New Book Discussion -- We Will Be Heard: Women's Struggles for
Political Power in the United States Jo Freeman, Independent
Writer, and Senior Scholar, Woodrow Wilson Center, author;
commentators Mary Ellen Curtin, Lecturer in American History,
University of Essex, Colchester, United Kingdom, and Fellow,
Woodrow Wilson Center; A. James Reichley, Author and former
Visiting Senior Fellow, Public Policy Institute, Georgetown
University. It is a common misconception that women entered
American electoral politics only after they won the right to
vote. In fact, as Jo Freeman noted in the Division of United
States Studies' discussion of her We Will Be Heard, women have
been participating in politics for over 120 years. Freeman
described the way women moved steadily into positions of
political power through the late 19th and early 20th centuries,
and how political parties impacted that movement. Women's
involvement in electoral politics and the suffrage movement ran
on parallel tracks, with few women participating in