- Acknowledgments
- Contributors
- Women, Gender, and American History
- Gender Frontiers and Early Encounters
- Manhood and the US Republican Empire
- Women and Conquest in the American West
- Women, Gender, Migration, and Modern US Imperialism
- Women, Unfree Labor, and Slavery in the Atlantic World
- Women, Power, and Families in Early Modern North America
- Women and Slavery in the Nineteenth Century
- Women’s Labors in Industrial and Postindustrial America
- Public and Print Cultures of Sex in the Long Nineteenth Century
- Interracial Sex, Marriage, and the Nation
- Reproduction, Birth Control, and Motherhood in the United States
- Sexual Coercion in America
- Gender, the Body, and Disability
- Transgender Representations, Identities, and Communities
- Women, Trade, and the Roots of Consumer Societies
- Gender and Consumption in the Modern United States
- Women at Play in Popular Culture
- Women, Gender, and Religion in the United States
- Religion, Reform, and Antislavery
- Women’s Rights, Suffrage, and Citizenship, 1789–1920
- Women, Gender, Race, and the Welfare State
- US Feminisms and Their Global Connections
- Sexual Minorities and Sexual Rights
- Women, Gender, and Conservatism in Twentieth-Century America
- Women, War, and Revolution
- Women, the Civil War, and Reconstruction
- Women and World War in Comparative Perspective
- Gender, Civil Rights, and the US Global Cold War
- Index
Abstract and Keywords
Women have participated in conservative movement politics throughout the twentieth century. From opposition mounted against Progressive-era health and welfare legislation to protests against Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal to culture war battles with feminists, conservative women have never completely ceded the right side of the political spectrum to men. Essentialist notions of what is “natural” to women, their bodies, and their connection to children and the family, have been the basis of conservative female politics throughout the twentieth century and beyond. Women on the right have drawn from a corpus of beliefs, ideals, and assumptions passed down from generations of political forbears about the natural conservatism of women—an intuitive drive to protect the young and bring calm to the space around them. This chapter examines the impact of that ideology, in its various iterations, over the course of the twentieth century.
Keywords: conservatism, maternalism, housewife, populism, antifeminist, anticommunist
Michelle Nickerson is associate professor of history at Loyola University Chicago. She is the author of Mothers of Conservatism: Women and the Postwar Right (2012) and a coeditor of Sunbelt Rising: The Politics of Place, Space, and Region (2011). Her current project investigates the Camden 28 of the Catholic antiwar movement in 1971.
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- Acknowledgments
- Contributors
- Women, Gender, and American History
- Gender Frontiers and Early Encounters
- Manhood and the US Republican Empire
- Women and Conquest in the American West
- Women, Gender, Migration, and Modern US Imperialism
- Women, Unfree Labor, and Slavery in the Atlantic World
- Women, Power, and Families in Early Modern North America
- Women and Slavery in the Nineteenth Century
- Women’s Labors in Industrial and Postindustrial America
- Public and Print Cultures of Sex in the Long Nineteenth Century
- Interracial Sex, Marriage, and the Nation
- Reproduction, Birth Control, and Motherhood in the United States
- Sexual Coercion in America
- Gender, the Body, and Disability
- Transgender Representations, Identities, and Communities
- Women, Trade, and the Roots of Consumer Societies
- Gender and Consumption in the Modern United States
- Women at Play in Popular Culture
- Women, Gender, and Religion in the United States
- Religion, Reform, and Antislavery
- Women’s Rights, Suffrage, and Citizenship, 1789–1920
- Women, Gender, Race, and the Welfare State
- US Feminisms and Their Global Connections
- Sexual Minorities and Sexual Rights
- Women, Gender, and Conservatism in Twentieth-Century America
- Women, War, and Revolution
- Women, the Civil War, and Reconstruction
- Women and World War in Comparative Perspective
- Gender, Civil Rights, and the US Global Cold War
- Index