"This Very Short Introduction explores the major transformations in American women's lives, ranging from political activism to popular culture, the workforce, and the family. Beginning in early America, it places gender at the center of American history, making it clear that women's experiences were not always the same as men's. Susan Ware shows how women's domestic and waged labor shaped the northern economy and how slavery affected the lives of both free and enslaved southern women. She moves through the tumultuous decades of industrialization and urbanization, describing the nineteenth-century movements led by women (temperance, moral reform, and suffrage). The book culminates in twentieth-century female activism for civil rights and successive waves of feminism. From Anne Bradstreet to Ida B. Wells to Eleanor Roosevelt, this book recognizes women as a force in American history and, more important, tells women's history as American history."--Front cover flap.

In the beginning: North America's women to 1750 -- Freedom's ferment, 1750-1848 -- The challenges of citizenship, 1848-1920 -- Modern American women, 1920 to the present.