Norah O’Donnell’s We the Women (2024) is a work of popular history that seeks to correct The Erasure of Women From Historical Memory by uncovering the stories of key but overlooked women who shaped the United States. Written with assistance from historian and best-selling author Kate Andersen Brower, the book frames US history as a continuous struggle by women to force the nation to live up to its founding principles. The narrative spans 250 years, from the Revolution to the present day, profiling figures from all eras, including a printer who put her name on the Declaration of Independence, an enslaved poet who inspired George Washington, and the engineers and codebreakers who were essential to American innovation and victory in war.

O’Donnell’s journalistic approach explores how these trailblazers exposed The Hypocrisy of American Democratic Ideals, often by using the nation’s own language of liberty to demand inclusion. The book also highlights The Intersecting Burdens of Race and Gender, demonstrating how women of color faced compounded forms of oppression and were often marginalized even within broader movements for liberation.

This guide refers to the 2024 Ballantine Books hardcover edition.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of illness, death, graphic violence, physical abuse, emotional abuse, child abuse, racism, gender discrimination, ableism, and mental illness.

Summary

We the Women opens with an Introduction that establishes the book’s animating conflict through a foundational act of protest on July 4, 1876, when suffragists Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony disrupted the nation’s centennial celebration in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Denied a formal role, they stormed the stage at Independence Hall and presented their Declaration of Rights of the Women of the United States, which equated women’s oppression with the tyranny of King George III. 

O’Donnell then weaves in her personal connection to this history through the story of her grandmother Mary Teresa Monaghan O’Kane, an Irish immigrant who arrived at Ellis Island with only an eighth-grade education and $20, seeking the opportunity that she believed the US offered to all. This framing establishes the long, arduous struggle for women to be fully included in the idea of equality promised by America’s founding documents.

The first part of the book covers the American Revolution and the nation’s first 50 years, showing women as active participants and patriots rather than mere observers. Mary Katherine Goddard, a printer in Baltimore, Maryland, took an immense risk by printing an official copy of the Declaration of Independence that included the names of the signers, and she was the only woman to add her own name to the document. The ideals of freedom were articulated by Phillis Wheatley, an enslaved young woman whose poetry challenged the hypocrisy of a nation fighting for liberty while upholding slavery; her work earned her the admiration of figures like George Washington. 

In Massachusetts, an enslaved woman named Elizabeth Freeman overheard discussions of the new state constitution declaring all men “born free and equal” (40). She successfully sued for her own freedom, setting a legal precedent that effectively abolished slavery in the state. Other women contributed in equally daring ways: Deborah Sampson disguised herself as a man to fight for the Continental Army and took a bullet in the process, while Patience Lovell Wright, a renowned wax sculptor in London, used her access to British high society to act as a spy for the American cause, embedding secret intelligence inside her wax busts.

Part 2 traces the 19th century, when the abolitionist and women’s rights movements became deeply intertwined, creating new platforms for female activists. Sarah and Angelina Grimké, daughters of a wealthy South Carolina family who enslaved people, broke with their heritage to become the only prominent Southern white women in the abolitionist movement, facing public scorn for speaking out. This era of advocacy culminated in the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention, where Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, and others drafted the Declaration of Sentiments, a revolutionary document modeled on the Declaration of Independence that demanded full citizenship rights for women, including suffrage. 

As the country moved toward the Civil War, women continued to break into male-dominated professions. Dr. Mary Edwards Walker served as a US Army surgeon and spy, earning the Medal of Honor for her bravery—the only woman to ever receive the nation’s highest military decoration. Others, like Belva Lockwood, challenged the political system directly, becoming the first woman to argue a case before the Supreme Court and later running a full-fledged presidential campaign nearly four decades before women had the right to vote.

The third part turns to the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, when women proved that they could both participate in society and build it. Emily Warren Roebling became the de facto chief engineer of the Brooklyn Bridge for over a decade after her husband fell ill, managing the project to its completion. In Richmond, Virginia, Maggie Lena Walker, the daughter of a formerly enslaved woman, founded and ran the St. Luke Penny Savings Bank, becoming the first Black woman in the US to charter a bank. The fight for civil rights in education saw a major early victory with Mary Tape, a Chinese American mother who sued the San Francisco, California, school board in 1885 when her daughter was denied entry to a public school, leading to the landmark Tape v. Hurley decision. 

Meanwhile, the suffrage movement gained momentum. In 1913, the charismatic lawyer Inez Milholland led a massive suffrage parade in Washington, DC, on horseback, an event that brought national attention to the cause after marchers were attacked by a hostile mob. The “Hello Girls,” female telephone operators who served on the front lines of World War I, demonstrated women’s patriotism and competence under fire. The decades-long fight for suffrage finally ended in 1920 with the ratification of the 19th Amendment, secured in a dramatic final vote in Tennessee after state representative Harry Burn was swayed by a letter from his mother, Phoebe.

Part 4 covers the 50 years following women’s suffrage, an era marked by global conflict and deep social change, with women moving into central roles in government and social reform. Frances Perkins, a witness to the tragic Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, became the first female cabinet member as President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s secretary of labor, where she helped design landmark New Deal programs like Social Security. Alongside her in the administration, educator Mary McLeod Bethune led Roosevelt’s “Black Cabinet,” advocating for civil rights and creating opportunities for Black Americans, including ensuring that Black women could serve in World War II. Her efforts paved the way for the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, the only all-Black, all-female unit to serve overseas, which cleared a massive backlog of mail and boosted troop morale. 

As first lady, Eleanor Roosevelt redefined her role, becoming a global advocate for human rights and an influence on her husband’s policy on civil rights. The legal battles of the civil-rights movement were often spearheaded by Constance Baker Motley, a lawyer for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People who argued 10 cases before the Supreme Court and became the first Black woman appointed to the federal judiciary. This progress was carried forward by the bravery of children like the “New Orleans Four” (258)—Leona Tate, Gail Etienne, Tessie Prevost, and Ruby Bridges—who faced down angry mobs to desegregate public schools in 1960. By the 1970s, legislators like Patsy Mink, the first woman of color in Congress, and Pat Schroeder had begun to codify these gains into law, championing Title IX and the Family and Medical Leave Act.

The fifth and final part, covering the period from 1976 to the present, allows O’Donnell to reflect on the exponential progress made within her own lifetime, which has seen the normalization of female leadership. This era was defined by the legal revolution spearheaded by lawyers like Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who systematically dismantled gender discrimination through the courts before her own appointment to the Supreme Court, and the breakthrough of Sandra Day O’Connor as the first female Supreme Court justice. 

Women began to wield significant economic and cultural power, from pioneering entrepreneurs to cultural icons like Billie Jean King, whose victory in the 1973 “Battle of the Sexes” broke down barriers for women in sports (318). The progress extended to once-impenetrable institutions like the military, with women now serving in all combat roles and reaching the highest ranks of leadership. O’Donnell concludes that while the work for full equality continues, the women of the last 250 years have irrevocably transformed the US, moving from the margins of history to the center of the nation’s story and ensuring that their voices can no longer be ignored.