Preview

How Did Women Gain Their Rights In The 19th Century

Powerful Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1809 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
How Did Women Gain Their Rights In The 19th Century
Each generation has its minority that is loudly fighting for change. For example, today it seems that everywhere we turn, there is another news story about the struggle for gay and lesbian rights, whether it's about tax equality, military service, or the right to marry. 150 years ago, it was an even larger portion of the population's turn: women. Throughout the 19th century and into the 20th, women fought for equal rights under the law and most importantly the right to vote. During the 19th century, the Industrial Revolution transformed life in Britain and in other countries in Europe and North America. By the end of the country, life was becoming more and more comfortable for most women. Some of the powerful methods to have a voice that would be undoubtedly heard was writing, this form was applied not only by Mary …show more content…
This essay will examine how women gain their rights, which writers, organizations, men and events helped them to conquer what we today have guaranteed and it was so hard for them to accomplish. Feminism Feminist ideas and social movements emerged in Europe, Great Britain, and the United States in an international environment that encouraged the migration of people and ideas across nationwide borders. Between the publication of Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792) and John Stuart Mill’s The Subjection of Women (1869) ideas, social movements, and individual feminists travelled across land and sea, creating a powerful new context for the improvement of women’s rights. These documents illuminate that process. In this era, the terms women’s rights and women’s emancipation were widely used to refer to what we today would call feminism. Although the term feminist did not appear until the late nineteenth century in France and somewhat later in Great Britain, the U.S. and other

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Women emerged as strong advocates during abolitionism as many began to question their own status in America during the fight to eliminate slavery (6). They wanted freedom from the domestic sphere they were confined too. However, instead of waiting for their government to change the laws, they began a social movement with the skills they learned during abolitionism such as “organizing, political and rhetorical skills” (7). Finally, in 1919, the 19th amendment was passed by Congress giving women the right to vote. After gaining the right to vote the movement continued with women fighting to “be allowed to achieve their own personal dreams and to be valued for themselves, not just for how well they serve their husbands and children” (9).…

    • 630 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Following the victory of the Suffrage movement with the passage and ratification of the 19th amendment in 1920 many in the women’s movement were left wondering, what’s next? Suffrage was the attainment of a goal of generations of women, and with its passage, to paraphrase Plutarch, what worlds were left to be conquered? Writing in the Historian, Peter Geidel states that it was at this point that the women’s movement splintered into schools: The Social Feminists and the Feminists”. According to Geidel the Social Feminists were more numerous and considered “feminism as only part of their reform program”. Women who considered themselves Social Feminists were not interested in full equality with men because they saw it as a threat to various…

    • 336 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The years 1848-1920 was a pivotal time in American history where women were fighting for the same rights men were granted. Women fought for seventy two years to be able to have the same political and economic rights men were given. Women’s right movement started to gain momentum in the 1820’s and 1830’s years before the Civil War began. Women in America were starting to challenge the culture that since they were born women, they were not allotted any rights. Women began to start having a bigger role in political and societal issues more than they ever had before.…

    • 841 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Women have sought out equality and its benefits for the longest of time. Their desire to own themselves and control the world’s perspective of women has been motivation throughout decades. Looking back as far as 1865, Women have always worked hard to care for the family even while they stood behind the man. Women used their skills to manage the home by bringing income in through making and selling clothing. There was a time when it was unacceptable for a woman’s shoulders to be bare in public, and unheard of to be seen with their belly visible. Sex without marriage was obscene as was the option of having sex with preventive methods. And they eventually won the battle of who can and cannot vote. Women struggled against men for and objective females for the right to enlist in the military. Abortion was brought to existence to protect women from birthing unwillingly. The world experienced several acts and rights to ensure women gained equality. Women tackled the world for women related changes drastically since 1865 and do not plan to back down. This paper defines that women have fought for equality in employment, fashion, voting, military choice, and even birth options; they achieved such rights through feminist acts like the women’s liberation movement and they will forever expect rightful equality.…

    • 2680 Words
    • 11 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, with on Political and Moral Subjects (also known simply as A Vindication of the Rights of women) is thought by many to be the real beginning of feminism. This is considered to be the first written example of feminist ideas. However, before Wollstonecraft, others had written about the need for more women’s rights. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman is the first complete statement about the necessity for women to be taught and educated, and for a mutual agreement of gender differences. Wollstonecraft’s first and foremost concern is certainly the education of women. Wollstonecraft tells us from the very beginning that our greatest gift is our capability to use reasoning. Since males…

    • 374 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Best Essays

    “Beginning in the mid-19th century, several generations of woman suffrage supporters lectured, wrote, marched, lobbied, and practiced civil disobedience to achieve…

    • 3988 Words
    • 16 Pages
    Best Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The 19th amendment was one of the most important times where big changes happen in history for the millions of woman who fought for their rights to vote. Before, they had no self-representation other than from their husbands and fathers, until 1920 when the 19th amendment was approved. Its a time where a big change will happen in women's history for their political and social rights that have led to the women who are in power today.…

    • 77 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    Women’s Suffrage started in 1848 and wasn’t considered over until 1920 when they 19th Amendment was passed by Congress; giving women the right to vote. However, there are still many people today that would disagree since in many cases women still aren’t equal to men. This paper will cover five aspects of Women Suffrage: the women of the movement, their views, the fight, support and troubles to victory, and the years after.…

    • 2491 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    One of the most important sources to this investigation is History of Women’s Suffrage. This tertiary source was produced by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Matilda Joslyn Gage, and Ida Husted Harper, all influential feminists who participated in the movement during the years 1848-1885 that are covered by these first three volumes. This origin is of value to the investigation, as all these women had firsthand experience in these events, allowing them to describe them and their direct effects accurately, especially because these books were published soon after, starting in 1881. The content is also valuable, combining excerpts from journals and other primary sources, describing the events directly, with some interpretation, showing the action’s…

    • 521 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Women have been at an unfair disadvantage in society dating all the way back to the early 19th century. In the 19th century, women did not have suffrage and could not own property if they were married. Nevertheless, single women could own property, but were seen as mistresses or not pure. Divorce also could not be achieved by women without their husbands. Married women that wanted a divorce had to be divorced by their husbands not the other way around.…

    • 552 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    American women from the late 19th Century through the 1970’s fought through discrimination, racism, and sexism. Women struggled to be acknowledged and given the same rights as men. Slowly, through out each century, women’s political, social and legal issues improved, but with challenges. In this essay, I will discuss some of the significant changes that women overcame.…

    • 1263 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The purpose of this research bibliography was to present the most important theories about feminism in the 18th and 19th century. One of them was Liberal Feminism which was discussed in the book Feminist thought. For all the ways liberal feminism may have gone wrong for women, it did some things very right for women along the way. Women owe to liberal feminists many of the civil, educational, occupational, and reproductive rights they currently enjoy. They also owe to them the ability to walk increasingly at ease in the public domain, claiming it as no less their territory than men’s. Perhaps enough time has passed for feminists critical of liberal feminism to reconsider their dismissal of it.…

    • 400 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    The American movement for women’s liberation and rights was undoubtedly the most progressive in the decades that followed the Second World War. The second wave of feminism that ensued in the 1960s and 70s redirected the goals and ambitions in the fight for gender equality in many aspects. This new wave of liberal reform allowed women to break free from the domestic sphere from the conservative restraints of the 1950s, which have traditionally limited a women’s access to the same political, economic, and educational rights as men. While the fight for women’s equality started to make real headway post World War II, the fight for women’s rights has existed long before then. This can be seen in the Antebellum reforms or the first wave of feminism from the early 19th century to the early 20th century.…

    • 839 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    A legal theory in feminism especially in the period of 1840 to 1870 included abolitionism which gave rise to the women’s movement who in their quest for equal rights of women that included the ownership to property and right to vote, the sort out to abolish slavery as well. Abolitionism garnered male supporters for the women’s movement like Frederick Douglass, Henry Blackwell and William Lloyd Garrison. 1…

    • 4751 Words
    • 20 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    As indicated by Maggie Humm and Rebecca Walker, the historical backdrop of woman's rights can be partitioned into three waves. The principal women's activist wave was in the nineteenth and mid twentieth hundreds of years, the second was in the 1970s, and the third stretches out from the 1990s to the present. Women's activist hypothesis rose up out of these women's activist developments. It is show in an assortment of controls, for example, women's activist geology, women's activist history and women's activist abstract feedback. Woman's rights has changed dominating points of view in an extensive variety of regions inside Western culture, extending from culture to law. Women's activist activists have crusaded for ladies' lawful rights (privileges…

    • 183 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays