US Women's History as the History of Human Rights

Linda K. Kerber US Women's History as the History of Human Rights Virtually all of the public issues that feminists have embraced in the last two centuries are matters of human rights. The legal tradition in the United States has been permeated by "coverture": laws that purport to protect women's interests but serve to limit their autonomy and membership in the constitutional community. Husbands' authority to exercise expansive arbitrary power over their wives' bodies and their property made the denial of a wide range of human rights to adult women seem to be part of the natural order of things. It was left to women to name the harms they experienced, to develop philosophical grounding for their claims, and to struggle politically to achieve equitable treatment and equality. The 1960s and 1970s are distinctive for a shift in the way us law views women's rights and obligations. Laws that were once viewed as protective of women are now viewed as discriminatory toward them, bringing us law more closely into conformity with the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Nevertheless, the legacy of coverture has not been completely eradicated, especially the field of reproductive rights and domestic violence.