US Women’s History as the History of Human Rights

1I began to think of writing this essay a year or two ago, when I noticed that at my university enrollments were shrinking in courses in U.S. women’s history while enrollments were growing in courses that were part of our program in the study of Human Rights. When progressive young people described the causes for which they volunteered, they were less likely to talk about feminism and more likely to talk about human rights. And I found myself suspecting that young women had concluded – in a way they could barely articulate – that a concern for feminism was somehow selfish, focusing only on the specific interests of a single group of which they were a part, while a concern for human rights was generous and wide ranging.