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Americans overwhelmingly support gender equality. But not as many 

Elizabeth Cobbs says that’s because we don’t know our history. Her latest book, “

,” chronicles how the fight for women’s rights began at the founding of our country, when Abigail Adams 

urged her husband to “remember the ladies”

 (and her plea was met with laughter), and continues through today. 

Cobbs argues that women’s rights and democracy itself are intertwined, that as rights were afforded to women, the country itself became stronger. Each chapter of “Fearless Women” tells the story of women who fought for a new right: the right to learn, the right to speak in public, the right to own property, and the right to vote, among others. It is a timeline of feminism in America. 

This week, Cobbs joined host Kerri Miller on Big Books and Bold Ideas to talk about the freedom inherent in feminism, why it’s not partisan — despite what some insist — and why many of the women she wrote about in her book have been overlooked by history. 

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Many of their names are unknown, but early American feminists fought hard for the freedoms that are cornerstones to democracy. This week on Big Books and Bold Ideas, historian Elizabeth Cobbs and our new series, “Big Books, Bold Americans.”

The feminists who built America

A woman poses next to separate image of book cover

The feminists who built America

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