The women’s movement in American history



The women’s movement in American history:

changing public/private relations

[note: green font = correspondence to specific standards]

I. Overview of causes (which are also effects): look for contradictions in women’s life conditions, which generate tensions and opportunities

a. Changing public/private relation:

i. What kind of work do women do

ii. Where do they do it

b. Waves: individuals and groups

i. First wave (1840s-1920s)

ii. Second wave (1960s-1980s)

iii. Third wave (19902-present)

c. Relation to other movements:

i. Abolition movement (first wave)

ii. civil rights movement (second wave)

iii. global human rights movements (third wave)

d. Fertility rates decreasing:

i. In 1800:

1. typical American woman had 7 – 8 live births during her lifetime (higher for blacks and immigrants);

2. average life expectancy was about 40 years (lower for blacks and immigrants)

ii. In 2000:

1. typical American woman had slightly more than 2 live births during her lifetime (higher for blacks and immigrants)

2. average life expectancy was about 75 years (lower for blacks and immigrants).[1]

3.

e. Literacy

i. American women had highest literacy rates in the world in early 19th century

ii. By 2010 – one half to two thirds of bachelor’s degrees conferred upon women, across races and classes

f. Power

i. Power over- ability to make people do what they would not otherwise do

ii. Power with – ability to enable people to do what they could not otherwise do:

g. “Rights talk” (democratic values)

i. Contagious

ii. Rising expectations

iii. Grounds for authority – legitimate power

II. Overview of the women’s movement

a. First wave – 1840s-1920 (note: much overlap among these strands)

i. Women’s clubs

1. literary and civic clubs

2. early roles: “universities for middle aged women” - self-improvement for women denied higher education

3. later roles: community development and political reform

4. Projects included workplace safety, public libraries, kindergartens, playgrounds; suffrage, anti-lynching campaign

ii. Abolition

1. Anti-slavery societies: women learned how to do politics

2. Grounding in Quaker, Unitarian or Universalist religions: spiritual equality of all souls

3. Learned to use skills on behalf of racial politics that they were then forbidden from using for sex/gender politics

4. Uneasy alliance: pressures to disconnect racial justice from gender justice to appease the south.[2]

iii. Birth control[3]

1. Abstinence model

2. Comstock laws – prohibited sending information about birth control or “obscenity” through the mails, 1873-1936.

3. 1917 – Birth Control League; became Planned Parenthood in 1942.

iv. Labor[4] - changing private/public relations

1. 1824 – first strike of 102 women workers, Pawtucket, Rhode Island, in support of brother weavers

2. 1825 – first women’s union – United Tailoresses of N.Y.

3. 1845 – Female Labor Reform Association, Lowell, Massachusetts, female cotton mill workers

4. 1881 – 3000 black women laundry workers strike, Atlanta, Georgia

5. 1909 – “Uprising of the 20,000,” female garment workers strike, New York city

6. 1912 -Triangle Shirt Waist Co. fire

7. 1941 – 7 million women enter the paid work force, 2 million in heavy industry

8. 1969 – 550 black women hospital workers strike, Charleston, South Carolina.

v. Suffrage (authority and power; rights and roles of citizenship)

1. Anti-slavery convention, London, 1840

2. Seneca Falls Convention, 1848 – Declaration of Sentiments

3. National Women Suffrage Association and American Women Suffrage Association formed, 1868

4. Merged into National American Women Suffrage Association, 1890 – seek state by state amendments, legal strategies

5. NAACP, 1909

a. Supported strikers at Triangle Shirt Waist Factory, helped keep out strike breakers

6. National Women’s Party, 1913 - seek federal amendment, civil disobedience

7. World War I – 1914-1918

8. 19th Amendment

a. Passed by Congress – 1919

b. Ratified by states - 1920

b. Other threads:

i. Temperance movement

ii. Spiritualist movement

iii. Settlement house movement

iv. Sex radicals

III. Resolution and consequences of the women’s movement

a. More women in public life

i. Education

ii. Politics

iii. Paid employment

iv. Entrepreneurs

v. Religion

b. Not many more men in private labor

c. No “resolution”

i. Continuing contradiction – double day

ii. Individual upward mobility vs. collective change

iii. “Rights talk” still contagious

1. gay/lesbian/transgender/bisexual

2. children

3. nature

iv. Women’s liberation connected with men’s and children’s:

1. “No people are ever elevated above the condition of their females.” Martin R. Delany, The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States (1852)

2. “A nation is not defeated until the hearts of its women are on the ground.” Cheyenne saying

3. “Regardless of all political and economic theories, treating of the fundamental differences between various groups within the human race, regardless of class and race distinctions, regardless of all artificial boundary lines between woman's rights and man's rights, I hold that there is a point where these differentiations may meet and grow into one perfect whole….Peace or harmony between the sexes and individuals does not necessarily depend on a superficial equalization of human beings; nor does it call for the elimination of individual traits and peculiarities. The problem that confronts us today, and which the nearest future is to solve, is how to be one's self and yet in oneness with others, to feel deeply with all human beings and still retain one's own characteristic qualities.” Emma Goldman, The Tragedy of Women’s Emancipatiom

v. ongoing negotiations.

Relevant content standards:

K.3.1: Describe historically significant events and observances in American history

1.3.2: Describe the lives of people who significantly impacted American history

1.4.4: Explain shared democratic values, including equality, common good, and individual rights

2.4.1 Describe the different ways people gain authority and the limits of such authority

3.4.2 Describe ways in which people exercise power without authority

3.5.1 Describe roles and rights of citizenship and demonstrate responsibilities of citizenship

8.3.8, Examine the impact of the Seneca Falls Convention and major abolitionists, including Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison

9PD.4.3 Assess the extent to which the American values of common good, equality of opportunity, and individual rights have been realized

10.3.4, Describe reform issues of the Progressive Era (including political reform, labor reform, and business regulation)

10.3.11 Describe the significance of the literature, arts, and feminism of the 1920’s, including the “Lost Generation,” the Harlem Renaissance, and flappers

10.3.26 Describe the expansion of the Civil Rights movement to other groups, including Native Americans and women

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[1]Michael Haines, “Fertility and Mortality in the United States,” E.H. Net 10/2/04 , accessed 6/8/11.

[2] “African American Women and the Suffrage Movement,” Teaching Tolerance, n.d. , accessed 6/8/11.

[3] birth control: History of the Birth Control Movement." The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia.

© 1994, 2000-2006, on Infoplease.© 2000–2007 Pearson Education, publishing as Infoplease.

09 Jun. 2011 accessed 6/9/11.

[4] “Women's Labor History Timeline: 1765 - Present Day,” New York Teacher, March 3, 2009, accessed 6/8/11.

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