Elisabeth Griffith

Elisabeth Griffith is an American historian, educator, and activist. She is the author of Formidable: American Women and the Fight for Equality: 1920–2020, and In Her Own Right: The Life of Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Early in her career, she held leadership positions in the Women's Campaign Fund and the National Women's Political Caucus, before serving as head of the Madeira School for 22 years.

Early life and education Born near Detroit, Michigan, Griffith was the second of two daughters, Her mother was a teacher. She has a master's degree from Johns Hopkins University.

Career After graduating from college, Griffith was involved with the National Women's Political Caucus, first as a volunteer, then as vice chairwoman, treasurer, and advisory board member. Although she had attended every Republican National Convention since 1972, she decided not to attend in 1984 to protest the Republican Party's stance on women's issues under President Ronald Reagan, a position she explained in her article "Why I'm Not Going to Dallas", published in Newsweek. In 1999, First Lady Hillary Clinton was the inaugural speaker at the Elisabeth Griffith Women's Leadership Lecture Series, which the school's board of directors named after Griffith in recognition of her first ten years at the helm.

In 2022, her second book, Formidable: American Women and the Fight for Equality: 1920–2020, was published by Pegasus Books. In Formidable, Griffith explores how the equal rights and civil rights movements were "interwoven" during the 100-year period since the ratification of the 19th Amendment, giving women the right to vote in the United States.

In 1985, a review of In Her Own Right: The Life of Elizabeth Cady Stanton in The Journal of American History stated that Griffith did "a careful job of showing the relationship between the development of Stanton's life experience and social thought", while also expressing skepticism of her use of social learning theory as a means of explaining Stanton's behavior.

Personal life She married John Deardourff, a Republican political strategist, in 1970, and has two children and two stepchildren. The couple both worked for feminist pro-choice cause and left the Republican party. Deardourff died in 2004. In her own right: the life of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Oxford University Press, New York, 1984.