Evolution Toward Equality: Equality for Women in the American West is a recently published women’s history with a regional focus. The significance it has for life today is reflected in an email I received a few days ago from a former student who moved to New York City three years ago from Colorado. She said that she has noticed “a big difference in how women are treated in the East Coast and the West.” She observes that “women in New York City very rarely have untraditional jobs like construction, roadside work, or even plumbing.” In contrast, she remembers her father consistently hiring women in his Colorado-based construction company, and she “always saw women working on the road along with men in Colorado.” She mentioned that she often thinks about the lectures in my humanities class about “women in the west being some of the most prominent leaders of the feminist movement.”
While this is a recent observation, it reflects the differences that inspired me to write Evolution Toward Equality. The women’s movement of the nineteenth century was started in New York, but it was the impact of the newly developing West that promoted the changes that led to more equality rights for women, including co-education, property rights, divorce laws more favorable to women, women’s suffrage, and women in public office and professional careers. This was not a change that occurred overnight; instead, it was an evolutionary process that required changing attitudes and more equitable gender relationships.
Evolution Toward Equality explores the factors that turned liberal eastern theory into practical reality in the West. A significant but rarely discussed contribution to this process was the positive role of fathers and other male and non-traditional female role models on the lives of daughters who grew up in the West.
Evolution Toward Equality has been successful in the two months it has been available. My students are enthusiastic to read it. One former student, now a teacher and father of three daughters says, “I am so very glad that you are sharing this with the world... with each and every paragraph I read, I have to pause to attempt to comprehend the depth of the struggle. Ah, is not knowing such a bad thing—it’s not like I deliberately had my eyes closed...just not knowing how or where or even why to look into the past to discover where people are at this very moment...I kinda feel bad for not knowing much about the subject...the ladies at my school are waiting in line to read this when I’m done. . .” Later he added, “how the last three chapters brought all of the subject matter together into clear focus for me was amazing. Many thanks once again for sharing your writing expertise with me, with us all!!!”
The American Heritage Center at the University of Wyoming is excited to add Evolution Toward Equality to the list of resources for the Landmarks in History project funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. The AHC project will be held this summer with a possible follow-up program during the summer of 2007. It will focus on the question of why women’s suffrage began in Wyoming, and the goal is to encourage teachers to use a variety of resources to research a historic question.
My own research is based on the work I did to complete my doctoral dissertation. I have since modified the manuscript significantly to appeal to a wider audience including historians, history buffs, students, and anyone who enjoys reading about the lives of people who have shaped our culture.