Changing Differences: Women and the Shaping of American Foreign Policy, 1917-1994 - Hardcover

Jeffreys-Jones, Rhodri

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0813521661 ISBN 13: 9780813521664

Publisher: Rutgers University Press, 1995

Synopsis

There are more than fifty women in the United States Congress and nearly one-fourth of foreign service posts are held by women. Nevertheless, the United States has yet to entrust a senior foreign policy job, outside of the United Nations, to a woman. Beneath these statistics lurk central myths that Jeffreys-Jones cogently identifies and describes: the "Iron Lady"--too masculine; the "lover of peace"--too "pink"; the weak or the promiscuous. These are to name only a few. With an eye to the feminist foreign policy leaders of the future, the author traces the successes and failures of collectivities such as Women Strike for Peace and individuals who were influential in international politics since World War I, including Alice Paul, Jane Addams, Jeannette Rankin, Dorothy Detzer, Eleanor Roosevelt, Margaret Chase Smith, Helen Gahagan Douglas, Bella Abzug, Margaret Thatcher, and many others. These women often found ways to employ the myths to their own and to their country's benefit, and more recently have had the freedom to defy the stereotypes altogether.

About this title

About the Author:

RHODRI JEFFREYS-JONES is a reader in history at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, and has published several books, including The CIA and American Democracy.

From Booklist:

Jeffreys-Jones, a reader in history at the University of Edinburgh, examines how women have influenced American foreign policy over the past 77 years. Starting with the concessions that feminist Carrie Chapman Catt proposed to President Wilson (over dropping antiwar protests in exchange for the vote), the author traces the major female players and their issues, including suffrage, pacifism, tariffs, trade, and military spending. The author makes distinctions between women who were in positions to explain policy rather than make it, and those who were placed in government positions as tokens or figureheads. Most interesting is the author's emphasis on individuals and their accomplishments (or failures). Denise Perry Donavin

About this edition

• Publisher: Rutgers University Press
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0813521661
• ISBN 13: 9780813521664
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 292