Dismantling the Patriarchal State: Women's Rights Activism, Nineteenth-Century Married Women's Property Acts, and Twentieth-Century Jury Rights Laws

妇女的积极行动在美国妇女法律的权利的两种主要形式的扩展中发挥了作用：19世纪的已婚妇女财产法和大约在20世纪上半叶赋予妇女陪审团权利的法律。 许多现有的研究认为，运动的特点或机会在更大的环境中导致有利的政治和法律的结果的运动行为者。 然而，目前的项目假定，运动和背景因素的结合导致了运动积极分子的成功结果。 具体而言，我调查如何政治和性别的机会介导的影响，妇女的积极性，扩大妇女的法律的权利。 我认为，性别化的政治背景影响的运动战略可能会成功地赢得妇女的法律的改革。 我通过比较两个非常不同的性别政治背景来探讨这一论点：在19世纪，女性几乎没有正式的政治权力，而在20世纪，她们获得了大量的政治话语权。 在这项研究中检验的假设认为，这两个不同的性别政治背景提供了不同的机会，这些不同的机会显着影响的运动战略，扩大法律的权利。 这项研究将基于美国9个州的妇女财产和陪审团权利运动及其背景的档案证据。 定性的历史调查结合定性的比较分析（QCA）将被用来识别的因素，导致这些法律的权利的改革。 这项研究将有几个更广泛的影响：它将扩大我们对妇女的公共角色的了解，它将为研究生提供一些学术培训的机会，它将提供一个独特的数据集有关的情况下，导致妇女的财产权和陪审团的权利扩大。

Women's activism played a role in bringing about expansions in two key forms of women's legal rights in the United States: the married women's property acts of the 19th century and laws granting women the right to sit on juries in roughly the first half of the 20th century. Much existing research argues that movement characteristics or opportunities in the larger environment lead to favorable political and legal outcomes for movement actors. The current project, however, posits that a combination of movement and contextual factors resulted in a successful outcome for movement activists. Specifically, I investigate how political and gendered opportunities mediated the impact of women's activism on expansions in women's legal rights. I argue that the gendered political context influenced which movement strategies were likely to succeed in winning legal reforms for women. I explore this argument by comparing two very different gendered political contexts: in the 19th century when women possessed little formal political power and in the 20th century when they had gained a substantial political voice. The hypotheses examined in this research posit that these two different gendered political contexts offered different opportunities for activism and these different opportunities markedly influenced which movement strategies resulted in expanded legal rights. The research will be based on archival evidence from women's property and jury rights campaigns and their contexts in 9 U.S. states. Qualitative historical investigation combined with Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) will be utilized to discern the factors that resulted in these legal rights reforms. The research will have several broader impacts: it will expand our knowledge of women's public roles, it will offer a number of scholarly training opportunities for graduate students, and it will provide a unique data set concerning the circumstances leading to expansions in women's property rights and jury rights.