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Article: The enactment of mothers' pensions: civic mobilization and agenda setting or benefits of the ballot?
- Article from:
- American Political Science Review
- Article date:
- September 1, 1995
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1995 Cambridge University Press. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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In this Review in 1993, Skocpol, Howard, Lehmann, and Abend-Wein analyzed the rapid enactment of mothers' pension laws in the American states in the 1910s. They concluded that the widespread federations of women's voluntary groups exerted a powerful influence on these enactments even before most American women had the right to vote. Sparks and Walniuk challenge these conclusions, noting that all 10 equal-suffrage states are among the 29 that passed mothers' pensions before 1916, and presenting new measures of suffrage endorsement and suffrage pressures in regression analyses suggesting that women's votes - actual and potential - played a major role in leading some states to ...