Challenge and Change

June Melby Benowitz’s new book, Challenge and Change, explores the political concerns and activism of right-wing women in the United States, with particular emphasis on the 1960s and 1970s. It adds to a growing scholarly conversation about conservative women’s contributions in the second half of the twentieth century, which includes most notably Lisa McGirr’s Suburban Warriors (2001) and Michelle Nickerson’s Mothers of Conservatism (2012). Readers acquainted with those two books will find much that is familiar in Benowitz’s new volume, including an exploration of women’s political organizing against: communism, sexual education, federal mental health programs, school desegregation, and the Equal Rights Amendment. Benowitz’s major contributions come in the form of expanding the scope of this research; she uses a national framework rather than focusing on local organizing in California, and she trains her attention on the 1960s and 1970s rather than on the decades immediately following the Second World War.

Baby boom · Communism · Conservatism · Desegregation · Grassroots · Media studies · Political activism · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Gender Studies · Historical Gender and Feminism Studies · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes · Law · Race, History, and American Society