As Rosalyn Baxandall and Linda Gordon observe, "Although the word 'feminist' has become a pejorative term for to some American women, most women (and most men as well) support a feminist program: equal education, equal pay, child care, freedom from harassment and violence," and so on.

Months before the book received any awards, a young filmmaker, after reading a review in the New York Times, visited me about making a documentary film. This blog features women from all walks of life, from all time periods, from all continents with one thing in common - they refused to be limited by the contemporary expectations surrounding their gender. Her extensive travel made her an easy target for media satire — "Mrs Roosevelt Spends Night at White House" ran one headline — and earned her the nickname "Eleanor Everywhere" ( now the name of one of several children's books about her). While writing it, I found it difficult to imagine anyone actually caring about my obsessive unpacking of the diary.The 1990 book “A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812” by Ulrich reprinted and extensively commented on the diary entries of an ordinary midwife in Maine who also acted as a healer. In a 1976 scholarly article about little-studied Puritan funeral services, Ulrich included the phrase "well-behaved women seldom make history. According to Evans, women achieved a lot of things, but they weren't necessarily the same as the ones men achieved! Ulrich invokes these contributions to historical knowledge in a 2009 interview, stating, “I don’t think anonymous people need to be included in the historical record just because of fairness or justice. The slogan works because it simultaneously acknowledges and defends misbehavior as a necessary consequence of making history.

D. in Early American History in 1980, she accepted a part-time position administering a freshmen humanities program at UNH. But I have also been galvanized, touched and counseled by the example, attitude, wisdom, and behavior of common women: neighbors, members of the church, mothers, professors. She is now deeply engaged in a study of the intersection of race, religion, and women’s rights in the United States from the Revolution to 1920.

Her being a woman who was also an abolitionist and women’s rights activist in the 19th century was a dangerous and frustrating task. As a consequence of Alva’s manoeuvring through society, she became the driving force in establishing the Vanderbilts as of the most influential dynasties of the age. Even the sight of the book made her wonder why so many learned men had “devilish and wicked thoughts about women. Given time, any powerful woman with backbone and nerve will get credit for this phrase and sentiment.

Martha Ballard made history by performing a methodical and seemingly ordinary act—writing a few words in her diary every day.Historian John Demos praises the book in his review, "Venturing off in a new and highly original direction, she has put physical objects ― mainly but not entirely textiles ― at the center of her inquiry. Zelda Fitzgerald, her first subject, was beautifully and powerfully drawn in the international bestselling, Z, a novel that crackled with energy as she raised Fitzgerald above her diminished reputation as just F Scott Fitzgerald's mentally ill flapper wife. Ulrich points out that histories of “ordinary” women have not been widely known because historians have not looked carefully at their lives, adding that by exploring this facet of our past, we gain a richer understanding of history. The new book explores how and why it is that women who act in unexpected ways tend to be remembered, while more conventional women fade into the past.