How To Be A Woman In The 1900s

Women today in 2016 couldn’t last two minutes living the life of a woman in the 1900s. 100 years ago, females were known as the weaker gender but more virtuous and were not allowed to do anything unless they had a husband. They didn’t have any rights, authority, or opinion about ANYTHING! It was illegal for women to do a lot of things, and here we are 100 years later, we can do whatever we want, when we want, however we want without anyone’s permission. To sum things up, a woman is her own boss and controls everything in her life. She can follow her dreams without anyone stopping her and a woman can make her own decisions. Everything
is different, the wardrobe, education and careers, rights, marriage and children, the whole lifestyle. In my opinion, women back in the 1900s were more put together and traditional than most women today, the only downfall of their time was that they just didn’t have any say so, and they were treated unequally because of their gender. To begin with, women had no voice of opinion about anything, especially politics. Women were not allowed to vote until 1920, activists worked very hard for that law to pass. They were not allowed to vote based on the idea that “ a married women’s legal existence was incorporated into that of her husband”. The Supreme Court denied women voting rights in 1874. Susan B. Anthony, a women’s right activist, was even arrested for attempting to vote. Today, a woman can go as far as running for president, which was very much impossible 100 years ago. Women back in the day paved the way for us women today, to be able to have the freedom to do whatever we want. Today, we can vote and run for anything we want, a female can even run for president. Men used to run everything, make our decisions for us, and that is who women depended on back then- the men. Now we are very independent, we no longer need a man to do anything and in my opinion, I think that is great. Even though women back in the 1900s would’ve killed to vote, some women even today won’t even take the advantage to go out and vote and make their voices be heard. It wasn’t just women fighting for women’s rights, men were too, and that made the Supreme Court look at it in a different way. Whatever they went through, I’m glad they did because they gave women better opportunities to do whatever they want. In addition to not having any rights, women in the 1900s were only known as mothers and wives, it was rare that you saw a women working a job or trying to get an education.
If they were working, it would be a small job, as oppose to today, women can be whatever they want. If a woman did work, she would not get paid equally as a man, she would get paid 59 cent of a man’s dollar. Women were usually seamstresses or teachers if they did make their own living. Unfortunately, if a women was a teacher she was forbidden to be married. After a while, the only jobs available to women were at department stores and factories because they left the heavy duty work to the men. Only five percent of the world’s doctors’ were women. At this day and age, women are paid the same as men and are CEOs, lawyers, judges, business owners, surgeons, engineers, and the list is endless. We make our own money, unlike in the 1900s, when men worked and brought home the pay checks. Now, we have the choice to go out and get ourselves and be just as career filled as men or do it the old fashioned way and be a house wife. Besides having a career or job, women were also discouraged to get an education. They were told that women shouldn’t work or go to school, that was
supposed to be a man’s job. Women were definitely excluded from the educational system, which goes back to their opinion of politics because a lot of women thought they weren’t educated enough to have a say so. Now, females make up a very large percentage of the students working to receive college degrees. A lot of women often take advantage of being able to get an education, but there are more women out pursuing their dreams and furthering their education as much as they can. Furthermore, if you were a married women, you were a happy women simply because you could a lot more with a husband than without a husband.
Although, there were a lot of things women had to go through if they were. You had to be married to do almost anything. For example, if you were not married, you couldn’t even get a bank account, and if you were married with a bank account you needed your husband’s permission to go in and out of it. Today, a woman can independently walk into a bank, and get her own bank account, without a husband or any man’s permission. I feel that it was pretty ridiculous that you needed your husband’s permission to go in a bank account with your name on it. But they felt that women were weak minded, and not able to make her own decisions. In the 1900s, women were not to have sex before marriage, and stepping outside of that marriage was illegal, only for women. It was also a struggle for a woman to file divorce, if a marriage ended it was her husband’s decision, not hers. If a woman got married or pregnant, she was to quit her job immediately and be a stay at home wife and mother. They looked at wives to cook, clean, and take care of the children and the home. Females today can stay at work until the week of their
due date if they decide to. Women are not really staying home these days married or not, they work and if they have children they will take them to school or daycare. We are definitely more independent. Most women back then were married by the age of 21, today, the average age of a woman to get married is 26-30. If you were unmarried, you would face getting blocks on your credit, making it impossible for you to do almost anything, that is why most women decided to get married, because it made their life very much easier. Those were not the only downfalls of marriage back then, there were no such thing as rape if you were married because you could refuse sex to your husband. And, if you pregnant, and did not want the baby, guess what? You had no choice but to keep it because abortions were illegal back then. Women in 2016 are allowed to get abortions, and if we refuse sex to our husbands and they force it upon us, that is rape and they will be going to jail. Another bad thing was that it was no such thing as being beaten if you were married, they felt that whatever you did inside your home was your business. These days, there are consequences if you hit your partner and that goes for male or female and it is called domestic violence. Back then, women had no resources, no one to go to if they were having these problems because no one saw anything wrong with it. Now days, we have a lot of programs and agencies that can help women who are going through marriage problems. These things are very different from what we have come to today. If you step outside your marriage today, it isn’t illegal, you can do whatever you want with or without a husband. Altogether, a women’s lifestyle today in 2016 is tremendously different from the lifestyle of a women in the 1900s. They had a lot of restrictions, and rules that they had to abide by and were not treated equally as men. They were known as the weaker gender, and was hardly allowed to work. Their duties were not to work or get an education, but to stay home, cook, clean, and take care of the children and maintain the house. They were discouraged to follow their dreams, get an education, and pursue a career. Today, women are much more liberated, and have the freedom to do whatever they want without anyone stopping them. Women are doctors, lawyers, scientists, astronauts, pilots, nurses, and anything else they want to be. We can choose to live a traditional lifestyle and stay home like the women in the 1900s, or we can go out and start a career, paying our own bills. We do not have to be married to do anything, we can do everything independently. We can work if we’re pregnant and can work however long we want while pregnant. We have a lot of support, and I’m glad that the men and women back then paved the way for us to be free how we are today.