MOOC WHAW2.3x | 11.6 The Shifting Meaning of Feminism with Nancy Cott | Towards Equality

MOOC WHAW2.3x | Women Have Always Worked: Negotiating a Changing World: 1920–1950 ColumbiaX | Alice Kessler-Harris

As we see American women coming into positions of unprecedented economic and political power, we start to wonder: why now? The Women Have Always Worked MOOC, offered in four parts, explores the history of women in America and introduces students to historians’ work to uncover the place of women and gender in America’s past.

The 19th Amendment– women’s right to vote–is our launching point for Course 3. As new cultural and economic opportunities emerged for women in the 1920s, so too did racial, familial, and legal structures place constraints on that independence. From the 1920s to the Depression of the 1930s, unemployment increasingly impacted men and women, including their job opportunities and self-image. WWII and the massive changes wrought by women's essential contributions to the effort conclude Course 3, highlighting the new opportunities and new barriers that emerged over the twenty-year interwar period.