The Constitution As Social Design

This book focuses on gender and civic membership in American constitutional politics from the adoption of the Nineteenth Amendment through Second Wave Feminism. It examines how American civic membership is gendered, and how the terms of civic membership available to men and women shape their political identities, aspirations, and behavior. The book also explores the dynamics of American constitutional development through a focus on civic membership―a legal and political construct at the heart of the constitutional order.

This is a book about gender politics and constitutional development, and about what each of these can tell us about the other. It considers the options and choices faced by women’s rights activists in the United States as they voiced their claims for civic inclusion from Reconstruction through Second Wave Feminism, and it makes evident the limits of liberal citizenship for women.

Gretchen Ritter is Associate Professor of Government and Director of the Center for Women's and Gender Studies at the University of Texas, Austin. She is the author of Goldbugs and Greenbacks: The Antimonopoly Tradition and the Politics of Finance (1997)