individual contributions to their published works. Individual and edited works Mary Beard's Woman's Work in Municipalities (1915), the first of six books that she wrote as a solo author, argued that women's social reform efforts could be considered political activities as well. She also urged women to pursue leadership positions in municipal government. Beard's book, A Short History of the American Labor Movement (1920), concerns social reform and the working class, but she is best known for her authored and edited works on women's history, especially On Understanding Women (1931), America Through Women's Eyes (editor, 1933), and her major work, Woman as Force in History: A Study in Traditions and Realities (1946) her most influential publication. To increase interest in research on women's history, Beard used multiple channels of communication, including pamphlets, radio shows, articles, speeches, and books. Beard's Woman as Force in History (1946) challenges the traditional feminists' view and argues that women had always been active agents in history alongside men. She further contends that focusing on women as victims instead of their impact in the world was distorted and inaccurate. Beard also believed that a woman's social class and her gender play important roles in her achievements. Beard rejected the feminist idea that women had been subjugated by men and "deliberately played down the very real constrictions on women through the centuries." She believed strongly in encouraging women through her writing about the importance of women's history, declaring: "We cannot know how our own society has been built up without known women's share in establishing free speech, free assembly, freedom of worship, all civil liberties, all humanism, all the branches of learning and everything else we value." Beard also wrote a 56-page pamphlet, "A Changing Political Economy as it Affects American Women" (1934), sponsored by the American Association of University Women, that was a prototype for a course on women's studies. Despite her efforts, she was unable to gain its adoption for college- or university-level courses. Beard also wrote and edited other books on women's history: Laughing Their Way: Women's Humor in America (coedited with Martha Bruiere, 1934), and The Force of Women in Japanese History (1953). Her final book was a tribute to her husband, The Making of Charles Beard (1955). Women's history scholar With the successful passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1920, Beard began to concentrate more on her writing