A Radical Demand Effect
Early US Feminists and the Married Women's Property Acts
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 11204640 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Holly J Mccammon (0000-0003-1462-0860, corresponding author), Sandra C Arch, Erin M Bergner (0000-0002-7995-5154) |
| Year | 2014 |
| Volume | 38 |
| Issue | 1-2 |
| Pages | 221-250 |
| Publication date | 2014-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Social Science History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0145-5532 • E-ISSN: 1527-8034 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/ssh.2015.17 |
| OpenAlex | W825643095 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 5 |
| References cited | 42 |
Numerous scholars consider the economic origins of the late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century US married women's property acts. Researchers investigate how economic downturns and women's inroads into business spurred lawmakers to reform property laws to give married women the right to own separate property. Such economic explanations, however, are only a partial story. Our investigation reveals the important role of women's collective activism in winning these legal changes. Women mobilized for property rights often as they pressed for voting rights and, in one case, as they campaigned for an equal rights amendment. We examine circumstances leading to passage of married women's property acts in seven states to show that as women mobilized for property rights alongside voting rights or a broader equal rights law, a radical demand effect unfolded. Lawmakers often considered demands for woman suffrage or an equal rights amendment as more far-reaching and thus more radical and threatening. Such feminist demands, then, provided a foil for property-rights activism, and the contrast led lawmakers to view property demands as more moderate. In addition, as they pressed for these combined reforms, women often engaged in hybrid framing that allowed them to moderate their demand for property reforms by linking their property goals to beliefs already widely accepted. The confluence of these circumstances led political leaders to deem property changes as more moderate and acceptable in an effort to steer feminists away from their radical goals. In the end, the radical demand effect created a political opportunity for passage of the married women's property acts
Framing (construction · Law and economics · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Property (philosophy · Property law · Property rights · Sociology · Suffrage · Voting · American History and Culture · Historical Economic and Social Studies · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes · Law
Free spaces
The strategy of social protest
Repression And Mobilization
Free Hearts and Free Homes
The Arkansas Married Woman's Property Law
Conceptual origins, current problems, future direction
Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements
Power in Movement
Women, Real Estate, and Wealth in a Southern US County, 1780–1860
The Gender Asset Gap
Harnessing and Challenging Hegemony
In the Eyes of the Law
Fanny Wright
Radical Reconstruction and the Property Rights of Southern Women
Mississippi Women
Law, Gender, and Injustice
Married Women's Property Laws and Female Commercial Activity
The Southern Lady
Law, Gender, and Injustice
The Female Frontier
Women and the Work of Benevolence
The American Life of Ernestine L. Rose
Inventing Citizens, Imagining Gender Justice
In the Eyes of the Law
Fathers to Daughters
A Wide Field for Usefulness
How Movements Win
Uniformity and Conformity
Constructing Political Opportunity
Two Logics of Labor Organizing in the Global Apparel Industry
Frame Alignment Processes, Micromobilization, and Movement Participation
Black Radicalization and the Funding of Civil Rights
| Unique citing works | 5 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,56 |
| Citation span | 2017 - 2025 (9) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 5 |