Educational Media Reviews Online

At 15 minutes long, Six Generations of Suffragettes, bills itself as a "concise overview of the women's movement in America." The program does, indeed, offer a concise overview but it delivers that overview in a way that not only instructs but also engages its audience.

My guess is that this video is intended for a junior and senior high school audience - a very hard audience to reach on women's issues. Most young women are hesitant to align themselves with feminism because of their misconceptions of what feminism is. Although the video centers on six generations of women, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and her descendants, it also serves well as a subtle introduction to the political structures of the women's movement.

Using the well-known format of a television news program, the video's host, a young women named Monica Novotny, serves as a reporter/narrator to frame interviews with the three most recent generations of Stanton women and bridge other segments of the program. Novotny begins the program by asking the audience to imagine living in a world where they were treated as second class citizens. A world where they could not legally own property, had no control over their money, and weren't allowed to go to college.

This was the reality of the condition of women in the United States when, in 1848, Elizabeth Cady Stanton organized the first women's rights convention in Seneca Falls, N.Y. One hundred fifty years, and six generations later, Stanton's 14 year old great, great, great granddaughter, Elizabeth Jenkins-Sahlin, speaks with Novotny in Seneca Falls' Elizabeth Cady Stanton Park. Elizabeth, an intelligent and well-spoken young woman, talks about what it means to her to have the hard won advantages for which Stanton and other women fought.

Elizabeth's mother and grandmother, in addition to Katherine Spillar, from the Feminist Majority and Susan Lesser, from Loyola Marymount University, are also featured in Six Generations of Suffragettes. Their commentaries put the personal experiences of the Stanton family women into a historical and political perspective. The women all have a wonderful camera presence that helps engage the viewer in what they're saying; the women's movement in America is more than the political, it's the personal. It's a story that depends on every generation of women to make it continue.

The program is visually appealing and holds the audience's attention. A unique feature of the program is the way its set works as a transition device. The set, which sports a high tech industrial theme, uses several video monitors to display archival clips and to blend scene changes. The sound, lighting, and pacing are all excellent.

Six Generations of Suffragettes serves admirably as both a history of the women's movement and a gentle call to arms for young women, and men, to become involved in preserving and furthering the work of the movement. It is a good choice for school libraries from the middle grades through high school and for public libraries. Highly recommended.