The women’s rights movement of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries unified women around a number of issues that were seen as fundamental rights for all citizens; they included: the right to own property, access to higher education, reproductive rights, and women’s suffrage. Feminism is clearly stated as, “the advocacy of women’s rights on the basis of the equality of the sexes.” After the birth of feminism at the Seneca Falls Convention and the 19th Amendment where women secured the right to vote in 1917, the women’s rights movement lost a large amount of its momentum. World War I encouraged women to do their patriotic duty by entering the workforce to support the war effort. In the seventeen decades since the Seneca Falls Convention, the women’s movement has tackled many issues that are considered discriminatory toward women and in all efforts, created the Equal Rights Amendment. The United States and the world have progressed drastically through the past one hundred and seventy years, we have traveled to the moon and explored outside of what society and science has known, yet women are still fighting for equality in the world due to the fact that society struggles to change its view and opinion on women and their capabilities.
The Seneca Falls Convention started on July 19, 1848, and was signally the birth of feminism in America. At the Wesleyan Chapel in Seneca Falls, N.Y., the first ever woman’s rights convention was held in the United States and convened with almost two hundred women in attendance. “In 1848, while the Industrial Revolution was putting the upstate New York Village of Seneca Falls on the map, a remarkable local event occurred: the nation’s first women’s rights convention. Frustrated by their inferior status, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and five other women organized the landmark event, and they also wrote American feminisms first document ‘The Declaration of Sentiments’” There were six main leaders in the first movement. One of the most influential leaders was Elizabeth Cady Stanton. She was a suffragist and an abolitionist. She also drafted the Declaration of Sentiments, which was a document signed in 1848 by 68 women and 32 men. Lucretia Mott was another founder of the Seneca Falls Convention. She was one of six women delegates to be chosen to attend the 1840 World Anti-Slavery Convention. Lucretia was also the first President of the Equal Rights Association in May 1866. These two-abolitionist met at the 1840 World Anti-Slavery Convention in London. As women, Mott and Stanton were barred from the convention floor, and the common indignation that this aroused in both of them was the impetus for their founding of the women’s rights movement in the United States. Martha Wright, Lucy Stone, Jane Hunt, and Mary Ann McClintock were all abolitionists and supporters of women’s suffrage as well as contributed significantly to the Seneca Falls Convention. These women sent out a call for a women’s conference to be held in Seneca Falls. The announcement, published in the Seneca County Courier on July 14, read, “A Convention to discuss the social, civil, and religious condition and rights of women will be held in the Wesleyan Chapel, at Seneca Falls, N.Y., on Wednesday and Thursday, the 19th and 20th of July current; commencing at 10 o’clock A.M.” During the first day, the meeting will be exclusively for women, who are earnestly invited to attend. The public is invited to be present on the second day, where Lucretia Mott, of Philadelphia, and other ladies and gentlemen, will address the Convention. Stanton read the “Declaration of Sentiments and Grievances,” a treatise that she had drafted over the previous few days. Stanton’s declaration was modeled closely on the Declaration of Independence and its preamble featured the proclamation, “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights…”. The Declaration of Sentiments and Grievances then detailed the injustices inflicted upon women in the United States and called upon U.S. women to organize and petition for their rights. On the second day of the convention, men were invited to attend–and exactly 40 men attended, including the famous African American abolitionist Frederick Douglass. The Declaration of Sentiments and Grievances was adopted and signed by the assembly. The convention also passed 12 resolutions, 11 unanimously, which called for specific equal rights for women. The ninth resolution, which declared “it is the duty of the women of this country to secure to themselves their sacred right to the elective franchise,” was the only one to meet opposition. After a lengthy debate, in which Douglass sided with Stanton in arguing the importance of female enfranchisement, the resolution was passed. For proclaiming a women’s right to vote, the Seneca Falls Convention was subjected to public ridicule, and some backers of women’s rights withdrew their support. However, the resolution marked the beginning of the women’s suffrage movement in America. The Seneca Falls Convention was followed two weeks later by an even larger meeting in Rochester, N.Y. Thereafter, national woman’s rights conventions were held annually, providing an important focus for the growing women’s suffrage movement. This was proceeded by World War I. “During WW1 women’s employment rates increased, from 23.6% of the working-age population in 1914 to between 37.7% and 46.7% in 1918.”
World war I began on July 28, 1914, and played a crucial role in developing a new image of a women’s capabilities and the roles they played in society in America. Many women assumed they would leave the working world when men returned from service, and many did. However, other women enjoyed the economic benefits of working outside of their home and remained in the workforce permanently. It is difficult to get exact statistic estimates because domestic workers were excluded from these figures and many women moved from domestic services into the jobs created due to the war effort but the “employment of married women increased sharply – accounting for nearly 40% of all women workers by 1918”. But because women were paid less than men, there was a worry that employers would continue to employ women in these jobs even when the men returned from the war. Before the end of the war, many women refused to accept lower pay for what in most cases was the same work as had been done previously by men. The women workers on buses and trams went on strike in 1918 to demand the same increase in pay, or war bonuses as they were referred to as, as men. The strike spread to other towns in the South East and to the Underground. This was the first equal pay strike which was initiated, led and ultimately won by women. Following women’s demands for equal pay, a Committee was set up by the War Cabinet in 1917 to examine the question of women’s wages and released its final report after the war ended. This report endorsed the principle of ‘equal pay for equal work’. But their expectation was that due to their “lesser strength and special health problems, a women’s ‘output’ would not be equal to that of men”. Despite evidence that women had taken on what were considered men’s jobs and performed them effectively during the war, this did not shift popular and government perception that ‘women would be less productive than men’. The unions received guarantees that where women had fully replaced skilled men they would be paid the same as the men – i.e. would receive equal pay. But it was made clear that these changes were for the duration of the war only and would be reversed when the war ended and the soldiers came back. These arguments and unfair, sexist events played a large role in gaining equal rights and equality for women, which also lead to the ratification on the 19th Amendment, as some; very few but some; had the slightest mindset alteration of a woman due to the roles that women successfully played during WWI.
After years of struggle, the 19th Amendment was adopted in 1920, granting American women the constitutionally protected right to vote. The 19th Amendment was passed by Congress on June 4, 1919, a year after WW1 ended and ratified on August 18, 1920. The 19th amendment granted women the right to vote. During the United States’ early history, women were denied many of the rights enjoyed by men and faced discrimination because of their sex. Women were excluded from many jobs and educational opportunities. But because they did not have the right to vote (also known as suffrage), women were limited in terms of how much influence they could have over laws and policies. In addition, before the Civil War, many women participated in reform activities, such as the abolitionist movement and temperance leagues. They wanted to pass reform legislation to address the problems they saw in American society, but politicians would not usually listen to those who were disenfranchised (did not have the right to vote). Women’s frustration with their low status in society motivated them to create a movement that eventually resulted in the Nineteenth Amendment. This amendment says “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” That is, it prohibits discrimination in voting based on sex. The ratification of this Amendment led to many other issues up rises and the discussion of the Equal Rights Amendments.
On March 22, 1972, the Equal Rights Amendment was passed by the U.S. Senate and sent to the states for ratification. First proposed by the National Woman’s political party in 1923, the Equal Rights Amendment was to provide for the legal equality of the sexes and prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex yet was not ratified. More than four decades later, the revival of feminism in the late 1960s spurred its introduction into Congress. Under the leadership of U.S. Representative Bella Abzug of New York and feminists Betty Freedman and Gloria Steinem, it won the requisite two-thirds vote from the U.S. House of Representatives in October 1971. In March 1972, it was approved by the U.S. Senate and sent to the states. Hawaii was the first state to ratify what would have been the 27th Amendment, followed by some 30 other states within a year. However, during the mid-1970s, a conservative backlash against feminism eroded support for the Equal Rights Amendment, which ultimately failed to achieve ratification by the requisite 38, or three-fourths, of the states. Because of the rejection of the Equal Rights Amendment, sexual equality, with the notable exception of when it pertains to the right to vote, is not protected by the U.S. Constitution. A number of recent events have put the ERA back on the political agenda: high-profile allegations including sexual assault, the #MeToo movement, sexism in advertising and the media, economic inequality issues that affect families, increasing restrictions on women’s access to abortion, and violence against women. Two ongoing issues in which women seek social change are those having to do with wage discrimination and reproductive health. Since 2017, two more states – Nevada and Illinois – have ratified the Equal Rights Amendment. Supporters are now rallying support in Virginia, hoping it will be the next and final state to ratify it in 2019. The ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment will play a massive role in women’s equality and where women stand in the future.
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