¶ … history of the League of Women Voters rightly begins with the very inception of the Women's Movement and the fight for liberation in the United States. During the early history of the United States there was little, if any respect for the principles of women's rights. In an intensely patriarchal society a man " ... virtually owned his wife and children as he did his material possessions. If a poor man chose to send his children to the poorhouse, the mother was legally defenseless to object." (Women's History in America) The history of women's movements in the United States is largely a reaction to this system of exclusion and male-dominance.
The start of the history of the fight for women's rights begins with a tea party hosted by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, in New York. Mrs. Stanton expressed her feelings of discontent at the situation of women in society. This meeting led to the first Convention on Women's Rights, which took place at the Wesleyan Chapel in Seneca Falls in 1848. While this was a comparatively small meeting it was to have wide repercussions and affect the future of women in America. In an insightful move Stanton used the principles of the Declaration of Independence as a framework for her "Declaration of Sentiments." In so doing she succeeded in giving the idea of women's rights legitimacy by associating these rights with a powerful symbol of freedom and liberty. In her declaration Stanton mentions eighteen areas of discontent - the same number of grievances that was declared in the Declaration of Independence from England.
Her grievances included the following:
Married women were legally dead in the eyes of the law
Women were not allowed to vote
Women had to submit to laws when they had no voice in their formation
Married women had no property rights
Husbands had legal power over and responsibility for their wives to the extent that they could imprison or beat them with impunity
Divorce and child custody laws favored men, giving no rights to women
Women had to pay property taxes although they had no representation in the levying of these taxes
Most occupations were closed to women and when women did work they were paid only a fraction of what men earned
Women were not allowed to enter professions such as medicine or law
Women had no means to gain an education since no college or university would accept women students
With only a few exceptions, women were not allowed to participate in the affairs of the church
Women were robbed of their self-confidence and self-respect, and were made totally dependent on men. (ibid)
At the First Women's Rights Convention all the proposals were accepted unanimously, except for one. This was the resolution dealing with the enfranchisement of women. At this time the issue of a woman's right to vote was hardly thinkable. However, after some argument the resolution was carried with a small majority. (ibid) The fact that there was such a large degree of dissent on the enfranchisement issue at the convention is an indication of the degree to which women were still enslaved by the male-dominated society.
As was to be expected there was an immediate and negative reaction from the male-dominated society to the results of the convention.
Newspaper editors were so scandalized by the shameless audacity of the Declaration of Sentiments, and particularly of the ninth resolution -- women demanding the vote! -- that they attacked the women with all the vitriol they could muster. (ibid)
The convention resulted in an expansion of the movement for women's rights. A series of similar conventions were held throughout America. Other figures in the movement in the latter part of the nineteenth century who successful promoted a variety of issues pertaining to women's rights were Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, and Sojourner Truth. Besides these prominent figures another woman who furthered the cause of women's rights was Esther Morris, who was the first woman to hold a position in the judiciary. Other activists were Abigail Scott Duniway, Anna Howard Shaw and Carrie Chapman Catt, who were leaders of the National American Woman Suffrage Association in the early 20th Century. Other women who also played an important part in the establishment of the Women's movement in the country were Alice Paul, the founder and leader of the National Woman's Party, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who become a member of the Supreme Court Justice.
These women carried the message of equality for women to various parts of the country. However, the opposition, especially...
Many women took up the cause of temperance. Women like Jane Adams, worked to expose political corruption and economic exploitation and established philanthropic programs for the poor. By 1900 over one-third of the wage-earning women in this country were employed as domestics or waitresses." As business grew, the privileged class grew. Domestics were in demand and were expected to do every kind of household chore in addition to cooking, serving,
Support like this was not uncommon. Women were demonstrating how useful they could become and by asserting their knowledge along with their feminine nature, they were showing men they could be a positive influence on society. As the effort grew, it became more organized and it gained momentum. In 1869, Lucy Stone helped establish the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA), which worked for women's right to vote. The association
History Of Human Services When the Kalamazoo Foundation began in 1925, the welfare state in the U.S. was minimal, and on the federal level almost nonexistent. Problems of poverty, hunger, racism, unemployment, and inadequate education were largely left to the start and local levels to be dealt with by private charities and religious organizations. This only changed with the expansion of the federal safety net during the New Deal of the
Introduction The Women’s Rights Movement in the U.S. got going in the 19th century with the National Woman’s Rights Convention of 1850 in Worcester, Massachusetts, where the role of women in society was a major focal point (Siegel, 1994). Women were becoming more outspoken and many women like Sojourner Truth and Angelina Weld were traveling around and speaking out on the evils of slavery and so on. The Women’s Movement would
Turning Points in American History Two Turning Points and Current Impact on Cultural, Social, Economic and Political Life Two historical turning points are the Social Security Act and the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The Social Security Act, passed in 1935, was intended to provide a "safety net" for people who could not support themselves (Schultz, 2010, p. 399). This "social welfare" was a significant departure from the federal government's
Much like African-American leaders and reformers that brought about the end of racial discrimination and segregation via the Civil Rights Movement, in 1866, Stanton created the American Equal Rights Association, aimed at organizing women in the long fight for equal rights. In 1868, the U.S. Congress ratified the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution which "defined citizenship and voters as male" and excluded women; in 1870, Congress ratified the Fifteenth Amendment
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