Preview

Liberal, Conservative, and Social Ideals vs. Feminism Before the 20th Century

Better Essays
Open Document
Open Document
2177 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Liberal, Conservative, and Social Ideals vs. Feminism Before the 20th Century
Liberal, Conservative, and Socialist Ideals vs. Feminism before the 20th Century

Tales from the beyond, story one: a parent binds his baby girl's feet in China, so it will not grow more than five to six inches because small feet in women are a sign of elegance; story two: a wife is burned alive in India, so she can accompany her husband in death. Are these stories? No, things like this really happened in the past. They are part of the reason that contributed to the birth of the Women's Movement in the 19th century. This movement was also known as the Feminist movement because its foundation came from feminism, an ideology that developed in the 19th century, and whose main goal was to gain equality for women. The goals of the Women's Movement in the 19th century where: to get the vote, to archive equality in property rights, access to education, access to jobs and fair pay, divorce, and children's custody. These ideals had been around for a while, but the 19th century was the perfect time for them to develop. During the 19th century, nations were going through radical changes; countries were adopting new ways of life based mainly of one of three ideologies: liberalism, conservatism, and socialism. The development of one of these ideologies, and the success of feminism in a country went hand in hand, and it is by analyzing the similarities, and differences between feminism, and each of these ideologies that we can see why feminism was most successful in liberal countries.

Moral, political, and social are the three cores of liberalism, and the ideas in each core have a very similar resemblance to the ideas the feminist movement was trying to promote in the 19th century. Liberals believe that individuals had the right to personal liberties, which included the freedom to think, talk, and worship. Feminist believe women had the right to think, to have an opinion different from that of their husband, or fathers. The faith in total freedom, and equality for the

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • 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

    During the 1920s was a time of great change in America. The role as a woman was changing in a big way not only at home, but also in the workplace and society. On August 18, 1920 the congress ratified and passed the 19th amendment, which guarantees all women the right to vote. In Crystal Eastman’s essay “Now we can begin” she gives her view of feminism during this time period and how it was viewed as negative since all the feminist leaders at the time was associated with socialism or communism. This negative social view prevented progressive movement in feminism. In “Now we can Begin” Crystal Eastman effectively uses examples on how the women’s right to vote in the 1920s would lead to social changes, economic changes, and women’s freedom overall which were unpopular at the time.…

    • 727 Words
    • 3 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

    Firstly Liberal Feminists have contributed to our understanding of family roles and relationships as they were protesting against sex discrimination and also for equal rights for women; which they hoped would influence people of both genders ti support them. Liberals also believed that Women’s oppression would be overcome on its own by changing attitudes within society. Although Liberal feminists don’t believe full gender equality has been achieved, they’re has been a significant improvement; this is shown in the Equal Pay act of 1970 and the sex discrimination act in 1975. An example of a liberal feminists is Jennifer Somerville, she believes that there needs to be males in the household but encourages greater equalities in the relationship and policies to help working parents. Therefore they believe legislation will affect the family and both society as the women will influence the family to new values and ideas.…

    • 880 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The people of Liberalism “defined themselves in opposition to conservatives on one end of the political spectrum and revolutionaries on the other” (page 680). It supported freedom of religion, movement, conscience, assembly, and the press. In ensured equality for every man before law and God. In person has an equal opportunities for success or failure. Even though Liberalism was not a political movement, followers still believed that a good government had a balance of power between branches, property restrictions for representative government, and representatives were educated and successful.…

    • 715 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Femenism In The 1800's

    • 461 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Prior to the 1800's the Jews were persecuted for their religious beliefs. After the 1800's they were looked upon as the killer of Jesus, and was subjected to punishment by local governments, religious leaders, and dictators.…

    • 461 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Liberalism is a political philosophy which emphasizes on the rights of an individual, and usually the rights will assure by the government. Liberalism has turned up for around 300 years, and the complexity to explain and define liberalism is increasing as there are several forms, including classical liberalism, neo-liberalism, conservative liberalism, social liberalism, libertarianism and libertarian socialism (Mastin, 2008). Although anarchism, communism, democratic socialism, social democracy, communitarianism and liberal conservatism have the same objective with liberalism which support for democracy as well as basic equality and against authoritarianism, but it does not consider as liberalism (Haar, 2015).…

    • 209 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory 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

    When people hear and talk about freedom and equality, they think about The United States of America. This is the first thing that comes up into their mind because this is a couple of things that America value. Freedom and equality is what America conducts in now, but throughout the 1900’s this was not the case. All genders back then were not all equal, in fact, women back then had the littlest of freedom and equality. Sometimes the women would make a stand for their gender, and sometimes the women would let the society control them. Two women who decided to make a stand for their sex were Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Lucretia Mott when they started the Women’s Suffrage Movement in 1913 (Table 1). This movement was created because women in the 1900’s wanted rights to own property, vote, and receive higher education. Eventually in 1920, the nineteenth amendment passed…

    • 587 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Women's Role Since 1930's

    • 1479 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Women’s role in the society began to change with the first movement in 1920, when they achieved the right…

    • 1479 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    ultrasound technician

    • 491 Words
    • 2 Pages

    In the nineteenth century, men were the only ones who were allowed to vote. Women did not have the right to freedom as men did. Men treated their wives as if they were their slaves. Women in those days were raised to do as the men said. Women would do everything for their husband. If a women was unhappy with a situation there was no way she had a choice to do anything about it. A woman was not allowed to obtain a divorce until 1891. If a woman tried running away the policd would capture her and then return her to the…

    • 491 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Women fought a lot to gain full equality during the Progressive era. The perfection of the American Revolution increased women’s suppositions, encourage some of the first straight forward requirements for impartiality and observed the formation of female institutions to enhance women’s education. According to http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/era.cfm?eraid=11(by the early 19th century, American women had the highest female literacy rate in the world). The American government's expanded suffrage to involve essentially all white males, nevertheless, they started contradicting the vote to free African American men and in New Jersey to women, who had temporarily won these advantages succeeding the Revolution. During the 1820s and many years after…

    • 380 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Essay On Liberal Feminism

    • 483 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Liberal feminism may be classed as ‘inadequate’ compared to other approaches to feminism, however, in itself, liberal feminism is actually groundbreaking. In 1994 the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act made it illegal for a man to rape his wife. This revolution was attained easily by dismissing the word ‘unlawful’ from the statuary definition of rape as it appeared in the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 1976. Astonishingly, prior to this change there were acts of rape which could infact be legal, due to the law interpreting the meaning of marriage as a continual consent to sex, consensual or not. This law that has protected married men from committing crimes is what feminists label ‘the patriarchal legal system’. The law’s interpretation here created a view on marriage that: all husbands owned their wives, as if a piece of property. For example in the 1736 case of R v R Chief Justice Hale ruled that a husband cannot be guilty of raping his wife due to marital exemption and therefore…

    • 483 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    In Western Europe during the late eighteenth century, single women had almost no protection under the law, and married women lost their legal identity. Women couldn’t vote, sign contracts, retain a lawyer, have rights over their children, or inherit property. Mary Wollstonecraft caused a sensation by writing A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. She declared that both women and men were human beings endowed with inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. She insisted women should be free to pursue professional careers, enter business, and vote if they wished. She called for women to become educated. “I speak of the improvement and emancipation of the whole sex,” (Wollstonecraft 253) she declared. “Let woman share the rights, and she will emulate the virtues of man; for she must grow more perfect when emancipated” (281). Mary Wollstonecraft is often referred to as the Mother of Feminism, and her beliefs produced a major shift in the way women were viewed. She inspired change throughout the Western world. If she had not challenged the status quo, modern women would not enjoy the liberties…

    • 1374 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays