Women in Colonial Times - Loudoun County Public Schools



Women’s History

Women in Colonial Times

A. New England - wife is subordinate to her husband; rear God-fearing children

B. Chesapeake – few women

C. General trends - Women gave up all personal property and freedom to her husband. Her job was to devote herself to the management of his household. Household work included cooking, cleaning, clothesmaking, and medical care. During this period, women were not supposed to have a temper or display passion of any kind. Instead, women were to be sharing and polite at all times, their primary goal being to service the man of the house. Even single women could not sue anyone or be sued, or make contracts, and divorce was almost impossible until the late eighteenth century.

D. Influence of the Enlightenment - weakened the view that husbands were natural "rulers" over their wives and replacing it with a (slightly) more liberal conception of marriage.

Women in the late 18th/early 19th centuries (The Early Republic)

A. Revolutionary War – some women worked at armed camps as cooks and nurses; in a few instances, women actually fought in battle (ex. Mary McCauley “Molly Pitcher”); at home, women ran family farms and businesses and provided food and clothing to the men

B. Post-Revolution

1. Republican motherhood - women had the essential role of instilling their children with values conducive to a healthy republic.

2. The wife's relationship with her husband also became more liberal, as love and affection instead of obedience and subservience began to characterize the ideal marital relationship

C. However, women still found themselves subordinated, legally and socially, to their husbands, disenfranchised and with only the role of mother open to them. The desire of women to have a place in the new republic was most famously expressed by Abigail Adams to her husband:

“Remember the Ladies”

D. The Declaration of Independence did not address women’s equality stating, "all men are created equal."

E. Cult of Domesticity - Women were expected to be pious, pure, and submissive to men. These were considered by many at the time to be "the natural state" of womanhood

F. Tasks: Cooking and meals were of primary importance. Cleaning and repairs and alterations to clothing were also the homemaker’s responsibility. Generally, four days of the week were also devoted to the care of household linens. The woman of the house also cared for any sick members of the family – and illness was frequent. This was all in addition to the mother’s role as primary teacher of her children. Daughters were encouraged to help their mothers with any and all domestic chores. Another object common to the home of a well-bred young lady was the piano. The ability to play suggested the girl’s parents had given their daughter a truly genteel education, probably at considerable expense.

Early Industrialization

A. Rise of industrialization and cities leads to changes in gender roles

1. if women in urban areas sought employment, they were limited to domestic service or teaching (factory jobs were not common)

2. most working women were single

B. Waltham System (Lowell, Mass.) - led by Francis Cabot Lowell

1. Lowell factories deemed a model of using young women for factory work

2. Lowell designed a "model" community--courtyards, secure dormitories for girls to live in,

prepared meals, religious exercises, etc.

3. many women came straight from the farms of New England, frequently with other female

relatives or friends from home

4. most only worked for a few years, then left to get married

C. Separate spheres not really relevant in southern households before the war

Early Activism, Seneca Falls, and the growth of the movement

A. Mental Hospitals - Dorothea Dix

B. Abolitionist movement – Sojourner Truth, Lucretia Mott, Lucy Stone, the Grimké sisters, Harriet Tubman

C. Early feminists – mid-1930s

1. many were active in the abolition movement

2. many were Christians, especially Quakers, such as Lucretia Mott

3. Sarah and Angelina Grimké published Letter on the Condition of Women and the Equality of the Sexes (1837) that the curse placed upon Eve in the Garden of Eden was God's prophecy of a period of universal oppression of women by men

4. Early feminists set about compiling lists of examples of women's plight in foreign countries and in ancient times

D. Seneca Falls convention (1848) - Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott

1. Declaration of Sentiments - men were said to be in the position of a tyrannical government over women

E. Susan B. Anthony - led to the focus on women's suffrage over more practical issues in the latter half of the 19th century; feminists assumed that once women had the vote, they would have the political will to deal with any other issues

F. Civil War

1. women took over men’s jobs (although lost them when men returned home)

2. took on the role of nurses and volunteers in soldiers’ aid societies

3. impacts

a. opened up the field of nursing

b. increased the fight for women’s suffrage

Late 19th Century

A. Women working – result of continued industrialization and urbanization

1. by 1890s, large number of women had entered the workplace (1 out of every 5; most single; only

5% of working women were married)

2. if economically feasible, most men and women believed a women’s proper place was at home

taking care of the children

3. Types of work

a. traditional female skills: domestic, teaching, nursing

b. non-traditional occupations: industrial (extensions of home – ex. textiles, baking), secretarial, and telephone operators

4. Wages: generally half of what men received; women seen as temporary, not permanent

breadwinners for families

B. Working class families - immigrant, minority and American-born workers’ families

1. Decisions were dominated by the male head of the household

2. all members of the family were expected to contribute to the family income, meaning taking in boarders, doing piecemeal work at home and finding other sources of income in addition to the head of the household’s were necessary

C. Middle-class families

1. characterized by a husband and wife team making joint decisions

2. maintained traditional roles - men working outside the home, women working inside the home

D. Reactions to women entering workforce in large numbers

1. some traditional occupations were seen as fitting for women--fit in with notions as being in

the proper sphere for "ladies" (nursing and teaching)

2. other occupations viewed as being unfit for "good" women

3. mass culture responded to the expanded role of women by producing a flood of magazines and

advice books aimed solely at female readers

E. Women and the labor movement

1. opposition by men

2. women form own unions (ILGWU--International Ladies Garment Workers Union)

F. Women and higher education

1. by 1900, new all-female college began to open up; 71% of all colleges admitted women

The Progressive Era

Temperance – Women’s Christian Temperance Union (Frances E. Willard) and Carry A. Nation – helped push for the 18th Amendment

Settlement houses

9 run by young, middle-class, well-educated women

10 provided social services to people in immigrant neighborhoods

11 Hull House – Jane Addams

Progressive women pushed for educational equality, liberalizing marriage and divorce laws, reducing job discrimination, and recognizing women’s rights to own property

Origins of Women's suffrage movement

1. turn of the century brought renewed effort for suffrage among middle-class women--especially those

who saw uneducated men voting all the time

2. as late as 1910, women could only vote in four western states (1869 – Wyoming was the first state to

allow women to vote)

3. the South and East coast states (w/exception of New York in 1917) held firm against women voting

E. Organized efforts for suffrage

1. National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA)

a. led first by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, then followed by Carrie Chapman

Catt in 1900

b. pushed for votes at the state level

c. efforts focused on lobbying, organized marches and rallies, and informational efforts

d. most members were native-born, middle-class, urban whites (mainstream progressives)

e. stressed women's special "purity" and its impact on electoral process

2. Congressional Union (Woman's Party)

a. founded in 1913, led by Alice Paul, and influenced by militancy of British suffragist

movement

b. attempted to bring direct pressure on federal government to pass an amendment granting

suffrage to women

F. Nineteenth Amendment

1. passed in 1919, ratified in 1920

1920s, the Depression and World War II

A. WWI – more than 11,000 women enter the workforce; helped convince Wilson to support the 19th

amendment

B. Post WWI

1. the promise of power in the 19th Amendment proved illusory to women during the 1920s

2. Women's movement splinters apart

a. some women's groups push for an equal rights amendment, while others viciously condemn it

as putting women in unnatural positions

b. Jane Addams supports an international league promoting peace and freedom worldwide--she

is condemned as a communist sympathizer

c. At same time, Supreme Court strikes down a number of child-labor laws and women's

protective laws

3. Challenges to the "private sphere" of women

a. Margaret Sanger--nurse who fought hard to get legalized birth control in N.Y.--was battled

strongly by northeastern ministers

C. The 1920s - a number of young Americans (mostly middle-class college students living in the cities) reject the values of

their elders about: sex, dress, public behavior, & religion - Flappers

1. they drink bootleg liquor, go to jazz clubs, discuss openly, date, embrace the ideas of Sigmund

Freud--even if they don't understand them--as way of exploring human motivation

2. some young women assert their freedom by wearing makeup (previously associated mainly with actresses and prostitutes), smoking, getting rid of confining undergarments (particularly petticoats and corsets), shortening their hair and their skirts

D. The Depression - economic guarantees granted to retirees, their wives and children and their widows,

through the Social Security Act; Frances Perkins is appointed as the first female Cabinet member

E. WWII

1. 350,000 women served in the war: Wacs, Waves, Spars, Marines and nurses

2. more than 6 million American women enter the paid labor force--by 1945 women constitute over 1/3 of employed workers

3. women take on formerly male-dominated occupations--"Rosie the Riveter" becomes symbol of female defense-plant workers

4. women only earn 65% of men's pay for same work--women are told they are only emergency replacements until men return from war

5. more than 1/3 of women workers have children under age 14

i. child-care centers exist for less than 10% of children

ii. with youngsters left on their own, juvenile delinquency spurts

6. marriage, birth, and divorce soar

F. Post-WWII – most women lost their jobs to men returning from the war; however, in many white collar sectors, such as

banking and clerical work, the glass ceiling was moved significantly upward. Both during and after the war, women rarely

earned as much in the occupations that became female-dominated (such as cashiers, tellers, and low-level loan officers) as

their male colleagues had before.

1950s

A. The GI Bill, suburbanization, and the reuniting of separated spouses fostered the baby boom; the nuclear family at one of its historic peaks, the scene was set for a major reconsideration of women's roles.

B. During the 1950s, popular culture portrayed career women as unfulfilled; homemakers and mothers were the ideal

1. as women tried to meet this ideal, fewer women went to college or sought higher-paying jobs--women constituted a smaller percentage of college students in the 1950s than in 1920s and 1930s

C. The symbolic fuse was the publication of Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, which critiqued suburban white women's socialization and experience as intolerable.

1960s - The growth of modern feminism

A. By 1960, 40% of women continue to work outside of the home, but they mostly held poorly paid, dead-end jobs

B. Resurgence of feminist movement in the 1960s

1. 1963, Betty Friedan's The Feminist Mystique is published--it articulates the growing unhappiness of middle-class white women with the 1950s emphasis on motherhood and domesticity

a. reactions to book mixed among women

2. 1966, National Organization for Women (NOW) founded--it lobbies for women's full economic and social equality

3. Activist women establish women's consciousness-raising sessions, health collectives, and day-care centers for children of working women

4. women also demonstrate for equal rights and legal abortions

C. successes

1. amendments to Civil Rights Act of 1964 forbidding discrimination on basis of gender

2. heightened political awareness and power

3. legalization of birth control in all states (Griswold v. Conn., 1963)

4. legalization of abortion with Roe v. Wade (1973)

D. problem areas

1. economic parity not achieved--job advancement still difficult, most working women paid less than

men

2. movement not widespread--still basically comprised of middle-class white women

3. ERA passes Congress in 1972, 28 states ratify quickly, but amendment fails to get enough votes for

ratification

Progress towards integration in politics

A. No more than two women served in the Senate at any time until 1994, and fewer than a dozen were Congressional Representatives until 1955. Current representation is 16 senators and 67 representatives, around 15% of the United States Congress.

B. One quarter of women in Congress are people of color, which reflects the American population, but bucks the trend of the Congress.

C. No woman has been a major party presidential nominee, although several have run for the position of Vice President or sought their party's nomination.

D. In 1981, Sandra Day O'Connor became the first woman to become a member of the Supreme Court. Ruth Bader Ginsburg is the second woman serving on the Court.

E. On January 4, 2007 Nancy Pelosi became the first female Speaker of the House of Representatives.

................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download