Gretchen Ritter

A talk by Gretchen Ritter from her new book.

This book is about gender and civic membership in American constitutional politics from the adoption of the Nineteenth Amendment through Second Wave Feminism. It explores the dynamics of American constitutional development through a focus on civic membership - a legal and political construct at the heart of the constitutional order. It is a book about gender politics and constitutional development, and about what each of these can tell us about the other. It considers the options and choices faced by women¢€™s rights activists in the US as they voiced their claims for civic inclusion over the course of a century. By taking the lessons learned from the prior debates over women¢€™s civic membership, we can identify both the deficiencies evident in modern, liberal citizenship and the promise present in the visions of citizenship offered by women¢€™s rights activists as well as other democratic movement activists who have aspired for full inclusion within the American constitutional order.