From Suffrage to the Senate: America's Political Women; An Encyclopedia of Leaders, Causes & Issues

O'Dea (Madam Chairman: Mary Louise Smith and the Republican Revival After Watergate; Legislators and Politicians: Iowa's Women Lawmakers) did an excellent job updating the 2007 previous edition of this work. Her introduction provides an overview of the ever-expanding role of American women in politics, and the entries that follow include coverage of people, legislation, court decisions, organizations, and legal and social issues from the Colonial period to the 21st century. This broad range allows researchers to obtain background information on a number of leaders, causes, and issues that shaped and continue to shape women's roles in American politics. Each entry ends with a list of cross-references and sources. The second volume offers a lengthy bibliography and two appendixes: the first provides a list of documents arranged by topic starting with women's rights and ending with women in the military, and the other presents several tables of facts and statistics followed by a chronology that begins in 1638 with the banishing of Anne Hutchinson from Massachusetts and ends with the Pentagon's 2013 lifting of the ban on women serving in combat.