Which of the five most iconic women in American history?
From the 1920s to the 1960s, women occupied positions of power in American life, from presidents to secretaries of state.
They also occupied leadership roles in the country’s military, where they served as key players in shaping how America’s wars were fought and how its troops served.
But as the women of the twentieth century gained political power, they also faced some new challenges, such as the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and the rise and fall of the Cold War.
But it was women who had more to lose.
Today, they face a greater risk of harassment and sexual assault than men, as well as discrimination from their peers and from fellow Americans.
So how did they do it?
“It is an incredible testament to the power of women and the perseverance of women who took on the burden of leadership,” says Kate Binder, an assistant professor at Duke University’s school of social justice and a former editor of the women’s magazine Cosmopolitan.
Binder was one of the authors of “The Power of Women: The Secret Lives of the Powerful Women Who Have Changed America,” which was published in February.
The book is a look at women who rose to prominence and power over the last 200 years, from suffragists to abolitionists.
She says the authors “did a very good job of giving you a very broad and broad overview of how women and women of color did what they did.”
The authors also focused on the experiences of women like Harriet Tubman, who was a slave and later escaped and founded the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, or WCTU.
In her lifetime, Tubman led a group of women to become the first women elected to Congress, and then was elected to the presidency in 1860.
Binders says Tubman is the first woman to become president.
But while Tubman’s name is widely recognized today, Binder says Tubmans life and legacy is more complicated than that.
Tubman “was a strong, strong woman,” Binder said.
“She had a tremendous ability to inspire others to stand up for themselves.
But also she had this huge sense of vulnerability.
She didn’t have the skills to protect herself, but she did her best to protect her children and herself.”
While Tubman was the first female president, she was only the second woman to hold the office.
Women had previously held the position of vice president and president of the Senate, and women had served as vice president of Georgia, secretary of the treasury, and secretary of state in the first half of the 20th century.
In the United States, only two women have been president in more than half a century.
Benders book also looks at the legacy of women such as Mary Robinson, a member of Congress who was elected in 1880 and later became the first African-American to hold Congress.
Binders book, she says, is a “powerful testament to how women who did something, and who were successful in the way that they did it, are still able to inspire generations to follow.”
“It was the women who were leading that they were really responsible for the progress that women were making, and were still leading today,” Binders says.
“That’s the legacy we’ve got left to women in the 21st century.”
Binders books book, “The Last Black Woman,” will be released in spring 2018.
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