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b'We often narrate the history of women\\u2019s rights in the United States by focusing on the fight for suffrage. Yet starting as early as 1835, states expanded married women\\u2019s\\xa0economic\\xa0rights. How were these statutes passed at a time when women\\u2019s political power was severely constrained, including no right to vote in most states? With limited national coordination?\\xa0\\nIn\\xa0In Her Own Name: The Politics of Women\\u2019s Rights Before Suffrage\\xa0(Columbia UP, 2023), Dr. Sara Chatfield argues that married women\\u2019s property rights reform occurred through a two-level process. Within each state, policy developed and cycled through different state-level institutions. Without explicit coordination, these policies spread throughout the states with institutional actors borrowing, copying, and learning from the successes and failures of other states \\u2013 such that ALL states passed some reform by 1920. Dr. Chatfield\\u2019s important contribution to the American political development literature shows how male legislators pursued legislation that served their own interests and how state legislatures and courts interacted to create property reforms essential to changing economics, the project of permanently seizing land from Native people, and protecting slaveholding women and families from economic instability. The reform of property rights included both property as a commodity and also a means of social control and order. Dr. Chatfield\\u2019s book furthers our understanding of how gender, federalism, and liberalism interacted in the development of state power.\\nIn the podcast, Dr. Chatfield generously cites the works of others including\\xa0Disenfranchising Democracy: Constructing the Electorate in the United States, the United Kingdom, and France\\xa0(my NBN interview with Dr. Bateman\\xa0here), Emily Zackin and Chloe N. Thurston\\u2019s\\xa0The Political Development of American Debt Relief\\xa0(Chicago), and Alena Wolflink\\u2019s\\xa0Claiming Value:The Politics of Priority from Aristotle to Black Lives Matter\\xa0(Routledge).\\nDr. Sara Chatfield\\xa0is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Denver, where she teaches classes on American politics and law. Her research interests focus on American politics, especially American political development, gender and politics, and methods.\\nSusan Liebell\\xa0is a Professor of Political Science at Saint Joseph\\u2019s University in Philadelphia.\\nLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices\\nSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law'