The History Of Feminism

On August 26, 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment were signed into the Constitution, there granting women the rights to vote. In conclusion, the Women’s Right Movement was a success event in the American history. The changes of the r ights to vote for women did not occur with just one request in a day, instead it took women suffragist 144 years to ratify the federal woman suffrage amendment. The women suffragists faced many challenges and obstacles, but their determination has won the fight. Although, today the rights for women to vote is not that important, it was once the famous and revolutionary event in the American history.

Feminism is the advocacy for women’s rights based on the social, political, and economic inequality of the sexes and genders. The movement dates back to the 1830s in the United States. It has developed through the years to be something much bigger than what it intended to be. What started out as a fight for living wages and safer working conditions for women, transformed into a movement fighting for women’s suffrage. From there, so much blossomed it was more than just equality for the sexes.

In 1961, President John F. Kennedy appointed former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt as chair of the Commission on the Status of Women. After extensive research, the commission filed their results in the Peterson Report, confirming that women were being highly discriminated in the workplace. In 1963, Betty Friedan, a journalist and women’s rights activist, published The Feminine Mystique, which focused on the hopelessness of most housewives who longed for more in life. After these publications, women began to regain their motivation to fight for equality, sparking the Women’s Liberation Movement. They sought to end gender discrimination and achieve e... ... middle of paper ... ...works, 2014, (6 May 2014).

Women’s Rights in the United States The Women’s Suffrage Movement was successful in that it achieved its original goal of earning voting rights for women. This movement officially began in the United States in 1848 at the first women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York. They drafted 12 resolutions calling for voting rights for women and overall equal treatment of women. This historic conference created a primary goal of obtaining voting rights for women. The first national women’s rights convention was held two years later in 1850 in Worcester, Massachusetts.

Women have slowly but surely broken the barriers and glass ceilings setup to keep them down. The idea that women are not as strong mentally and physically was replaced with the idea that women might even be stronger in some instances. The feminist movement has been a movement of evolution, but still seems to be a movement that faces stigma, fear and opposition though the message is not lost. “ Simply put, feminism is a political philosophy and practice centering on the concerns of women and opposing gender inequality”(Feminism). The feminist movement began in1848 in Seneca Falls, New York when the idea was purposed that women deserved equal treatment as men and the right to vote.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal.” (Elizabeth, 1815). The 19th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States gave women a right to vote as well as men. The movement to give the right to vote for women through the 19th Amendment was a Suffrage movement. The Suffrage movement had continued since the Civil War, but the 13th, 14th and 15th amendment (it is related to the right to citizen) did not cover the right to vote for women. The 19th Amendment and the Suffrage movement have changed the lives of women in society.

In 1848, Stanton along with some other females organized the Seneca Falls Convention, where they put together a declaration that in a way resembled the Declaration of Independence. Today many historians believe that this declaration that they drafted was a great turning point for women's rights. And they were right indeed seeing that this convention would soon lead to women gradually gaining rights so that they would eventually be equal to the rights of a male. Today it is still debated whether women are still discriminated against. I believe in some unfortunate cases this is true, but for the most part women have gained equal rights to males.

Although the two movements hoped to achieve different things and used different tactics, they still came together to gain women’s rights and have achieved more than anyone would have ever anticipated. Works Cited http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-wave_feminism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-wave_feminism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Womens_Rights_%28other_than_voting%29

Suffrage is the right or exercise of the right to vote. Suffrage has been viewed as a right, a privilege, or even a duty. Suffrage was first proposed as a federal amendment in 1868, women 's suffrage struggled for many years before the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment gave women the right to vote in 1920. The demand for liberation of american women was first formed in 1848 at seneca falls after the civil war. In 1869 Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton formed the National woman suffrage association to work for the movement on the federal level and to press for a more drastic institutional changes.

Gordon, A. D. (1998). The new U.S. women's suffrage history. NWSA Journal, 10(3), 202-207. Hewitt, N. (2001). Re-rooting American women’s activism: Global perspectives on 1848.