Women in the Second Industrial Revolution The Second Industrial Revolution had a major impact on women's lives. After being controlled fro so long women were experiencing what it was like to live an independent life. In the late nineteenth century women were participating in a variety of experiences, such as social disabilities confronted by all women, new employment patterns, and working class poverty and prostitution. These experiences will show how women were perceived in the Second Industrial Revolution. Women were confronted by many social obligation in the late nineteenth century. Women were living lives that reflected their social rank. They were expected to be economically dependent and legally inferior. No matter what class women were in, men were seen as the ones who go to work and make the money. That way, the women would have to be dependent since they were not able to go to work and make a good salary. No matter what class a woman was in, she could own property in her own name. When a woman became married she " lost control of any property she owned, inherited, or earned" ( Kagan et al. 569). A woman's legal identity was given to her husband. Getting a divorce was very difficult, most nations would not even end a marriage by having legal consent. Court trials were expensive which made it hard for a women to afford. Even if a divorce was granted the women would not receive anything. The children, land, house, and all of her belongings would be given to the man. If the father choose he could take the children away from the mother at any time and give them to someone else to raise and care for. The illustration above represents the typical appearence of a woman during the re... ... middle of paper ... ...en started taking more of a stand on their beliefs. Women's movements started forming, which made it possible for women to get a higher education. Women became more intelligent and confident in their abilities to fight for more rights such as voting, higher pay in their jobs, and to be treated equally. Today women are the product of hard work and achievement and continue to gradually overcome their minority status. Works Cited 1. http://www.colby.edu/personal/rmscheck/GermanyB4.html 2. http://lcweb.loc.gov/exhibits/bnf/bnf0006.html 3. http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1873anthony.html 4. http://www.theblackswan.com/review/bits22.html 5. http://sol.slcc.edu/distance/inet/ecn274/women/education_1900.htm 6. Kagan, Donald et al. The Western Heritage Brief Edition. Prentice Hall, inc.1996. 7. Roberts, Nickie.Whores in History. Harper Collins, 1992.
To understand the significant change in the role of the women is to understand its roots. Traditionally, women in colonial America were limited in the roles they played or limited in their "spheres of influence." Women were once seen as only needed to bear children and care for them. Their only role was domestic; related to activities such as cooking and cleaning. A married woman shared her husband's status and often lived with his family. The woman was denied any legal control over her possession, land, money, or even her own children after a divorce. In a sense, she was the possession of her husband after marriage. She "... was a legal incompetent, as children, idiots, and criminals were under English law. As feme covert she was stripped of all property; once married, the clothes on her back, her personal possessions--whether valuable, mutable or merely sentimental--and even her body became her husband's, to direct, to manage, and to use. Once a child was born to the couple, her land, too, came under his control." (Berkin 14)
The literature of the nineteenth century cataloged the social, economical and political changes during its period. Through it many new concerns and ideologies were proposed and made their journeys through intellectual spheres that have endured and kept their relevance in our own period today. The literature, sometimes quite overtly, introduced the issues arising with the changes in society specifically due to the industrial revolution. In this mixture of new ideas was the question of women's labor and functions among this rapidly changing society. American authors as well as Victorian authors, like George Gissing and Mabel Wotton, explored these issues somewhat explicitly during this period. In America, Louisa May Alcott and Charlotte Perkins Gilman expressed these issues in short stories with strong implications of the dangers of unfulfilled or unsatisfying labor available to women.
One need only look as far as the literature of the 1890's to see that women's issues influenced the thinking of many intellectuals. The discourse of the period is obsessed with the proper roles for women, debate about suffrage, and considerations of what to do with all the "odd women" who couldn't find husbands. As early as 1860 census data indicated that more and more women were remaining single and unmarried (Showalter viii). In an essay written for The Edinburgh Review Harriet Martineau argued that because there were not enough husbands to go around, girls should be educated and trained to be self-supporting (Showalter ix). By the end of the century the numbers of unmarried women lacking economic support reached crisis proportions. This event, as much or more than any other, precipitated the feminist movement of the late nineteenth an...
In the early 19th century, America was experiencing an increase in economic, political, and social changes. One of the mass changes happened during the Market Revolution. What this revolution did for Americans that lived in a more rural environment was basically make things and traded them themselves. They would raise crops and animals to be traded or sold for food, clothing, etc. Factories in the North flourished and the US became more industrialized as people trade money for necessities or wants. The Market Revolution gave women the role of importance in their family life. Women became the new leading member of their family because they were the ones who kept the family together and raised the children and prepare them for adulthood in America. Although the Industrial Revolution brought positive changes to America it also shifted the lifestyles of people and their family.
For a very long time, men always had a higher status than women. In marriages during the beginning of the 1900s, men were dominant over their wives. They were the providers and the leaders of their families.(Bernstein, 2011) For women, their main goal in life was to get married to a man that could provide for them financially. Women did not attend college or have careers, so having a man asking for their hand in marriage was a need and a privilege. Originally, marriage contracts stated that any property that the woman owned automatically became his once they were married. (Bernstein, 2011) Even though marriage contracts were changed so that women could own their own property and they gained the right to vote in 1920, women were still looked down upon. (Bernstein, 2011) Until the 1980s, rape within marriages was legal because technically it was the wife’s job to have sex with her husband. (Bernstein, 2011) Women literally only seen as something for men to marry so they had someone provide them with children and to take care of them
A huge part of the economical grow of the United States was the wealth being produced by the factories in New England. Women up until the factories started booming were seen as the child-bearer and were not allowed to have any kind of career. They were valued for factories because of their ability to do intricate work requiring dexterity and nimble fingers. "The Industrial Revolution has on the whole proved beneficial to women. It has resulted in greater leisure for women in the home and has relieved them from the drudgery and monotony that characterized much of the hand labour previously performed in connection with industrial work under the domestic system. For the woman workers outside the home it has resulted in better conditions, a greater variety of openings and an improved status" (Ivy Pinchbeck, Women Workers and the Industrial Revolution, 1750-1850, pg.4) The women could now make their own money and they didn’t have to live completely off their husbands. This allowed women to start thinking more freely and become a little bit more independent.
1. More women went to work outside the home, women gained the right to sit in parliament, more
Industrialization had a major impact on the lives of every American, including women. Before the era of industrialization, around the 1790's, a typical home scene depicted women carding and spinning while the man in the family weaves (Doc F). One statistic shows that men dominated women in the factory work, while women took over teaching and domestic services (Doc G). This information all relates to the changes in women because they were being discriminated against and given children's work while the men worked in factories all day. Women wanted to be given an equal chance, just as the men had been given.
As women started working, patriarchal control of the family was upset (Faragher 400). Women were now bringing in income just like the men were and to them this was empowering. They now longer depended on a man to survive. Now that women were working many also wanted an education beyond high school. Women started going to college and with a better education were able to further increase the interest of the women 's rights movements (Knight 361). Despite these advances women still were not close to gaining equality to their male counterparts. However they did gain more control of the family’s well being.
Through World War II woman took the jobs of men in the military, in 1919 woman got the right to vote, in 1900 woman got their to participate in their first Olympic Games. As time progresses women rights blossom. Title IX has helped this movement grow.
In the 19th century, women were expected to have certain roles to fit into and create a “normal” society. In the beginning of the 19th century, women did not have the same freedom that they do today.
Before the 1890s, females had no other options but to live with their parents before marriage and with their husband after marriage. They couldn’t work and if they did their wage was way lower than men. Today many women chose their own lifestyle and have more freedom. They can chose if they want to get married and have kids or not. Coontz said “what 's new is not that women make half their families living but that for the first time they have substantial control over their own income, along with the social freedom to remain single or to leave an unsatisfactory marriage” (98). When women couldn’t work, they had no options but to stay with their husband for financial support. Working is a new way of freedom because they can choose to stay or leave their husband and make their own decisions. It’s not like women couldn’t work before, they could but they didn’t have too much social freedom like to get divorce or not have children. Their voice wasn’t as important as men. Most of the time men had to decide everything in the family and had control over the family. Coontz believe that today women have more control over their own life and they can choose however they want to live their life. Kuttner also agree that “most Americans, after all, believe women should not be consigned to the nursery and the kitchen” (122). Women used to be the mother who
In the 1800s divorces were frowned upon and everything was given to the males. In the Declaration of Sentiments, Stanton enumerated specific complaints concerning the oppressed status of women in American society: their inability to vote; exclusion from higher education and professional careers; subordination to male authority in both church and state; and legal victimization in terms of wages, property rights, and divorce (Driscoll 1).... ... middle of paper ... ...
Social conventions of the 1800's did not allow women of the middle class to live independently. With few exceptions women moved from father's household to husband's household. It was the father's prerogative to arrange a suitable marriage. In truth there might be a carefully selected few to choose from, but any unauthorized selection would hold severe consequences for both men and women.
Throughout the early 1800s, British women most often were relegated to a subordinate role in society by their institutionalized obligations, laws, and the more powerfully entrenched males. In that time, a young woman’s role was close to a life of servitude and slavery. Women were often controlled by the men in their lives, whether it was a father, brother or the eventual husband. Marriage during this time was often a gamble; one could either be in it for the right reasons, such as love, or for the wrong reasons, such as advancing social status. In 19th century Britain, laws were enacted to further suppress women and reflected the societal belief that women were supposed to do two things: marry and have children.