This week in lectures in history, a discussion about women's political power in early America.

York College professor Jacqueline Beatty discusses women's rights and changing political power

during the American Revolution and the early years of the Republic.

One of the most prominent ways that women were really engaged politically during the American

Revolution were, especially in organizing boycotts of British goods and in organizing

what were called homespun bees, right?

They were to get together and organize to make homemade clothing while they were boycotting

British goods.

Professor Beatty also provides context to the political struggle that women living in the District of Columbia

had to deal with, especially during the Jackson era.

All right, so today we are going to talk about, as you see, the intersection of topics of gender, sex, and politics in the early American

Republic. So I think it'll be a good follow-up to a lot of what we've been discussing already

and kind of get us ready to transition to topics we have on the syllabus in the coming weeks.

So for lecture today, I think it's basically going to be in about four parts, right?

So I'm going to start talking about the changes that the American Revolution brought in terms of political power for women, both in terms of how they perceive their power and how society perceives their power as well. I'm going to go through

a couple of historians' conceptions of women's changing political power, especially in the

early republic. And then I'll kind of talk about the backlash to those expanding political

roles and political power. And then finally, I'll spend most of the time talking about a scandal in Andrew Jackson's cabinet.

We can maybe call it a sick scandal. It might be pushing it.

But I think pretty compelling and a good example of what we'll be talking about today,

in a lot of ways, what we've already been talking about thus far this semester.

Okay, so I want to argue that, right, there were not a whole lot of changes in terms of legal rights and status for women as a result of the American Revolution.

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