Despite wartime factories’ outstanding productivity with women working in traditionally male jobs, women were mostly pushed out of their jobs at war’s end. Some Rosies returned to their home states. But many others did stay in California, transitioning from wartime work in defense industries to other occupations. After all, the state still offered more progressive social conditions and a wider range of opportunities for women than could be found in many other parts of the country during the post-war era.

"Most Suffragettes were married and had the full support of their husbands, several of whom were solicitors that could represent women in court.” The support went beyond husbands. Many male artists, radical politicians, and writers were fierce proponents of women’s right to vote, including writer and Zionist leader Israel Zangwill and artist Laurence Housman, who designed the famous “From Prison to Citizenship” banner that was carried by Suffragette prisoners. There were even dedicated organizations for male supporters, such as Men’s Political Union for Women’s Enfranchisement, whose founder, Victor Duval, married a Suffragette, Una Dugdale, in a controversial ceremony—in which Dudgale refused to say the word “obey” as part of her wedding vows.

When Elsie Inglis asked the War Office if female doctors and surgeons could serve in front-line hospitals in World War One she was told 'my good lady, go home and sit still'. Elsie, a pioneering Edinburgh doctor who had already become well-known as a champion of women's health, did the opposite. Instead, she formed the Scottish Women's Hospitals - all female units that provided support for Britain's allies, the French, the Belgians and especially the Serbs.

The inventiveness and success of New York’s suffrage campaign, built on lavish parades, clever promotional gimmicks, and strategic and tactical finesse, spurred the momentum that finally moved Congress to approve the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. By 1920, three-quarters of the states had ratified the measure and it became law. In part because the men never sought credit, history has been slow to record their contribution, even though women thanked them often and in public, in real time.

“There is no natural body, but only a cultural body,” wrote Denia Bruna, the curator of the Bard Graduate Center’s exhibition, "Fashioning the Body,” in an essay for the exhibition catalogue. “The body is a reflection of the society that presided over its creation.” In other words, undergarments like the corset were used to create and mold the body, shaping and disguising the figure to form a “cultural body,” designed to fit the aesthetics of any given time. However, during the Age of Enlightenment, intellectuals began questioning the corset and its artifice, arguing that the corset was, at best, the physical embodiment of censorship, and, at worst, a way of deforming and destroying the natural body. Anatomists and doctors began advising against the wearing of stays.

The Professional Golfers’ Association originally had no regulations relating to the race of its players. But, in 1934, it introduced a bylaw stating that it was only “for members of the Caucasian race.” Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, black male golfers attempted to challenge this ban legally. It only began to be lifted only when the PGA came under enormous public pressure, particularly after ex-champion boxer Joe Lewis drew attention to it. The “Caucasians-only” policy was maintained in general, but a few, specific black players were allowed to take part. Finally, in 1961, the ban was lifted for good.

Amid the present flood of accusations of sexual harassment and abuse, there’s been a strange scarcity of broader social critique. We are accumulating copious evidence of wrongdoing, without looking deeper for a diagnosis. “Boy, all men really are pigs!” isn’t close to radical enough, because the sentiment invites criticisms like the one Masha Gessen recently made: that we’re on the brink of a “sex panic,” an epidemic of puritanism that will take down innocent men out of sheer inertia.

produced and copyrighted in 1915, when she was just 21 years old. It highlighted the hypocrisy of opposition to voting rights for women, and illustrated the struggle young women faced in a world that offered few professional opportunities.

Sure, he was born in the first decade of the twentieth century — a time when those absurd gender norms were very much alive and well, a time not too long after it was perfectly acceptable for a wholly non-sarcastic Map of Woman’s Heart to exist and a list of don’ts for female bicyclists could be published in complete seriousness. And he came of age in a culture where those same norms very much mandated the rules of love and gender relations. But that’s perhaps all the more reason for a man who dedicated his creative career to our era’s smartest institution of cultural commentary to poke fun at society’s ebb and flow of values the best way he knew how — through his satirical cartoons.

“What was militant about the NWP was that no group had ever picketed the White House before,” said Jennifer Krafchik, executive director of the Belmont-Paul Women’s Equality National Monument, the party’s former headquarters that now serves as its museum. “They used Wilson’s words against him in their banners. Nobody had ever seen this before especially in a group of women. They were much more aggressive than any other suffragette group.”

In the mid-1300’s, the black plague killed millions, wiping out an estimated 30-60 percent of the European population. Now, a bioarchaeologist has found another surprising outcome: women got shorter after the plague.