Women’s Women’s MovementMovement

Thinking Skill: Explicitly assess information and draw conclusions

Objective: Understand the nature of early 20th century women’s reform in the larger context of the Progressive Era

Bold/Daring

Cautious

Aggressive

Courageous

Decisive

Stoic

Authoritative

Decisive

Passive

Timid

Emotional

Hesitant

Self Reliant

Dependent

Submissive

What characteristics would you want in a leader?

Bold/Daring

Aggressive

Courageous

Decisive

Stoic

Self Reliant

Authoritative

Cautious

Passive

Timid

Hesitant

Emotional

Dependent

Submissive

Which of these columns reflects the “traditional”

view of men? Of women?

Are men seen as leaders because they possess these characteristics?

Or

Are these traits ascribed to men because they have traditionally been leaders?

Struggle for Suffrage

Suffrage Movement originated in 1848 at Seneca Falls, NY

Disrupted by Civil War

Split over support of 15th Amendment

Early Leaders

Susan B. Anthony- organized National

American Women’s Suffrage Association (NAWSA) in 1890

President through 1900

Elizabeth Cady Stanton- Prominent member

of NAWSA“Women deserved to vote because they were equal to men.”

Women’s Movement Characteristics

Educated Middle Class Women

Formed a “Grass Roots” Movement

Sought Suffrage: The right to vote

Actions: Lobbied Legislators, Held Rallies, Parades, and Distributed Literature

Women first receive

the right to vote

in the West

Voting in the West

By 1910, women had full suffrage in four western states

Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, and Idaho

What might explain the success of women’s suffrage in the West?

NAWSA in the 1900s

Carrie Chapman Catt- focused on women’s unique role

Assumed Presidency after 1900

Developed “Winning Plan”- push for suffrage at both state and federal level

Supported by white,native-born, middle-class women

Carrie Chapman Catt

Alice Paul

“Iron Jawed Angels” background

http://womenshistory.about.com/library/weekly/aa010118a.htm

Differences in goals between NAWSA and NWP

Alice Paul’s Woman’s Party Lobbying President Wilson at

the White House

Leaflet written and distributed by Alice Paul outside of the White House in 1917.

“President Wilson and Envoy Root are deceiving Russia. They say "We are a democracy. Help us to win the war so that democracies may survive." We women of America tell you that America is not a democracy. Twenty million women are denied the right to vote. President Wilson is the chief opponent of their national enfranchisement. Help us make this nation really free. Tell our government that it must liberate its people before it can claim free Russia as an ally.”

Strong Anti-Suffrage Sentiment

What reasons would men have to oppose women’s suffrage? What

reason would women have to oppose their own right to vote?

Anti-suffrage Quotes

“I am satisfied with my present position, and of my almost unlimited power of usefulness, that I have no need of a vote, and should not use it if I had it.”

-Edith Milner, writing in The Times, 29 October 1906

“I regard women as superior and I don’t like to see them trying to become men’s equal. “

-Miss Violet Markham, speaking in October 1910

This cartoon (drawn by a man) stereotypes Suffragettes as bitter old crones engaged in a gender-war against men.

NAOWS

Groups like the

National Association Opposed to

Woman Suffrage (NAOWS).

Were opposed to women

gaining the vote because

they believed that women

belonged in the domestic

rather than the political sphere

of life.

http://www.primaryresearch.org/suffrage/show.php?dir=dodgeletter&file=1

Alleged Areas of Difference Between Men and Women (Summary of newspaper stories and editorials from the early 1900s).

1. The “frailty” of women make them “unsuited” for the vote. “Once a woman arrived [at the polling place] she would have to mingle among the crowds of men who gather around the polls…and to press her way through them to the ballot box. Assuming she reached the polling place, she might get caught in a brawl and given women’s natural fragility, she would be the one to get hurt.” (Mayor, 64)2. “Allowing women to vote would lead to foreign aggression and war.” (Mayor, 65)3. If women got the vote they would be placed in situations where their vulnerability, based on ignorance and frailty, would be exploited.4. If women got the vote, they could hide extra ballots in their dress and slip them into the ballot box unnoticed.5. If women got the vote, they would have to mingle in the dirty world of politics and would tarnish their naturally high morals.

Note - Some arguments against suffrage, from both men and women alike, attempted to justify their position on the grounds that women were superior, not inferior, to men.

More common arguments against suffrage…

- “Women and men have ‘separate spheres’.”- “Most women do not want the vote.”- “Women’s role is in local affairs.”- “Women are already represented by their husbands.”- “It is dangerous to change a system that works.”- “Women do not fight to defend their country - “Women would be corrupted by politics and chivalry would die out”- “If women became involved in politics, they would stop marrying, having children, and the human race would die out”

 -” Women are emotional creatures, and incapable of making a sound political decision.”

Even when the position appeared to have be in favor of women’s voting rights, the argument used was often based on prevailing stereotypes that were grounded in false assumptions about gender roles

Words on the cartoon: "Woman Devotes Her Time to Gossip and Clothes Because She Has Nothing Else to Talk About. Give Her Broader Interests and She Will Cease to Be Vain and Frivolous

Who is she appealing to here?

Jane Addams – Why Women Should Vote (1915) “[I]f woman would fulfill her traditional responsibility to her own children; if she would educate and protect from danger factory children who must find their recreation on the street… then she must bring herself to use the ballot….”

Steps toward the 19th amendment

Between 1878, when the amendment was first introduced in Congress, and August 18, 1920, when it was ratified, champions of voting rights for women worked tirelessly, but strategies for achieving their goal varied. Some pursued a strategy of passing suffrage acts in each state--nine western states adopted woman suffrage legislation by 1912. Others challenged male-only voting laws in the courts. Militant suffragists used tactics such as parades, silent vigils, and hunger strikes. Often supporters met fierce resistance. Opponents heckled, jailed, and sometimes physically abused them.

Steps toward the 19th amendment

August 2020 will mark the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th amendment to the Constitution. The amendment guarantees all American women the right to vote. Achieving this milestone required a lengthy and difficult struggle; victory took decades of agitation and protest. Beginning in the mid-19th century, several generations of woman suffrage supporters lectured, wrote, marched, lobbied, and practiced civil disobedience to achieve what many Americans considered a radical change of the Constitution. Few early supporters lived to see final victory in 1920

1919thth AmendmentAmendment

(1920)(1920)

““Right to vote Right to vote shall not be shall not be denied or denied or abridged on abridged on account of sex”account of sex”

In part due to In part due to timing (WWI)timing (WWI)

What is the central message of this cartoon?

Reform Campaigns

Besides Suffrage

many women joined

the progressives Labor conditions

(women equality/child)

Birth Control

Prohibition

Poverty

Foods and Health

Other early 20th Century Women’s Efforts:

Margaret Sanger- crusade for birth control

Florence Kelly- child labor protection, National Consumer’s League

Carrie Nation- Temperance movement to ban alcohol- Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) organized in 1874

Jane Addams – Settlement House

Ida B. Wells-Barnett

Margaret SangerMargaret SangerThe Case for Birth Control

Prevent women in the slums from having unwanted pregnancies

First birth control clinic in the US

Questions for DiscussionQuestions for Discussion:

Was birth control more important than the right to vote, or equality in the workplace?

Is birth control the solution to preventing the death of children in poverty?

Charlotte Perkins GillmanWrote “Women and Economics”

History of sexual discrimination

Thesis: Subordination of women is result of their economic dependence on men. Women should seek equality in the workplace, no longer focus on “domestic sphere.”

Discussion: How equal is the workplace today?

What are some solutions to help women in the workplace?

Should women be allowed to participate in all jobs that men participate?

Are men or women better at certain domestic tasks?

Continuing stereotypes..

When my predecessors at TIME reviewed ecologist Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring 50 years ago this month, they were less than impressed. While the piece praised her graceful writing style, it argued that Carson’s “emotional and inaccurate outburst” was “hysterically overemphatic,” which I believe is a fancy way of saying that the lady writer let her feelings get the best of her

- Time 2012