League of Women Voters representatives gather around a table on a sidewalk while writing and mimeographing news releases to hand out at train stops en route to the Democratic Convention.

The League of Women Voters Takes On the Environment

Having won the right to vote, some suffragists moved on to fight water pollution and protect the environment.
Lunchroom in Chicago, 1896

How Gender Got on the Menu

As women began to be welcomed into restaurants, some started catering to what they perceived as “female tastes,” largely meaning the sugary stuff
Antique illustration: Sleeping at sea

The Women Who Preached in Their Sleep

Was sleep-preaching an ingenious way for oppressed women to subvert the social order through somniloquy?
Marie Stopes in her laboratory, 1904

Counting Orgasms With Marie Stopes

Before gall wasp expert Alfred Kinsey turned to the study of human sexuality, another biologist made her move.
Connie Converse

Connie Converse Wasn’t Just a Folk Singer. She Was a Scholar, Too.

The disappeared—but recently rediscovered—folk musician edited and published in academic journals under the name Elizabeth Converse.
A woman smiles while holding bottles of various types of alcohol, including peach brandy, port wine, gin, absinthe, and forbidden fruit.

Whiskey, Women, and Work

Prohibition—and its newly created underground economy—changed the way women lived, worked, and socialized.
Illustration of women fighting from 19th century.

How to Fight Like a Girl

Women have been punching each other in the face (during boxing matches) since the early 1700s.
Clemencia López

Clemencia López and the Philippine Struggle for Freedom

López’s gender and appearance helped her contribute to anti-imperial and suffrage movements in a way her male peers couldn’t.
Portrait of Nancy Clem

Money, Murder, and Mrs. Clem

Nancy Clem was a Gilded Age con artist whose swindles eventually turned deadly. Her crimes would test the era’s assumptions about class, gender, and criminality.
A poster made by Ghazal Foroutan

Was She Really Rosie?

The unlikely, true story of the Westinghouse “We Can Do It” work-incentive poster that became an international emblem of women’s empowerment.