We the Women

As America approaches its 250th anniversary, journalist Norah O'Donnell argues that women have been essential to shaping the nation's democracy yet remain largely absent from standard history curricula. Drawing on nearly two years of research with co-author Kate Andersen Brower, O'Donnell profiles more than 30 women across five chronological sections, tracing their contributions from the Revolutionary era to the present day. She opens with a dramatic scene from July 4, 1876, when suffragists Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton stormed the stage at Philadelphia's centennial celebration to deliver a "Declaration of Rights of the Women of the United States," demanding that civil and political rights be guaranteed to women forever. The National Women's History Museum has found that less than 15 percent of what is taught in American schools highlights the achievements and history of women, and O'Donnell frames the book as an effort to correct that imbalance.

The first section covers the founding era, from 1776 to 1826. Mary Katherine Goddard, a Baltimore printer, was commissioned by the Second Continental Congress, the governing body directing the war for independence, to print an authenticated copy of the Declaration of Independence with the signers' names in 1777. Her full name appears at the bottom of what became known as the Goddard Broadside, making her the only woman named on the nation's founding documents. Despite 14 years of service as the first female postmaster in the United States, she was dismissed in 1789 when Postmaster General Samuel Osgood replaced her with a man, claiming the role required more travel than a woman could undertake. She appealed to President George Washington, who declined to intervene.

Phillis Wheatley, an enslaved young woman kidnapped from West Africa at age seven, became the first published African American poet. Her 1773 book, published in London, required a note from prominent Bostonians attesting that a Black woman had indeed written the poems. Thomas Jefferson, an American founder and future president, dismissed her work, but centuries later poet Amanda Gorman cited Jefferson's disdain as motivation. Mercy Otis Warren, considered the leading female intellectual of the Revolution, published an anonymous 1788 pamphlet warning that the proposed Constitution lacked protections for a free press and trial by jury. As an Anti-Federalist, one who opposed ratifying the Constitution without stronger safeguards for individual rights, Warren helped create a model for the Bill of Rights. Elizabeth Freeman, born enslaved around 1742, heard the Massachusetts Constitution's declaration that all men are born free and equal, walked to an attorney's home, and asked why the law would not grant her freedom. Her 1781 court victory helped make Massachusetts effectively the first state to abolish slavery. Other founding-era women profiled include Elizabeth Ellet, the first writer to chronicle Revolutionary women's contributions; Deborah Sampson, who disguised herself as a man to serve in the Continental Army; and Patience Lovell Wright, a wax sculptor who secretly embedded intelligence in her sculptures for the Continental Congress.

The second section spans 1826 to 1876, when women built networks of activism around abolition and suffrage. Sarah and Angelina Grimké, the only white Southern women to become prominent abolitionists, rejected their slaveholding family in South Carolina and moved north. Sarah's insistence that men remove their figurative feet from women's necks was later quoted by Ruth Bader Ginsburg, then a lawyer arguing a sex-discrimination case, in a 1973 Supreme Court argument. Charlotte Forten, from Philadelphia's most prominent free Black family, kept diaries documenting antebellum racism and became the first Northern Black teacher to travel south to educate freed people during the Civil War.

The 1848 Seneca Falls Convention, organized by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and abolitionist leader Lucretia Mott after they were excluded from an anti-slavery convention in London, produced the Declaration of Sentiments. The document mirrored the Declaration of Independence but added "and women" to "all men are created equal." The support of Frederick Douglass, abolitionist writer and newspaper editor, proved critical to including women's suffrage. Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman to earn a medical degree in America in 1849, admitted to Geneva Medical College as what the all-male student body intended as a prank. Dr. Mary Edwards Walker served as the first female US Army surgeon during the Civil War and remains the only woman ever to receive the Medal of Honor. Susan and Susette La Flesche, sisters from the Omaha Tribe, fought for Indigenous rights through medicine and the courtroom, respectively. Young abolitionist orator Anna Dickinson became the first woman to address Congress in 1864, and lawyer Belva Lockwood became the first woman admitted to practice before the Supreme Court, running for president twice in the 1880s.

The third section covers 1876 to 1926. Emily Warren Roebling served as de facto chief engineer of the Brooklyn Bridge for 11 years after her husband was incapacitated. Katharine Wright, sister of the famous aviators, served as the Wright brothers' business manager and sole consistent income earner. Suffrage activist Inez Milholland led the first large-scale suffragist march in Washington, DC, in 1913 and died at age 30 after collapsing during a 1916 speaking tour. Maggie Lena Walker became the first Black woman to charter and run a bank in 1903. Mary Tape's 1885 lawsuit challenged her daughter's exclusion from a San Francisco public school for being Chinese, establishing early legal precedent for educational equality. Zitkala-Ša, born on the Yankton Indian Reservation, became a leading Native American writer whose work contributed to the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924. The Hello Girls, female telephone operators who served on World War I's front lines, spent decades fighting for recognition as veterans, finally succeeding in 1977.

The chapter on the Nineteenth Amendment traces the brutal path to ratification, from the Silent Sentinels who picketed the White House to the Night of Terror, when imprisoned suffragists were beaten and force-fed. Tennessee became the decisive 36th state to ratify on August 18, 1920, when 24-year-old representative Harry Burn changed his vote after receiving a letter from his mother urging him to support suffrage. Agnes Meyer Driscoll, known as the "First Lady of Naval Cryptology," cracked Japanese naval codes that contributed to the Allied victory at the Battle of Midway. Margaret Sanger led the birth control movement, opening the first clinic in 1916 and founding the American Birth Control League, while MIT-educated scientist Katharine McCormick funded Dr. Gregory Pincus's research into hormonal contraception, leading to the pill's federal approval in 1960. Sanger's legacy is complicated by her involvement in the eugenics movement.

The fourth section covers 1926 to 1976. Mary McLeod Bethune, the 15th of 17 children and the first in her family not born into slavery, founded a school for Black girls with $1.50 and became the leader of FDR's Black Cabinet, an informal group of Black policy advisers to the president. Eleanor Roosevelt transformed the role of First Lady over 12 years and later chaired the UN Commission on Human Rights. Frances Perkins, who witnessed the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, became the first female Cabinet member and helped architect the New Deal. The Six Triple Eight, the only all-Black female battalion in World War II, processed 17 million pieces of backlogged mail in half the expected time but received no recognition upon returning home. The New Orleans Four, four six-year-old Black girls who helped desegregate public schools in 1960, endured violence and isolation. Romana Acosta Bañuelos, deported as a child despite being an American citizen, became the first Latina US Treasurer. Babe Didrikson dominated multiple sports and co-founded the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA). Congresswoman Patsy Mink championed Title IX, the 1972 federal law banning sex discrimination in federally funded education. Pat Schroeder became the leading feminist legislator of her era, and Constance Baker Motley helped litigate every major Civil Rights Movement campaign before becoming the first Black woman appointed to the federal bench.

The concluding section reflects on the past 50 years. O'Donnell traces how legal victories in the 1970s fulfilled many demands from the 1848 Declaration of Sentiments, highlighting Ginsburg's landmark gender-discrimination cases and the six women who have served on the Supreme Court. She connects her Irish grandmother's 1930 arrival at Ellis Island with $20 to today's reality, where women constitute the majority of medical and law school students, lead Fortune 500 companies, and make up 17.7 percent of the active-duty military force. O'Donnell concludes that the trajectory from margin to center represents a fundamental shift in American power, built on the courage of the women profiled throughout the book.