"Just do it", "Our time is now", "Impossible is nothing"; these modern motivational sports messages adopted by companies such as Nike and Adidas were originally backed by the women suffragists whose goals were to increase the effectiveness of women in the cause of good government. The historical context and sacrifices these women made are often overlooked, and the only date remembered is August 26th, 1920: the passing of the nineteenth amendment. In educational settings teachers present information about wars and the passing of importance legislation, however there remains prominent gaps in our understanding of women suffrage for equality--"a war that had been going on for half a century". Jennifer Friedes's story "Iron Jawed Angels" produced by Katja von Garnier, underscores the struggle and grief that women suffragists endured, along with providing the viewer with an in-depth understanding of the events, consequences and heroic actions of the activists of the 1920s women's suffragist movement.
The story of Alice Paul and Lucy Barnes, two young Quaker activists appeals to the audience: mothers, daughters, sisters and those that share their lives with females or are women in today's society. Reading short passages and listening to lectures about the suffrage of women doesn't register with humanity, often individuals dismiss it as something that one always reads and hears about, but that remains part of a completely different world. Garnier's integration of detailed mundane characteristics and the realistic depictions of the acts of violence and discrimination force the reader to consider the possibilities of living in a society parallel to that of the 1920s. The emotional intensity surrounding Miss Paul's belief "Give me libert...
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...s have broadened women's roles, most importantly giving women a voice to take control of their lives. The movement has reinforced the concepts: "Impossible is Nothing", "Our Time is Now" and "Just Do It": that stretch across billboards, shoe boxes and sporting event flyers; however they aren't just advertisement slogans, they embody the suffrage of women activists and the obstacles that they overcame with the upmost amounts of tenacity. In addition they exhibit the vast amount of people, places, and events that the women's right movement influenced including me as I take responsibility through voting and activism to establish my place in society as a Republican women of the twenty-first century.
Works Cited
Brink, André. A Dry White Season. First Perennial ed. New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2006. Print
Iron Jawed Angels. Dir. Katja von Garnier. HBO Films, 2004. DVD
Anne Hutchinson's efforts, according to some viewpoints, may have been a failure, but they revealed in unmistakable manner the emotional starvation of Puritan womanhood. Women, saddened by their hardships, depressed by their religion, denied an open love for beauty...flocked with eagerness to hear this feminine radical...a very little listening seems to have convinced them that this woman understood the female heart far better than did John Cotton of any other male pastor of the settlements. (C. Holliday, pps. 45-46.)
The title character of Catharine Maria Sedgewick’s novel, Hope Leslie, defies the standards to which women of the era were to adhere. Sedgewick’s novel is set in New England during the 17th century after the Puritans had broken away from the Church of England. Hope Leslie lives in a repressive Puritan society in which women behave passively, submit to the males around them, and live by the Bible. They allow the men of their family to make decisions for them and rarely, if ever, convey an opinion that differs from the status quo. However, Hope Leslie does not conform to the expected behavior of women during that time, behavior that only further expressed the supposed superiority of males. Hope portrays behaviors and attitudes common in a woman today. Hope is capable of thinking for herself, is courageous, independent, and aggressive. Sir Philip Gardner describes Hope as having “a generous rashness, a thoughtless impetuosity, a fearlessness of the… dictators that surround her, and a noble contempt of fear” (211). In comparison to Esther Downing, Hope is the antithesis of what a young Puritan woman should be, and in turn, Hope gains a great deal of respect from the readers of the novel through her “unacceptable” behavior.
I have read Kathryn Kish Sklar book, brief History with documents of "Women's Rights Emerges within the Antislavery Movement, 1830-1870" with great interest and I have learned a lot. I share her fascination with the contours of nineteenth century women's rights movements, and their search for meaningful lessons we can draw from the past about American political culture today. I find their categories of so compelling, that when reading them, I frequently lost focus about women's rights movements history and became absorbed in their accounts of civic life.
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...
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.
Jeffrey, Julie Roy. The great silent army of abolitionism: ordinary women in the antislavery movement. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998.
In conclusion, the Women’s Right Movement was a success event in the American history. The changes of the r
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.
Whereas the women’s suffrage movements focused mainly on overturning legal obstacles to equality, the feminist movements successfully addressed a broad range of other feminist issues. The first dealt primarily with voting rights and the latter dealt with inequalities such as equal pay and reproductive rights. Both movements made vast gains to the social and legal status of women. One reached its goals while the other continues to fight for women’s rights.
Catharine Sedgwick’s novel, A New-England Tale, tells the story of an orphan, Jane Elton, who “fights to preserve her honesty and her dignity in a household where religion is much talked about but little practiced” (Back Cover). The story take place in the 1820s, a time when many children were suffering in silence due to the fact that there was really no way to get people to understand exactly how bad things were for them. The only way anyone could ever really get a true understanding of the lives of the children in these households would be by knowing what took place in their homes. Outside of the home these women seemed perfectly normal and there was not reason to suspect any crookedness. The author herself was raised by a woman of Calvinist religion and realized how unjust things were for her and how her upbringing had ultimately play at role on her outcome. Sedgwick uses her novel, A New-England Tale to express to her readers how dreadful life was being raised by women of Calvinist religion and it’s affect by depicting their customary domestic life. She takes her readers on an in deep journey through what a typical household in the 1820s would be like providing them with vivid descriptions and reenactments of the domestic life during this period.
Through the use of messages such as public conventions, speeches, literary pieces, published works, unions, groups, and memorabilia, the suffrage movement’s goal of achieving equal voting rights for women to be the same as men can be credited as providing the stomping grounds for women to seek a stronger hand in society and to the evolution of women’s rights to include equal freedoms to men in arenas such as education, the work force, and military involvement.
Reaction Paper 1: Iron Jawed Angels “Courage in women is often mistaken for insanity” (von Garnier, 2004, part 10) and that is exactly what courage was viewed as when the women’s suffrage movement erupted in the mid 1800’s and it was quite the uphill battle from there. Iron Jawed Angels captures the height of the women’s suffrage movement with Alice Paul, a liberal feminist, as the front woman in the battle against Congress. Paul’s determination to pass a constitutional amendment can be seen through her dauntless efforts to go against the societal norms of the time to fight for women’s rights. Through the first wave of the women’s suffrage movement seen in Iron Jawed Angels, the struggles women endured for equality have a lasting impact on American society.
Beginning in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, women began to vocalize their opinions and desires for the right to vote. The Women’s Suffrage movement paved the way for the nineteenth Amendment in the United States Constitution that allowed women to have that right. The Women’s Suffrage movement started a movement for equal rights for women that has continued to propel equal opportunities for women throughout the country. The Women’s Liberation Movement has sparked better opportunities, demanded respect and pioneered the path for women entering the workforce that was started by the right to vote and given momentum in the late 1950s. The focus of The Women’s Liberation Movement was idealized off The Civil Rights Movement; it was founded on the elimination of discriminatory practices and sexist attitudes (Freeman, 1995).
...rkforce, balancing their social life and the right to own property. Without the 19th amendment being enacted, granting women to vote, they would not have any influence in political decisions today. The choice to hold political seats is now their right. A recent example can be seen through Hillary Clinton, who was a candidate for a presidential election in 2008. Women are now on a path to seek advanced degrees in comparison to the past. They are also holding higher positions within the workforce. There has been an incline in women working within various fields. Today a woman can choose to be an athlete, astronaut, surgeon, engineer, scientist, or any other career field of her choice. Women are now contributing income within the family household. The course for feminism is now in an endless path, moving quickly in the direction to obtain equality for all.
In 1848, in Seneca Falls, New York, 68 women and 32 men sat down at the first women’s rights convention to sign a Declaration of Sentiments to call for equal treatment of men and women under the law and voting rights for women (Imbornoni para 2). This is where feminism all began. From 1848 until 1920, many women, and even men, fought for the rights of women around the country. They fought for equality and liberty and in 1920, the 19th amendment was finally passed allowing women the right to vote (Imbornoni para 15). This was a major milestone in the women’s rights movement. Susan B. Anthony once said “Men, their rights, and nothing more; women, their rights, and nothing less.” (Susan B. Anthony para 1). If only feminism were the same today it wouldn’t be a bad connotation and would still be a positive movement. This is because many of those associated with feminism today no longer see the need for equality. Instead, it seems they are looking for superiority. Modern-day feminists in America do not see how well women are doing today, and they instead fight for justice for their victimhood that they still see themselves in. They also fight against the prominent wage gap claiming that women are being discriminated against in work place.