Cult Of True Womanhood Analysis

Shoshana Charlot
POLS 3837
October 8, 2015
Midterm Exam
1.
Civil rights and legal mobilization movements all start from a root. The root being a grievance in which a person’s fundamental rights are being compromised whether it be a right that is explicitly written in the constitution or an enumerated right. The Fundamental rights are rights that are recognized by the Supreme Court as being fair and legal. The fundamental rights are illustrated in the first amendment. As it reads “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances”.
The first amendment is the foundation to grass root movement that call for legal mobilization and social change. The right to freedom of speech and freedom of press is an important tool that can be used to call attention to a grievance through every outlet of public speech. The right for people to peacefully assemble is the right for these group of people to rally people together to peacefully protest and spread information about the grievance that they have. The right to petition government for redress of grievances is the actual act of presenting the authority figure with the grievance and calling for change. When these rights are brought together it is an effective way to bring about social change and legal mobilization. Throughout history we have seen many movements start from a single grievance become a national issue. The first amendment is a blueprint for the steps a person should take when trying to create legal mobilization. First I would use my right to freedom of speech and press, which would allow me to spread my message to the masses and gain support. Then I would petition my authority figures for change and if this did not cause discussion amongst them I would then use my right to assembly and peacefully protest for my mission. The first amendment is the blueprint for civil rights and legal mobilization and the way any successful movement achieved their goals.
2.
When discussing the woman’s rights movement it is thought to be a singular movement rather than a movement that had many facets to it that combined for the greater mission. The nineteenth century was the beginning for the call for woman’s rights movement. The different organization that came together all had different missions and means to gain political and moral reform. The women’s rights movement was closely tied to the anti-slavery movement and was made up of mostly abolitionist’s woman, although these two movements we thought to be completely different in mission there were able overlap because they had intersecting ideas when it came to slave woman. The Industrial Revolution and the Second Great Awakening helped to encourage the change in the way women were viewed in society and the roles that they played within their families.
The evangelical revivals of the antebellum era brought more women into reform movements because there was an emphasis on how woman were thought to be faithful and had a higher standard for morality. This outlook of woman during this time benefitted middle-class woman the most so it caused them to organize the ‘Cult of True Womanhood ‘. This organization of woman were thought that because of their depth of morality that they should spread their loving and nurturing instincts to society as a whole. The Cult of True Womanhood first to began to organize themselves by doing charity work such as feeding the hungry widows, protecting working woman from vice, and by trying to rehabilitate prostitutes and by helping to reform prisons and insane asylums. As stated in the essay The Case for the Reform Antecedents for Women’s Rights Movement by Allison M. Parker “All this work moved woman from the domestic into the public, political sphere.” The work that these women where doing brought them outside of their home into society takes steps to create reform. These woman were found in prisons, insane asylums and even prostitution houses. The woman in this organization felt that a major societal change would be possible without the right to
vote. After the American Revolution woman began to argue for basic education for and then eventually higher education such as high school and college equivalent education, this was meant with some resistance because is challenged the role of woman in a subordinate position and was thought to cause women to compete for professional jobs. Mary Wollstonecraft, Frances Wright and Margaret Fuller advocated for equal education of woman believed that it would benefit woman more than voting rights. In the post-bellum years woman suffrage came to be seen as the best way to solve a many different social problems facing woman. The woman’s suffrage didn’t have the same face when it came to discussing what was their most important stance that should be taken when discussing the movement. Susan B. Anthony believed all other reform issues such as marital inequality, unfair divorce laws, wage inequality, and intemperance should be given less attention and the right to vote should be the most important because once the right to vote was received they would be able to dictate the way society was swayed. The women’s rights movements gained a great amount of head way when they were able to have many conventions that woman were able to illustrate the importance of women’s equality. The convention was able to draw thousands and woman were able to discuss topics of interest such as marital equality, education, the right to vote, divorce reform. These conventions were also a tool to incorporate the different types of woman and give them a voice within the movement. The women’s suffrage movement focused on middle-class white woman and so it excluded a great amount of woman within American society. Sojourner Truth and Mrs. Prince are examples of black woman who know the horrors of slavery and can speak of the intersectionality of racial and sexual oppression. The conventions that took place is the was the most effective way that brought the movement together it was able to give the movement a number a different faces and stories to illustrate the important of gender equality rather than the singular story of middle class white woman.

3.
In the book “The Hollow Hope” by Gerald Rosenberg discusses notion that there are two major schools of thought and the way that courts should view their powers. The Dynamic court which is a court that is powerful and a court that can create social change. The Constrained Court is a court that is powerless and cannot create social change because of lack of power and influence. The Constrained Court is a court that cannot create social change because it is constrained by three ideas. The first constraint is limited by the constraint of constitutional rights. The restricted nature of constitutional rights prevents the courts from effectively acting on social reform claims and would prevent change because not all claims can be looked at through a constitutional lens when emotional and mainstream opinion are a factor, and it is important for new rights to be built upon old ones rather than disregarded completely. The second constraint is that the court doesn’t lacks interdependence from the other branches of government to produce social change. The decision of the courts can be overturned by congress and congress can change the legal structure. The third constraint of the court is that the courts do not have the appropriate tools to create social change through the development of policy change. In order for social change to happen within these courts political elites must support the stance if not it will be
implemented. The Dynamic Court does not have these same restraints as the Constrained Court. The Dynamic Court is thought to effective in being able to cause social change and can be effective in causing social change than other branches of government. The Dynamic Court is thought to be able to overcome the constraints of the Constrained Court because it uses interdependence which judges are electorally unaccountable and free to act at any time. Judges can be objective by the nature of the position. The court their positions allows courts to teach people about their constitutional obligations and the courts opinion is able to sway and change people opinions. The court is also always evolving in its procedure to cope with the complex social reform. The conditions to a court efficacy condition is a theory that if a court is able to produce social change is must overcome the three constraints and one of the four conditions must happen. The first condition is that in order for the courts to cause significant change the courts must other actors must give incentives to create compliance. The second condition is to create social change is that other actors impose costs to induce social change, the third is when the judicial decision can implemented by the market the fourth is that the courts can provide leverage for or an excuse people crucial to the implementation of those who are will to act. In the case Brown v. Board of Education the outcome wanted to call for social change though social change wasn’t able to happen because despite the courts decisions to integrate school nothing changed it was congress that had to act did the change occur. Under the Dynamic view it was unsuccessful because it had little to no social influence on Americans and no evidence of change. In the case Roe v. Wade it had some influencing in social change and was able to overcome the first and second constraint and did incorporate the fourth condition but it was not able to overcome the third constraint which is the lack of tools necessary to create social reform, which causes this to be unsuccessful. I believe that a hybrid approach can be effective in creating social reform though it thought that the dynamic view is weak in creating social reform it has elements that are important in cause a social change that is not only dictated by judicial factors but also social ones.
4.
The right to privacy is a right that was established in the case Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) which the Executive director of planned parenthood were arrested for giving advice and instruction to a married couple about preventing conception. In the end the court ruled in favor of Griswold under the notion that it is right to privacy. Roe v. Wade (1973) a pregnant woman wanted to terminate her pregnancy but it was illegal in her state and so it was brought before the Supreme Court and was ruled in favor of it because of the right to privacy. Both of these rulings are considered victories in the women’s rights movement because they set precedent for many other cases in which a woman could not choose for herself. Roe v. Wade overturned all state and federal restriction on abortions up until a fetus becomes viable and able to survive outside the womb. Women were able to more control over their bodies and what they wanted to do with them. In the case Planned Parenthood v. Danforth (1976) which held that it was unconstitutional for a woman to gain consent from her spouse or any third party to have an abortion. These cases all had a significant affect on the Women’s Rights because it went beyond the rights of equality but had an emphasis on the right to a person own body. The right to privacy played a significant role in the advancement of the woman’s rights movement. The woman’s right advocates used the judicial system to shed light on these injustices that were happening under federal law.