American housewives, but mainly about the independent woman's life in house and home. "The problem," begins Friedan's narrative, "lay buried, unspoken, for many years in the minds of American women. Each suburban wife struggled with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night - she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question - 'Is this all?'"

In a society famously dedicated to "the pursuit of happiness", Friedan reported that American women had lost their smiles. "I feel empty," declared this first generation of desperate housewives. Friedan intensified her argument by braiding it with one of many personal admissions: a slave to the feminine mystique, she had made her own sacrifices for "the dream of love", and become frustrated. (She, and her estranged husband, Carl, would fight about their marriage up to and beyond their eventual divorce.) Away from her failing home life, as a seasoned magazine journalist she conducted more reportage into the condition of female college students ("I don't want a career I'll have to give up", says one) following this up with a fairly simplistic assault on Freud ("the puritan old maid who sees sex everywhere") and then against social anthropology, and Margaret Mead, whom Friedan convicts for "the glorification of the female role".

Having anatomised this crisis of identity among American women, at least to her own satisfaction, Friedan wrenches her argument back to the present. She and her generation, she argues, are victims of the 20th century, specifically the depression, the second world war, and the anomie of the atomic age. The baby boom, she says, was a reaction to more than a decade of dehumanising crisis, an instinctive quest for the traditional comforts of hearth and home. She is not really against this, rather determined to level the playing field for husbands and wives.

As Friedan's narrative works through sex, consumerism and dehumanisation, she builds to her stirring conclusion: "the feminine mystique has succeeded in burying millions of American women alive".

Finally, after a call to have contemporary women taking up roles "requiring initiative, leadership and responsibility", her book becomes a rallying cry, exhorting women to make change happen for themselves. This path to liberation, she concedes, would not be easy. Nevertheless, now was the time for a final breakthrough: "In the light of women's long battle for emancipation, the recent sexual counter-revolution [of the 1950s] has been perhaps a final crisis before the larva breaks out of the shell into maturity." Women, who had allowed the liberation of wartime to be taken away from them, would soon recognise their self-incarceration and break free, sexually and socially.

Friedan's sometimes awkward, occasionally inspired rhetoric would underpin women's lib, which in turn would morph into the ongoing feminist revolution in the writing of Susan Brownmiller, Germaine Greer ( No 13 in this series), Gloria Steinem, Kate Millett, even Naomi Wolf's The Beauty Myth (1991), and many more. Few books in this series have enjoyed such a direct and immediate influence on their readership. Friedan, who died in 2006, was a magazine journalist more than a literary writer, but unquestionably a 20th-century icon. To her admirers, she was the woman who changed the course of history for American women. In her obituary notice, Germaine Greer wrote a more careful verdict. Friedan had pioneered something important, even if subsequent feminists were uneasy in her company, and "though her behaviour was often tiresome, she had a point. Women don't get the respect they deserve unless they are wielding male-shaped power."

A signature sentence

"With a vision of the happy modern housewife as she is described by the magazines and television, by the functional sociologists, the sex-directed educators, and the manipulators dancing before my eyes, I went in search of one of those mystical creatures."

Three to compare

AC Kinsey, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948)
Kate Millett: Sexual Politics (1969)
Susan Brownmiller: Against Our Will (1975)
Topics

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The 100 best nonfiction books: No 18 - The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan (1963)

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Betty Friedan, the godmother of the postwar US women's movement, was an accidental feminist. "Until I started writing [The Feminine Mystique]" she confessed in 1973, "I wasn't even conscious of the woman problem."

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CHICAGO - The jobs were the best they would ever have: collecting union wages while working at Ford, one of America's most storied companies. But inside two Chicago plants, the women found menace.

Bosses and fellow laborers treated them as property or prey. Men crudely commented on their breasts and buttocks; graffiti of penises was carved into tables, spray-painted onto floors and scribbled onto walls. They groped women, pressed against them, simulated sex acts or masturbated in front of them. Supervisors traded better assignments for sex and punished those who refused.

That was a quarter-century ago. Today, women at those plants say they have been subjected to many of the same abuses. And like those who complained before them, they say they were mocked, dismissed, threatened and ostracized. One described being called "snitch bitch," while another was accused of "raping the company." Many of the men who they say hounded them kept their jobs.

In August, the federal agency that combats workplace discrimination, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, reached a $10 million settlement with Ford for sexual and racial harassment at the two Chicago plants. A lawsuit is still making its way through the courts. This, too, happened before: In the 1990s, a string of lawsuits and an E.E.O.C. investigation resulted in a $22 million settlement and a commitment by Ford to crack down.

For Sharon Dunn, who sued Ford back then, the new lawsuit was a fresh blow. "For all the good that was supposed to come out of what happened to us, it seems like Ford did nothing," she said. "If I had that choice today, I wouldn't say a damn word."

In recent months, as women have spoken out about harassment - at media companies and technology start-ups, in the entertainment industry and on Capitol Hill - they have spurred quick action, with accused men toppling from lofty positions, corporations pledging change and lawmakers promising new protections.

But much less attention has been focused on the plight of blue-collar workers, like those on Ford's factory floors. After the #MeToo movement opened a global floodgate of accounts of mistreatment, a former Chicago worker proposed a new campaign: "#WhatAboutUs."

Their story reveals the stubborn persistence of harassment in an industry once the exclusive preserve of men, where abuses can be especially brazen. For the Ford women, the harassment has endured even though they work for a multinational corporation with a professional human resources operation, even though they are members of one of the country's most powerful unions, even though a federal agency and then a federal judge sided with them, and even after independent monitors policed the factory floors for several years.

At a moment when so many people are demanding that sexual harassment no longer be tolerated, the story of the Ford plants shows the challenges of transforming a culture.

Workers describe a mix of sex, swagger, suspicion and racial resentment that makes the factories - the Chicago Assembly Plant and the Chicago Stamping Plant - particularly volatile.

The plants are self-enclosed worlds where employees pass on job referrals so relatives, classmates and longtime friends can work together. They share gossip and rumors, but also keep secrets that entrench bad behavior. Many feel deep loyalty to Ford and their union, and resent the female accusers, fearing they may damage the company and jeopardize good paychecks and generous benefits. Some women are suspected of gaming a system where sex is a powerful lever.

Ford has worked to combat harassment at the plants, including recently stepping up disciplinary efforts and installing new leadership. But over the years the company did not act aggressively or consistently enough to root out the problem, according to interviews with more than 100 current and former employees and industry experts, and a review of legal documents.

Ford delayed firing those accused of harassment, leaving workers to conclude that offenders would go unpunished. It let sexual harassment training wane and, women charge, failed to stamp out retaliation.

The local union, obliged to protect both accusers and the accused, was divided, with a leadership that included alleged predators. And even the outsiders whom women turned to for help, including lawyers and the E.E.O.C., left some of them feeling betrayed.

Ford officials say they view the harassment as episodic, not systemic, with an outbreak in the '90s and another beginning in 2010 as new workers flooded in. They say they take all claims seriously and investigate them thoroughly. Responding to the national outcry over sexual harassment, Ford's chief executive, Jim Hackett, released a video to employees last week about appropriate behavior. "The test would be if you go to work, have experiences, and go home and tell your family about it and be proud of what went on," he said. "We do not expect or accept any harassment in the workplaces here at Ford."

Shirley Cain, who arrived at the stamping plant five years ago and had to fend off advances from supervisors and co-workers alike, was skeptical. "That's not the reality," she said. "They don't even go on the floor, so they don't know what goes on."

From the beginning, the women were targets. The first warning often came during orientation as new hires were paraded through the Chicago Assembly Plant. Shirley Thomas-Moore, a teacher who came to Ford to make better money, recalled the scene in the mid-80s: A man would hit his hammer on a railing, summoning the attention of the factory floor. "Fresh meat!" the male workers hollered.

"When they come in, everybody's: 'Oh man, look at her. Nah, this is going to be mine,'" recalled her husband, Terrance Moore, who also worked at the plant.

Men still stake their claims today, according to workers. Some women say they know how to shut down unwanted advances - "I don't play," they snap - while others say they have never encountered harassment. But James Jones, a union representative, said the problem should not be minimized, describing the attitude of many men at the factories: "You're going to want to eat that porterhouse steak."

The giant Chicago Assembly Plant sprawls like a low-slung fortress over an isolated stretch of Chicago's South Side near the Indiana border. The oldest continuously operating plant at a company that once revolutionized manufacturing with the Model T, it now churns out Ford Explorers and Tauruses.

Women joined the work force during World War II, when the factory made M8 armored cars. But it was not until the 1970s that they routinely held permanent jobs on the line. By then, Ford had built a second factory, the Chicago Stamping Plant, to supply parts. Today, the two plants employ about 5,700; just under a third are women.

As women were finding their way into Ford, the nation's manufacturing base was eroding, and overseas competition threatened the auto industry.

Darnise Hardy, one of the first women to arrive, was told by male workers that she belonged at home in the kitchen. Ms. Thomas-Moore, who arrived a few years later, said some men felt that the newcomers were taking their jobs. Two decades later, a foreman told Suzette Wright that women should never have been hired.

A job at Ford was considered a golden ticket. When Ms. Wright, a 23-year-old single mother, was offered a spot at Chicago Assembly in 1993, she was "crazy insane elated." She had been working part-time jobs as a hair salon receptionist and a data entry clerk. In an instant, her hourly wage tripled, to about $15. With overtime, workers could earn $70,000 or more a year, good money for those without a college degree - and an incentive to put up with a lot.

Ms. Wright and others discovered a robust underground economy at the assembly plant: Everything from toys and televisions to drugs and guns were for sale inside, and sex outside. On the line, she would hear men regaling one another with stories about late-night parties with strippers in the parking lot. Ms. Thomas-Moore's father, who worked at the stamping factory, saw prostitutes and makeshift liquor trucks as he waited to pick her up from Chicago Assembly. "Baby girl," she remembers him saying, "I can't believe this is part of Ford."

As Ms. Wright settled in, she asked a co-worker to explain something: Why were men calling out "peanut butter legs" when she arrived in the morning? He demurred, but she insisted. "He said, 'Well, peanut butter,'" Ms. Wright recalled. "'Not only is it the color of your legs, but it's the kind of legs you like to spread.'"

Like many of the female employees who eventually sued Ford, Ms. Wright is African-American; those accused of harassment include black, white and Latino men. Some of the women felt doubly victimized - propositioned and denounced as sluts while also being called "black bitches" and other racial slurs. (The assembly plant's work force is predominantly African-American, while the stamping plant's is majority white.)

As the affronts continued - lewd comments, repeated come-ons, men grabbing their crotches and moaning every time she bent over - Ms. Wright tried to ignore them. Veteran female employees warned that reporting the behavior brought only more trouble. The smallest infraction, routinely overlooked, suddenly merited a write-up. The very nature of factory work - the pressure to keep the production line going - gave bosses power to inflict petty humiliations, such as denying bathroom breaks.

But after a man Ms. Wright had trusted as a mentor made a crack about paying her $5 for oral sex, she asked her union representative for help. He began what she calls a "don't-file-a-claim-against-Bill" campaign: Her co-worker would lose his job, his benefits, his pension, she was told. Rumors spread, questioning their relationship. Then a union official delivered the final insult: "Suzette, you're a pretty woman - take it as a compliment."

The same thing happened to Gwajuana Gray, who had followed her father into the assembly plant in 1991 and still works there. When she told her union steward that a manager had pressed his groin against her, he said she should be flattered. "I was like, well, where do you go?" she said.

The accumulating misconduct took a toll. Some women quit. Others were emotionally spent.

"It just was way, way, way, way too much," Ms. Wright said of the abuses. "Each time that I was taking it, again and again, it just felt like more of me diminishing," she said, "just getting smaller until it was just like a shell of a person."

She and Ms. Gray both said they were overcome by anxiety and depression and took extended medical leaves. "I was at rock bottom," Ms. Gray recalled.

When their lawsuit was settled in 2000, Ms. Wright had to leave Ford. Ms. Gray was able to return. The harassment subsided for a while, she and others said, but soon came back. Louis Smith, a 23-year Ford veteran, could see some of the damage. "I would never want my daughter to work in that environment," he said. "We as men have got to do better."

In the last five years, one woman said a male co-worker bit her on the buttocks. A supervisor told a female subordinate, "I want to screw you so bad," she recalled. A laborer described in pornographic detail what he wanted to do to another woman, then exposed himself to her, she said; later, he pushed her into an empty room and turned off the lights before she fled.

Those who complained said they faced retaliation from co-workers and bosses. Some women were frightened after harassers warned them to watch their backs. An Army veteran who accused a man of groping her was physically blocked by his friends from doing her work, she said. Later she found her car tires slashed in the parking lot.

Ford officials say that they have a strict policy against retaliation, and that supervisors who exact retribution will be disciplined. But "when you speak up," Ms. Gray said, "you're like mud in the plant."

In explaining why harassment became so ingrained, she and others described sex as a preoccupation at the plants - variously a diversion, a currency and a weapon. There were plenty of consensual affairs and flirtations, employees agree. Some women used sex to win favors from the overwhelmingly male hierarchy. Bosses rewarded those who acquiesced to their advances by doling out cushier jobs or punished those who spurned them, requiring them to do more taxing, even dangerous work.

Miyoshi Morris gave in to a supervisor's leverage, and was filled with shame. She had been struggling to find day care centers for her children that were open early enough for her to make her 6 a.m. shift. By her account, a manager in the paint department told her she was in trouble because of tardiness. He could help her, she recalled him saying, if she came to his house on a day off he arranged.

She agreed, and had sex with him.

"I was so lost, afraid, and realizing I had children to care for," she said. Afterward, she said, her attendance record was no longer a problem, and she received better assignments. She remembers thinking, "Where else are you going to go and make this kind of money?"

The manager, Myron Alexander, who was accused by multiple women of sexual harassment and fired in 2014, did not return calls and Facebook messages seeking comment.

Today, Ms. Morris works as an aesthetician for a fraction of what she earned at Ford. "No person should have to endure that," she said of the inappropriate behavior at the plant. "You have to force yourself into a place of not feeling anything, of not having any emotion, to exist."

The first place workers in trouble are supposed to turn for help is their union - a family, some call it. But when one member formally accuses another of sexual harassment, solidarity splinters.

Mr. Jones, the United Automobile Workers representative, recalled a recent meeting when he was advocating for both sides - a woman and the man she accused. Ford issued its decision: termination. The man shot a despairing look at Mr. Jones.

"How do you know the woman is telling the truth and she didn't get her buddies together to come up here and say this?" Mr. Jones remembers thinking.

Union representatives are caught between women's pleas to stand with them and men's pleas to save their jobs. And the Chicago union itself is now divided between those who champion women and those accused of preying on them.

"The union has got an impossible job," said George Galland, who acted as an independent monitor at the two Chicago plants for three years. "They're supposed to protect their members. Unions are ill at ease helping management control sexual harassment. They tend to throw monkey wrenches where they can."

Some women at the plants say the union, whose leadership is mostly male, often met their calls for help with hostility, resistance or inaction. One woman said a representative downplayed a co-worker's vulgar commentary about her body, saying, "That's just him - the man has no filter." Another was told not to bother filing a report against a union representative who forcibly kissed her, saying it was her word against his.

Tonya Exum, the Army veteran who reported being groped, recalled a union representative saying: "It's not sexual harassment. He only did it one time." When she asked him how he would feel if that happened to his mother or sister, he just walked away.

The current lawsuit against Ford, which involves about 30 plaintiffs, accuses multiple local union representatives of harassing women or obstructing their complaints.

But women also single out some union representatives for praise, including one man who said he spent hours helping women fill out claims. "As a union, we're supposed to be all one," said the man, who insisted on anonymity because he feared losing his job. "It frustrates me to see that others do not conduct themselves like gentlemen."

In 1979, even as sexual harassment was not yet settled law or a familiar concept to many Americans, the autoworkers' union was one of the earliest to include a clause in its contracts with Ford and Chrysler allowing members to file a grievance if harassment occurred. Its constitution condemns sexual harassment. And the union cooperates with Ford in training; Chris Pena, president of Local 551 in Chicago, said he emphasized the anti-harassment policy with every new employee during orientation.
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But as the Great Recession ravaged the auto industry, economic survival eclipsed everything. Chicago Assembly was "on life support," said Bill Dirksen, Ford's vice president of labor affairs. The plant laid off 700 employees in 2008 and slashed production. "You're not going to have sexual harassment if you don't have a company to work for," Mr. Pena said.

That near-death experience haunts workers to this day. Fear that their well-paying jobs could evaporate if the plants become a headache for Ford drives some of the hostility toward women who complain of harassment. Terri Lewis-Bledsoe remembers a union representative warning her to stop filing complaints: "You're going to be called a troublemaker," she recalled him saying. She shot back, "Then a troublemaker I shall be."

The top union official at Chicago Assembly, Alan Millender, who is known as Coby, is a polarizing figure. Some women praise him for helping them, and he has won two terms. Others have accused him of harassment, including Ms. Morris. She lost her job in January 2014 and turned to him for assistance. But Mr. Millender told her that she would have to get on her knees if she wanted her job back, she said. She should act like another woman who, moments before their conversation, had been pressed close to him, standing between his legs, Ms. Morris recounted.

"I could not compromise myself anymore," Ms. Morris said. "My job was lost."

Mr. Millender declined to comment on the allegations. In a brief telephone conversation, he said: "My record at Ford Motor Company has always been impeccable. The truth is always going to be the truth."

National U.A.W. leaders declined interview requests, and Ford officials do not comment on specific cases. But, Mr. Dirksen said, the company does not hesitate to punish anyone who violates its sexual harassment policy, whatever the union rank, and punishments of union members in the past have not provoked plant protests.

Ford suspended Mr. Millender for two weeks in April 2015 for "improper conduct," making inappropriate comments and "inappropriate unwanted touching," according to a company document obtained by The New York Times. The decision was later overturned by an outside arbitrator.

When Howard Stamps, a longtime Ford veteran, transferred to Chicago Assembly several years ago from a plant near Detroit, he was jolted by the anything-goes culture he encountered. "I've never seen anything like Chicago all the days of my life," he said. "They don't think the rules apply to them."

By 2015, half of all sexual harassment and gender discrimination complaints lodged with the E.E.O.C. about Ford's domestic operations originated in Chicago.

The company is unique among the Big Three automakers, controlled by one family since the days of Henry Ford. Blue-collar employees used to say they "work at Ford's," and family members still talk of their close ties to workers. But from the factory floor, many workers viewed the company as defensive and tentative about a long-simmering problem, enacting its strongest measures against sexual harassment only after pressure from female employees and outside forces like the E.E.O.C. and lawsuits.

In the mid-90s, some women at the Chicago plants had enough. Dozens filed formal complaints with the E.E.O.C. and joined several lawsuits. When Ford officials found out that a "Dateline NBC" segment was in the works in 1998, they took action, firing or disciplining eight managers and workers, according to local news media reports.

After long negotiations, the lawsuit was dismissed in exchange for a toughened settlement with the federal agency in 2000; Ford would pay $22 million, with $9 million in damages to women. Mr. Galland recalled that at least 100 women received payments. As is typical in such agreements, Ford denied liability. The company also pledged to make changes, which would be overseen by outside monitors.

"If we didn't like the way H.R. was investigating these complaints, we told them and made them start over," said Mr. Galland, the chairman of the three-member monitor panel. "We told them it's not the paper procedures that count. A firing is worth a thousand words."

Firing workers demonstrated that harassment came with steep penalties. But many men did not view their behavior as improper. Ms. Thomas-Moore, the former teacher, was among those asked to conduct the classes. "Once you crossed into what we call Ford World," she said, "everybody was supposed to be treated as co-workers." There should be no hugging. When employees found themselves in uncomfortable situations, she taught them to say, "You're in the yellow," or "You're in the red."

Some men scoffed or cracked jokes. Still, she felt the training was having an effect. One day, a man spoke up, saying he had wronged a co-worker by lying about having sex with her, Ms. Thomas-Moore recalled. He asked that the woman come upstairs, then apologized to her in front of his classmates.

For a time, many women said, the plants seemed "quieter." When the monitors ended their stint in 2003, they gave Ford high marks. But their final report warned of "significant risks that need attention," including staffers inexperienced in investigating complaints, the lack of a policy against fraternization and the practice of promoting people widely perceived to be harassers. The report was prescient: Ford would struggle in those areas in the coming years.

"It's easy to backslide," Mr. Galland said in an interview.

Back from the brink of economic catastrophe in 2010, Chicago Assembly doubled its work force in a couple of years. A mix of young, inexperienced hires and transfers who resented leaving their hometowns flooded in.

In the rush to ramp up production, the training lagged - several workers recalled receiving only a piece of paper outlining the harassment policy, and managers often refused to excuse workers for class, according to Ms. Thomas-Moore. Ford said the training never stopped, but acknowledged it peaked in the early 2000s.

Complaints of harassment at the plants started spiking in 2011. Ford officials in the Dearborn, Mich., headquarters said that they dispatched a team to Chicago to insist on prompt but thorough investigations, and that they added staffers to tackle the growing pile of complaints. Training took on new urgency.

Still, there appeared to be a gap of expectations. Like most companies, Ford was bound by privacy protections and unwilling to communicate specific findings. But some women felt grilled as if they were lying and frustrated that they were not told if the company was meting out discipline. "We were told it's been handled," said LaWanda Jordan, referring to her complaint about a supervisor who was fired two years later. "The case has been closed; we can't discuss it."

In assessing complaints, Ford struggled with verifying what often boiled down to he-said, she-said accusations. Mr. Galland, the monitor, acknowledged that false accusations were a real problem in factories. But because there often are no witnesses - or none willing to cooperate - and no evidence, he added that investigators must assess credibility on both sides.

An employee who investigated complaints said Ford was insistent on proof. "Our policy at Ford, told to us by our bosses - that I didn't agree with - was if there are no witnesses, there is nothing you can do," said Grant Crowley, a former labor relations representative at the stamping plant. (Mr. Crowley said he was asked to leave Ford this year after he posted on Snapchat an emoji expletive about a departed co-worker who left him with extra work.) Ford said investigators also took credibility into account.

Even if investigators could not verify some individual accusations, company officials often failed to consider patterns of behavior, workers and lawyers say. Keith Hunt, the lawyer who represented women in the 1990s and today, described cases of four men who were the subject of numerous complaints by women dating back years - in one instance three decades ago - but were fired only in the last few years. Julie Lavender, director of personnel relations and employee policies, said that Ford now gave more weight to multiple complaints.

And even when there were witnesses, assessing credibility was often hard.

Christie Van arrived at Chicago Assembly with the influx of transfers in 2012. She said a supervisor who had been giving her easy jobs like placing radiator caps began asking her to "play hooky" from work with him. She claimed that the man, Mike Riese, told her his preferred nickname: "He called himself White Chocolate. He said that he had a black man's dick."

After another supervisor, Willie Fonseca, showed her a picture of his penis on his cellphone, she said, Mr. Riese laughed and asked if she wanted to see his too. "That was it for me," she said.

Both men denied that happened. Ms. Van filed a complaint in 2012. She showed investigators text messages from Mr. Riese, she said. According to company records obtained by The Times, several co-workers denied her account and described her as disgruntled to Ford investigators.

But two other employees, Mr. Stamps and a man who insisted on anonymity because he feared retaliation, said they witnessed Mr. Riese's advances toward Ms. Van and heard him boast of his nickname. Neither was questioned in Ford's inquiry, they said.

The documents indicate that the company did not substantiate Ms. Van's complaint. But later, without specifying any episodes, the E.E.O.C. determined she had been subjected to sexual harassment, retaliation and gender discrimination. Several other women accused Mr. Riese of harassment, which he denied. Mr. Riese said he was fired in 2015. "My life was shattered," he said.

Although they do not comment on individual cases, Ford officials said discipline could be invisible when pay or bonuses were docked. They also said they believed in giving employees a chance to remedy behavior, although the company has fired workers if a first offense is egregious. But many people drew the same conclusion as Ms. Gray: "They get a slap on the hand and come right back to work."

Starting about six years ago, multiple women once again turned to the E.E.O.C. and lawyers. The agency opened an investigation in 2014, and that same year Mr. Hunt filed a lawsuit. Ford accelerated changes as both were unfolding. Company executives said they acted independently of the inquiry and legal action.

One supervisor was fired in late 2014, and by the spring of 2015, the automaker was replacing senior leaders at Chicago Assembly, according to multiple interviews and news media reports. Company officials were also ramping up additional harassment training "with a vengeance," according to David Cook, Ford's human resources director of global operations. That summer, the company issued a new rule: Salaried employees must disclose any family or romantic relationships with subordinates.

Still, Grant Morton, a former top union official at the plant, filed a suit charging that Ford managers discouraged him from helping women submit complaints and retaliated against him when he did. His suit claimed that a senior executive told him, "Your people better stop complaining." The manager denied his account.

Mr. Morton reached a confidential settlement with Ford that bars him from commenting. But Mr. Crowley, who investigated complaints at the stamping plant, said his managers "didn't want to admit any wrongdoing or punish the supervisors because they didn't want to add on to the case."

In August, Ford and the E.E.O.C. announced the $10 million settlement. Because the law imposes strict confidentiality on the agency when it reaches an agreement with an employer, it does not reveal details of what it found, who those accused of harassment were and which workers were involved - something some Ford women want to know.

The agreement requires more improvements at Ford, including holding managers more accountable. "How do we ensure sustainability?" Ford's Mr. Dirksen said. "We have to keep asking ourselves that question."

Once again, monitors will be watching closely, this time for five years. "It's something we push for," said Julianne Bowman, the agency's Chicago district director, when "we're really trying to come up with a culture change in the company."

Ms. Gray does not regret taking on her employer by joining the lawsuit decades ago. "If one person doesn't stand for everybody," she said, "then it's just a continual cycle."

But this time, she said, things must be different.

Many of the women back then felt betrayed by both Ford and their lawyers, and said they were pressured into giving up their jobs. Their lawyers told them Ford insisted they resign as a condition of the E.E.O.C. settlement, for an additional payment. Ford lawyers later told a judge that was optional. Ms. Gray resisted but many of the others gave up the largest paychecks they would ever earn.

Ms. Dunn received $225,000 in the settlement, legal records show, but as a divorced mother raising two children, she said that was no substitute for a Ford job. In 2000, her last year there, she earned $23 an hour; at Bed Bath & Beyond, she got only one-third that pay. She worked as a home health aide at night and mowed lawns during the day, inching her way back to $17 an hour. "I'm 61 years old, and I cut grass for a living," she said.

Ms. Dunn and the other plaintiffs were outraged to find that their lawyers had claimed one-third of their awards in addition to the $2.75 million in fees the judge had approved, so they protested. The judge accused the lawyers of deception and ordered them to return the money to the women. Several lawyers on the case, including Mr. Hunt, were disciplined. He said the fees were legal and there was no intent to mislead the judge.

Workers have their own ideas about how to make lasting change in the culture - having the equivalent of undercover cops walking the factory floors, plastering signs all over the plants warning about sexual harassment, punishing Ford with a far more painful settlement than $10 million, one on the scale of a recall.

Ford said it had absorbed some lessons. The company appears more willing to fire people; Ford has disciplined 27 Chicago employees for sexual harassment and terminated five managers since January 2015, Ms. Lavender said. Others have received lengthy suspensions.

So far, there are some signs of progress: The proportion of complaints about harassment or gender discrimination from Chicago is now about a quarter of those reported in its domestic operations, down from half in 2015.

But the company is still struggling to win workers' trust. Some women still dread coming to the plants, and cite misbehavior that continues to this day. Recently, Ford officials said they noticed a small uptick in complaints and sent reinforcements to Chicago.

Women said that those accused of harassment who remain at the plants angered and worried them most; they reel off lists of men who seem untouchable.

Like Chicago Assembly itself, Ms. Gray has struggled and survived. Once again, a supervisor she says has a record of mistreating workers has been berating her, even showing up at her house. She logged repeated calls to a company anti-harassment hotline, to no avail. Her anxiety mounted; her friends worried about her.

But just the other week, she was stunned when the plant's new human resources director welcomed her to his office and vowed to help. For the first time in years, Ms. Gray felt that a manager was taking her complaints seriously.

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How Tough Is It to Change a Culture of Harassment? Ask Women at Ford

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CHICAGO - The jobs were the best they would ever have: collecting union wages while working at Ford, one of America's most storied companies. But inside two Chicago plants, the women found menace. Bosses and fellow laborers treated them as property or prey.

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You should've asked. Illustration: Emma

The French comic artist Emma illustrates the concept of the 'mental load'. When a man expects his partner to ask him to do things, he is viewing her as the manager of their household chores

Fri 26 May 2017 08.00 EDT Last modified on Fri 9 Dec 2022 12.03 EST

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The gender wars of household chores: a feminist comic

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French comic artist Emma introduces the concept of the mental load. When a man expects his partner to ask him to do things, he is viewing her as the manager of their household chores

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It really IS a man's world: Campaign for #MoreWomen shows how empty top tables of global politics look when the men are Photoshopped out

Video created by Elle Magazine to spearhead its #MoreWomen campaign

Highlights lack of women in power positions by Photoshopping out men

Scenes include the UN and Parliament as well as Buckingham Palace

Question Time and University Challenge also given treatment

What would the world's top tables look without men? Empty, is the answer. A new video created for the #MoreWomen campaign has highlighted the lack of the fairer sex in significant positions by Photoshopping men out of the picture.

In the clip, photos from political arenas such as the UN and Parliament, as well as Buckingham Palace, cabinet meetings and top TV shows have been given the feminist airbrushing treatment.

And the scenes are left looking eerily empty without the men who usually dominate them.

Images of BBC's Question Time, Saturday Night Live, Masterchef and University Challenge have also been given the same treatment in the project by Elle Magazine.

In the video, Emma Watson cuts a lonely figure in the UN - where she gave a speech on women's rights last year - when the men around her are removed.

In a debate in the Houses of Parliament, the chamber looks practically empty when only a handful of women MPs are left on the benches after the men have been taken out of the equation.

In a picture from 2012 showing Prime Minister David Cameron, President Barack Obama, Chancellor Angela Merkel and Jose Manuel Barroso, the German Chancellor is left completely alone in the #MoreWomen campaign image.

And in a photo of the Queen hosting a reception for G20 leaders at Buckingham Palace, Merkel is once again one of the only women left, save for The Queen herself and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, the president of Argentina.

On the day of the raid on Osama bin Laden's compound in 2011, in a meeting with Barack Obama and his top security advisers in the Situation Room on the day of the raid on Osama bin Laden compound in 2011 Hilary Clinton is also left sitting all on her own when her colleagues are erased.

The video, which is accompanied by the slogan 'there is room for more of us at the top' on the magazine's website, supports the #MoreWomen campaign, which Elle launched in their November 'feminism' issue.

In the issue, Lorraine Candy, Elle's editor-in-chief describes her hopes that the campaign will help empower more women to make it to the top.

Candy also makes a plea to readers to rally together and support other women to help achieve the goal of equality.

'In this issue I'm asking you to do something very special,' she writes. 'I want you to help empower every woman - not just the ones you favour, the ones you love and like or agree with.

'I'm asking you to support those with different ideas from yours, for you to 'do right' by other women, and to welcome into the fold those women whose ideology you may not always approve of - whose appearance or lifestyle you may not value in the same way you value yours.'

The editor continues: 'Why? Because silence is no longer an option.

'We need equal pay, we need a fair and humane judiciary for those of us who have suffered assault or abuse, we need an equal path to success at work, we need flexibility when we have a family, we need our value in society to be the same value as that of a man.

'We also want the same opportunities and choices men have so that our world is fairer for all, more economically successful for our future and a happier place to live in.'

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What would the world look like if men were photoshopped out?

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Video created by Elle Magazine to spearhead its #MoreWomen campaign Highlights lack of women in power positions by Photoshopping out men Scenes include the UN and Parliament as well as Buckingham Palace Question Time and University Challenge also given treatment What would the world's top tables look without men?

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Abortion Before Roe v. Wade

Until the late 19th century, abortion was legal in the United States before "quickening," the point at which a woman could first feel movements of the fetus, typically around the fourth month of pregnancy.

Some of the early regulations related to abortion were enacted in the 1820s and 1830s and dealt with the sale of dangerous drugs that women used to induce abortions. Despite these regulations and the fact that the drugs sometimes proved fatal to women, they continued to be advertised and sold.

In the late 1850s, the newly established American Medical Association began calling for the criminalization of abortion, partly in an effort to eliminate doctors' competitors such as midwives and homeopaths.

Additionally, some nativists, alarmed by the country's growing population of immigrants, were anti-abortion because they feared declining birth rates among white, American-born, Protestant women.

In 1869, the Catholic Church banned abortion at any stage of pregnancy, while in 1873, Congress passed the Comstock law, which made it illegal to distribute contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs through the U.S. mail. By the 1880s, abortion was outlawed across most of the country.

During the 1960s, during the women's rights movement, court cases involving contraceptives laid the groundwork for Roe v. Wade.

In 1965, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a law banning the distribution of birth control to married couples, ruling that the law violated their implied right to privacy under the U.S. Constitution. And in 1972, the Supreme Court struck down a law prohibiting the distribution of contraceptives to unmarried adults.

Meanwhile, in 1970, Hawaii became the first state to legalize abortion, although the law only applied to the state's residents. That same year, New York legalized abortion, with no residency requirement. By the time of Roe v. Wade in 1973, abortion was also legally available in Alaska and Washington.

Jane Roe

In 1969, Norma McCorvey, a Texas woman in her early 20s, sought to terminate an unwanted pregnancy. McCorvey, who had grown up in difficult, impoverished circumstances, previously had given birth twice and given up both children for adoption. At the time of McCorvey's pregnancy in 1969 abortion was legal in Texas-but only for the purpose of saving a woman's life.

While American women with the financial means could obtain abortions by traveling to other countries where the procedure was safe and legal, or pay a large fee to a U.S. doctor willing to secretly perform an abortion, those options were out of reach to McCorvey and many other women.

As a result, some women resorted to illegal, dangerous, "back-alley" abortions or self-induced abortions. In the 1950s and 1960s, the estimated number of illegal abortions in the United States ranged from 200,000 to 1.2 million per year, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

After trying unsuccessfully to get an illegal abortion, McCorvey was referred to Texas attorneys Linda Coffee and Sarah Weddington, who were interested in challenging anti-abortion laws.

In court documents, McCorvey became known as "Jane Roe."

Henry Wade

In 1970, the attorneys filed a lawsuit on behalf of McCorvey and all the other women "who were or might become pregnant and want to consider all options," against Henry Wade, the district attorney of Dallas County, where McCorvey lived.

Earlier, in 1964, Wade was in the national spotlight when he prosecuted Jack Ruby, who killed Lee Harvey Oswald, the alleged assassin of President John F. Kennedy.

Supreme Court Ruling

In June 1970, a Texas district court ruled that the state's abortion ban was illegal because it violated a constitutional right to privacy. Afterward, Wade declared he'd continue to prosecute doctors who performed abortions.

The case eventually was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. Meanwhile, McCovey gave birth and put the child up for adoption.

On Jan 22, 1973, the Supreme Court, in a 7-2 decision, struck down the Texas law banning abortion, effectively legalizing the procedure nationwide. In a majority opinion written by Justice Harry Blackmun, the court declared that a woman's right to an abortion was implicit in the right to privacy protected by the 14th Amendment.

The court divided pregnancy into three trimesters, and declared that the choice to end a pregnancy in the first trimester was solely up to the woman. In the second trimester, the government could regulate abortion, although not ban it, in order to protect the mother's health.

In the third trimester, the state could prohibit abortion to protect a fetus that could survive on its own outside the womb, except when a woman's health was in danger.

Legacy of Roe v. Wade

Norma McCorvey maintained a low profile following the court's decision, but in the 1980s she was active in the abortion rights movement.

However, in the mid-1990s, after becoming friends with the head of an anti-abortion group and converting to Catholicism, she turned into a vocal opponent of the procedure.

Since Roe v. Wade, many states imposed restrictions that weaken abortion rights, and Americans remain divided over support for a woman's right to choose an abortion.

In 1992, litigation against Pennsylvania's Abortion Control Act reached the Supreme Court in a case called Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey. The court upheld the central ruling in Roe v. Wade but allowed states to pass more abortion restrictions as long as they did not pose an "undue burden."

Roe v. Wade Overturned

In 2022, the nation's highest court deliberated on Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which regarded the constitutionality of a Mississippi law banning most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. Lower courts had ruled the law was unconstitutional under Roe v. Wade. Under Roe, states had been prohibited from banning abortions before around 23 weeks-when a fetus is considered able to survive outside a woman's womb.

In its decision, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in favor of Mississippi's law-and overturned Roe after its nearly 50 years as precedent.

Sources

Abortion in American History. The Atlantic.
High Court Rules Abortion Legal in First 3 Months. The New York Times.
Norma McCorvey. The Washington Post.
Sarah Weddington. .
When Abortion Was a Crime, Leslie J. Reagan. University of California Press.

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Roe v. Wade: Decision, Summary & Background

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Roe v. Wade was a landmark legal decision issued on January 22, 1973, in which the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a Texas statute banning abortion, effectively legalizing the procedure across the United States.

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Alcoa Aluminum
"Mad Men" is famous for illuminating a bygone era, replete with three-martini lunches, glamorous clothing, and, of course, casual sexism.

The rampant sexism in "Mad Men" was typical of the 1960s, when the outlook for women in America was just beginning to change. While the " second wave" of feminism began in the '60s, mainstream America was still very much a "man's world."

That attitude carried over into advertising, which did little to advance gender roles and ran ads that implied women were idiots who cared mostly about pleasing their men.

In honor of the premiere of Mad Men's final season, we collected some of advertising's most egregious sexist ads from that era. The first episode of Mad Men's final season airs April 5th at 10 pm eastern.

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26 sexist ads of the 'Mad Men' era that companies wish we'd forget

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"Mad Men" is famous for illuminating a bygone era, replete with three-martini lunches, glamorous clothing, and, of course, casual sexism. The rampant sexism in "Mad Men" was typical of the 1960s, when the outlook for women in America was just beginning to change.

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'Mad Men' premiere: Sexist ads from the era of Don Draper

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Sexism is rampant on the 1960s period drama "Mad Men". Lest we forget, it's not just fiction -- these vintage ads from the era of Don Draper are proof that the creative types on Madison Avenue -- and society at large -- were overtly sexist. Here are some cringeworthy examples of ads that objectify women.

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National Museum of American History,Rosie the Riveter

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National Museum of American History,Rosie the Riveter

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Our museum is temporarily closed to support the effort to contain the spread of COVID-19. Read a message from our director, and check our website and social media for updates.

Description

Artist J. Howard Miller produced this work-incentive poster for the Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company. Though displayed only briefly in Westinghouse factories, the poster in later year has become one of the most famous icons of World War II.

As women were encouraged to take wartime jobs in defense industries, they became a celebrated symbol of female patriotism. But when the war ended, many industries forced women to relinquish their skilled jobs to returning veterans.

Location

Currently not on view

commissioner

Westinghouse Electric Corporation

distributor

War Production Coordinating Committee

maker

Miller, J. Howard

Physical Description

paper (overall material)

Measurements

overall: 22 in x 17 in; 55.88 cm x 43.18 cm

ID Number

1985.0851.05

accession number

1985.0851

catalog number

1985.0851.05

subject

Homefront, World War II

Rosie the Riveter

related event

World War II

See more items in

Political and Military History: Political History, Home Front Collection

Industry & Manufacturing

National Treasures exhibit

Princeton Posters

Government, Politics, and Reform

Advertising

Data Source

National Museum of American History

Our collection database is a work in progress. We may update this record based on further research and review. Learn more about our approach to sharing our collection online.

If you would like to know how you can use content on this page, see the Smithsonian's Terms of Use. If you need to request an image for publication or other use, please visit Rights and Reproductions.

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Our museum is temporarily closed to support the effort to contain the spread of COVID-19. Read a message from our director, and check our website and social media for updates. Description Artist J. Howard Miller produced this work-incentive poster for the Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company.

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When men were men and women wore skirts

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The image in the poster on the left really portrays what the copy says. The soldier not only has patriotism, but holds firmly onto it in his hands. I feel that this poster works well for stirring up the emotions of the American people during times of war.government wants them to do. Kind of makes me feel that art, no matter what kind, can be important and not just "fluff". Kind of makes me feel that I could possibly do something that would be important and not just "fluff".

I really am glad that I had the opportunity to read "Heroic Icons". I never thought about the importance of an artist and designer on shaping the opinions of large groups of people or stirring their emotions to support what a

The first poster to pop into my head after reading the article was "Rosie the Riveter". It was one of the few war posters that I've seen and have even seen a time or two in movies that took place during WW II. " A few months after Rockwell's image, the most famous image of Rosie appeared in the government-commissioned poster "We Can Do It" (Yellin 44). "

I never realized that there were any other Rosie the Riveter posters other than "We Can Do It" until I was looking for a picture of it. " Norman Rockwell's image on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post on May 29, 1943 was the first widely publicized pictorial representation of the new "Rosie the Riveter". "
I feel that Norman Rockwell's version looks a little more like the "everyday woman" than Yellin's version.

In the "Heroic Icons", Superman and other comic super heroes were "tapped into the universal desire for invincible heroes to uphold, in this case, "Truth, Justice, and the American Way." Thinking about Rosie the Riveter made me think of Wonder Woman. I thought that maybe Wonder Woman was modeled after Rosie the Riveter, but then I found out that Wonder Woman " first appeared in All Star Comics #8, which was published by All American Publications in December of 1941. " I find it kind of interesting that they were created around the same time.

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The image in the poster on the left really portrays what the copy says. The soldier not only has patriotism, but holds firmly onto it in his hands. I feel that this poster works well for stirring up the emotions of the American people during times of war.government wants them to do.

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Find out more information about Women and the vote including the history of the suffragettes

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Definition of the three waves of feminism

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Definition of the three waves of feminism

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While the roots of feminism are buried in ancient Greece, most recognize the movement by the three waves of feminism.

However, empowered by the constant connectivity of the internet and the strength of the #MeToo movement, a new wave of feminists are speaking out in record numbers against discrimination. A new era for feminism has begun, full of passion, social-influencing power, and demanding change.
The first wave (1830's - early 1900's): Women's fight for equal contract and property rights
Often taken for granted, women in the late 19th to early 20th centuries, realized that they must first gain political power (including the right to vote) to bring about change was how to fuel the fire. Their political agenda expanded to issues concerning sexual, reproductive and economic matters. The seed was planted that women have the potential to contribute just as much if not more than men.

The second wave (1960's-1980's): Broadening the debate
Misconceptions...
Coming off the heels of World War II, the second wave of feminism focused on the workplace, sexuality, family and reproductive rights. During a time when the United States was already trying to restructure itself, it was perceived that women had met their equality goals with the exception of the failure of the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment (which has still yet to be passed).

This time is often dismissed as offensive, outdated and obsessed with middle class white women's problems. Conversely, many women during the second wave were initially part of the Black Civil Rights Movement, Anti Vietnam Movement, Chicano Rights Movement, Asian-American Civil Rights Movement, Gay and Lesbian Movement and many other groups fighting for equality. Many of the women supporters of the aforementioned groups felt their voices were not being heard and felt that in order to gain respect in co-ed organizations they first needed to address gender equality concerns.
The third wave (1990's - early 2000's): The "micropolitics" of gender equality
Women cared so much about these civil issues that they wanted to strengthen their voices by first fighting for gender equality to ensure they would be heard.

Unlike the former movements, the term 'feminist' becomes less critically received by the female population due to the varying feminist outlooks. There are the ego-cultural feminists, the radicals, the liberal/reforms, the electoral, academic, ecofeminists... the list goes on.

The main issues were prefaced by the work done by the previous waves of women. The fight continued to vanquish the disparities in male and female pay and the reproductive rights of women. Work continues to end violence against women in our nation as well as abroad. This wave was about acceptance and a true understanding of the term 'feminism'.

It should be noted that tremendous progress has been made since the first wave, but there is still much to be done. Due to the range of feminist issues today, it is much harder to put a label on what a feminist looks like- leading to a brand new generation rallying for equality and women's rights.....

Yes- a new Fourth Wave of Feminism has hit the coast, causing quite a stir: The Four Waves of Feminism (And Why They Matter for All Women)

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A Brief History: The Four Waves of Feminism

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While the roots of feminism are buried in ancient Greece, most recognize the movement by the three waves of feminism. However, empowered by the constant connectivity of the internet and the strength of the #MeToo movement, a new wave of feminists are speaking out in record numbers against discrimination.

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The passing of the Representation of the People Act had extended voting rights to women over the age of 30 who owned property for the first time.

In this centenary year a group of women called the suffragettes will be much celebrated. Yet, the suffragists began campaigning years before them with a very different vision for how to secure the vote for women - so who did win it?

By the late 19th century parliamentary reforms had given more men the right to vote in Britain, while petitions to enfranchise women were mocked and rejected.

Growing anger turned into action, and in 1897 local campaigners came together to form the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS).

Known as the suffragists, they were made up of mostly middle-class women and became the biggest suffrage organisation with more than 50,000 members.

Their president, Millicent Garrett Fawcett, passionately believed that non-violent campaigning would lead to constitutional change. She wanted to prove, through petitions and the lobbying of MPs, that women were respectable and responsible enough to participate in politics.

The broad focus of the suffragists is reflected in the colours adopted by the group; Green, White and Red, stood for Give Women Rights. Meanwhile the sashes often seen on suffragettes (and in the Disney film Mary Poppins) used Green, White and Violet, demanding Give Women Votes.

After six years with little progress, a number of women across the country became frustrated with Fawcett's moderate campaigning style.

Emmeline Pankhurst, who had been a member of the Manchester suffragist group, believed it was time for direct action by working-class women who would use any means necessary to secure the vote. "Deeds not words" - the motto of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) she created in 1903 - summed up their tactic of demanding, not asking, for their rights.

The label of suffragette was actually first used in an article by Daily Mail journalist Charles E Hands.

The intention of the "ette" suffix was "to belittle and to show that they were less than the proper kind of suffrage worker", says Elizabeth Crawford, a researcher and author on the women's suffrage movement.

"But they took up the name and were very proud of it."

The early action of these suffragettes was just to heckle politicians, and that "was considered really untoward" says Ms Crawford.

A turning point came in 1905.

Pankhurst's daughter, Christabel, and fellow suffragette Annie Kenney, were charged with obstruction after they interrupted a Liberal Party meeting to ask if they would give votes to women.

The women chose prison over paying a fine, and the considerable attention this attracted to the suffragette cause became their inspiration.

"The idea of militancy then was ratcheted up over the years," Ms Crawford says. "This was never overtly condoned by the leadership, but on the other hand they didn't condemn them. They just more or less said 'do what's necessary'."

As street demonstrations became increasingly angry and windows were smashed in Whitehall, arrests became common amongst the suffragettes.

This led to a new tactic - hunger strikes - and the brutal force-feeding they were subjected to attracted sympathy to their cause.

From 1912 the militant tactics became more violent; Mary Richardson took a meat cleaver to a painting at London's National Gallery while Sikh Princess Sophia Duleep Singh threw herself in front of the prime minister's car.

Arson attacks became commonplace - including on churches and libraries. They even bombed the house of then Chancellor of the Exchequer Lloyd George - though no one was hurt.

Historian Katherine Connelly explains that at this period, the militant suffrage movement became more elitist, largely organising middle class and upper class women.

"That elitism was also coupled with a neglect for winning over public opinion," she says.

Suffragists v Suffragettes

Fawcett was sympathetic to the aims of the suffragettes, but as public outrage grew Ms Crawford explains that this was damaging her cause.

"People didn't distinguish between the two factions of the movement and were put off the whole idea."

In 1913 suffragists organised a march of 50,000 law-abiding members to London to show suffragettes did not represent them.

Yet in the same year Fawcett demonstrated loyalty to the suffragettes who risked their life for the cause. After Emily Wilding Davison threw herself under the King's horse at the Epsom Derby, she declared "courage calls to courage everywhere, and its voice cannot be denied".

Who won women the vote?

"It's not possible to imagine women winning the vote without the suffragettes," says Ms Connelly,

"The militant organising, particularly of working class women, pointed to the possibility of a movement that would grow and could potentially become an enormous mass movement."

Both sides of the movement halted their campaigns in 1914, in order to support the war efforts.

World War One and women undertaking jobs usually done by men was the catalyst for extending votes to women.

"It was the suffragists who said that if you give the vote to more classes of men then you must include women," says Ms Crawford.

"The whole idea of what women could be, had changed by then - with all the work they'd been doing in World War One - that the government felt able to make this concession."

Ms Connelly agrees that the suffragettes were inspired by the suffragists, but that ultimately both movements played their part in winning the vote by organising women on mass in so many different ways.

What is 100 women?

BBC 100 Women names 100 influential and inspirational women around the world every year and shares their stories. Find us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter and use #100Women

Other stories you might like:

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100 Women: Suffragists or suffragettes - who won women the vote?

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The passing of the Representation of the People Act had extended voting rights to women over the age of 30 who owned property for the first time. In this centenary year a group of women called the suffragettes will be much celebrated.

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When a student researching in the archives of a London museum read the unpublished memoirs of a suffragette bomber, she began to wonder if the history of the movement had been sanitised. The suffragettes may have won the vote for women, but some of them, she argues, were terrorists.
Fern Riddell recognised the bomb straight away.

On the morning of 15 September 2017 an explosion on a rush-hour train at Parsons Green underground station in west London had resulted in dozens of injuries.

It was the fifth act of terror in the country in less than a year, and Riddell was anxious for more information. Combing through social media looking for real-time updates, she came across the image of a burning white plastic bucket.

The crude bomb that had detonated in the packed train carriage had been wrapped in a plastic grocery bag and concealed inside that bucket.

To Riddell, the image had a powerful resonance.

"That," she thought, "is a suffragette bomb. Home-made and with materials you could buy in chemist's and hardware stores. That is the kind of bomb the women used to terrorise the country into paying attention."

Riddell's interest in the suffragettes had begun five years earlier while she was studying for a PhD in history, though her first instinct had been to have nothing to do with them.

"It felt like a trap. That to be a young female historian, I had to write about women, about suffrage," she says.

She was far more interested in Victorian music halls. They featured skits and novelty acts, and, frequented by all classes, were a democratic and affordable form of entertainment.

"They were the internet of their day," says Riddell. "Just like memes appear on social media today, a song would be written and performed in music halls on the day of a significant cultural event. It was a raw, electric and relevant world that told of a society that differed from the restrained images often painted by historians of the 19th and early 20th Centuries. Especially when it came to women. It captivated me and I was excited to learn more."

But a chance discovery in the archives of the Museum of London, made with the help of archivist Beverley Cook, led to a dramatic change of direction.

"Bev said to me, 'I've got this unpublished autobiography of a young music hall artist, very few people have ever really looked at it. She was also a suffragette. I don't know if you're interested?'

"And I kind of rolled my eyes and thought, 'Oh God not a suffragette,'" Riddell says.

"At that time I had a certain impression of suffragettes that many people did. I knew about the window-smashing, being chained to rails, the force-feeding, the posters and marching. I thought I knew everything there was to know about these women."

Riddell told herself that she'd read the parts about the music halls and skip the campaigning parts. She was presented with two folders' worth of handwritten papers.

About five pages in, Riddell says, an incredible voice leapt off the page. She was reading the words of a suffragette who talked openly about staging arson attacks. Other papers indicate she was also a bomber. In other words, says Riddell, she was "a terrorist".

"Through the pages Kitty was a such a powerful speaker. And she was telling me a violent story that I had never heard. Later I checked with my friends, my family, and even other academics I knew. They had never heard this either. This was a part of our history that most historians seemed to have shied away from exploring, and here I was with access to a primary source, a woman who was unlike anyone I had encountered in the history books."

She calls it a Da Vinci Code moment.

Riddell stayed in the archive until it closed, reading the story of Kitty Marion in one sitting.

Katherina Maria Schafer had arrived in London at the age of 15 after fleeing from her abusive home in Germany. Her mother had died when she was an infant, leaving her alone with a violent and unloving father. He killed her puppy when it began to show her affection.

She lived with her aunt, uncle and cousins in east London, and quickly learned English. By chance, she stumbled into the energetic and vibrant world of music halls and for the first time, the teenager felt a sense of belonging. She renamed herself Kitty Marion and began a career as an actress and dancer.

"Kitty was mesmerised by this world," says Riddell. "Music halls were an exciting and cosmopolitan pocket of Victorian London. Working, financially solvent women and interracial marriages were common here. Kitty had a diverse group of friends - the son of a Chinese diplomat gave her her first cigarette. She forged fast friendships with women - strong, sexually liberated women unlike those I had read about in the history books. Women in Victorian England were generally depicted as long-suffering pious victims, not the free agents I was meeting in Kitty's autobiography."

Marion didn't immediately champion the cause of gender equality or votes for women, but then, as Riddell puts it, "she had a Me Too moment".

An assault by a music hall agent, whom she refers to only as "Mr Dreck" or Mr Trash, made Marion seriously question a career in an industry dominated by powerful men. In her autobiography she describes how her "whole being revolted" at the incident.

"Few women forget the first time they have been assaulted. The first time someone has decided that they have the right to touch, to kiss, to take without asking," says Riddell.

As a travelling actress, Marion saw that she was far from alone in having to endure such an experience.

You may also be interested in:
Suffragists or suffragettes - who won women the vote? What did the suffragettes do for you? Does being called Emmeline change your life?
"It was the idea that women deserved a right to be safe in their working environments, and to have their independence without having to sacrifice their bodies to get it, that propelled Kitty into the fold of the suffragette movement," Riddell says.

Marion joined the Actress Franchise League, which often staged pro-suffragette plays. After that she joined the Pankhursts' Women's Social and Political Union and soon began to participate in demonstrations and marches, graduating later to radical acts of civil disobedience.

Her first experience of prison came after she threw a brick through a Newcastle post office window, and, like an increasing number of jailed suffragettes, she went on hunger strike. The prison authorities dealt with these women by force-feeding them - violently pushing a tube into the nose or mouth. Marion protested against this first treatment by breaking a gas lamp and using mattress stuffing to set her cell on fire.

Repeated imprisonments followed, mainly for arson attacks.

On the night of 13 June 1913, she and a fellow suffragette set fire to a racecourse grandstand in retaliation for the death of Emily Wilding Davison, who had died after being trampled by King George V's horse during a protest at the Epsom Derby. Both were arrested the following morning.

This time she was force-fed an excruciating 232 times in one day.

Riddell was entranced by Kitty Marion. Here was a woman who was not a household name, but was certainly a frontline soldier in the suffragette movement, and well-known to its leaders. Riddell spent hours, then days, months and eventually years, looking through huge amounts of archival documents including personal diaries, letters, court and police records, published memoirs, and newspapers to piece together Marion's life in the movement. A little-known history of the suffragettes began to emerge.

They were not just breaking windows or committing arson attacks.

The women sent vials of phosphorus in the post, which would break when handled, causing postmen to suffer severe burns.

They were also planting bombs.

"By the start of 1913, the suffragettes had become a highly organised terror group," argues Riddell. "In May 1913 there were 52 attacks, including 29 bombs and 15 arson attacks in the country."

Home-made bombs, much like the one that Riddell had seen on social media following London's Parson's Green attack, were found in churches, packed train carriages, halls and stations, and Riddell says that they were intended to hurt people. It was pure luck that they didn't.

"Bombs then did not detonate instantly like they do now, they fizzed and spluttered and smoked, and gave people plenty of time to get away. But they were placed in public places, with large footfall.

In pamphlets suffragette leader Emmeline Pankhurst called the militancy "continued, destructive guerrilla warfare against the Government". Both suffragettes and the police called it a "Reign of Terror". Newspaper headlines referred to "Suffragette Terrorism".

"There is no doubt that this had all the hallmarks of what we would today define as terrorism," says Riddell.

While Kitty Marion is frank about her arson attacks, she is coy about the bombs.

She kept a scrapbook of clippings of arson attacks that she carried out - and included reports of bombings where the attacker is not identified. Riddell believes Kitty is claiming responsibility for these attacks. There are also revealing letters from one suffragette to another.

There is some indication, Riddell adds, that the suffragettes made a co-ordinated attempt in later years to remove references to their most violent acts from published memoirs.

When Riddell began to speak out publicly about Kitty Marion's violent record she faced some backlash from suffragette historians.

"One wrote a letter saying my research was 'shameful' and I should 'not continue', which was incredibly intimidating for me, a young student at the start of my career," says Riddell.

"Other historians were defensive, saying that there was no large whitewashing of suffragette memory. To that I'd like to address people who aren't in the elite academic bubble, 'Have you or your friends heard of suffragette bombers? Have you ever heard them called terrorists?'"

Riddell says that it was only the outbreak of World War One in 1914 that curbed the escalating militancy of the suffragettes.

Kitty Marion's final arrest in the UK came the year before, on suspicion of setting fire to the grandstand at Hurst Park racecourse, near London. She was sentenced to three years in prison, of which she served several months before being released to a hospital under the provisions of the so-called Cat and Mouse Act (which allowed for the early release of prisoners who were so weakened by hunger strikes that they were at risk of death - though they were recalled to prison once their health improved).

Following the outbreak of World War One the British government seized the opportunity, Riddell says, to accuse one of the most dangerous women in the suffragette movement of being a German spy.

But Marion had loyal friends, and a number of high-profile suffragettes helped her travel to the US instead of returning to prison.

While in New York, the itch for social justice returned.

Kitty Marion made friends with Margaret Sanger and became involved with her American Birth Control movement - which went on to become Planned Parenthood.

"Here was a woman whose life linked two of the great movements of our times, and yet we don't know her name," says Riddell.

The research Riddell carried out for her PhD became the basis of her recently published book, Death in Ten Minutes. This has been optioned as a drama series detailing the lives of Marion and her friends - a group within the suffragette movement who called themselves The Young Hot Bloods whom Riddell accuses of carrying out bomb attacks.

Riddell is keen to make clear that she is not trying to tarnish the reputation of the suffragettes.

"I am so in awe of these women," she says. "But we cannot shy away from what these women were in their entirety. There's an age-old saying, 'One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.' That is the same here."

Riddell keeps a photo of Kitty Marion in her home.

"Kitty desperately wanted her story to be told and I'm so proud to finally be able to do that for her," she says. "Everyone should know what difficult, troubling choices these women made for us to be free."
Photos by Phil Coomes unless otherwise indicated Follow Megha Mohan on Twitter @meghamohan
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Did the suffragettes win women the vote?
These women staged headline-grabbing stunts, chaining themselves to railings and attacking property. Yet they risked turning the press and public against their cause. Would their tactics prove effective when war was looming?

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When a student researching in the archives of a London museum read the unpublished memoirs of a suffragette bomber, she began to wonder if the history of the movement had been sanitised. The suffragettes may have won the vote for women, but some of them, she argues, were terrorists.

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Anti abortion Law Professor Theresa Manning appointed President of Planned Parenthood

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Donald Trump has reportedly appointed to a position overseeing the US's family planning safety net a law professor who once stated that "contraception doesn't work" and "family planning is something that occurs between a husband and a wife and God, and it doesn't really involve the federal government."

The prospect of Teresa Manning becoming deputy assistant secretary for population affairs at the Department of Health and Human Services, first reported by PoliticoPro, has led reproductive rights activists to demand that Trump withdraw the appointment, saying his choice could jeopardize the federal program responsible for preventing millions of unplanned pregnancies, and by extension, abortions.

Manning's appointment would give her oversight of Title X, a quarter-of-a-billion-dollar federal program that provides contraceptive services to low-income and uninsured women and men, and a hand in guiding the federal government's policy toward teen pregnancy, family planning, and pregnancy prevention.

"Teresa Manning's appointment is unacceptable," said Dawn Laguens, Planned Parenthood's executive vice-president. "This is the fox guarding the hen house, and women with low incomes will pay the price. We are at the lowest rate of unintended pregnancy in 30 years and a historic low for teen pregnancy because of access to birth control. Someone who promotes myths about birth control and reproductive care should not be in charge of the office that is responsible for family planning at HHS."

Manning is an adjunct law professor teaching legal research and writing at George Mason University. She previously worked with the National Right to Life Committee, an anti-abortion group, and the Family Research Council, an arch-conservative lobbying group known for its virulent opposition to LGBT rights.

Manning once sued the University of Iowa law school for passing her over for a professorship, claiming the dean of the law school had discriminated on the basis of her political views. (The school claimed that Manning didn't offer to fulfill all of the job's requirements.)

The administration has not publicly confirmed Manning's appointment, but PoliticoPro reports that she already appears in the agency's directory.

Manning made her comments on contraception and family planning during a 2003 media tour to promote a book she had edited about the future of the anti-abortion movement.

"I always shake my head," she told C-Span, explaining her views on family planning. "You know, family planning is something that occurs between a husband and a wife and God, and it doesn't really involve the federal government, much less the United Nations, where we hear about family planning all the time. What are they doing in that business?"

In an interview with Boston's NPR affiliate, Manning, who at the time went by Teresa Wagner, claimed that "contraception doesn't work".

"Its efficacy is very low," she said, "especially when you consider over years - which, a lot of contraception health advocates want to start women in their adolescent years, when they're extremely fertile, incidentally, and continue for 10, 20, 30 years. The prospect that contraception would always prevent the conception of a child is preposterous."

In fact, many types of contraception, particularly IUDs and other implants designed to stay in the body for long periods of time, have a nearly 100% success rate at preventing pregnancy.

The federal family planning program which Manning will oversee has provided thousands of such devices to US women.

In 2014, Title X provided contraceptive drugs, devices, and counseling for nearly 4 million women who rely on the public safety net for their family planning needs. The same year, the program prevented nearly 1 million unintended pregnancies and more than 300,000 abortions.

Earlier this year, in a move that could weaken the network of family planning clinics that use Title X funds, Trump signed legislation encouraging states to divert Title X funding away from Planned Parenthood.

Manning is not the first opponent of reproductive rights to receive a high-level appointment in the Trump administration.

Tom Price, the head of the HHS, opposes the Obama-era requirement that health insurance plans cover contraception with no co-pay and once challenging a reporter to "bring me one woman" who struggled to afford contraception on her own.

In February, Trump named a health policy aide to the White House Domestic Policy Council, Katy Talento, who believes that taking birth control before pregnancy can lead to miscarriages and infertility, assertions unsupported by any medical evidence.

And on Friday, the administration named Charmaine Yoest, the former president of Americans United for Life, to head the health department's public communications strategy. Yoest is a longtime foe of abortion rights who dismisses the notion that contraception has a role to play in reducing abortions as a "red herring".
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Trump set to hand key family planning role to anti-contraception advocate

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Donald Trump has reportedly appointed to a position overseeing the US's family planning safety net a law professor who once stated that "contraception doesn't work" and "family planning is something that occurs between a husband and a wife and God, and it doesn't really involve the federal government."