Women's Suffrage: Abott and Dodge

The fight for women’s suffrage was a generations-long struggle that began before the Civil War and that women who favored suffrage faced a great deal of resistance.

Which of the following points did Abbott and Dodge argue?

• Women were inherently inferior to men.

• Appealed to the notion that women and men were qualitatively different and therefore had different and therefore had different duties.

They argued that women were qualitatively different, not inferior to men.

many people who opposed women’s suffrage saw women getting the right to vote as a threat to a basic division of labor between men and women that they sought to keep intact. For them, women’s suffrage was not merely a question of political rights. It was about…

potentially overturning what they viewed to be fundamental aspects of society, especially what they considered to be the ideal dynamics of home life.

Abbott argues that..

women and men have inherently different natures and therefore that they are fit for different roles. He argues that these roles are of equal importance..

Dodge argues..

• That she believes in what we might call equal educational opportunities for women.

• Nonetheless, she contends that women’s main role is
  rearing children, a role that she especially seems to think is
  important for native-born women (she makes clear that
  she fears the growth of the nation’s immigrant population).

• Dodge is deeply concerned about what will happen to the
  home if women begin to fully participate in politics.

• Moreover, she worries what will happen to the nation if its
  homes fall into disarray.