WOMENS RIGHTS

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WOMENS RIGHTS
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Changes in American life during the Industrial
Revolution

• Division between work and home

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The cult of true womanhood portrayed the ideal
woman as pious, pure, domestic, and submissive.
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The demand for women suffrage emerged in the
first half of the 19th century from within other
reform movements.
Education for women
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Mary Wollstonecraft, Frances Wright, and Margaret
Fuller believed that giving women an equal
education to that of men would do more to improve
womens position in society than voting rights.
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The Temperance Crusade
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Susan B. Anthony and Amelia Bloomer attended the
New York Mens State Temperance Society meeting
while wearing short hair and bloomers.
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The radical abolition movement had the greatest
impact on womens rights.
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Women in the abolition movement recognized
parallels between the legal condition of slaves
and that of women.
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Participation in the Anti-Slavery movement helped
women develop public-speaking and argumentative
skills that carried over into the womens rights
movement.
Clarina Irene Howard Nichols, Abolitionist and
First Feminist of the Kansas Territory
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Both white and black women were excluded from
full membership in the American Anti-Slavery
Society until 1840. Women responded by forming
their own separate female auxiliariesby 1838,
over 100 existed.
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What if I am a woman? . . . Females should
strive by their example, both in public and in
private, to assist those who are endeavoring to
stop the strong current of prejudice that flows
so profusely against us at present. Marie
Stewart, 1833
Marie Stewart, early African-American
abolitionist speaker
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The Grimké sisters, nationally prominent
abolitionists, connected the inequalities of
women, both white and black, with slavery.
Angelina and Sarah Grimké
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. . . We are placed very unexpectedly in a very
trying situation, in the forefront of an entirely
new contesta contest for the rights of women as
a moral, intelligent, and responsible being. . .
. It is a womans right to have a voice in all
the laws and regulations by which she is to be
governed.
Angelina Grimké, 1838
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1840 The World Anti-Slavery Society denied women
delegates the right to speak.
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Elizabeth Cady Stanton attended the 1840
Anti-Slavery Convention and her experience led
her into the struggle for womens rights.
"We resolved to hold a convention as soon as we
returned home, and form a society to advocate the
rights of women."
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Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott met in
1848 to organize a convention to promote the
social, civil, and religious rights of women.
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The Seneca Falls Womens Rights Convention, 1848
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. . . The history of mankind is a history of
repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of
man toward woman, having in direct object the
establishment of an absolute tyranny over her. .
. . He has never permitted her to exercise her
inalienable right to the elective franchise. He
has compelled her to submit to laws, in the
formation of which she has no voice. .
. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, The Declaration of
Sentiments
The first signatures on the Declaration of
Sentiments.
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Property-owning New Jersey women could vote from
1776 to 1807.
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The 14th Amendment to the Constitution added
male to its definition of eligible voterswomen
would need another amendment explicitly granting
them the franchise.
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The demand for woman suffrage presented a vision
of independent women that seemed to threaten
social structures.
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The Seneca Falls Convention was the birthplace
of the womens rights movement.
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Two new demands
1848 New York passed a Married Womans Property
Actother states followed. But calls for divorce
reform were less successful.
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Before the Civil War, black and white men and
women worked together for womens rights and the
abolition of slavery.
Frederick Douglass demanded the vote for women in
1848.
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War, and the Reconstruction that followed, split
the Womens Rights movement.
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Impact of Reconstruction

• Radical Republicans demanded black male
  suffragebut not universal suffrage for all
  adults.
• To enfranchise women, black and white, would give
  the vote to large numbers of white Southern
  women, who would probably vote Democratic.

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Both Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton
were furious that Congress had given the vote to
black men but denied it to women.
This image made the point that, in being denied
the vote, respectable, accomplished women were
reduced to the level of the disenfranchised
outcasts of society.
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Black male suffrage v. Universal adult suffrage

• National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA)
• Founded by Anthony and Stanton
• The more radical woman's suffrage group.
• Accepted only women and opposed the Fifteenth
  Amendment since it only enfranchised
  African-American men.
• American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA)
• More moderate in its views than the NWSA.
• Allowed men to join and rallied behind the
  Fifteenth Amendment as a step in the right
  direction toward greater civil rights for women.
• Leaders of the AWSA included Julia Ward Howe and
  Lucy Stone.

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When the two groups reunited in 1890, the new
National American Woman Suffrage Association
(NAWSA) followed the direction set by Anthony and
Stanton.
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A New Argument for Woman Suffrage

• The nation needed women voters because of their
  special moral leadership.

Blanche Ames, Two Good Votes Are Better Than One,
Womans Journal (October, 1915)
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A New Argument for Woman Suffrage

• Female voters could sweep out the scoundrels
• Female voters could ensure that reforms in child
  labor, temperance, and womens work would occur.
• Only a woman who was truly a citizen could teach
  citizenship to her children.

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Suffrage supporters began to adopt the class and
race prejudices of their white, middle class base.
The enfranchisement of women would insure
immediate and durable white supremacy, honestly
obtained. Belle Kearney
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Overt racism expressed by many suffragists
created an atmosphere hostile to the
participation of black women.
Some African-American suffragistsfounded their
own separate suffrage associations.
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Others, like Mary Terrell, remained within the
NAWSA.
Mary Church Terrell, African-American suffragist
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The initial success of the post-Civil War
suffrage movement came on the frontier.
Women voting in Wyoming, 1869
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Why the West?

• Special frontier conditions?the Turner thesis.
• Womens vote would offset votes of black men?
• Womens vote would attract women settlers to the
  West?

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The second Western territory to grant women the
vote was Utah, in 1870.
Emmeline Wells and other Mormon suffragists in
Utah.
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A close correlation exists between the success of
woman suffrage and states where men voted in
large numbers for Populist, Progressive, or
Socialist party candidates.

• Colorado (1893)
• Idaho (1896)
• Washington (1910)
• California (1911)
• Kansas (1912)
• Oregon (1912)

• Arizona (1912)
• Montana (1914)
• Nevada (1917)
• North Dakota (1917)
• Nebraska (1917)

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After 1890, increasing competition among
political parties made womens suffrage a hot
political issue.
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Between 1900 and 1920, the woman suffrage
movement modernized, adopting new tactics of
lobbying, advertising, and grass-roots organizing
under the leadership of Carrie Chapman Catt.
Carrie Lane Chapman Catt (1859-1947), women's
suffrage leader
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1913 Illinois became the first state east of the
Mississippi to grant women the vote.
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Growing opposition fostered a sense of impatience
among women who had waited over 50 years since
the Seneca Falls Convention for the vote.
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Alice Paul and Lucy Burns gave a new direction to
the womens rights movement. In 1913, Paul and
Burns organized the National Womans Party (NWP),
adopted the radical tactics of the British
suffragettes, and campaigned for the first Equal
Rights Amendment.
Alice Paul (1885-1977), women's suffrage leader
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"The Stomach Tube" "The sensation is most
painful," reported a victim in 1909. "The drums
of the ears seem to be bursting and there is a
horrible pain in the throat and breast. The tube
is pushed down twenty inches it must go below
the breastbone." The prisoners were generally fed
a solution of milk and eggs.
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The Womans Party was one of the first groups in
the United States to employ the techniques of
classic non-violent protest.
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The actions of the NWP made the NAWSA seem
moderate and reasonable by comparison.
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In 1916, neither party endorsed woman suffrage in
its platform, but both parties called on the
states to give women the vote.
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Jan. 10, 1917 The NWP began to picket the White
House.
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World War I interrupted the campaign for woman
suffrage.
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Womens war work allowed them to claim the right
of patriotic citizenship.
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In 1918, in the midst of the war, the House of
Representatives passed the federal suffrage
amendment, but the Senate voted it down.
Carrie Chapman Catt and President Wilson
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Finally, on Aug. 20, 1920, the 19th Amendment
became part of the United States Constitution
when Tennessee became the 36th state to ratify it.
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Just as the 19th century womens rights movement
began with womens experiences in the temperance
and abolition movements, the modern womans right
movement began with womens involvement in the
civil rights protests of the 1950s and 60s.
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Civil Rights Act of 1964
In 1964, sex was added to race, creed, color,
and national origin as a prohibited reason for
discrimination in employment (Title VII).
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In 1972, Congress included Title IX in the Higher
Education Act, providing, No person in the
United States shall, on the basis of sex, be
excluded from participation in, be denied the
benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination
under any education program or activity receiving
federal assistance.
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On March 22, 1972, Congress approved the Equal
Rights Amendment.
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