A Woman in the House (and Senate): How Women Came to the United States Congress, Broke Down Barriers, and Changed the Country by Ilene Cooper (review)

Many of the female “firsts” in this collective biography have already stepped into the spotlight in children’s nonfiction: first woman representative, Jeannette Rankin; first African-American woman representative, Shirley Chisholm; first woman Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi. Although noting the groundbreaking (or, perhaps, ceiling breaking) accomplishments of these individual women, Cooper is far more interested in demonstrating the diversity and historical context of the issues championed by women politicians and the regional and social correlations to their electability. The presentation is divided by clusters of decades, each introduced with an overview of the historical zeitgeist, and then focused on individuals emblematic of the period. Thus, congresswomen of the 1920s and ’30s cluster shared the likelihood that they stepped into an office vacated by the death of a husband or father; another group from the ’30s to ’50s had previous high-profile careers of their own right; the ’60s through ’70s saw the fruits of the civil rights movement in the election of black women to the House. Cooper goes beyond noting the women’s arrivals and offers a brief overview of issues, committee work, successes, and disappointments that marked their stay. The layout is clear and generally attractive: cameo photographs accompany each entry, interspersed with slightly stilted art and set against pages bordered with patriotic motifs. Copious end matter includes a crash course on federal-level civics and women’s suffrage; a complete list of women in Congress; citations, bibliography, and a particularly well-designed and helpful index.