Woman's History

WOMEN
Jayne Craig
Ashford University
HIS 204
PROF. Pamela Forsythe
April 29, 2013 WOMEN

Women have come a long way, from the earliest day of staying at home and taking care of the family, to becoming some of the world’s leaders that are more renowned. The beginning of the woman’s movement started in the late 1700 and continues today. Woman faced many struggles and conflict, for many generations, in order for recognition as a citizen with rights that are equal to white males.
Women have always been placed in a subservient role. They had no rights to own property and have money of their own. They were placed at the mercy of the family or husbands. They were not allowed to conduct business, control their property nor had any decisions when it came to politics. In the early of 1600’s to 1700’s men outnumbered women and this gave them more freedom to choice to either remarry or to remain on her own. Women’s rights started to decline when the balance of the sex began to equal (Women, 2000). In the 1800’s many states started to pass laws that granted men the authority to control their wife’s assets. These same states made it a man responsibility for their wife’s actions.
Many think that women’s liberation started in the late 1800’s, but it can be traced back to 1404. It started with allowing women access to education. An early supporter was Margaret Fell (1614-1702). She took an active role in defending women’s right to preach and to take an active role in religion. Mary Astell (1666-1731), wanted to establish schools for higher education for unmarried women. She felt it was necessary for women to develop their rational capacity for thinking, which would help to be more rational as wives and mothers. Catherine Macauley (1731-1791) expressed that both girls and boys should be exposed to the same actives, both physical and academic. There were men that felt strongly in their cause; Condorcet (1743-1794) was not only for the education of women, but also equal civil rights and political rights. He wrote, “Either no member of the human race has real rights or else all have the same.” (1790).
Not all women believed in the higher education of women, Anna Barbauld and Hannah More were two examples of not supporting this cause. They were called the bluestocking, while they were engaged in politics and morals of the time; they did not support the education of women.
Often, women were regarded as inferior to men. It has been called the “cult of true womanhood” (Women, 2003). This combined piety and domesticity with submissiveness and passivity. Sarah Josephe Hall, editor of Godey’s Lady’s Book in 1832, wrote” a true woman was delicate and timid, that required protection and possessed a sweet dependency”. This gave to the ideology of why women should stay home and take care of the family. The opposite was said of men, the reason for them belonging outside of the house in the world of business was because they were competitive, aggressive and materialistic.
It was felt that because women were modest and pure, that their roles were that of staying at home and educating the children. This would eventually lead women to become teachers outside of the home.
While marriage was usually the best route for women in the early years, society expected women to marry and feel that they had fulfilled their lives. Most marriage in the history was arranged marriage. It was not until the mid-eighteen century that marriage was based on love and affection. Women of these companion marriages were believed to be more nurturing as mothers and sexual pure moral guardians.
Women had to endure many problems. In most states, women were considered to the property of their husbands. Women had no right to control their personal property, no right to earn money, could not enter into any contracts and no rights for guardian ship over their children. If a woman was to divorce she would very seldom get custody of the children, it was felt that the father was the natural custodian.
Emphases were being put on the women as educators; this started a change in how women were themselves educated. By the 1800’s more girls were going to primary schools which increased the rate of female literacy. Secondary education was still limited to only wealthy families. These academies only gave women a basic education, they were taught French, English and embroidery.
Emma Willard was an innovator and supporter of better secondary education for females. In 1819, she campaigned for better education for females; she felt that this would lead to better homemakers and mothers. This would also lead to better-trained teachers outside of the home. Horace Mann (1837) (secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education) wanted to expand women education to include reading, writing and arithmetic. He argued that this would improve the quality of women that would be hired as teachers in primary and secondary schools. In 1850 Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman doctor to have graduated from college. In 1850 the first female medical college was opened in Pennsylvania.
This was also a time of the U.S. expansion to the west. Many men left their wives and families at home. Women usually traveled with other families. This was another time that men outnumbered women and pressure was put on the women to marry if they wanted to or not. The women who made this journey found that they had no support and family or friends.
The Industrial Revolution gave women the opportunity to start earning money and working outside of the home. The working conditions for these women were extremely poor. The women had to work 10-14 hours a day, the supervisors would lock the doors so that they would not go to the bathroom unless authorized and were expected to take work home with them. This gave us the term “sweatshops”; it describes the garment system of making clothes under filthy and inhumane conditions. Women decided that they were going to go on strike and formed a union called the Factory Girl’s Association in 1836 (Women Movement, 2003). Working in the mills gave many girls from the country an opportunity to come to city and work. The owners of these mills built boardinghouses to allow the women a safe environment in which to live. Most of these women either saved the money for themselves or used it as a dowry. Emma Liggins (1890) wrote an article called “The Life of a Bachelor Girl in the Big City”. This article described the life and decisions that this “New Women” would be facing. It showed the rise of more women refusing to marry and their desire to be more independent. This New Women was more interested in working outside of the house and being educated. The Victorian era ideas were being challenged in that it was now acceptable to be a spinster. (Liggins, 2007)
By 1848 several states had started to pass the Married Woman’s Property Act. It gave married women ownership of their property. This still was very limiting in what women could do. They could not could not sell their property or set up wills to leave the property and money to anyone. The husband was the only one that could buy, sell and manage the property. This was also done so that a women could inherit property, but the understanding the next male in line would inherit the property. (Women 's Suffrage, 2010) In July 1848 women held their first convention on woman’s rights in New York. Leaders of this convention were Elizabeth Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone and Sojourner Truth. In 1890 they formed the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). This group did not include any African-American women. It was exclusive to middle class white females. Alice Parks had started to campaign for the woman suffrage movement. She would use label buttons, stationary and baggage stickers to start what was called “personal advertising”.
These women not only faced media hostility, they had also faced corporations that started the Anti-suffragist. This cooperation was mostly brewers and distillers that feared that the women’s movement also supported the temperance movement. This cooperation started their own propaganda in that most women did not want to vote and called into question the leaders’ femininity and sexuality. They were trying to create a negative stereotype of the women’s movement. (Women 's Suffrage, 2010) Public access to contraceptive devices in the United States aroused the concerns of Mr. Anthony Comstock and others, who lobbied Congress until it passed (1873) which was a bill prohibiting the distribution of these devices across state lines or through the mail. Women’s lives were changed when Margaret Sanger opened up the first birth control clinic in New York in 1916. She was arrested and sent to jail for 30 days. Ms. Sanger also helped organize (1917) the National Birth Control League in the United States. In 1921 it became the American Birth Control League, and in 1942 the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Meanwhile, in 1918 an American judge ruled that contraceptive devices were legal as instruments for the prevention of disease, and the federal law prohibiting dissemination of contraceptive information through the mails was modified in 1936. WWI changed everything. Men left to go fight in the war and that left women to fill the jobs that were vacant. The war gave the women the opportunity to show society that they could do more than raise children. Women played a key role in making ammunition, bandages and manning the trains and buses. They also worked as mechanics, nurses and farmer. While women were getting paid less than what their male counterparts would have received, it made people realize that women had the capacity to do more. World War I provided the final push for women 's suffrage in America. After President Woodrow Wilson announced that World War I was a war for democracy, women were up in arms. Members of the NWP held up banners saying that the United States was not a democracy. Women in the audience of his public speeches began to ask the question "Mr. President, if you sincerely desire to forward the interests of all the people, why do you oppose the national enfranchisement of women?" On January 1918, President Wilson acceded to the women who had been protesting at his public speeches and made a pro-suffrage speech. The next year Congress passed the Nineteenth Amendment giving women the right to vote.
In 1921 a new generation of women took up the movement. They formed the National Women’s Party (NWP). (See appendix). This new organization was trying to appeal to younger women and the working class women. They employed a new tactic of civil disobedience. They picketed the White House. They carried signs that stated, “If America cannot give their own citizens democracy, and how can they give it to someone else.” They also would chain themselves to the White House fence and other federal buildings.
Because of the wars, the women’s movement took a back seat to taking care of the war effort. With the resurgence of civil rights, the women liberation also returned in 1960’s.
The Woman Liberation’s Movement started again when the civil rights issue started with African-American wanting more freedoms. While most of the issue of women’s freedom came to be by the 1920’s, they received formal education, better labor laws, better health care for them and their children. There was more to be done. The liberation movement of the 1960’s focused more on the equality of women. While women still only worked outside of the home as a necessity to support their family women were denied “careers”. Betty Friedan wrote a book in 1953 called The Feminine Mystique which empowered women to expand their goals, it explained that the women’s life in the suburbs were not as ideal as it seemed. (Hall, 2003).
The new women’s movement concentrated on the women’s right for an abortion. Before, an abortion was only done if the life of the mother was endangered; now they fought for the women to have the right to choose an abortion if they wanted. The newly formed National Organization for Women (NOW) became so politically powerful that it forced the Supreme Court to rule on an abortion case that still stands today. Roe vs. Wade.
This new movement was concerned with major social issues, intimate personal matters regarding the family, gender roles and sexual relations. The new wave was called the Feminist Movement. This movement was led by Gloria Steinem and Phyllis Schlafly, (both attorneys). While each supported equal rights and treatment of women, they had different ideas of how to accomplish it. Ms. Steinem wanted Congress to make an amendment to the Constitution and Ms. Schlafy felt that the amendment would lead to moral decay and social problems.
The 1960’s was a time of change for the American women; President John Kennedy put in place the Civil Rights Act which prohibited job discrimination related to race, creed, national origin and sex. The FDA approved the first oral contraception for women. The Federal Government amended the Equal Right Act to prohibit wage discrimination between a male and female doing the same job. But even after all of this legislation, women were not treated as equals. President Kennedys’ commission on the American Women led to child care centers, better working conditions and equal opportunities.
This new movement had many problems and it led to many other groups which had their own agenda that did not coincide with the NOW group. Two of the groups were the Young Socialist Alliance(YSA) and the Socialist Worker’s Party(SWP). The movement now had a separtation of younger members vs. older members. This lead to the gay/straight split. The split by the presence of lesbians in the feminist groups that felt that lesbianism was the true feminist idea. They felt that women should only identify with, live with and associate only with women. The idea of women having anything to do with a man was consorting with the enemy.
By the 1970’s these groups started to disappear or go back to the orginal groups ideals. The NOW movement regained its focus of the need to protect women rights. They focused on the issues of rape, battered women and health care. Some of the most significant legal victories of the movement of NOW were a 1967 Executive Order extending full Affirmative Action rights to women, Title IX and the Women 's Educational Equity Act (1972 and 1974, respectively, educational equality), Title X (1970, health and family planning), the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (1974), the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978, the illegalization of marital rape (although not illegalized in all states until 1993,and the legalization of no-fault divorce. In 1975 a law requiring the U.S. Military Academies to admit women was imposed. Supreme Court cases, perhaps most notably Reed v. Reed of 1971 and Roe v. Wade of 1973 made significant changes. However, the changing of social attitudes towards women is usually considered the greatest success of the women 's movement. (Rosenfeld, 1991)
By the early 1980s, it was believed that women had met their goals and succeeded in changing social attitudes towards gender roles. The women’s movement was responsible for repealing oppressive laws that were based on sex, integrating the "boys ' clubs" such as Military academies, the United States armed forces, NASA, single-sex colleges, men 's clubs, and the Supreme Court, and illegalizing gender discrimination. However, in 1982 adding the Equal Rights Amendment to the United States Constitution failed three states short of ratification.
In 1990 to the present the new women’s movement is involved in creating the same equal rights to all women no matter of color, sexual orientation or economic circumstances. NOW is still in force, they held the largest march on Washington D.C. ever in 2004. There were 1.4 million participants. It represented many issues that still are on the women’s agenda. Abortion, birth control, same sex marriages, and the wars in the Middle East are still important to the American women.

Conclusion The advertising phrase, “You have come a long way, baby”, only puts it mildly. Women had to fight for everything in their lives, from the right to work, getting an education, voting, deciding on birth control, and abortions.
History has given us what it called three waves of feminism. The first wave was in the 1800’s, which focused on establishing that women were human beings and not a man’s property. The second wave wanted equality for women financially, legally, socially and politically. The first two waves usually only included middle-class women. The third wave is now evolving to include women of all ethnicity, social background and sexual orientation. The third wave is now working to extend the movement to the third world countries.
The role of the feminist has changed over the course of many generations. The future of women movement will have to be seen. If the past is any indication of the future movement, the women of the world will greatly benefit. References
Gale. (2001). Women 's liberation movement. In In World of Sociology. doi:http:/wwscredoreferenc.com/entry/worldsocs/women 's liberation movement
Hall, E. J. (2003). The Myth of Postfeminism. In Gender and Society (Vol. 17, pp. 878-902). Sage Publications. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/3594675
Liggins, E. (2007). ' 'The Life of a Bachelor Girl in the Big City ' ': Selling the Single Lifestyle to Readers of Woman and the Young Woman in the 1890s. Victorian Periodicals Review 40(3), 216-238. The Johns Hopkins University Press. Retrieved April 10, 2013, from Project MUSE database.
Martin, G. (1914). The education of women and sex equality. In Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (Vol. 56, pp. 38-46). Sage Publication. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/1011976
Rosenfeld, R. (1991). The Contemporary. U.S. Women 's Movement: an empirical example of competition theory. In Sociological Forum (Vol. 6, pp. 471-500). Springer.
The women 's rights movement: a timeline of significant events. (March, 6 2009). The Post and Courier
The women 's movement revolution and reaction. In (2007). In Modern American Lives: Individuals and Issues in American History since 1945. Retrieved from http://www.credoreference.com/entry/sharpeamlives/the_women_s_movement_revolution_and_reaction
Women’s Movement. (2013). Retrieved from http://www.credoreference.com/topic/women_s_movement
Women. In (2011). in the American Economy; A Historical Encyclopidia. Retrieved from http://www.credoreference.com/entry/abcamerecon/women
Women 's movement:first wave suffrage. In (2003). In Propaganda and Mass Persuasion: A Historical Enclopedia, 15000 to the Present. Retrieved from http://www.credoreference.com/entry/abcprop/
Women 's Suffrage. (2010). In Encyclopedia of American Studies. Retrieved from http://www.credoreference.com/entry/jhueas/women_s_suffrage

Appendix
1848: Five women, including young housewife and mother Elizabeth Cady Stanton, are having tea when the conversation turns to the situation of women in America. Within a week, they organize a two-day convention in Seneca Falls, N.Y., to discuss women 's rights. There, participants sign a Declaration of Sentiments, which calls for equal treatment of women and men under the law and voting rights for women. The women 's rights movement has begun.

1851: Sojourner Truth, an abolitionist, women 's rights activist and former slave, delivers the famous "Ain 't I a Woman" speech at the Ohio Women 's Rights Convention.

1866: Congress passes the 14th Amendment granting all citizens the right to vote, but for the first time in the Constitution, "citizens" and "voters" are defined as "male."

1869: Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton form the National Woman Suffrage Association, while Lucy Stone (the first American woman to keep her maiden name after marriage) and others form the American Woman Suffrage Association. Wyoming, then a territory, passes the first women 's suffrage law in the country.

1913: Alice Paul and Lucy Burns form the Congressional Union to work toward a federal amendment that would give women the vote. The group later is renamed the National Women 's Party. Members picket the White House and in 1917 are arrested; some go on hunger strikes and are force-fed.

1916: Margaret Sanger opens the first birth control clinic in Brooklyn and within 10 days is arrested. She continues to fight to establish women 's right to control their own bodies and opens another clinic, with legal support, in 1923.

1920: The 19th Amendment is ratified, giving women the right to vote. Charlestonian Anita Pollitzer was instrumental in its passage.

1923: The Equal Rights Amendment, written by Alice Paul, first is presented to Congress.

1945: Millions of women lose their jobs when servicemen return from World War II, though surveys show 80 percent want to keep working.

1960: The Food and Drug Administration approves birth control pills.

1963: Congress passes the Equal Pay Act, promising equitable wages for the same work regardless of sex, race, religion or national origin.

1964: Title VII of the Civil Rights Act passes, prohibiting employment discrimination on the basis of sex, race, religion or national origin.

1965: In Griswold v. Connecticut, the Supreme Court overturns one of the last state laws prohibiting the prescription or use of contraceptives by married couples.
1972: In Eisenstadt v. Baird, the Supreme Court rules that the right to privacy includes an unmarried person 's right to use contraceptives.

Title IX of the Education Amendments bans sex discrimination in schools that receive federal support. The number of women in athletic programs and professional schools increases drastically.
The Equal Rights Amendment, which now reads, "Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex," is passed by Congress and sent to the states for ratification. The amendment dies in 1982 when it fails to achieve ratification by a minimum of 38 states.

1973: In Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, the Supreme Court declares that the Constitution protects women 's right to terminate an early pregnancy, thus making abortion legal.

1976: The first marital rape law passes in Nebraska, making it illegal for a husband to rape his wife.

1978: Congress passes the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, prohibiting employment discrimination against pregnant women.

1981: The Supreme Court rules that excluding women from the draft is constitutional. 1993: The Family and Medical Leave Act goes into effect, allowing female workers to take employment leave after giving birth.

1994: The Violence Against Women Act funds services for victims of rape and domestic violence, allows women to seek civil rights remedies for gender-related crimes, and provides training to increase police and court officials ' sensitivity and a national 24-hour hot line for battered women. The National Organization for Women called it "the greatest breakthrough in civil rights for women in nearly two decades."

1995: Shannon Faulkner is the first woman to attend The Citadel in its 152-year history. She sued the all-male, state-supported school and was admitted under court order. In 1996, the Supreme Court ruled that the all-male policy at the Virginia Military Institute, also a state-funded military college, was unconstitutional. After that, The Citadel 's board voted to open its doors to women, and four women enrolled in 1996.

2009: President Barack Obama signs the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act, which allows victims of pay discrimination to file a complaint with the government against their employer within 180 days of their last paycheck. Previously, victims were allowed only 180 days from the date of the first unfair paycheck. The act is named after a former employee of Goodyear, who was paid 15 percent-40 percent less than her male counterparts, who won 't benefit from the legislation. She said the reward is that the nation 's daughters and granddaughters will be better off. ("The women 's rights," March)

References: Gale. (2001). Women 's liberation movement. In In World of Sociology. doi:http:/wwscredoreferenc.com/entry/worldsocs/women 's liberation movement Hall, E Martin, G. (1914). The education of women and sex equality. In Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (Vol. 56, pp. 38-46). Sage Publication. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/1011976 Rosenfeld, R The women 's rights movement: a timeline of significant events. (March, 6 2009). The Post and Courier The women 's movement revolution and reaction Women’s Movement. (2013). Retrieved from http://www.credoreference.com/topic/women_s_movement Women Women 's movement:first wave suffrage. In (2003). In Propaganda and Mass Persuasion: A Historical Enclopedia, 15000 to the Present. Retrieved from http://www.credoreference.com/entry/abcprop/ Women 's Suffrage