Monica Gonzalez

Women’s Suffrage

Module 4 Final Paper

Women in US history have been considered second class citizens and some countries still

struggle today with maintaining equal rights for women. Women have faced a strenuous and

long road acquiring equal rights and the fight still continues for some of us women today. Equal

pay in the work force, discrimination , under representation of women in the political life and the

non ratification of the ERA.

Women have struggled with issues such as the right to vote in elections and receiving equal pay

for equal work in the workplace. There has been many victories in the battle to become equal

citizens but there has also been many setbacks throughout our history. Beginning in the 1800s

American women became involved in social reform movements and participated in the several

movements but to disappointment they found that their roles in reform organizations were

restricted, just as in general society. They were limited and prevented from voting or public

speaking at organizational meetings. Many women started to realize that in order to have a

voice or to be effective in social reforms, they needed to acquire legal rights as women.

In 1848 ,a group of women organized the Seneca Falls Convention in New York and the

women’s movement was born. This was the first nations gathering devoted to the rights of

women. The primary goal in the early years of the movement was to obtain the right to vote

“women’s suffrage” How has the women’s suffrage impact the US? How were they affected

socially, and politically? While women have come a long way in the last fifty years, they sill

have a long way to go.

rights. There was no legal identity from her husband, she had no right to control her

reproduction system, had no right to property, pursue a career of her own, no right to vote,

serve a jury or hold public office.

These realities define’s women’s proper place in society as fundamentally domestic. Over the

course of the 19th century and early 1900s women appeared in all manner of public settings,

laying the foundation for change in the twentieth century. The claim of citizenship was a radical

challenge , it asserted the right of women to participate as individuals and not through

representations of men whether it was a husband or father. The women’s suffrage movement

was born on women’s consciousness and female associations. The women’s suffrage became

a huge movement in the 1910s when women of the working class, and African American

women shared the same goals. The National American Women Suffrage Association (NAWSA)

under the leadership of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, began the campaign to obtain voting rights for

women and in 1893, under the direction of Susan B Anthony, Colorado became the first state to

adopt an amendment granting women the right to vote.

The suffrage movement also had as much opposition as it did support resulting in organizations

as in The National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage (NAOWS). Members were of

woman of economical and social wealth along with some corporate capitalists. The

organization felt that giving women voting rights would lead to uneducated voting as well as

fearing that women given this right would undermine the traditional morals and values of the

society. In 1916, NAWSA president Carrie Chapman Catt proposed a “winning plan” to attain

permanent voting rights for women and by 1918 , Utah, Idaho, Washington, California, Oregon,

Kansas, Arizona, Alaska, Illinois, Montana, Nevada, New York, Michigan, South Dakota, and

Oklahoma granted women the right to vote.

number of states and became law in 1920. American Woman Suffrage Association formed the

League of Women Voters, dedicated to educating women to exercise their individual citizenship

rights.

After the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, suffrage leaders considered the battle to be

over and concentrated their efforts on social issues. Alice Paul however, reviewed the right to

vote as a necessary step toward gender equality. She recognized that laws treated women

differently from men, presuming women to be weaker and inferior to men. She set out to

change those laws by and felt that women and men should be treated equally under the law.

In 1923, she along with other educated women felt the continuing sting of discrimination and

sought to eradicate the legal discrimination with an Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) and

presented it to congress. One of the leading organizations in the struggle was The National

Women’s Party which first proposed the ERA in 1923. Another group of research reformers,

with leaders like Eleanor Roosevelt , strongly opposed the ERA, fearing losing the recently won

protections for working women might be lost. The ERA did not earn it’s significant

congressional backing until the second wave of women’s movement in the 1950s and 1960s.

Roles of women really changed during World War II. Encouraged by the government to do their

patriotic duty, women joined the workforce in record numbers. The obtained industrial jobs that

were traditionally held by men, worked in factories and in steel and lumber mills, railroads, and

shipyards. These women were known as “Rosies” . Women also enlisted in the arm forces as

nurses and a number of them were part of an organization known as the Women’s Army

Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) working in a variety of jobs and freeing more men for combat. The
combat positions for the women of this organization were typically thought of as women’s task

such as typing, filing and others worked as radio operators and some of technicians repairing

military equipment. By 1943, Congress voted to make these women part of the regular army,

allowing them to wear the uniform , achieve army ranks and earn army pay and benefits.

One the World War II ended in 1945, after learning what it was to earn their own money and

spend it how they decided, they were expected to return to their traditional female roles as

wives, mothers, and to take care of the household and families. Some of the women that

worked in the factories during the war did return to their household lives because of the need of

the family but some were fired to make room for the men that returned from the war. Most of

the women that stood working had to accept demotions and pay cuts in order to stay since the

higher positions and salaries were put aside for the men. Once the war was over the reaction of

women holding traditionally male jobs changed.

During the 1950s, women were expected once married to quit their jobs and become

homemakers and mothers. Society sent a strong message to women by advertising of house

selling equipment and products that would assist them to be the perfect homemaker and wife.

There were still millions of women that continued in the workforce but for those that did, job

prospects were extremely limited. Highly education women were denied jobs in business or

government service because employers felt that they would not perform adequately as well as

women not belonging in such professions. Teaching, nursing, and secretarial work were

considered women’s jobs. Women of no education as well as women of color were limited with

their choices, and in most changes restricted into working as a maid or domestic position.

A writer named Betty Friedan (1921-2006) sent a questionnaire to hundreds of women and

asked questions about the women’s lives since graduation and spent years interviewing and
conducting research. She realized that many middle-class educated women were suffering

from vague undefined dissatisfaction. Friedan turned her research to a magazine article, but

when several magazines opposed to publishing her article she expanded her work into a book.

Released in 1963, The Feminine Mystique quickly became a controversial best seller and laid

the groundwork for an emerging women’s movement.

With the support of women’s rights advocates , in 1961 John F. Kennedy established the

President’s Commission on the Status of Women. The group explored barriers of equality for

women , including sex discrimination in the workplace and supported a bill that required equal

pay for equal work. It became law in 1963, though it did not give the broad protection that

women had hoped for.

The most significant legislative victory for women in the mid 1960s was the passage of the Civil

Rights Act of 1964. The law made radical segregation illegal, it also outlawed discrimination

based on gender. The Act is also responsible for the establishment of the Equal Employment

Opportunity Commission (EEOC) .

Women’s rights activist continue to have battles to wage. Activist continue to struggle to protect

reproductive rights, to secure equal pay for equal work, and to end of the sexist hiring practices.

There are still anti-feminist messages that come from various organizations in today’s world.
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