Brittany
Morgan
U S History
City-Life
Project
Women’s
Suffrage
“We
hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they
are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these
are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”
– United States Declaration of
Independence
Throughout
the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, women’s attitude towards themselves started
to change. As a result, women were seemingly on the road to achieving
professional, legal, and educational equality with men. Before, women’s goals
were to marry, have children, and obey their husbands. Even though this movement
was very empowering to women’s rights, some women as well as most men did not follow
suit. With the determination of pro-suffrage women, the new time era, and the
NAWSA, women established a new life for themselves.
During the
year of 1900, 20% of the women in the U.S. were employed away from their homes.
Between 1880 and 1910, the number of women employed in the U.S. increased from 2.6
million to 7.8 million, due to the increased availability for women to receive education
on the elementary, secondary, and collegiate level. A census taken in 1890
reported that women were represented in 360 occupations out of 369 although,
most employed women worked in textile and factory work with lower paid tasks,
as the majority of better paying jobs continued to go to men, and had little
chance for advancement. More and more women began to devote their lives to
their careers instead of the stereotypical image of cooking, cleaning, and
raising children at home. As well as profession, women gained legal rights. States
began to modify common law to give women more legal power. Wives were given
control over their inheritance and earnings and even in some states women were
given a chance of winning at least joint custody of their children in the case
of divorce, which one in twelve relationships in 1905 ended because women “found their voice”. By
1896, women had gained the right to vote in four states: Wyoming, Colorado,
Idaho, and Utah. By 1913 nine states (all in the west) gave women the vote, but
in 1917 the tenth was New York (east). Legislative support for women’s voting
rights produced the 19th amendment passed by Congress on June 4,
1919 but ratified on August 18, 1920.
The National
Women’s party created a special flag to publicize and commemorate the
ratification process. A star was placed on the flag for each state in which
women were enfranchised. A new star was added for each state that ratified the
nineteenth amendment. Photographs of sewing on new stars (as inserted above),
provided rich promotional for the party’s ratification campaign. Public images
, at the time, were very influential on women of the era. Images that pictured
healthy and athletic women simply dressed caused women to abandon petticoats
and ribbon gowns. Instead, women slowly started to wear tailored suits and
blouses.
During the 1800’s and
early 1900’s, women and women’s organizations such as the NAWSA (National
American Woman Suffrage Association) founded in 1890, not only worked to gain
the right to vote, they also worked for broad-based economic and political
equality and for social reforms. Unlike gossip groups or tea parties before,
the clubs focused on women’s concerns and rights. By the beginning of the new
century, women’s clubs in towns and cities across the nation were working to
promote suffrage, better schools, the regulation of child labor, women in
unions, and liquor prohibition. More women’s organizations began to appear. Organizations
brought public attention to issues varying from women’s suffrage to poor
factory working conditions. The significance of the useful movement brought public
support and demand for improved conditions. Just as the women’s suffrage
movement came alive, an opposing movement, anti-suffrage was created in 1871.
Anti-suffragists associated feminism with mental illness. All women, they felt,
were weak minded, frail, physically weak, vulnerable, and intellectually inferior
to men. They felt that it was their duty to protect women from evil things like
voting, in which could possible contaminate them too. Women who upheld
traditional gender roles argued that politics were improper for women represented
by the struggle for political, economic, and social equality was as threatening
to women as it was to men.
Sheffield, Wesley. "The Women's Movement." N.p.,
Mar. 2012. Web. 12 Dec. 2013.
"Women's Suffrage." Loc.gov. N.p., n.d. Web. 12
Dec. 2013.
"Women Suffrage in the Progressive Era - American Memory
Timeline- Classroom Presentation | Teacher Resources - Library of
Congress." Women Suffrage
in the Progressive Era - American Memory Timeline- Classroom Presentation |
Teacher Resources - Library of Congress. Loc.gov, n.d. Web. 10 Dec. 2013.
Brinkley, Alan. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Print.
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