Women's Freedom In The Progressive Era

Madam Roland famous remarks “O Liberty! Liberty! How many crimes are committed in thy name!” (Voice of Freedom 92) sums up the women struggle and their feminism movement. In the United States, women are fighting for their rights and freedom from more than two centuries. Women movements continued in Reconstruction Era, Gilded Age, Progressive Era and it is still going on right now. Women fought for right to vote, right for education, equal pay and equal rights as men, hold office, and right to work. Women are still fighting in the current time for crime against women, sexual harassment, equal pay and other feminist issues. In 1865, after the end of civil war, United States entered an era of Reconstruction. For the first time, the new born

It also witnessed suffering of working class, formation of unions to fight rights for working class. Women in this ear did not get right to vote but got economic freedom almost same as men. Women’s freedom changed at the end of Gilded Age and in the Progressive Era of 1920s. “The 1890s launched what would later be called the women era” (Give Me Liberty 676). In 1890s, Colorado and Idaho passed the law to extend voting right to women. Women’s were still fighting for their political rights but they were successful in getting liberty to work as men, economic independence and played a greater role in the public life. Almost all states gave women rights to own property, make separate wills and over their

Emma Goldman, an immigrant from Lithuania proclaimed, “I demand freedom for both sexes, freedom of action, freedom in love and freedom in motherhood” (713). A woman activists Margaret Sanger helped to place the birth control movement at the central on the feminism movement. She started clinic in 1916 to distribute contraceptive devices to poor working women. Some individual states started to change the law banning birth control. The Progressive ear witnessed several changes in the political system including election of senators directly by the vote instead of elected by state legislators and the constitution amendment enfranchising women. It witnessed the largest expansion of democracy in the United States history. Women’s movement became the central part of politics and they challenged the political and social barriers to exclude them as part of the Progressive government. After 1900, the woman suffrage campaign became a mass movement and moved to engage women from working class, unionists, and social activists. This group helped in broadened the movement of right to vote throughout the country. Wilson proclaimed, “Shall we admit them only to a partnership of suffering and toil and not to a partnership of privilege, and right?” (751). In 1920, women’s demand of getting the right to vote has ended with the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment barring states from using