Introduction +thesis
Women’s Rights was one of the major social changes that began to gain attention in the media and to peak in active activity during the twentieth century. Women’s rights had been in the making since the eighteenth century. Some of the earliest documented words for Women’s rights appeared in a letter to John Adams by his wife Abigail Adams. During the making of the United States constitution (from the eighteenth to nineteenth century), she wrote to her husband and asked him to “remember the ladies”. The first state to permit women to vote in the United States (before the nineteenth amendment was drafted) was New Jersey. However, there were restrictions upon who was eligible to vote. Some of these restrictions included being a widow, being wealthy (owning property) and they had to be over the age of thirty.
In complete contrast to this early beginnings of women’s rights in the United States, Great Britain would take about another two centuries for women to begin gaining some legal rights. Before the turn of the nineteenth century into the twentieth century, there had been slow progress towards the enfranchisement of women. Some of these rights came into existence for very different reasons. Most of them had to do with the way that women were treated in the home and dealing with domestic issues during the Victorian age (1837-1901). Women were not permitted to seek a legal divorce from their husbands on any basis. However when their husbands gave them the divorce, they would lose their children, their familial wealth and any property that they owned. In many cases, husband and wife would often separate in lieu of getting a divorce because it was considered scandalous in society’s eyes to divorce your spouse. W...
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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)
In the 1840’s, most of American women were beginning to become agitated by the morals and values that were expected of womanhood. “Historians have named this the ’Cult of True Womanhood’: that is, the idea that the only ‘true’ woman was a pious, submissive wife and mother concerned exclusively with home and family” (History.com). Voting was only the right of men, but women were on the brink to let their voices be heard. Women pioneers such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott wrote eleven resolutions in The Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments; this historical document demanded abolishment of any laws that authorized unequal treatment of women and to allow for passage of a suffrage amendment.
Shaw, Susan M., and Janet Lee. Women's voices, feminist visions: classic and contemporary readings. 4th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2010. Print.
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After the success of antislavery movement in the early nineteenth century, activist women in the United States took another step toward claiming themselves a voice in politics. They were known as the suffragists. It took those women a lot of efforts and some decades to seek for the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment. In her essay “The Next Generation of Suffragists: Harriot Stanton Blatch and Grassroots Politics,” Ellen Carol Dubois notes some hardships American suffragists faced in order to achieve the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. Along with that essay, the film Iron-Jawed Angels somehow helps to paint a vivid image of the obstacles in the fight for women’s suffrage. In the essay “Gender at Work: The Sexual Division of Labor during World War II,” Ruth Milkman highlights the segregation between men and women at works during wartime some decades after the success of women suffrage movement. Similarly, women in the Glamour Girls of 1943 were segregated by men that they could only do the jobs temporarily and would not able to go back to work once the war over. In other words, many American women did help to claim themselves a voice by voting and giving hands in World War II but they were not fully great enough to change the public eyes about women.
Women’s suffrage was an emotionally brutal fight that lead to tremendous triumphs in order to receive their freedom. Most women believed they deserved the equal rights as men do, but men tried to terminate their beliefs, although they eventually failed. Macleod expresses the women's rights movement through a video with symbols that pertain to their physical appearance, actions and the increase and decrease of the lighting with the message of how women finally gained the rights they
In August 18, 1920, the U.S. Constitution Granted U.S. women a right. That was the right of vote. In American history women had no right to vote or be part of government. They were born to be at home and do the house choir and motherhood. They had no right to educate or go out, thus the 19th amendment was approved that gave the women the right to vote (Matthew, 2017). Having the right of votes for women was not easy. It was given to them after years of fighting and struggling, after fighting and protesting so long for their rights they were finally victorious. Women in America were finally given their rights. One of the most important freedom given to women in 19th amendment is their rights. This essay will investigate how women were given the right to be equality, the right to vote and be part of government, and also, how this amendment affected the lives of women.
Throughout history, as women struggled to gain equality with men, these suffragettes were often ostracized and not accepted by society. In today’s world we find the basic rights which these women were fighting for fair, and the thought that someone would have opposed a woman’s right to vote seems ridiculous. Our society likes to feel that we are less rigid and very open-minded, but is there a type of equality, which we are still not prepared to accept? The two science fiction novels, He, She, and It by Marge Piercy, and The Ship Who Sang by Anne McCaffrey both make strong predictions about the technology, government, and social aspects of the future. Piercy and McCaffrey also express similar feminist views through the characters of Nili and Helva. Although they come from completely different hypothetical universes, these women are able to accomplish amazing feats without falling into a label, and are completely comfortable and proud of who they are. Helva and Nili exemplify feminists who use their strength and confidence with themselves, their constantly mutating attitudes and personalities, and their unique relationships with others to make incredible changes in their worlds.
“Honey, you’re not a person, now get back in the kitchen and make me a sandwich!” If a husband were to say these words to his wife today, he would likely receive a well-deserved smack to the face. It is not until recently that Canadian women have received their status as people and obtained equal rights as men. Women were excluded from an academic education and received a lesser pay than their male counter parts. With the many hardships women had to face, women were considered the “slave of slaves” (Women’s Rights). In the past century, women have fought for their rights, transitioning women from the point of being a piece of property to “holding twenty-five percent of senior positions in Canada” (More women in top senior positions: Report). The Married Women’s Property Act, World War I, The Person’s Case, and Canadian Human Rights Act have gained Canadian women their rights.
The right to vote went to the land holding male of the family, all-though in many instances women were capable of swaying their husband’s opinions. Women were not the furthest from liberty, though they were still subject to man’s will. “As factories began to do many of the things women had done at home previously, such as spinning and weaving, women were left with a little time to devote to other projects.” Other projects, including: education, protection of women and later women’s suffrage. Laws did not protect women from their husband’s the way they act today; when a woman married, she lost control of her rights, under coverture: “that is, the very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended during the marriage, or at least is incorporated and consolidated into that of the husband: under whose wing… she performs everything.” Safeguards did exist, that kept men from treating women outside of their station, however women had no protection, financially, from their husband’s poor decisions. Unmarried women were starting to become a common occurrence in the years leading up to the civil war. “They had the legal right to live where they pleased, and
The nineteenth century encountered some of most revolutionary movements in the history of our nation, and of the world – the movements to abolish slavery and the movement for women’s rights. Many women participated alongside men in the movement to abolish slavery, and “their experience inspired feminist social reformers to seek equality with men” (Bentley, Ziegler, and Streets-Salter 2015, pg. 654). Their involvement in the abolition movement revealed that women suffered many of the same legal disadvantages as slaves, most noticeably their inability to access the right to vote. Up until this time, women had little success in mobilizing their efforts to gain the right to vote. However, the start of the women’s rights movement in the mid-1800s, involving leaders such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, paved the path for the expansion of women’s rights into the modern century.
...en endured throughout the Realist literary period. This oppression has evolved into strong female business figures. Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” shows the perceived inequality and inferiority of women throughout this era. This lies in contrast with strong, powerful female officials, such as Supreme Court Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. Chopin’s The Awakening illustrates a literary attempt at women’s activism. Women’s activism is still present today, and is seen in the recent happenings at the Plymouth High School baseball and softball fields. Women have evolved past their positions as domestic keepers that were subordinate to men to active, equal members of society. Feminist literature has aided this evolution over the year. Women have overcome oppression through activism and garnered more rights since the termination of the Realist literary era.
The entire Women’s Movement in the United States has been quite extensive. It can be traced back to 1848, when the first women’s rights convention was held in Seneca Falls, New York. After two days of discussions, 100 men and women signed the Declaration of Sentiments. Drafted by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, this document called for equal treatment of women and men under the law and voting rights for women. This gathering set the agenda for the rest of the Women’s Movement long ago (Imbornoni). Over the next 100 years, many women played a part in supporting equal treatment for women, most notably leading to the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, which allowed women the right to vote.
Shaw, Susan M., and Janet Lee. Women's Voices, Feminist Visions: Classic and Contemporary Readings. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2012. Print.
In the analysis of the issue in question, I have considered Mary Wollstonecraft’s Text, Vindication of the Rights of Woman. As an equivocal for liberties for humanity, Wollstonecraft was a feminist who championed for women rights of her time. Having witnessed devastating results or men’s improvidence, Wollstonecraft embraced an independent life, educated herself, and ultimately earned a living as a writer, teacher, and governess. In her book, “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman,” she created a scandal perhaps to her unconventional lifestyle. The book is a manifesto of women rights arguing passionately for educating women. Sensualist and tyrants appear right in their endeavor to hold women in darkness to serve as slaves and their plaything. Anyone with a keen interest in women rights movement will surely welcome her inexpensive edition, a landmark documen...