Handout to Women: A Historical Look at Women's Rights PDF

"...a woman\'s place is in the home..." **The Invisibility of Women** Wifehood and motherhood - women's most significant professions Monogamous families became practical units **Women in the Colonies** - sex slaves, child-bearers, companions. In 1619 - „Agreeable persons, young and incorrupt\.....

"...a woman\'s place is in the home..." **The Invisibility of Women** Wifehood and motherhood - women's most significant professions Monogamous families became practical units **Women in the Colonies** - sex slaves, child-bearers, companions. In 1619 - „Agreeable persons, young and incorrupt\... sold with their own consent to settlers as wives, the price to be the cost of their own transportation." Black women -- as slaves they were the property of their masters Women of the American frontier seemed close to equality with their men (their work was needed) **Legal Position in the Colonial Period** "*The husband's control over the wife's person extended to the right of giving her chastisement. But he was not entitled to inflict permanent injury or death on his wife...*" (Julia Spruill) "*Besides absolute possession of his wife's personal property and a life estate in her lands, the husband took any other income that might be hers. He collected wages earned by her labor.... Naturally it followed that the proceeds of the joint labor of husband wife belonged to the husband.*" (Julia Spruill) "... *that the husband should obey his wife, and not the wife the husband, that is a false principle. For God hath put another law upon women: wives, be subject to your husbands in all things.*" (Rev. John Cotton) Anne Hutchinson insisted on the interpretation of the Bible for themselves. J.Winthrop: "...a woman of a haughty and fierce carriage, of a nimble wit and active spirit, and a very voluble tongue, more bold than a man, though in understanding and judgment, inferior to many women." The necessities of the Revolutionary war brought women out into public affairs - formed patriotic groups, carried out anti-British actions, wrote articles for independence, campaigned against the British tea tax (Daughters of Liberty groups boycotting British goods, urging women to make their own clothes and buy only American-made things) "... *in the new code of laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make, I desire you would remember the ladies, and be more generous to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power in the hands of husbands. Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention are not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound to obey the laws in which we have no voice of representation.*" (Abigail Adams) Response: American women would be "too wise to wrinkle their foreheads with politics" (T. Jefferson) **The Cult of True Womanhood** Pious, religious, sexually pure, feminine, chaste, submissive The Young Lady's Book of 1830 -- "... *in whatever situation of life a woman is placed from her cradle to her grave, a spirit of obedience and submission, pliability of temper, and humility of mind, are required from her*." "*True feminine genius is ever timid, doubtful, and clingingly dependent; a perpetual childhood.*" **"Do not expect too much"** The woman's job was to keep the home cheerful, maintain religion, be nurse, cook, cleaner, seamstress, flower arranger. A woman shouldn't read too much, and certain books should be avoided. The cult of domesticity - **separate but equal** - giving her work equally as important as the man's but separate and different In the 19th century, women began working outside their homes in large numbers In the 1910s the states limited working hours and improving working conditions of women and children (10-hour-day) In the 1830s -- 50s, women began to resist the attempt to keep them in their "woman's sphere" Middle-class women began to monopolize the profession of primary-school teaching Literacy among women doubled between 1780 and 1840 "*Reason and religion teach us, that we too are primary existences... not the satellites of men*." **Women's Suffrage** 1848 - First Women's Rights Convention in history -- Seneca Falls, New York held by Elizabeth Cady Stanton - three hundred women and men Sojourner Truth -- "Ain't I a woman?" -- "That man over there says that woman needs to be helped into carriages and lifted over ditches.... Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud puddles or give me any best place. And ain't I a woman?.." The 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution, adopted in 1868 and 1870 respectively, granted citizenship and suffrage to blacks but not to women. Wyoming Territory in 1869, Utah Territory in 1870, and the states of Colorado in 1893 and Idaho in 1896 granted women the vote but the eastern states resisted. A woman-suffrage Amendment to the Federal Constitution, presented to every Congress since 1878, repeatedly failed to pass. The legal right to vote gained women on the national level in 1920. **The 20^th^ Century** During the 1960s several federal laws improving the economic status of women were passed. The Equal Pay Act of 1963 required equal wages for men and women doing equal work The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited discrimination against women by any company with 25 or more employees A Presidential Executive Order in 1967 prohibited bias against women in hiring by federal government contractors. **Discrimination in other fields** Many retail stores would not issue independent credit cards to married women Divorced or single women often found it difficult to obtain credit to purchase a house or a car Laws concerned with welfare, crime, prostitution, and abortion also displayed a bias against women \...