Women in United State went through great challenges, to change the societal views and discriminations on them. The suffrage movements, during 1848 to 1920, were accentuated with their strong assertion of their natural rights as human beings, just like any other great builders of what is now called United States of America. Subtle approaches to guarantee democratic representation of women were taken through factual, logical, and informational reasoning for their assertion.…
Women get the vote 1916-1919 Women's suffrage groups had existed since the 1870s, but during the war it was hard to ignore their arguments. Women were serving in the war, taking over from the men in factories and offices, holding families together while the men were overseas, and working in voluntary organizations that supported the war effort. They couldn't be kept out of political life any longer. Women got the federal vote in three stages: the Military Voters Act of 1917 allowed nurses and women in the armed services to vote; the Wartime Election Act extended the vote to women who had husbands, sons or fathers serving overseas; and all women over 21 were allowed to vote as of January 1, 1919.…
To understand the reasons behind some women getting the vote in 1918, one must look back at the history of the women’s movement to fully understand the reason female suffrage was sought and gained. In Victorian Britain there was a longstanding and persistent belief that men and women occupied separate spheres. The separate spheres ideology promoted the belief that due to women’s roles in reproduction, they were best suited to occupy the private sphere of home and family. Alternatively, men were designed to occupy the public sphere work and politics . However, this ideology was a direct contradiction to the reality of Victorian women who, in 1871, constituted nearly 32 per cent of the total British labour force.…
Shortly after, the United States Congress decided to follow in their footsteps. On June 4th, 1919 Congress passed the 19th Amendment, allowing women the right to vote. It had been a long, hard battle. However, in the suffragettes’ eyes, was well worth the fight. Men who were simply born with their high place in society; women had to shed blood, sweat and tears…
Women were not treated as equals with men before the second half of the eighteenth century. They had to marry, obey their husbands and have children, only receiving little education. In the eyes of the law they had little power and men were their superiors. For example, once they were married, everything they owned belonged to their husband, this meant that if they separated the women would be left with nothing, not even her children, as they too, belonged solely to the husband. Around 1850, the rights of women started to change, as laws were made to improve women's education and rights in marriage. However women were still not allowed to vote in the general elections. Many women considered this as a huge prejudice, and that they would have to carry on being second-class citizens until they received the right to vote because a lot of women thought that having a say in general elections would give them more opportunities and rights. Before 1918, only men had the vote, even though they had to qualify by meeting the property qualification (which was someone who earned 40 shillings a year and was a freeholder). Therefore, not all men did qualify, but many women did qualify, and as a result could vote in local elections. As I mentioned above, people had to meet the property qualification in order to vote. Many women did own property of the right value, and so were entitled to the vote. The Married Women's Property Act made even more women qualify, as they could keep their earnings. Women had to endure the same laws as men and also had to pay taxes, like men. So, the women only saw it fair to be able to vote, which gave women a say in what the laws and taxes were. One of the arguments used against women's suffrage was that they were considered physically and mentally too weak. Women's argument towards that was that women had become successful monarchs of this country, for example, Queen Elizabeth I and the present Queen of the time, Queen Victoria. If women were suitable…
The First World War could have been seen as the most important factor in achieving female enfranchisement in 1918 due to it acting as a catalyst which sped up the changing attitudes towards women. As it gave women the opportunity to prove that they really were as worthy of having the vote as men. Foremost amongst these was the fall of Asquith as PM. However, the issue would certainly not have been in the forefront of the Government’s mind without the publicity-seeking campaigning of the Suffragettes, immediately prior to the War. It is difficult, however, to consider this to have been the most important factor, due to the very negative image of Suffragettes that prevailed, and the fact that many WSPU members had defected to the NUWSS. The work of the Suffragists together with the changing laws, led to the increasing politicisation of women. So therefore it can be concluded that the militant suffragette campaign cannot be seen as the most significant factor in helping women gain the…
Of course from the start of America there were women that wanted the right to vote. America in its youth was quite sexist, and believed that woman were at their best when they were serving their husbands and their families. Of course throughout history women had done brilliant things, but they had never had an opportunity to stop men from putting them down. Now in America equality was promised and women began to realize that they had a platform in the Declaration of Independence that supported them. The start of the movement is credited to Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who in 1848, presented at a convention in Seneca Falls. The main point that came out of the convention was that American woman were intelligent individuals who deserved the right to vote. As the movement progressed, more and more women got on board, and the main document that they could use as leverage to vote was the Declaration of Independence. The declaration promised equality for all, yet women did not receive this equality. The movement and its major actors argued that women share the same humanity as men, thus they should receive the same unalienable rights. These unalienable rights say that no one person should rule over another, yet in this case, men were ruling over women. With the ability to vote, men held the power to influence the direction and goals of the nation, and who its leaders would be, while women had to accept whatever choices the men made. Ultimately, the 19th amendment was formed which gave all persons in America, no matter gender, the right to…
Women were in weak position when they started to strive for the right to vote in the mid-1800s. "In 1848,the first women's rights convention is held in Seneca Falls, New York. After 2 days of discussion and debate, 68 women and 32 men sign a Declaration of Sentiments, which outlines grievances and sets the agenda for the women's rights movement." (Imbornoni, n.d.) From then on, this struggle lasted long over 72 years. The women's suffrage movement was of enormous political and social significance in the American history and greatly changed life for women in America. (Cooney, n.d.) The report will focus on the ways to launch the women's suffrage campaign, changes taking place in American women's life and the significance of the women's suffrage movement.…
The first reason is the war effort the suffragettes put into the war. On 14th August 1914, Britain declared war on Germany. After that the NUWSS (national union of suffrage societies) decided that all political activity would be suspended until the war was over. Some leaders of the women’s social and political union such as Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughter, Christabel Pankhurst, played a big role on recruiting young men into the army. When men left their jobs to go to fight overseas, they were replaced by women, women such as Octavia Wilberforce and Louisa Martindale from Brighton worked as doctors treating injured British soldiers. Many jobs that men did were overtaken by women jobs like tram driver, doctor, factory worker, navy and so on. This gives the government a good reason to give the women the right to vote. The historian Alasdair Gray has the view that the War was the most important influence in women gaining the vote,…
Up until 1920, the right for women to vote was up in arms. Men didn't want women to vote because they saw women as the family care taker and they believed politics wasn't a problem that women needed to deal with. From 1848 to 1920, women fought back with Women's Suffrage Movements throughout the country. With continuous parades, speeches, and picketing attempts, the American Woman Suffrage Association proved to men that women can pull political weight. This led to the passing of the 19th amendment, which granted women the right to vote.…
The women's suffrage brought a changed perception of the roles women held in society. During the nineteenth century, women had no position other than a home maker, and stay at home wife. Women could not vote, and had no role in national politics. The women's suffrage began as a movement fighting for the right for women to vote and hold positions in office, but it soon grew into much more. Women began fighting for equality in the workplace, and in society as a whole. Women began to fight for acceptance and equality alongside men.…
First, the origin is limited because the text was written too soon after the events to fully understand their historical impact. Moreover, its editors were all members of the National Women Suffrage Association, white, and lived in the North, causing different perspectives, for instance the rival American Woman Suffrage Association or Southern women, to be unacknowledged. Additionally, the purpose of this book is greatly limiting; written to inspire more support for women’s suffrage, this text presents the movement’s history as a unified force accomplishing goals with little resistance; in reality, the movement had many different opinions and faced a lot of strife in accomplishing…
What is injustice? How does it affect those around us and our community? In the book, To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee, a great deal of injustice is shown through both words and actions. On the other hand there was continual injustice in the Woman´s Rights Movement. In fact there was an article called, Little Things Are Big by Jesús Colón which infers that injustice happens everywhere and has had an impact on our society in the past during the rights movement.…
As women began to understand the need for their right to vote so they could help make changes to further their cause the more they sought for access to the ballot. The two main groups who helped the cause of the women’s suffrage were the National Women’s Party (NWP) and the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). The NAWSA worked to convince opponents that women are valuable assets in society by working from state to state (Schultz, n.d). Alice Paul who founded the NWP worked for their cause by using a more aggressive national strategy. This included a rally of five thousand women on the eve of President Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration demanding their right to vote. Right after the end of the World War I women won their right to…
The movement for women's rights in 1920s marked a positive change and some European countries. A look back at this time shows women made great strides in the fight for equality, including women’s suffrage and inroads in equal opportunity in the workplace and education (). In 1904 the International Woman Suffrage Alliance (IWSA) was formed by British women’s rights activist Millicent Fawcett, American activist Carrie Chapman Catt, and other leading women’s rights activists. These women had the goal of gaining the right to vote, known as suffrage. The women’s suffrage movement was the struggle for the right of women to vote and run for office. In the mid-19th century, women in several countries most notably, the U.S. and Britain formed organizations…