Women's Suffrage, Working Conditions, and Gender Equality

Introduction

A variety of arguments were used against women when it came to gaining the right to vote. Women's second-class citizenship had been justified by appealing to the sense of meaning and identity found in the traditional family and its status as the key unit in the political order. Many felt that husbands were the ideal persons to express the opinions of the entire family unit and that, as such, women need not have an independent voice. While that did not sit well with women, there was little they could do about the issue until a shift in society made the suffrage movement possible. During that time, many women wanted to secure their education and status outside of the family — both to have something that was their own and to protect themselves and their children if something unfortunate should happen to their husbands.

Additionally, the traditional roles of women as responsible for household duties and family affairs were being challenged by more women entering the workforce. Some women wanted to work, and others had no choice, but they were moving into the workforce in record numbers. That was changing how workplaces operated, because companies were realizing that they could not avoid hiring women and that they had to treat them differently from the men they were hiring. Some companies were far more receptive to women becoming part of their workforces than others, as there were businesses that actively avoided hiring women and did not believe they had a place in the working world. The analysis conducted here examines the implications that the changing demographics of the workforce had on the women's suffrage movement.

Arguments Against Suffrage

In the 1890s, those who were opposed to women's suffrage in the borderlands of Maine and New Brunswick held many of the same arguments, but expressed them in different ways and with different outcomes. In New Brunswick, for example, the most vocal adversaries were male and represented in the Legislative Assembly, while in Maine, a group of elite women — mostly from Portland — led the fight to keep women from having a vote. The anti-suffragist movements at this time mingled with nationalistic rhetoric about citizenship, the rights of property ownership, and the very structure of an industrial and modern society.

Many of the arguments against suffrage dealt with the fear of change in the traditional gender roles that had been in place throughout previous generations. For example, in a primary source from 1911, it was suggested that a "home-loving" woman does not want the vote. While that may have been what people were told, it was not necessarily accurate and was unlikely to reflect what most women were actually saying. Despite the social changes that came with industrialization and rapid population growth, many people still clung to the more traditional roles of women. In some areas, the fears were more specific. In Fort Wayne, Indiana, it was feared that many women would use their political rights to vote for prohibition and for politicians and business leaders representing the German-American population in the area. Thus there was a mix of generalized fears, as well as more specific ones tied to local expectations of change should women gain the vote.

It was not so much that people did not want women to vote at all, but that they could not feel safe and secure in determining what women would vote for. That became the true issue, because extending the vote meant giving up some measure of control and placing that control into the hands of women — who were deemed unpredictable and emotional, at best. The emotional nature of women was often used to deny them basic human rights, with the claim that they would not think logically. That was not the case, however, as changes to the workforce and women's rights in general have since proven. Women are highly capable of participating in the workforce, and of owning and operating businesses independently. While they may be more emotionally expressive than men in many cases, that does not make them unreliable — and those emotions can actually serve them well, making them more intuitive in professional contexts.

Women in the Industrial Revolution

The relevant research in this literature includes studies that extend feminist analyses of how history is written and taught — analyses that examine how women and people of color have been excluded from history curricula and textbooks. The way this information is presented to students can help frame what it means to be a woman in the minds of young people. The feminist perspective offers many insights into the roles women played in society at the time of the suffrage movement. Many studies have focused on specific variables believed to have triggered calls for suffrage in different cultures, such as the electoral system type, district magnitude, quotas, socioeconomic factors such as gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, the percentage of women in the workforce, the year women gained the right to vote, and cultural indicators such as religion. It is easy to see that a number of variables can affect suffrage, depending on the country and culture in which it takes place.

The factors that have put pressure on further democratization have been studied by scholars for generations. European countries provide interesting examples because of the variety in timing across independent nations. For example, France, Belgium, and Switzerland were early in their adoption of nearly universal male suffrage, but were late in extending the vote to women — in 1945, 1948, and 1971, respectively. By contrast, Austria and Sweden were late with the introduction of male suffrage, but extended suffrage to women shortly after the First World War. Yet even with so many different examples of evolving suffrage movements, it remains difficult to accurately identify the factors most responsible for their introduction in each country. The more those factors can be identified and understood, the more history can be analyzed and its complexities resolved.

The segregation of public and private life — upon which gender inequality was mapped — was problematic not only because it justified the exclusion of women, but also because it devalued the very concept of citizenship. Notable figures such as Mary Austin argued that society should, to some extent, be modeled on nature, which allows for a variety of different roles and a process of social evolution. The notion of social evolution sees society as a dynamic body continually adopting new practices and cultural concepts. While it is natural for individuals to resist change, that resistance can be overcome when momentum reaches a tipping point. While men, and some women, resisted the changes that could come with suffrage, many women believed that gaining the right to vote would provide them with a voice and an identity they had not previously possessed. Entering the workforce helped women find that voice and allowed them to stand up for what they believed in, making personal and professional advancement possible.

This type of momentum was certainly built by the changes that occurred as a result of the Industrial Revolution. It all started with the textile industry and the invention of power-driven machinery, but it soon extended to the rest of society. This also led to an increase in non-industrial wage labor, the growth of urban centers to handle labor and trade, and the expansion of commercial agriculture, all of which fostered growth in numerous industries and required more people in the workforce. As a result of these changes, there were several significant implications for the life and culture of American families. The demand for labor introduced countless women into the workforce and into the economic affairs of their families. Since women now earned an income, it gave them more leverage to demand rights — both within the family and in public life. They realized they had value and that they could speak up and be heard in ways that had not previously been possible. While not all women were interested in working outside the home, voting, or pursuing other rights, the importance of suffrage was that women could do those things if they chose to.

That freedom allowed women to make more choices and focus on what mattered to them as individuals, not merely as members of a family unit. Additionally, the advancement of a capitalistic system was working to replace a patriarchal one that had functioned as a system of domination. The domestication and institutionalization of women into the resulting mesh of patriarchy and capitalism is a system that persists today to a lesser extent, and it is argued to be so powerful that resistance to it can seem futile. Still, many women believe that standing up to that system is well worth the difficulties involved. They seek equal pay and equal treatment, goals that have still not been fully achieved. Women continue to speak out on these issues so that they have the opportunity to be heard, with the hope that, eventually, enough change will be made that women will no longer have to fight for their rights.

Some of the areas of patriarchal social control faced by women crisscross public and private spheres and can be categorized into different domains: (1) the domestic sphere, (2) the workplace, (3) the criminal justice complex, and (4) residential schools as other historical-social forms of oppression, all of which intersect with racism and colonialism. In other words, the way women are treated by society is reflected not only in public life but also at home. Families assign women specific roles, and society does the same. Women are not treated equally, no matter how strongly they advocate for equality. It is important to note the distinction between being treated equally and being treated the same, however. Equality means fair and just treatment, while being treated identically does not always produce fairness given the extenuating circumstances — including gender — that shape individual situations.

Conclusion

From examining the issue through several different lenses, it is clear that there is considerably more to the women's suffrage movement than a casual reading of history might suggest. Those who skim through history today may feel that women's suffrage was primarily about the right to vote. That was a very important component of it, but women were fighting for much more. They wanted to be treated equally, to have the opportunity to work outside the home, and to engage more fully with public life than they had previously been permitted to do. In doing so, they also helped children gain rights and protections by ensuring that children were recognized and valued more than they had previously been. While problems with suffrage and the treatment of women and children remain, there is far more equitable treatment — or at least treatment that strives to be fair and just — than there once was. That is progress, and it would not have happened without women's dedication to their cause.

The problems that plagued women before the suffrage movement have not been completely eradicated. There are still people in the United States and other developed countries who do not believe women should be anything more than property or domestic servants. Those people are in the minority, but they do still exist, and it is against such attitudes that women continue to fight. They continue to gain ground, even though some gains are slow and hard-fought. Women have clearly taken much more control in the workplace; however, they are still paid less than men who perform the same jobs with the same qualifications. That disparity needs to be remedied, and improvement, while slow, is occurring. The number of rights women hold today is far greater than when their fight began, and that progress has helped countless women and children in the years since the desire for change first took hold.