Progression of American Women Throughout

Progression of American Women Throughout History

American History Since 1865

Historically speaking, American women have had fewer rights and opportunities than American men. For hundreds of years, the roles of women were confined to that of wife, mother, housekeeper and cook. However, as years went by in America, women were able to gain more and more rights, putting them on equal footing as men. While some women may agree that even in the 21st century they are still not treated the same as men in society and the workplace, it cannot be denied that women have come a long way since the mid-19th century. This paper will focus on the progression of women's rights and opportunities in the United States from 1865 until present time.

By 1865, black Americans had found new freedom. They began to look for their families and find a place for themselves in society -- against intransigent and unrepentant white racism (Evans). During the battle over Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments promising citizenship and voting rights to black men, suffrage was also a central issue within the movement for women's rights as well. Female citizenship began to find new meanings in a world that was rife with racial and class conflict -- and this included tensions between women and men. In 1865, Southern white women created Confederate memorial societies to help memorialize the "Lost Cause." This is the jumping board that women need to catapult them into the public sphere for the very first time in American history. Around this same time, Southern black women -- newly emancipated -- formed thousands of organizations that were aimed at "uplifting the race."

For black women, emancipation from slavery was fraught with many different issues. First of all, under slavery, black has basically learned the value of mutuality, or of looking to their own community for the support that they needed.

Individualistic competition had few rewards in that system, and the slave community developed many ways of enforcing its own norms. Knowing well the need for mutual aid and support, women played strong and visible roles both in their families and in associations. Ideas about the proper roles of women and men also surfaced, shaping different experiences according to gender. Women's abrupt withdrawal from field labor provided the first clear signal of this difference (Evans 1997).

For many women, the idea that they could go home and tend to the needs of their own families was a joyous one; however, they were resentful about the sacrifices that they had been forced to make before.

The National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) and the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA) were founded in 1869. Both were founded in response to a split in the American Equal Rights Association over the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. In the meantime, the changing lives and activities of large numbers of women provided new ground for the seeds of women's rights activism.

In the winter of 1873-74, women in little Midwestern towns -- such as Hillsoboro, Ohio -- rose up in massive numbers, sending a shock wave through the nation (Evans 1997). Their cause was Temperance, a reform issues that came out of the antebellum era. Through temperance, women were able to express their anxieties about the disruption of communities and families and they also lashed out at certain male behavior -- the consumption of alcohol (1997). Their main goal was to close down the saloons; by the next summer, over a thousand saloons had been closed because of their work. Women in other areas of the state who had also been successful in shutting down saloons joined Hillsboro women. While the women's crusade did not last long, what was left was the sense of accomplishment that these women had. The were able to change their experience into power. Frances Willard wrote:

Perhaps the most significant outcome of this movement was the knowledge of their own power gained by the conservative women of the Churches. They had never even seen as "women's rights convention," and had been held aloof from the "suffragists" by fears as to their orthodoxy; but now there were women prominent in all Church cares and duties eager to clasp hands for a more aggressive work than such women had ever before dreamed of undertaking (Evans 1997).

Very much like abolition, temperance was a secular reform with evangelical roots, couched in religious language. For middle-class women it was a vehicle for their joint grievances as women, much as moral reform had been for earlier generations (Evans 1997). The women were intent on protecting their homes and their families from violence, financial irresponsibility, desertion, and immorality that was linked with alcohol and men's abuse of alcohol. These were the major feminist issues at hand of the Temperance movement.

Unit II: 1877 -- 1920:

Modern America was emerging during this time; urban, industrial, and bureaucratic -- are some of the key words to describe the era. American women were forming new voluntary organizations and social movements. Thanks to movements like the Temperance movement, women saw how the use of their collective power, which had frown throughout the 19th century, was a way to achieve political reform and woman suffrage. Even though black female activism had emerged, there were still major divisions of race between females. Frances Harper, a poet as well as an abolitionist, was one of the most important female activists of this period. She addressed the Congress of Representative Women, as racial terrorism was still ever present in the south. "She knew that the reforming sensibilities of white women were deeply imbued with both racial and class bias" (Evans 1997).

Life had completely changed by the year 1890; there was the emergence of big, industrial and urban ways of living that went against what people knew -- the small community that was once such a defining aspect of American society. Women, like men, worked in bigger and louder factories that were owned by enormous, vertically integrated corporations (Evans 1997). A new class had emerged -- the managerial class, who wanted to control supply and demand of all the raw materials. The wives of the managerial and wealthier class of people lived in the suburbs, electric trolley rides away from the dirty and impoverished neighborhoods of the city where most of the new immigrants took up residence. The farmwomen in both the south and the west could not take part in electoral politics, an area that their husbands were desperate to understand and participate in after the banks and railroads destroy their cooperatives (1997).

Women shared in the violence of American's birth, for the birth was not an easy one. Most of the perpetrators as well as victims of class and racial violence were male, but women, of course, shared men's "conflict-shaped environments and their ideas of race and class position" (Evans 1997). However, one of the most stunning facts about this time is the fact that women were now going to college, they were not always married, and they were becoming self-sufficient.

After the Civil War this first generation of women had been formed in the intense world of women's colleges where they challenged conventional wisdom about women's intellectual capacities and developed deep and loving bonds with both teachers and sister students (Evans 1997).

By the year 1880 there were forty thousand (32% of all students) enrolled in higher education. Women had a choice after graduation: did they want to get married and choose a more traditional life, or did they want to choose a career where they would be paid for their work? The fact is that nearly half of all college-educated women never married; those who did decide to marry did so much later and they had fewer children. They women were not allowed to go into certain "male" fields and so professions like teaching and nursing began to grow and became typically seen as female professions.

The road to self-sufficiency and education wasn't easy for women of this era. Career women were looked upon as being unnatural beings, for what woman should not want to have children? There was even the ridiculous belief that too much education could hurt the female reproductive system. Because of this, women turned to places where they could find solidarity with others of the same gender.

Between 1900 and World War I, the antiquated Victorian code which set up very strict segregation of men and women began to crumble in different areas (Evans 1997). The women's movement reached a new height of political power; by 1912 they movement saw new laws for pure food, protective legislation that regulated wages and hours for women in the workforce and children, prison and court reforms, as well as the establishment of a Federal Children's Bureau headed by former Hull House resident Julia Lanthrop. The old image of the Victorian woman was gradually fading. Women were seen in places where men had once only been able to frequent -- places like movie theatres, dance halls, and amusement parks. This was a big moment for men and women alike as women and men were now able to meet outside of the home without the supervision of family members. "Their activities emphasized the sensual, pleasure-seeking dimensions of the new century's culture and brought sexuality out from behind the euphemisms of the nineteenth century (1997). This was seen in the dances of the era (e.g., the slow rag, the bunny hug, etc.) as well as the dress styles of American women. Women's appearance changed. They no longer were buried under petticoats and big skirts, restricted by their corsets. The silhouette was now slender and smaller, allowing a greater freedom of movement as well as more exposure of arms and legs. Women who worked were now considered "bachelor girls" as opposed to "homeless women" or "spinsters" (1997). By 1920, the image of the flapper girl was everywhere; this can be viewed as an example of just how far women had come.

Unit III: 1921 -- 1945:

Zelda Fitzgerald, wife of novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald, said in 1924: "I like the jazz generation and I hope my daughter's generation will be jazzier. I want my girl to do as she pleases, be what she pleases regardless of Mrs. Grundy" (Evans 1997). This became the symbol of female expression in the 1920s. Mrs. Grundy was symbolic of prudery and sacrifice as seen in contrast to the new standards of pleasure and consumption (1997). Fitzgerald continued,

I think a woman gets more happiness out of being gay, light-hearted, unconventional, mistress of her own fate, than out of a career that calls for hard work and intellectual pessimism and loneliness. I want her to be a flapper, because flappers are brave and gay and beautiful (1997).

Flappers made a huge impact on society of the 1920s. They showed that there was a major behavioral change -- as well as an ideological one -- in American culture. Youth became an important part of society. Coeducational colleges were forming and women and men were put to together where they lived and studied; this was important as it began new ways for men and women to date and participate in heterosexual relationships (Evans 1997). Sigmund Freud was an important part of this whole movement of sexuality and sensuality as he basically "declared war on Victorian ideology, labeling it superstitious, unscientific, and unhealthful" (1997).

Freud's emergence as a leader in human psychology helped people to acknowledge that women indeed had their own sexuality. There was the new idea that sexual pleasure was completely separate from simply procreation. At this same time, however, "it reinforced the traditional goal of marriage in the context of an increasingly competitive 'marriage market'" (1997). There was once again a high importance placed on marriage. A new kind of marriage thus emerged with this new kind of woman. Romantic love, sexual pleasure and companionship were seen as the most important elements of a marriage. The marriage, though, was also completely cared for by the woman as she was aware that her financial security, emotional needs, and her social status pretty much depended upon a successful marriage. There were new worries then. If a woman had to find a husband, how was she supposed to put her efforts into the physical freedoms put forth by the flappers?

By 1930 when Joan Crawford went from being a silent screen star portraying flappers to portraying mature sexual women in the new talkies, there was a new sophistication seen in women in film. There were stars like Marlene Dietrich and Bette Davis who were all woman in appearance but had the self-confidence of men. This was an interesting aspect of the time as the Great Depression had already begun and women were being forced to be more "man-like" for survival. On screen there were often battle of the sexes that "reflected serious tension felt by many" (Evans 1997). The crash of the stock market in 1929 had shattered the illusion created by the twenties. Men were out of work and unemployed men felt like failures. Black women became domestic laborers as there were very few clerical and manufacturing jobs available. Between 1930 and 1940 the numbers of private workers in households increased by 25%, and most of these workers were black (1997).