In Conversation: Unequal Playing Field

Marlene Wagman-Geller is a native Torontonian who now resides in San Diego, California. She currently teaches high school English; her other hat is that of an author. While not writing and teaching, she looks after a household that includes her husband, Joel, her daughter, Jordanna, Persian cat, Moe, and Pomeranian, Harley. Her first foray into publishing was Once Again to Zelda: The Stories Behind Literature’s Most Intriguing Dedications (Perigree/Penguin 2008). Her ninth-and most recent publication- is Fabulous Female Firsts: Because of Them We Can (Mango Press 2020). The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, and Washington Post have carried her reviews.

Doris Weatherford is extensively recognized for her contributions to the field of women’s history. She was editor-in-chief and major contributor to the monumental reference work, A History of Women in the United States: State-by-State Reference, which offers detailed and engaging histories of women in each of the fifty states. Her other publications include Foreign and Female: Immigrant Women in America, 1840-1920; American Women’s History: An A―Z of People, Organizations, Issues and Events;  and a two-volume work for Congressional Quarterly Press, Women in American Politics: History and Milestones. Weatherford’s Victory for the Vote: The Fight for Women’s Suffrage and the Century that Followed (Mango) offers an engaging and detailed narrative history of women’s seven-decade fight for the vote, and the continuing current-day struggle for human rights and equality. It puts the fight for suffrage into contemporary context by discussing key challenges for women in the decades that followed 1920, such as reproductive rights, the Equal Rights Amendment, and political power. In her foreword, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi notes that Victory for the Vote ” not only tells the story of the trailblazing suffragists of Seneca Falls; it also shares the story of women of color whose heroism in the fight for women’s suffrage is too often unsung, but who are finally taking their rightful place in American history. “