Little scholarly analysis has been devoted to the hypothesis that antebellum Texas women generally married within their own socioeconomic (slaveholding) class, and thus had only limited choice in the selection of marriage partners. This quantitatively based investigation suggests that the popular image should be carefully qualified. This study reveals that although a majority of Texas women who married during the early 1850s chose men who had the same slaveholding status, a significant minority crossed class lines. By using marriage records of the period in correlation with information gleaned from the census, conclusions were reached. Contemporary women's diaries, letters and reminiscences were investigated, in addition to a historiography of marriage in the South, which created the background for this study.

Touring the state in the early 1980s, the “Texas Women: A Celebration of History” exhibit was the first attempt to create a comprehensive, public Texas women’s history narrative. Surprisingly, the exhibit was organized not by academics or museum professionals, but rather by the Texas Foundation for Women’s Resources—a nascent second-wave feminist non-profit organization composed of up-and-coming political activists such as Ann Richards, Sarah Weddington, Jane Hickie, and Martha Smiley. Through an analysis of the exhibit, as well as archival research and oral histories with many of the participants, this thesis explores the reasons that a feminist organization with finite resources would choose to focus on the production of women’s history as a tool of feminist activism. The “Texas Women” exhibit was a uniquely effective way for the members of the Texas Foundation for Women’s Resources to express their feminist values in a culturally palatable way and to create embodied moments of feminist consciousness for their audience. Furthermore, it paved the way for the organization’s future successful feminist projects, fed the production of Texas women’s history initiatives around the state, and served as a springboard that helped launch Ann Richards’ successful political career. / text

This thesis is a quantitative analysis of women working for pay aged sixteen and older in five mid-size Texas cities from 1900 to 1940. It examines wage-earning women primarily in terms of race, age, marital status, and occupation at each census year and how those key factors changed over time. This study investigates what, if any, trends occurred in the types of occupations open to women and the roles of race, age, and marital status in women working for pay in the first forty years of the 20th century.