The Rights of Women, Third Edition: The Basic ACLU Guide to Women's Rights (ACLU Handbook)

Throughout much of American history, discrimination against women has been rooted in the legal system. When Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott called the first women’s rights convention at Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848, one of their major concerns was a legal system that profoundly discriminated against women. It deprived all women of the right to vote and also prohibited women from engaging in many occupations and professions, including the practice of law. The legal system was particularly hard on the married women, depriving them of all rights—in effect rendering them "civilly dead." The system is hardly perfect now, but women have fought and won major legal battles that provide significantly more protection under the law.

Using a question-and-answer format, this ACLU handbook explains in detail how women can use the laws currently on the books in their continuing struggle to gain real equality in the family, marketplace, workplace, and academia.

Topics covered include employment, education, parenting, family law, and reproductive freedom. This handbook also examines criminal proceedings, insurance, the military, credit, and the rights of homeless women.

Susan Deller Ross is a professor of law at the University of Georgetown Law Center. Her publications include a law school casebook entitled SexDiscrimination and the Law; several articles on women’s legal rights; and judicial training materials on child custody, visitation, and spousal support for the Women Judges Fund for justice.

Isabelle Katz Pinzler has been director of the ACLU Women’s Rights Project since 1978.

Deborah A. Ellis is legal director of the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund.

Kary L. Moss has been a staff attorney with the Women’s Rights Project since 1988. She has published extensively on governmental efforts to punish women for their prenatal behavior and on accessing health care for low-income women.