This fascinating work presents biographical essays about women from the colonial period to modern times, chronicling the previously untold story of the female financial experience in the United States. Petticoats and Pinstripes: Portraits of Women in Wall Street's History provides a fascinating chronological account of the contributions of women on Wall Street through profiles of selected individuals that set their achievements in the context of the prevailing times. The book documents how women frequently assumed financial roles as a temporary palliative to the nation's ills, only to be cast aside once conditions improved, and how they were often restrained from financial endeavors by various factors, including American legal, political, economic, and cultural norms. Author Sheri J. Caplan describes the accomplishments of women in the financial world against the backdrop of the general advancement of women's rights and the evolution of gender-based roles in society, and identifies the primary factors in the development of a greater female role in finance: wartime urgency, personal necessity, technological change, and financial education. Explores the female financial experience in the United States from the colonial period to modern times Presents the history of women on Wall Street by placing personalities in the context of both Wall Street's development and prevailing political and cultural times Identifies common themes and issues confronted by women in finance Provides two quick-reference appendices, one describing the significance of particular women and a second that provides a chronology of milestones

Many extraordinary women traveled west with their Army officer husbands between 1865 and 1890 and discovered a world that was completely controlled by the United States Army. The Army as a public institution colored virtually every aspect of their domestic lives. Army directives, customs, and traditions imposed social obligations on these women, and the world of the frontier Army garrison continually challenged their sense of what it meant to be "true women." Remarkably, they flourished and established a defined role for themselves that went beyond the conventional definition of true womanhood. The shared values, loyalties, and patriotism within the institutional environment of the frontier garrison transcended gender. As distinctly masculine as the Army garrison was perceived to be, the officers' wives shared with their "comrades in arms" an unequivocal commitment to the Regiment. Because of their presence, the frontier garrison became a much different place to live, as they subtly and slowly changed the very nature of the institution through their efforts to bring some notion of proper society to these rugged circumstances. Unlike most studies, which focus only on farm and frontier women, this volume details the experiences of the women who viewed the world from within garrison walls.

The fact that domestic violence is a serious and ongoing social problem has been well recognized since the women's movement made the hitherto private experience of violence against women in the home into a political issue in the 1960s and 1970s. In Australia, a major national prevalence study of violence against women conducted by the Australian Bureau of Statistics in 1996 found that 23% of women who had ever been married or in a de facto relationship-1.1 million women-had experienced violence from their partner at some stage during the relationship. Feminist legal scholarship, however, has highlighted the many failures of criminal law to respond adequately to women's experiences of domestic violence. Civil remedies for violence and abuse seem to offer better possibilities: there is a lower standard of proof, and the woman is the subject of her own action rather than merely being the object of proceedings. The availability of civil remedies has, in many cases, resulted from feminist campaigns to fill the gaps in protection left by the criminal law. It has also been argued that civil actions provide scope to change public discourses and legal understandings of violence against women. Listening to women's stories might force a revision of traditional conceptions and myths about what constitutes violence, its causes and effects, and "appropriate" reactions to it. This study investigates the ways in which women's experiences of domestic violence are heard and understood in civil court settings, and examines women's experiences of telling their stories (or at least attempting to do so) in those settings. The two areas on which the study focuses are intervention order proceedings in State Magistrates' Courts, and residence, contact, and property matters in the federal Family Court in Australia. The relevant legislation in the two jurisdictions is either partly or wholly a product of feminist legal activism. The study, therefore, seeks to determine whether the feminist claim that the criminal law silences women also pertains in the context of new civil claims specifically designed to respond to women's experiences. The general history and theory of law reform suggests that reforms often strike problems in the process of implementation. But because law does not operate monolithically, the exact nature of those problems is not necessarily predictable. In the context of this study, implementation problems may arise from social and legal discourses about domestic violence and about victims of violence which tend to operate constantly across the legal system, and/or they may arise from the particular rules and structures found in each institutional setting. There is thus a need for detailed examination and analysis of how these various elements operate and interact in different court settings. In undertaking this task, the study has two objectives. First, it draws conclusions about the nature of implementation problems in the two jurisdictions in order to inform future feminist activism around violence against women. Secondly, it makes a more general point about the importance of procedure in feminist legal theory and praxis. In Australia in particular, feminist legal scholars and advocates have placed a heavy emphasis on doctrinal revision and have largely ignored issues of implementation. The study argues that procedure (conceived broadly to encompass the what, where, how, and who of legal proceedings) crucially shapes women's experience of the legal process, and is neglected by feminists at their peril. This book will be of interest to feminist jurisprudence and law and society scholars and researchers, and to activists and advocates in the field of domestic violence.

This book tells a different story about water. Against the backdrop of the end of the Ottoman Empire to Palestinian uprisings, old Palestinian women recount life before and after piped water. While talking about fetching and managing household water women talked about being women. "Women, Water and Memory" speaks of many different lives. We will hear stories like the one where women talked about their own strength and beauty, or about the woman who married a man whose ugly face made her sick. While one woman married the man "she cared for," another one was relieved that her husband died when she was too old to be forced to remarry. We learn about the joy they feel each time they dance at a wedding; the sheer satisfaction of lighting a cigarette; of the loyalty and shared despair towards families with members in prison, of the tears of sorrow with each death and the delight with each birth.

Through a study of the church of Santa Prassede, Mary M. Schaefer offers a compelling examination of the ''golden ages'' for women active in ecclesial ministries, critically measuring feminist claims and providing evidence contrary to the official Roman position that women have never been ordained in the Catholic Church. The ninth-century church of Santa Prassede has been studied intensively in recent years, yet no scholar has yet recognized the significance of the balanced male and female imagery: both men and women disciples, Peter and Paul as family friends, Praxedes and her sister as house church leaders in the post-apostolic period assisted by bishop Pius I, and Pope Paschal's mother Theodora episcopa, for example. Praxedes' identification as ''presbytera'' by a Roman priest-historian in 1655 and by the Benedictine prior of the church in 1725 prompts analysis of women's ordination rites in churches of East and West. Santa Prassede preserves one of the largest intact programs of church decoration in Rome up to 1200. Schaefer investigates its scriptural and liturgical sources, and, in turn, reexamines its foundation myth. With the story of the church, Schaefer provides a detailed study of women in pastoral office (especially diaconas, presbyteras, and episcopal abbesses) from the first through twelfth centuries in the West. Women in Pastoral Office also shows how the liturgy as well as the vita of Praxedes and her sister Pudentiana (whose fourth century church is located down the hill) shaped this outstanding commission of the builder, Pope Paschal I (817-824).

"Pride and Joy: The Lives and Passions of Women Without Children" is a collection of interviews with 25 women who have chosen not to have children. In lively stories and vivid voices, these diverse narrators talk proudly of their contributions to their communities, causes, and families, and they speak joyfully of intimate relationships with husbands and partners, of family and friends, work, volunteer and leisure activities, solitude, and connections with children. Their stories dispel the social myth that women must have children to be happy, and they debunk the stereotypes of childless women.
For the 20 percent of U.S. women who are currently childless by choice or by chance, "Pride and Joy" offers validation and community. For the millions of women deciding whether to have children, it provides inspiration. For parents, siblings, and friends of women who have chosen or may choose not to have children, it offers insight.

A compelling investigation of the Jewish communitys reaction or nonreaction to domestic violence. In a congregation of devoted worshippers gathered for Shabbat services at the local synagogue, it may be difficult to accept how many wives go home with their husbands to ongoing physical and emotional abuse. In Sins of Omission, author Carol Goodman Kaufman offers a compelling investigation of the Jewish communitys reaction or nonreaction to domestic violence. Concerned with the sins of the community more than the sins of the abuser, Goodman Kaufman finds that the Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform rabbis and community leaders are not doing enough and are not informed enough to help the abused women in their congregations get the support, protection, and guidance they need. Through her many insightful interviews with survivors of abuse, rabbis, and lay community leaders, the author takes a hard look at the Jewish community, its rules, regulations, and followers, and discovers the ways in which it helps and hinders victims of abuse.

This collection of papers explores the facets of gender and sex in history, language and society of Altaic cultures, reflecting the unique interdisciplinary approach of the PIAC. It examines the position of women in contemporary Central Asia at large, the expression of gender in linguistic terms in Mongolian, Manju, Tibetan and Turkic languages, and gender aspects presented in historical literary monuments as well as in contemporary sources.