Women make up half the population, but their rights have always been treated like a special request. In this episode we dive into the real history of women’s rights in America: from forced sterilizations and credit card restrictions to the myth of the 19th Amendment being a universal win. We exposes how progress has always come with an asterisk and why women’s rights are the ultimate test of any democracy.

1. The Original Setup: Eve, the Apple, and the Birth of Blame
2. Votes for Some: The Long Road to Women’s Suffrage
3. Rights on Paper, Fights in Practice: A Tour Through Women’s History
4. The Mother of Gynecology - and the Daughters Who Paid the Price
5. Sterilized and Silenced: When Reproductive Rights Were’t Yours
6. ’Til Regret Do us Part: Marriage, Divorce and the Trap of Forever

Music by Loghan Longoria
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Resources & References

The Bible & Eve
• Augustine, On the Good of Marriage — Early church writings framing women as morally weaker.
• Tertullian, On the Apparel of Women — One of the first texts blaming Eve for humanity’s downfall.

Women’s Suffrage
• National Archives: 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
• Library of Congress: Frederick Douglass’s support at Seneca Falls, 1848.
• Alexander Keyssar, The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States.

Voting Rights & Racial Exclusion
• U.S. Department of Justice: Voting Rights Act of 1965
• Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 (National Archives).
• Mae Ngai, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America.

Workplace & Economic Rights
• U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission: Equal Pay Act of 1963
• U.S. Department of Labor: Civil Rights Act Title VII
• U.S. Department of Education: Title IX Overview
• Federal Reserve: History of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act
• Congressional Research Service: Women’s Business Ownership Act of 1988.

Reproductive Rights
• Supreme Court: Roe v. Wade (1973).
• Congressional Record: The Hyde Amendment (1976).
• Supreme Court: Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022).

Medicine & Exploitation
• Harriet A. Washington, Medical Apartheid.
• Journal of Medical Ethics: Reproductive Surgery and the Enslaved Body: The Case of J. Marion Sims.

Forced Sterilization
• Supreme Court: Buck v. Bell (1927).
• Paul Lombardo, Three Generations, No Imbeciles.
• Dorothy Roberts, Killing the Black Body.
• Alexandra Minna Stern, Eugenic Nation.
• Madrigal v. Quilligan case (Los Angeles, 1978).
• Jane Lawrence, “The Indian Health Service and the Sterilization of Native American Women,” American Indian Quarterly (2000).

Marriage, Divorce & Domestic Rights
• California Family Law Act of 1969 — first no-fault divorce law.
• Andrew Cherlin, Marriage, Divorce, Remarriage.
• U.S. Department of Justice: Violence Against Women Act of 1994.