The 1960s were years spent in war, both in actual combat overseas and in a fight for equal rights on the home front. Particularly for women, the battle for equal rights was an exhausting struggle that generated success, but not the desired amount. This was due to the numerous obstacles and prejudices women faced along the way, set back by men and society’s unjust standards for women. In The Girl I Left Behind, Judith Nies observes the difficulties women encountered in the educational system and political field, detailing how the disregard for women hindered their opportunities for success and forced them to accept a compromised lifestyle instead of gender equality.
Negligence for educational equality between men and women limited the potential
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She was even angrier that school officials had so little imagination that they didn’t question why the administration was all male.” Clarissa, Nies’ imaginary embodiment of her inner angered feminist, projects all of Nies’ discontent with sexism in the educational system. Given Nies’ position as a student during Clarissa’s creation, Clarissa expresses Nies’ frustration with America’s inability to offer equal education for men and women. This inequality includes differences in treatment, opportunities, positions, and placements, where men were given access to much more than women ever were. Even when in the same situation as women, men received the better option and security than women could imagine having. This unjust treatment is later summed up by Nies simply, “The point here is that education was not a boundary; prejudice was.” Whether or not women pursued higher education, it was not their education level holding them back from receiving better jobs and careers. It was prejudice that offered more opportunities to men than to women, prejudice that kept women back from success, …show more content…
Despite how involved women were in politics, their presence remained publicly unappreciated. Nies writes, “Women were still not considered an important part of national politics as either voters or activists. Women were important as supporters—organizers, volunteers, and canvassers for political campaigns—but they were not considered an organized political force with defined interests.” Women played a big part in political campaigns, yet they were not recognized outside “behind the scenes.” Their help and work benefitted politics greatly but was not acknowledged, granting them even less acknowledgement when participating as activists and voters, two examples of more public political stances. Once public, women’s political participation was not taken seriously for women were not thought of as having defined opinions. This weakened women’s voices in politics even more because their stances were never seriously recognized, limiting their ability to progress their rights and make a change. Another reason women’s political voices were weak is that women were expected to be politically silent, “Women were not supposed to have a voice. Women weren’t full human beings except as wives and mothers and secretaries and decoration. We were there to serve. We were always ‘girls’ in the same way African American men were ‘boys,’ regardless of age. The realities of sex discrimination
Today, women and men have equal rights, however not long ago men believed women were lower than them. During the late eighteenth century, men expected women to stay at home and raise children. Women were given very few opportunities to expand their education past high school because colleges and universities would not accept females. This was a loss for women everywhere because it took away positions of power for them. It was even frowned upon if a woman showed interest in medicine or law because that was a man 's place not a woman’s, just like it was a man 's duty to vote and not a woman 's. The road to women 's right was long and hard, but many women helped push the right to vote, the one that was at the front of that group was Susan B. Anthony.
In one section of “Men and Women’s Studies: Premises, Perils, and Promise,” Michael Kimmel discusses how men have helped women to gain equal rights within the educational system (Kimmel, 26). He explains that as pro-feminists, men who made efforts to understand feminism and support women, as well as implement equal rights for women, realized the importance of women’s education (Kimmel, 26). According to his essay, many American men, as well as women, helped to create an educational system for women, which was seen as a “revolt” against inequality and the subordination of women (Kimmel, 26-27). Kimmel argues that pro-feminists tried to provide an opportunity for every woman to study; one such example is Henry Durant, an American pro-feminism activist, who established Wellesley College for
During America's early history, women were denied some of the rights to well-being by men. For example, married women couldn't own property and had no legal claim to any money that they might earn, and women hadn't the right to vote. They were expected to focus on housework and motherhood, and didn't have to join politics. On the contrary, they didn't have to be interested in them. Then, in order to ratify this amendment they were prompted to a long and hard fight; victory took decades of agitation and protest. Beginning in the 19th century, some generations of women's suffrage supporters lobbied to achieve what a lot of Americans needed: a radical change of the Constitution. The movement for women's rights began to organize after 1848 at the national level. In July of that year, reformers Elizabeth Cady Stanton(1815-1902) and Lucretia Mott (1793-1880), along with Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906) and other activists organized the first convention for women's rights at Seneca Falls, New York. More than 300 people, mostly women but also some men, attended it. Then, they raised public awar...
Whether it is the Ancient Greece, Han China, the Enlightened Europe, or today, women have unceasingly been oppressed and regarded as the second sex. Provided that they have interminably been denied the power that men have had, very few prominent female figures like Cleopatra, the Egyptian Queen, or Jeanne d'Arc, the French heroine, have made it to history books. Veritably, it was not until 1792 when Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Women addressed the issues of gender equality, that some started hearkening the seemingly endless mistreatment of women. New Zealand was the first country to grant women the right to vote in 1892. The United States did not endorse this until 1920 when the 19th Amendment was ratified, which states “The right of citizens of the United States votes shall not be denied or abridged… on account of sex.” This, however, was not the end to women’s plight. For the majority of the 20th century, America’s idea of a good woman was a good mother and a good wife. In the 1960s and 1970s, a movement that would later bring fundamental changes to the American society was spreading rapidly throughout the country: The Women’s Liberation Movement. With the increasing number of educated women, gender inequality received more attention than ever before. Hundreds of women came together to fight domestic violence, lack of political and economic development, and reproductive restrictions. One of these women was an ordinary girl from Ohio named Gloria Steinem who would later become a feminist icon in the United States. Steinem contributed to the Women’s Liberation Movement by writing about feminism and issues concerning women, co-founding Ms. magazine, giving influential speeches— leading he movement along with...
The Eventual Success of Women's Suffrage Rhetoric In One Half the People and Women and the American Experience, we learn that women were outraged upon finding that the 15th amendment constitutionally enfranchised men of every race and ethnicity, but still excluded women. According to Susan B. Anthony, one-time president of the National Woman’s Suffrage Association, this occurrence brought women “to the lowest depths of political degradation” (Woloch 329). Women quickly realized that the governing body of white men would more quickly give freedom to uneducated and poor foreigners than to their own mothers and wives, whom were steadily beginning to make financial contributions at home, as a result of industrialization. The analysis, herein, is meant to illustrate how the frequent lack of unity in the rhetoric of the various women’s suffrage organizations postponed and often stifled women’s attainment of full constitutional enfranchisement, but eventually forced the government to give into the women’s plight. Women like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Stanton, of the NWSA, preached that “women must lead the way to their own enfranchisement and work out her own salvation” (Woloch 330).
Women understood that the only way they could genuinely make a difference in legislation was to commence running for office themselves. “Chisholm additionally ran president and carried delegates in the Democratic National Convention”. Though after the kineticism commenced an abundance of woman commenced running for office. Some of these women were the first of their ethnicity to be in office as women. Patsy Mink was elected into office in 1965 as the first Asian women and Shirley Chisholm in 1969 became the first African American women in office. This alone was immensely colossal progress in legislation for women. To further amend legislation and get more women into office the National Women’s Political Caucus. “National Women’s Political
Throughout history, women have always fought to gain equal political rights, but conventional roles kept women from getting enough political representation. Many suffrage groups founded by women challenged the conventional roles of women during 1840 to 1968 with the dream of obtaining equal political representation. In 1919, the nineteenth amendment, drafted by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton was passed. The 19th amendment has been desired by many women for years. Although the 19th amendment passed and women thought that they were able to be equal in politics, many women did not get equal political representation due to their conventional roles at the time period. Women were not able to achieve high roles in politics, shown through the fact that there has never been a woman president in the history of the United States. The presidency of women did not occur due to the perceptions that generally, women should be protected and hidden, not out in the open and leadin...
A common belief at the time was that women did not have the same intellectual aptitude as men (Murray 176). Murray sets out to disprove the belief through the image of children; “Will it be said that the judgment of a male of two years old, is more sage than that of a female’s of the same age? I believe the reverse is generally observed to be true” (Murray 178). Murray makes her point. In general young children have the same intellectual level, regardless of gender. Therefore, why later in life are adult men smarter than adult women? Does age and time change aptitude and gifted ability? Continuing with her line of reasoning, Murray proposes that women are not as smart as men because they are not receiving an education; “Are we deficient in reason? We can only reason from what know, and if the opportunity of acquiring knowledge has been denied us, the inferiority of our sex cannot fairly be deduced from thence” (Murray 177-178). Murray suggests that an accurate scaling of mental prowess cannot be deduced because men and women do not have the same educational level; the very reason that women are being denied and education in the first place. Women’s education has become a paradox. Women cannot receive an education because they are not smart enough, but they are not smart enough because they are denied an education. Murray, having now established that women should have an education, then sets out to explain its
Sixty- nine years after the Declaration of Independence, one group of women gathered together and formed the Seneca Falls Convention. Prior and subsequent to the convention, women were not allowed to vote because they were not considered equal to men. During the convention, Elizabeth Cady Stanton delivered the “Declaration of Sentiments.” It intentionally resembles the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men and women are created equal…” (Stanton, 466). She replaced the “men” with “men and women” to represent that women and men should be treated equally. Stanton and the other women in the convention tried to fight for voting rights. Dismally, when the Equal Rights Amendment was introduced to the Congress, the act failed to be passed. Even though women voiced their opinions out and urged for justice, they could not get 2/3 of the states to agree to pass the amendment. Women wanted to tackle on the voting inequalities, but was resulted with more inequalities because people failed to listen to them. One reason why women did not achieve their goals was because the image of the traditional roles of women was difficult to break through. During this time period, many people believed that women should remain as traditional housewives.
Women throughout the suffrage act were faced with many challenges that eventually led into the leading roles of women in the world today. Suffrage leaders adopted new arguments to gain new support. Rather than insisting on the justice of women’s suffrage, or emphasizing equal rights, they spoke of the special moral and material instincts women could bring to the table. Because of these women taking leaps and boundaries, they are now a large part of America’s government, and how our country operates.
The underrepresentation of female’s interests and values is a global phenomenon as there is no country where women are equally represented on all levels of government. Since most women in the Western World gained the right to vote, there is no area of human life or development sector which is immune from the impact of inequitable gender relations. The central thesis of this paper is that women’s underrepresentation in elected office creates serious problems. This paper begins by analysing the key barriers of women to get into politics, especially into leading positions. It will then go on to the argument that women have special interests and needs, and that male politicians cannot represent those concerns adequately. Additionally, this paper describes further problems in today’s political world, such as women’s identification with
Before the 1920s men and women were thought to have two separate roles in life. People believed women should be concerned with their children, home, and religion, while men took care of business and politics. In 1920 there were significant changes for women in politics, the home, and the workplace. When the 19th amendment passed it gave women the right to vote. “Though slowly to use their newly won voting rights, by the end of the decade women were represented local, state, and national political committees and were influencing the political agenda of the federal government.” Now a days it’s normal for women to be involved in politics and it’s normal for women to vote. Another drastic change
It was these progressive moments in history that began to establish women’s role in society. Even though women were now able to attend these male institutions and earn advanced degrees, in many states women could still not vote. At this point in time people viewed women as unsuitable for the public
The right for women to be educated has been long sought after. The history of women education started the beginning of feminism. Education, over the last two hundred years, has changed women lives in America according to Barbara M. Solomon. In the early years of American history women were discouraged from getting a higher education it would be considered unnatural for women to be educated, and women were only taught domestic skills such as sewing, cooking and child-rearing. American women began to seek opportunities for further education, as well as equal rights. The history of women’s education has evolved through events that have shaped the culture of America today. To better understand the women’s education movement, it is important to know the background of its history.
In the 1960s the civil rights movement inspired a new women’s movement, and women began to speak out for fair treatment at school and in the work place. Before these movement girls were warned about math classes being too difficult and were told that a college or a graduate degree was a waste of time. Boys were encouraged to study math and science to ready them for careers. Girls were supposed to be good in English and prepare to become wives and mothers. (Blumenthal 1) Past Generations that grew up with the development of education would now wonder why the genders would want to be separate when once they fought to be together.