Women in Reform Movements

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.

 

In one instance, women delegates to the World's Anti-Slavery Convention held in London in 1840 were denied their places.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. Many women supported the temperance movement in the belief that drunken husbands pulled their families into poverty.Women were also active in movements for agrarian and labor reforms and for birth control.

After that the movements for prison reform and for providing mental-hospital care for the needy were leader by Dorothea Dix.

 

 

I think that is great to know how women can fight for their rights and equal opportunities, and they not only care about them.

Feminist Philosophies

 

Elizabeth Cady Stanton was a leading theoretician of the women's rights movement, 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.

 

During the early 20th century the term new woman came to be used in the popular press becase more young women 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. 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.

I think that this movement was exceptional, because this was the moment when women can prove that women and men are equal. And not only that, this proves that women can do more things and better that men.

Women in Politics

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.

And from this moment a lot of woman  has been involved in the politic world , for example:  Benazir Bhutto, Patricia Roberts Harris, Antonia Novello, Margaret Thatcher,Margaret Heckler,  Lynn Martin,  Eleanor Roosevelt, Juanita M. Kreps,Jeane Kirkpatrick,  Indira Gandhi, Elisabeth Domitien, Sandra Day O'Connor, etc.

I think that it is important that women are involved in the politc of their coutries, because in this way they can help to other women and make them happy making changes.

Women at Work

 

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,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.

 

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. By the 1910s, however, women were attending many leading medical schools, and in 1915 the American Medical Association began to admit women members.

 

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.

 

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 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.

 

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. 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.

 

 

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.

I think that it is great that women can have this opportunities to be better people and to have jobs where they can do what they like, i think this is important to be happy in life. And having the same opportunities as men.

I

The Legal Status of Women

 

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.

 

Some communities 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 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.

 

After that in 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; 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. In the 1960s several federal laws improving the economic status of women were passed.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited discrimination against women by any company with 25 or more employees.

 

But discrimination in other fields persisted, many retail stores would not issue independent credit cards to married women but divorced or single women often found it difficult to obtain credit to purchase a house or a car.

Also, 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."

 

 

I think that this part is really important because is here where we can notice some changes in the way of seeing woman. And i think that women can do whatever they want, even if nobody help them or support them. And i can notice that is in this moment where men see that women can be helpful for them and that also can be better that them.

The Weaker Sex?

Women were long considered naturally weaker than men, ignoring the fact that caring for children and doing such tasks required heavy and 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.

Because of 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. Nowadays the cultural pressure for women to become wives and mothers still prevents many talented women from finishing college or pursuing careers.

By the end of the 19th century 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.

 

 

I think it is great the way that women can show that we are not what men used to think (inferior), that we are more that what they used to think, and it is important to remark how that with effort we can do anything.

Early Attitudes Toward Women

The author explains in the lecture that women have been viewed a creative source of human life. He remaind us that historically woman have been considered intellectually inferior to men and a major source of temptation and evil. Also he tells us about the attitude toward women in the East was at first more favorable. In India women were not deprived of property rights or individual freedoms by marriage and in Hinduism women had to walk behind their husbands and when women were allowed personal and intellectual freedom, women made significant achievements.


I am really sorprised of the facts that had happened, and i think it is nteresting to know  all this information. Also all this makes me feel bad, because i think that woman and man are equal... so this make me feel angry...