We the Men: How Forgetting Women’s Struggles for Equality Perpetuates Inequality
Professor Jill Hasday, Distinguished McKnight University Professor and the Centennial Professor in Law, has published We the Men: How Forgetting Women’s Struggles for Equality Perpetuates Inequality (Oxford University Press 2025).
What inspired you to write We the Men?
The United States Constitution purports to speak for “We the People.” I wrote this book because too many of the stories that powerful Americans tell about law and society include only We the Men.
I first began thinking about some of the ideas in the book when I was in law school. So many of the stories I heard in class treated men’s lives as the ordinary baseline and women’s lives as exceptions to either skip over or mention as footnotes. I thought: women are not an exception. We are half the population. Our experiences within and outside of the law are just as important as men’s experiences.
Do you have a favorite story from the book?
Anne Davidow was a trailblazing attorney in Detroit. She represented four women who sued to block a 1945 Michigan law that prohibited women from bartending in cities with fifty thousand or more people, unless the woman was “the wife or daughter of the male owner” of the bar. The Michigan statute was part of a wave of anti-barmaid legislation that the male-only bartenders’ union helped push through statehouses after Prohibition ended.
Challenging the constitutionality of Michigan’s law was an uphill battle. Generations of judges had upheld many other restrictions on women’s work. But Davidow was undaunted and appealed Goesaert v. Cleary (1948) all the way to the Supreme Court. She later reported that Justice Felix Frankfurter heckled her from the bench while informing her that “the days of chivalry aren’t over.” Presumably, Frankfurter either failed to recognize the irony or felt that Davidow’s effrontery in bringing this suit excused him from any obligation to act like a gentleman. Frankfurter wrote an opinion for the Court that dismissed Davidow’s arguments in less than three pages. Eventually, though, she had the last laugh. The Court overruled Frankfurter’s opinion in 1976.
Did anything surprise you when writing this book?
As modern Americans, many of us have encountered people who announce or assume that the nation has left the sexist bad old days behind. Still, I was surprised to discover just how early in American history those premature declarations began appearing and how important a role they have played in perpetuating inequality. Wildly exaggerated accounts of American progress toward sex equality have been common in both everyday settings and legal institutions since before the Nineteenth Amendment’s 1920 ratification made sex-based disenfranchisement unconstitutional.
For example, a 1918 textbook assured young readers that: “All men and women are regarded as equals before the law.” At the time, 33 out of 48 states maintained sex-based restrictions on voting. Although women had spent decades mobilizing for equality, discrimination against women at work, in marriage, and in every other arena was still legal and pervasive throughout the nation.
How does Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the 2022 Supreme Court decision overruling Roe v. Wade, fit into your book’s argument?
My book reveals how Dobbs perpetuates long-standing patterns. Generations of courts have made their rosiest pronouncements about America’s commitment to sex equality while issuing judgments that maintain or exacerbate inequality. Dobbs continues that tradition. The opinion relies on overstated accounts of women’s advances to defend the Justices’ decision to leap backward and eliminate a constitutional right that women had held for generations.
What takeaways do you have for readers?
Women’s rights and opportunities have unquestionably expanded over the past century. But progress has not been nearly fast or far-reaching enough — largely because of fierce opposition to changing women’s rights and roles. Sometimes courts, legislatures, or presidents have even dragged women backward, reversing earlier victories. We the Men outlines an unfinished reform agenda that spans teaching, commemoration, political representation, legislation, litigation, and everyday life. The long history of women’s struggles for equality makes clear that progress on this agenda is unlikely to be quick, easy, or achieved by anyone acting alone. Generations of women have learned that lesson and persisted nonetheless.