Women's History in America
Presented by Women's International Center
WOMEN'S RIGHTS. Throughout most of history women
generally have had fewer legal rights and career opportunities than men. Wifehood
and motherhood were regarded as women's most significant professions. In the
20th century, however, women in most nations won the right to vote and
increased their educational and job opportunities. Perhaps most important, they
fought for and to a large degree accomplished a reevaluation of traditional
views of their role in society.
Since early times women
have been uniquely viewed as a creative source of human life. Historically,
however, they have been considered not only intellectually inferior to men but
also a major source of temptation and evil. In Greek mythology, for example, it
was a woman, Pandora, who opened the forbidden box and brought plagues and
unhappiness to mankind. Early Roman law described women as children, forever
inferior to men.
Early Christian theology
perpetuated these views. St. Jerome, a 4th-century Latin father of the
Christian church, said: "Woman is the gate of the devil, the path of
wickedness, the sting of the serpent, in a word a perilous object." Thomas
Aquinas, the 13th-century Christian theologian, said that woman was
"created to be man's helpmeet, but her unique role is in conception . . .
since for other purposes men would be better assisted by other men."
The attitude toward women
in the East was at first more favorable. In ancient India, for example, women
were not deprived of property rights or individual freedoms by marriage. But
Hinduism, which evolved in India after about 500 BC, required obedience of
women toward men. Women had to walk behind their husbands. Women could not own
property, and widows could not remarry. In both East and West, male children
were preferred over female children.
Nevertheless, when they
were allowed personal and intellectual freedom, women made significant
achievements. During the Middle Ages nuns played a key role in the religious
life of Europe. Aristocratic women enjoyed power and prestige. Whole eras were
influenced by women rulers for instance, Queen Elizabeth of England in the 16th
century, Catherine the Great of Russia in the 18th century, and Queen Victoria
of England in the 19th century.
Women were long considered
naturally weaker than men, squeamish, and unable to perform work requiring
muscular or intellectual development. In most preindustrial societies, for
example, domestic chores were relegated to women, leaving "heavier"
labor such as hunting and plowing to men. This ignored the fact that caring for
children and doing such tasks as milking cows and washing clothes also required
heavy, sustained labor. But physiological tests now suggest that women have a
greater tolerance for pain, and statistics reveal that women live longer and
are more resistant to many diseases.
Maternity, the natural biological
role of women, has traditionally been regarded as their major social role as
well. The resulting stereotype that "a woman's place is in the home"
has largely determined the ways in which women have expressed themselves.
Today, contraception and, in some areas, legalized abortion have given women
greater control over the number of children they will bear. Although these
developments have freed women for roles other than motherhood, the cultural
pressure for women to become wives and mothers still prevents many talented
women from finishing college or pursuing careers.
Traditionally a
middle-class girl in Western culture tended to learn from her mother's example
that cooking, cleaning, and caring for children was the behavior expected of
her when she grew up. Tests made in the 1960s showed that the scholastic
achievement of girls was higher in the early grades than in high school. The
major reason given was that the girls' own expectations declined because
neither their families nor their teachers expected them to prepare for a future
other than that of marriage and motherhood. This trend has been changing in
recent decades.
Formal education for girls
historically has been secondary to that for boys. In colonial America girls
learned to read and write at dame schools. They could attend the master's
schools for boys when there was room, usually during the summer when most of
the boys were working. By the end of the 19th century, however, the number of
women students had increased greatly. Higher education particularly was
broadened by the rise of women's colleges and the admission of women to regular
colleges and universities. In 1870 an estimated one fifth of resident college
and university students were women. By 1900 the proportion had increased to more
than one third.
Women obtained 19 percent
of all undergraduate college degrees around the beginning of the 20th century.
By 1984 the figure had sharply increased to 49 percent. Women also increased
their numbers in graduate study. By the mid-1980s women were earning 49 percent
of all master's degrees and about 33 percent of all doctoral degrees. In 1985
about 53 percent of all college students were women, more than one quarter of
whom were above age 29.
The myth of the natural
inferiority of women greatly influenced the status of women in law. Under the
common law of England, an unmarried woman could own property, make a contract,
or sue and be sued. But a married woman, defined as being one with her husband,
gave up her name, and virtually all her property came under her husband's
control.
During the early history of
the United States, a man virtually owned his wife and children as he did his
material possessions. If a poor man chose to send his children to the
poorhouse, the mother was legally defenseless to object. Some communities,
however, modified the common law to allow women to act as lawyers in the
courts, to sue for property, and to own property in their own names if their
husbands agreed.
Equity law, which developed
in England, emphasized the principle of equal rights rather than tradition.
Equity law had a liberalizing effect upon the legal rights of women in the
United States. For instance, a woman could sue her husband. Mississippi in
1839, followed by New York in 1848 and Massachusetts in 1854, passed laws
allowing married women to own property separate from their husbands. In divorce
law, however, generally the divorced husband kept legal control of both
children and property.
In the 19th century, women
began working outside their homes in large numbers, notably in textile mills
and garment shops. In poorly ventilated, crowded rooms women (and children)
worked for as long as 12 hours a day. Great Britain passed a ten-hour-day law
for women and children in 1847, but in the United States it was not until the
1910s that the states began to pass legislation limiting working hours and
improving working conditions of women and children.
Eventually, however, some
of these labor laws were seen as restricting the rights of working women. For
instance, laws prohibiting women from working more than an eight-hour day or
from working at night effectively prevented women from holding many jobs,
particularly supervisory positions, that might require overtime work. Laws in
some states prohibited women from lifting weights above a certain amount
varying from as little as 15 pounds (7 kilograms) again barring women from many
jobs.
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.
But discrimination in other
fields persisted. 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. In possible
violation of a woman's right to privacy, for example, a mother receiving
government welfare payments was subject to frequent investigations in order to
verify her welfare claim. Sex discrimination in the definition of crimes
existed in some areas of the United States. A woman who shot and killed her
husband would be accused of homicide, but the shooting of a wife by her husband
could be termed a "passion shooting." Only in 1968, for another
example, did the Pennsylvania courts void a state law which required that any
woman convicted of a felony be sentenced to the maximum punishment prescribed
by law. Often women prostitutes were prosecuted although their male customers
were allowed to go free. In most states abortion was legal only if the mother's
life was judged to be physically endangered. In 1973, however, the United
States Supreme Court ruled that states could not restrict a woman's right to an
abortion in her first three months of pregnancy.
Until well into the 20th
century, women in Western European countries lived under many of the same legal
disabilities as women in the United States. For example, until 1935, married
women in England did not have the full right to own property and to enter into
contracts on a par with unmarried women. Only after 1920 was legislation passed
to provide working women with employment opportunities and pay equal to men.
Not until the early 1960s was a law passed that equalized pay scales for men
and women in the British civil service.
In colonial America, women
who earned their own living usually became seamstresses or kept boardinghouses.
But some women worked in professions and jobs available mostly to men. There
were women doctors, lawyers, preachers, teachers, writers, and singers. By the
early 19th century, however, acceptable occupations for working women were
limited to factory labor or domestic work. Women were excluded from the professions,
except for writing and teaching.
The medical profession is
an example of changed attitudes in the 19th and 20th centuries about what was
regarded as suitable work for women. Prior to the 1800s there were almost no
medical schools, and virtually any enterprising person could practice medicine.
Indeed, obstetrics was the domain of women.
Beginning in the 19th
century, the required educational preparation, particularly for the practice of
medicine, increased. This tended to prevent many young women, who married early
and bore many children, from entering professional careers. Although home
nursing was considered a proper female occupation, nursing in hospitals was
done almost exclusively by men. Specific discrimination against women also
began to appear. For example, the American Medical Association, founded in
1846, barred women from membership. Barred also from attending
"men's" medical colleges, women enrolled in their own for instance,
the Female Medical College of Pennsylvania, which was established in 1850. By
the 1910s, however, women were attending many leading medical schools, and in
1915 the American Medical Association began to admit women members.
In 1890, women constituted
about 5 percent of the total doctors in the United States. During the 1980s the
proportion was about 17 percent. At the same time the percentage of women
doctors was about 19 percent in West Germany and 20 percent in France. In
Israel, however, about 32 percent of the total number of doctors and dentists
were women.
Women also had not greatly
improved their status in other professions. In 1930 about 2 percent of all
American lawyers and judges were women in 1989, about 22 percent. In 1930 there
were almost no women engineers in the United States. In 1989 the proportion of women
engineers was only 7.5 percent.
In contrast, the teaching
profession was a large field of employment for women. In the late 1980s more
than twice as many women as men taught in elementary and high schools. In
higher education, however, women held only about one third of the teaching
positions, concentrated in such fields as education, social service, home
economics, nursing, and library science. A small proportion of women college
and university teachers were in the physical sciences, engineering, agriculture,
and law.
The great majority of women
who work are still employed in clerical positions, factory work, retail sales,
and service jobs. Secretaries, bookkeepers, and typists account for a large
portion of women clerical workers. Women in factories often work as machine
operators, assemblers, and inspectors. Many women in service jobs work as
waitresses, cooks, hospital attendants, cleaning women, and hairdressers.
During wartime women have
served in the armed forces. In the United States during World War II almost
300,000 women served in the Army and Navy, performing such noncombatant jobs as
secretaries, typists, and nurses. Many European women fought in the underground
resistance movements during World War II. In Israel women are drafted into the
armed forces along with men and receive combat training.
Women constituted more than
45 percent of employed persons in the United States in 1989, but they had only
a small share of the decision-making jobs. Although the number of women working
as managers, officials, and other administrators has been increasing, in 1989
they were outnumbered about 1.5 to 1 by men. Despite the Equal Pay Act of 1963,
women in 1970 were paid about 45 percent less than men for the same jobs; in
1988, about 32 percent less. Professional women did not get the important
assignments and promotions given to their male colleagues. Many cases before
the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 1970 were registered by women
charging sex discrimination in jobs.
Working women often faced
discrimination on the mistaken belief that, because they were married or would
most likely get married, they would not be permanent workers. But married women
generally continued on their jobs for many years and were not a transient,
temporary, or undependable work force. From 1960 to the early 1970s the influx
of married women workers accounted for almost half of the increase in the total
labor force, and working wives were staying on their jobs longer before
starting families. The number of elderly working also increased markedly.
Since 1960 more and more
women with children have been in the work force. This change is especially
dramatic for married women with children under age 6: 12 percent worked in
1950, 45 percent in 1980, and 57 percent in 1987. Just over half the mothers
with children under age 3 were in the labor force in 1987. Black women with
children are more likely to work than are white or Hispanic women who have
children. Over half of all black families with children are maintained by the
mother only, compared with 18 percent of white families with children.
Despite their increased
presence in the work force, most women still have primary responsibility for
housework and family care. In the late 1970s men with an employed wife spent
only about 1.4 hours a week more on household tasks than those whose wife was a
full-time homemaker.
A crucial issue for many
women is maternity leave, or time off from their jobs after giving birth. By
federal law a full-time worker is entitled to time off and a job when she
returns, but few states by the early 1990s required that the leave be paid.
Many countries, including Mexico, India, Germany, Brazil, and Australia require
companies to grant 12-week maternity leaves at full pay.
American women have had the
right to vote since 1920, but their political roles have been minimal. Not
until 1984 did a major party choose a woman Geraldine Ferraro of New York to
run for vice-president (see Ferraro).
Jeanette Rankin of Montana,
elected in 1917, was the first woman member of the United States House of
Representatives. In 1968 Shirley Chisholm of New York was the first black woman
elected to the House of Representatives (see Chisholm). Hattie Caraway of
Arkansas first appointed in 1932 was, in 1933, the first woman elected to the
United States Senate. Senator Margaret Chase Smith served Maine for 24 years
(1949-73). Others were Maurine Neuberger of Oregon, Nancy Landon Kassebaum of
Kansas, Paula Hawkins of Florida, and Barbara Mikulski of Maryland.
Wives of former governors
became the first women governors Miriam A. Ferguson of Texas (1925-27 and
1933-35) and Nellie Tayloe Ross of Wyoming (1925-27) (see Ross, Nellie Tayloe).
In 1974 Ella T. Grasso of Connecticut won a governorship on her own merits.
In 1971 Patience Sewell
Latting was elected mayor of Oklahoma City, at that time the largest city in
the nation with a woman mayor. By 1979 two major cities were headed by women:
Chicago, by Jane Byrne, and San Francisco, by Dianne Feinstein. Sharon Pratt
Dixon was elected mayor of Washington, D.C., in 1990.
Frances Perkins was the
first woman Cabinet member as secretary of labor under President Franklin D.
Roosevelt. Oveta Culp Hobby was secretary of health, education, and welfare in
the Dwight D. Eisenhower Cabinet. Carla A. Hills was secretary of housing and
urban development in Gerald R. Ford's Cabinet. Jimmy Carter chose two women for
his original Cabinet Juanita M. Kreps as secretary of commerce and Patricia
Roberts Harris as secretary of housing and urban development. Harris was the
first African American woman in a presidential Cabinet. When the separate
Department of Education was created, Carter named Shirley Mount Hufstedler to
head it. Ronald Reagan's Cabinet included Margaret Heckler, secretary of health
and human services, and Elizabeth Dole, secretary of transportation. Under
George Bush, Dole became secretary of labor; she was succeeded by
Representative Lynn Martin. Bush chose Antonia Novello, a Hispanic, for surgeon
general in 1990.
Reagan set a precedent with
his appointment in 1981 of Sandra Day O'Connor as the first woman on the United
States Supreme Court (see O'Connor). The next year Bertha Wilson was named to
the Canadian Supreme Court. In 1984 Jeanne Sauve became Canada's first female
governor-general (see Sauve).
In international affairs,
Eleanor Roosevelt was appointed to the United Nations in 1945 and served as
chairman of its Commission on Human Rights (see Roosevelt, Eleanor). Eugenie
Anderson was sent to Denmark in 1949 as the first woman ambassador from the
United States. Jeane Kirkpatrick was named ambassador to the United Nations in
1981.
Three women held their
countries' highest elective offices by 1970. Sirimavo Bandaranaike was prime
minister of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) from 1960 to 1965 and from 1970 to 1977 (see
Bandaranaike). Indira Gandhi was prime minister of India from 1966 to 1977 and
from 1980 until her assassination in 1984 (see Gandhi, Indira). Golda Meir was
prime minister of Israel from 1969 to 1974 (see Meir). The first woman head of
state in the Americas was Juan Peron's widow, Isabel, president of Argentina in
1974-76 (see Peron). Elisabeth Domitien was premier of the Central African
Republic in 1975-76. Margaret Thatcher, who first became prime minister of
Great Britain in 1979, was the only person in the 20th century to be reelected
to that office for a third consecutive term (see Thatcher). Also in 1979,
Simone Weil of France became the first president of the European Parliament.
In the early 1980s Vigdis
Finnbogadottir was elected president of Iceland; Gro Harlem Brundtland, prime
minister of Norway; and Milka Planinc, premier of Yugoslavia. In 1986 Corazon
Aquino became president of the Philippines (see Aquino). From 1988 to 1990 Benazir
Bhutto was prime minister of Pakistan the first woman to head a Muslim nation
(see Bhutto).
In 1990 Mary Robinson was
elected president of Ireland and Violeta Chamorro, of Nicaragua. Australia's
first female premier was Carmen Lawrence of Western Australia (1990), and
Canada's was Rita Johnston of British Columbia (1991). In 1991 Khaleda Zia
became the prime minister of Bangladesh and Socialist Edith Cresson was named
France's first female premier. Poland's first female prime minister, Hanna Suchocka,
was elected in 1992.
At the end of the 18th
century, individual liberty was being hotly debated. In 1789, during the French
Revolution, Olympe de Gouges published a 'Declaration of the Rights of Woman'
to protest the revolutionists' failure to mention women in their 'Declaration
of the Rights of Man'. In 'A Vindication of the Rights of Women' (1792) Mary
Wollstonecraft called for enlightenment of the female mind.
Margaret Fuller, one of the
earliest female reporters, wrote 'Woman in the Nineteenth Century' in 1845. She
argued that individuals had unlimited capacities and that when people's roles
were defined according to their sex, human development was severely limited.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton was
a leading theoretician of the women's rights movement. Her 'Woman's Bible',
published in parts in 1895 and 1898, attacked what she called the male bias of
the Bible. Contrary to most of her religious female colleagues, she believed
further that organized religion would have to be abolished before true
emancipation for women could be achieved. (See also Stanton, Elizabeth Cady.)
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
characterized the home as inefficient compared with the mass-production
techniques of the modern factory. She contended, in books like 'Women and
Economics' (1898), that women should share the tasks of homemaking, with the
women best suited to cook, to clean, and to care for young children doing each
respective task.
Politically, many feminists
believed that a cooperative society based on socialist economic principles
would respect the rights of women. The Socialist Labor party, in 1892, was one
of the first national political parties in the United States to include woman
suffrage as a plank in its platform.
During the early 20th
century the term new woman came to be used in the popular press. More young
women than ever were going to school, working both in blue- and white-collar
jobs, and living by themselves in city apartments. Some social critics feared
that feminism, which they interpreted to mean the end of the home and family,
was triumphing. Actually, the customary habits of American women were changing
little. Although young people dated more than their parents did and used the
automobile to escape parental supervision, most young women still married and
became the traditional housewives and mothers.
Women in the United States
during the 19th century organized and participated in a great variety of reform
movements to improve education, to initiate prison reform, to ban alcoholic
drinks, and, during the pre-Civil War period, to free the slaves.
At a time when it was not
considered respectable for women to speak before mixed audiences of men and
women, the abolitionist sisters Sarah and Angelina Grimke of South Carolina
boldly spoke out against slavery at public meetings (see Grimke Sisters). Some
male abolitionists including William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, and
Frederick Douglass supported the right of women to speak and participate
equally with men in antislavery activities. In one instance, women delegates to
the World's Anti-Slavery Convention held in London in 1840 were denied their
places. Garrison thereupon refused his own seat and joined the women in the
balcony as a spectator.
Some women saw parallels
between the position of women and that of the slaves. In their view, both were
expected to be passive, cooperative, and obedient to their master-husbands.
Women such as Stanton, Lucy Stone, Lucretia Mott, Harriet Tubman, and Sojourner
Truth were feminists and abolitionists, believing in both the rights of women
and the rights of blacks. (See also individual biographies.)
Many women supported the
temperance movement in the belief that drunken husbands pulled their families
into poverty. In 1872 the Prohibition party became the first national political
party to recognize the right of suffrage for women in its platform. Frances
Willard helped found the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (see Willard,
Frances).
During the mid-1800s
Dorothea Dix was a leader in the movements for prison reform and for providing
mental-hospital care for the needy. The settlement-house movement was inspired
by Jane Addams, who founded Hull House in Chicago in 1889, and by Lillian Wald,
who founded the Henry Street Settlement House in New York City in 1895. Both
women helped immigrants adjust to city life. (See also Addams; Dix.)
Women were also active in
movements for agrarian and labor reforms and for birth control. Mary Elizabeth
Lease, a leading Populist spokeswoman in the 1880s and 1890s in Kansas,
immortalized the cry, "What the farmers need to do is raise less corn and
more hell." Margaret Robins led the National Women's Trade Union League in
the early 1900s. In the 1910s Margaret Sanger crusaded to have birth-control
information available for all women (see Sanger).
The first women's rights
convention took place in Seneca Falls, N.Y., in July 1848. The declaration that
emerged was modeled after the Declaration of Independence. Written by Elizabeth
Cady Stanton, it claimed that "all men and women are created equal"
and that "the history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and
usurpations on the part of man toward woman." Following a long list of
grievances were resolutions for equitable laws, equal educational and job
opportunities, and the right to vote.
With the Union victory in
the Civil War, women abolitionists hoped their hard work would result in
suffrage for women as well as for blacks. But the 14th and 15th Amendments to
the Constitution, adopted in 1868 and 1870 respectively, granted citizenship
and suffrage to blacks but not to women.
Disagreement over the next
steps to take led to a split in the women's rights movement in 1869. Elizabeth
Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, a temperance and antislavery advocate,
formed the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) in New York. Lucy Stone
organized the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA) in Boston. The NWSA
agitated for a woman-suffrage amendment to the Federal Constitution, while the
AWSA worked for suffrage amendments to each state constitution. Eventually, in
1890, the two groups united as the National American Woman Suffrage Association
(NAWSA). Lucy Stone became chairman of the executive committee and Elizabeth
Cady Stanton served as the first president. Susan B. Anthony, Carrie Chapman
Catt, and Dr. Anna Howard Shaw served as later presidents.
The struggle to win the
vote was slow and frustrating. 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.
Excerpted
from Compton's Interactive Encyclopedia
Copyright (c) 1994, 1995 Compton's NewMedia, Inc.