This paper examines the negative stereotypes so long foisted on witty women and the move of contemporary witty women writers into a comic vision beyond the imposed connection of female wit to sly cleverness and witchcraft. To illustrate how the woman writer had to cope with a prejudice against and a fear of her wit, the paper considers three…

Designed to attempt an assessment of the quality and quantity of information on traditional Navajo women in view of feminist concerns about the treatment of women in ethnography, data from 10 basic ethnographies on the Navajos and 14 published life histories of Navajo men and women are explored. (Author)

Recollection of the lives of Navajo women and men on the eastern part of the reservation in 1940 are presented. The multiplicity of responsibilities of a traditional Navajo woman is reflected in the Navajo puberty ceremony for girls, Kinaalda. (ERB)

The Indian woman has been viewed as a subservient and oppressed female; often overlooked were the economic, social and political positions women held within tribal societies. The biographies and autobiographies of Indian women that have been obtained over the last century can be used to examine this contradiction in perspectives. These accounts…

Based on information on women who attended Oberlin College between 1833 and 1860, a sketch is drawn on the lives of American females during that period. Attention is directed to such demographic factors as the area of the country from which they entered the Oberlin College, the number of years they remained at the college, their mobility,…

The development of nursing and nursing education in the United States during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is described. Professionalization accompanied by feminization in nursing, as in teaching, librarianship, and social work, opened opportunities to middle class women for respectable employment and sometimes prestige and…

Organizational change at Wells College, New York, is traced from 1876-1905 in relation to women's role in higher education. This excerpt of a larger study indicates how women worked within a female college that had male authority figures at a time in which there were strong notions about proper feminine behavior. The college was intended to train…