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Chapter 4 draws on qualitative interview data derived from a research collaboration between UCSF, the University of Cape Town, and Sonke Gender Justice, a non-governmental organization in South Africa that seeks to reduce the spread and impact of HIV. This chapter analyses how men in several provinces of South Africa who participated in a gender-transformative HIV and anti-violence program shifted their views of masculinities, gender relations, and women’s rights. Chapter 3 also analyzes how men modified their alcohol use, violence, and HIV risks as a result of this innovative gender transformative program. The chapter situates gender transformative health interventions as combining dynamic social science thinking on masculinities, collective action and gendered power relations with public health behaviour change strategis. The data analysis also highlights how gender-transformative programming can reify discourses of healthism, individual blame, and individualized notions of masculinities that can limit the effectiveness of such programs.

The chapter of the book discusses the specific stages of evolution of the Hindu Code Bill and provides the base for understanding the ideological underpinnings of the discourse over the Hindu Code Bill during 1941 to 1946. The chapter traces the process of codification of Hindu laws since the 1920s, immediately after the Montague Chelmsford reforms. It discusses the debate over Hindu legislative reforms in the 1920s and 1930s and also the growing social discontent over the Hindu Women’s Right to Property Act of 1937 that led to the constitution of the Hindu Law Committee in 1941. The chapter also discusses the recommendations of the first Hindu Law Committee, the reconstitution of the Committee in 1944 with the mandate to frame a Bill to codify Hindu law.

Both in the law of property and the law of succession Scots law has historically contained rules discriminating against women, restricting their rights and limiting their control over property and its disposal. These rules may sometimes have had a historical justification based on the place accorded to women in society but they could not be maintained. Some change took place by private initiative limiting the general rules but equality has required a long process of legislative change. Formal equality, however, does not ensure actual equality in that equal access to property and hence to control over it is also required.

This chapter delves deeper into the women's movement in Iraq during the Hashemite period. It suggests that there were two main reasons why the full scale of women's response against the constitutional monarchy was difficult to trace. The first is connected with circumstances of the time—that is, with the government's censoring of the women's movement. The second, however, is rooted in accounts portraying the history of the women's movement, provided by Iraqi women activists and their later reproduction in contemporary scholarly literature published in English. The chapter argues that the early history of the women's movement in Iraq remains little known because the two key organizations involved in the movement—the Iraqi Women's Union, which was harshly sanctioned by the regime, and the underground League for the Defense of Women's Rights, produced two competing narratives of the women's movement.

Discusses the issues in the film Uridu halan which, according to informants, aroused most empathy and acted as a catalyst for publicly exposing issues surrounding the reform of personal status law. Focuses on the evolution of the maintenance-obedience relationship in Egypt, from the early 1920s when the first codified personal status law codes were introduced, until the introduction and implementation of Egypt's first law of the new millennium, the khul' law of 2000.

Chapter four focuses on the advancement of women’s rights movements in the years between 1956 and 1959, when the UDI and the CIF accelerated their efforts in the national context to fight for labor legislation for women who worked inside and outside the home. They reaffirmed their autonomy by directly confronting the political parties, trade unions, Catholic organizations, and the Vatican on outmoded ideas about gender. The disruption on the left caused by the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956 threatened to de-stabilize the membership of the UDI and the WIDF and marked a watershed year in Italian politics. Italy’s signing of the Treaty of Rome in 1957 opened the door to economic growth already evident by 1958 and signaled to the CIF and the WMM that the Europeans could overcome national divides. Chapter four shows that the UDI and the CIF advanced their objectives for Italian women while cautiously rethinking their national and international political alliances to best represent the interests of their members.

Chapter 5 examines the flight attendant corps of the 1970s, when the profession became more attuned to both women’s liberation and gay liberation. This chapter examines how women and gays cooperated—and sometimes fought—in both the workplace and the union hall to find common ground that respected all employees. I link these developments with the backlash against a feminist, pro-gay ethic, whether that backlash came from airline executives or larger conservative social movements. These increasingly severe skirmishes in the culture wars also influenced the legal legacy of Diaz v. Pan Am, as conservatives continued to portray women’s rights initiatives like the Equal Rights Amendment as backdoor pathways for queers to gain equal rights.

Weil pushed a reluctant Federation of Women's Clubs to adopt a suffrage resolution. In 1914 she served as president of the Goldsboro Equal Suffrage League and five years later was elected president of the Equal Suffrage Association of North Carolina. Either North Carolina Tennessee would need to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment for women to achieve the vote, but North Carolina's political climate was conservative. Carrie Chapman Catt, president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, appointed Weil as state field commander. The legislature repeatedly voted down granting women the franchise or legal rights, and anti-suffragists campaigned that women's suffrage was immoral and would overturn white supremacy. Although the governor reluctantly endorsed women's suffrage, the state legislature tabled the motion, and Tennessee became the ultimate ratifying state.

After the South reversed intimate partner violence reform, the North did too. Progressivism emphasized reliance on experts, and science grew as a field during the early twentieth century. Biologists warned against women’s growing rights, claiming family and the entire nation would suffer as a consequence. The field of psychology and social work also grew during the period. Social workers pushed for the creation of family courts, in which decisions of intimate partner violence would be decided. These new professions upheld conservative definitions of womanhood and pushed to uphold the family whatever the cost. This process effectively decriminalized abuse

“Evolution and the Natural Order” introduces the key themes of the book, notably that evolutionary theory profoundly impacted ideas about gender and sex and that the American reception of Charles Darwin was often highly gendered. The connections between Darwin and new thinking about gender can especially be seen the American reception of The Descent of Man(1871). This chapter also introduces the Darwinian feminists who are further analyzed in the rest of the book.

Chapter 4 describes the challenges and opportunities of life for women in the nation’s capital during the 1860s. During the Civil War, Washington, D.C., was on the front lines of the conflict. After the war, annual reports of the Board of Metropolitan Police to Congress make clear that Washingtonians continued to endure overcrowding, housing shortages, crime, and disease. Women not only survived in this chaotic context; many—including Patent Office clerk Julia Wilbur, whose diary offers an intriguing window into the everyday life of a female federal employee—thrived in this tough city, enjoying independence, filling their leisure time, and changing the demographics of Washington. For those who chose to do so, female federal employees’ salaries, newly acquired political knowledge, and personal associations provided them with the financial and practical wherewithal to participate in philanthropy and political movements, including the suffrage movement. Female federal employees were visible all over the city, helping to normalize the presence of middle-class women in the streets of Washington. In forming this new, conspicuous community of independent women in full view of the nation’s politicians, female federal employees became a part of the struggle for women’s rights, whether they intended to or not.

Chapter 7 explores the equal pay debates of the Civil War era. The government paid women less than it paid men, although many performed the same or equivalent work. Between late 1864 and early 1870, Congress received at least 740 female federal employee signatures on eleven separate petitions asking for greater pay. Some of these women argued that since they performed the same work as men, they should be paid the same. The efforts of early female federal employees and labor feminists to obtain equal pay for equal work engendered a precocious debate in Congress that almost succeeded in earning equal pay for women and forced Congressmen to engage in dialogues about gender equality and the role the federal government should play in society. Despite the exciting rhetoric of equality and justice in these debates, Congress did not set the standard of equal pay for women underscoring that although women had made much progress in federal work during the Civil War era, much work remained to be done. Surprisingly, petitioners did not receive much assistance from the women’s suffrage movement. The absence of the suffrage movement in these debates arguably disadvantaged both causes.

This introductory chapter provides a background of Simone de Beauvoir's feminism. As the political opposition hardened and the Women's Liberation Movement (MLF) matured in the 1970s, Beauvoir put “her notoriety and her connections at the service of this movement of young rabble-rousers without ever claiming to lead it in any certain direction.” Beauvoir supported those feminists interested in legal reform through the creation of a League of Women's Rights and those “who preferred to fight sexism by denouncing it with perspicacity and humor.” Moreover, she lent her support to a successful campaign for divorce law reform and an unsuccessful one for a law banning sexism, which won the support of the Secretary for Women's Rights in the new Socialist government in 1981, but failed after vehement opposition from advertisers and the press. In 1979, Beauvoir joined an international campaign—also unsuccessful—to defend the rights of women in the Iranian Revolution.

Chapter 6, activism, centres the transnational work of activists internationally whose purpose is to improve access to abortion; taking action to provide or facilitate access; improving knowledge about abortion and challenging abortion stigma. The recent history of abortion activism, is considered, beginning with the Jane Collective, which operated primarily in the Chicago area of the US, providing access to abortion and abortion services during the late 1960s / early 1970s. This chapter reflects on how in the 21st century resistance to prohibitive legal frameworks and restricted access is offered by national and international organisations who work in collaboration with grassroots groups. The chapter reflects on the wide range of work offered by activist organisations which provide short-term help or longer-term interventions to circumvent laws or change societal perceptions about abortion.

This chapter further analyzes the ambivalences of media witnessing through a study of the visual rhetorics of women’s human rights in Associated Press photographs of Afghan women caught up in the War on Terror. I critique visual encounters with spectacles of Orientalism to consider the possibilities of recognition within human rights discourse.

Chapter 2 analyzes the complex and often contradictory gendered positions of women artists associated with Mexico’s Communist Party during the first decades of the twentieth century. This chapter first examines the Mexican Communist Party’s official stance toward women from 1919 to the 1940s, and the changing global and national political framework in which the PCM operated. Next, this chapter highlights the artistic and political contributions of Tina Modotti, while recognizing her ambivalent position within postrevolutionary society. This chapter argues that even as state representatives grew increasingly concerned with Modotti’s communist leanings, Mexican officials nonetheless co-opted Modotti’s image in several ways. Not only did her photographs help to shape an “authentic” Mexican identity, but her very presence provided a cautionary morality tale to all women concerning the consequences of having “questionable” morals and even worse, of adhering to communist principles.

Focusing on the writings of antebellum women’s rights activist Elizabeth Oakes Smith, this chapter demonstrates that many objected to early marriage for girls, but for a variety of reasons. Some believed that it was physiologically unsound, others that it would be detrimental to “the race,” and others like Smith believed that early marriage curtailed girls’ chances for a meaningful girldhood. Smith and other activists like Elizabeth Cady Stanton also pointed out that legally early marriage was flawed because girls were permitted to contract marriage—which itself was disadvantageous for all women because of coverture—when they were not yet legally adults. While Smith and her contemporaries were astute in all these critiques, they rarely paused to consider the ways that early marriage was mostly detrimental for middle-class girls who really did have the opportunity of a protected childhood, unlike working-class children, who were laboring from early ages.