topic 3, lesson 2: women gain rights

Text 1: Expanding Opportunities for Women

  • more middle class women wanted to expand their role in the community

  • by 1900, 1/3 of all college students in the US were women

  • some colleges trained women to lead new organizations working for social reform

Economic and Social Issues for Women

  • working class women expected to hand over their wages to the men in their families

  • could be easily cheated/bullied by employers

  • no right to vote made things harder

Addressing Economic Issues

  • women reformers key goal: limit work hours

  • progressives initially viewed women working less hours as a victory but in later years it was used as justification for women getting paid less

  • NCL still active today; backed laws for inspecting meatpacking and making payments to the unemployed

  • Florence Kelley helped form Women’s Trade Union League which created the first workers strike fund

Women Address Social Issues

  • temperance mvmt led by Women’s Christian Temperance Union

  • members thought alcohol led to carelessness & abuse

  • work of Frances Willard led to 18th amendment being passed

  • Margaret Sander= initially jailed for being a public nuisance but eventually founded American Birth Control League

  • Ida B. Wells wrote newspapers and spoke about anti-lynching; helped form National Association of Colored Women

purpose of NCL: label products under good working conditions

Text 2: Women Seek Equal Political Rights

  • Jane Addams: “women need to vote bc political issues affected homes too

The Early Fight for a Constitutional Amendment

  • women’s rights activists like Susan B. Anthony felt betrayed when 14th and 15th amendments weren’t extended to women

  • Anthony illegally voted; while on trial, she toured the country (speeches failed)

Women Lobby for Expanded Rights

  • Carrie Chapman Catt worked as one of country’s first female school superintendents

  • her “winning plan”: some prompted congress to pass amendment, others used referendum process to pass suffrage laws

  • her “society plan”: women of all races from all social classes signed to be suffragettes

Activists Use Nonviolent Protests

  • activists presented suffrage as a way to help solve society’s other ills

  • social activists organized mass parades and rallies

  • Alice Paul’s National Women’s Party became first group to march w/ picket signs outside the White House

The Nineteenth Amendment Expands Political Rights

  • both parties called for extending women right to vote in 1916

  • liquor industry strongly opposed women’s suffrage bc temperance; textile industry opposed bc fear of limiting child labor

  • NAOWS (opposed to woman suffrage) thought attention would be taken away from family and volunteer work

  • Alice Paul + other suffragists embarrassed Woodrow Wilson in front of Russian envoys; ‘America is NOT a democracy!’

  • millions of American women voted for the first time in the election of 1920