An Insight For Women 's Struggle For Equality

Women have been fighting the fight for women’s rights for a long time. In fact, evidence can be traced back centuries of women’s desire for equality. Specifically, women have fought for their rights in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

“You can’t judge a book by it’s cover”. Every day our parents tell us as children that we cannot judge things based on the first glances that we see. However, people in our society today have filled their heads with stereotypes in order to judge people and their abilities. And when hiring employees, stereotypes and first glances is all an employer sees and therefore care about. In her book, Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich proves that a person’s race and gender have a massive influence on the type of low-wage work a person can find, due to the stereotypes that are associated with gender and race in our society today.

Women have always been fighting for their rights for voting, the right to have an abortion, equal pay as men, being able to joined the armed forces just to name a few. The most notable women’s rights movement was headed in Seneca Falls, New York. The movement came to be known as the Seneca Falls convention and it was lead by women’s rights activist Elizabeth Cady Stanton during July 19th and 20th in 1848. Stanton created this convention in New York because of a visit from Lucretia Mott from Boston. Mott was a Quaker who was an excellent public speaker, abolitionist and social reformer. She was a proponent of women’s rights. The meeting lasted for only two days and was compiled of six sessions, which included lectures on law, humorous

Although it was not seen as a right before, equality has grown into the statement for all of the natural human rights. Throughout the growth of the United States, much has changed: technology has advanced, wars have come and passed, old ways have been updated. However, the one thing that has followed slowly behind in the race for change is the equality for all. Those who were once viewed as lesser to the American males—females—are still having to make strides towards equality, but are considerably closer due to their fight for freedom and recognition. The documents “Now We Can Begin” by Crystal Eastman and “What’s Become of Rosie the Riveter?” by Frieda S. Miller are examples of what some of the women were out there fighting for.

The women’s rights movement was a huge turning point for women because they had succeeded in the altering of their status as a group and changing their lives of countless men and women. Gender, Ideology, and Historical Change: Explaining the Women’s Movement was a great chapter because it explained and analyzed the change and causes of the women’s movement. Elaine Tyler May’s essay, Cold War Ideology and the Rise of Feminism and Women’s Liberation and Sixties Radicalism by Alice Echols both gave important but different opinions and ideas about the women’s movement. Also, the primary sources reflect a number of economic, cultural, political, and demographic influences on the women’s movement. This chapter

Equality was not only a struggle for people of color, but also women. Women were looked at as property own by their husbands. They were not a loud to get a divorce, own property, speak in public, work, or vote. In 1848, women fought for their rights at the Seneca Fall Convention. After many struggles, women finally got to make their appearance in the workforce. Along with that came many stipulations such as they couldn’t work as many hours or get as much as men. Women have fought very hard over the years for equal rights and freedom. Even though, women have more rights today, this is still a struggle. The National Organization for Women fight for equality for women today.

Throughout history, battles and wars have been fought to gain some type of rights or freedoms. In 1775, the American Revolutionary War was fought for independence; In 1865, the American Civil War was fought to end slavery. Although no wars were fought, many battles were waged for women 's rights. The struggle for women 's rights begin in the mid-late 1800s at a time when women were not allowed to vote or own property. Women, as with African-Americans, during this period were not recognized as having any legal and political rights as men and whites, respectively. This attitude towards women, at the time, was ascribed to the “gender rules in the 1700s” where men thought of “women as fragile creatures always in need of male protection and always denied access to the public sphere." (Lecture 2, 6:19). If women wanted to gain their individualism, rights, and freedoms they were entitle to; they would have to unite and create opportunities to do so. The inequalities women faced was the foundation of the Women 's Suffrage Movement and many other organizations in support of women.

Women’s equality is an issue that has been around for awhile. While women have been given many rights to increase equality, including the right to vote and go to college, the problem hasn’t completely vanished. One area that still sees this is in sports. Women’s sports do not draw nearly as many fans and are not covered in the media as much as men’s sports, pay differences between male and female athletes are large, and female athletes have to wait longer to start their professional career than men, which risks their professional career before it even starts.

This investigation has enabled me to gain a perception into some of the techniques used by certain historians, as well as to the difficult task that historians encounter when undertaking historical investigations. I feel I have developed the skill of critically and carefully analyzing sources which is essential in the study of history. In order to carry out this investigation, I read books by well-known and praised historians on the subject of women’s rights and analyzed statistical evidence.

Many people are often misinformed or given bad first impressions of feminism. However, feminism is equal rights for all people of different race, sex, gender, and sexuality. Many of the people that give feminism a bad name, include a self-proclaimed feminist that is running for presidency, and meninists who are satirical equal rights activists. In reality, feminism is pro-gender equality and opportunities for all types of people.

The women’s movement began in the nineteenth century when groups of women began to speak out against the feeling of separation, inequality, and limits that seemed to be placed on women because of their sex (Debois 18). By combining two aspects of the past, ante-bellum reform politics and the anti-slavery movement, women were able to gain knowledge of leadership on how to deal with the Women’s Right Movement and with this knowledge led the way to transform women’s social standing (Dubois 23). Similarly, the movement that made the largest impact on American societies of the 1960’s and 1970’s was the Civil Right Movement, which in turn affected the women’s movement (Freeman 513). According to

The definition of gender roles is a set of societal norms dictating what types of behavior is generally considered acceptable based on the gender of a person. Additionally, if you don’t seem to accept this standard, there can be huge consequences. For example, in India, women are viewed as a burden and a “extra mouth to feed.” Her status promotes the idea that men can treat them in a subdued manner. If they don’t comply to these requirements, then a woman is murdered by her husband or his family by being set alight by a flammable liquid, which is usually known as bride burning. Herland, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, also uncovers the harsh inequality of women. Gender roles shouldn’t be real and they were forced on us by society.

Throughout many decades women have been struggling to be equal to men, both at home and in the work place. Women have come a long way and are certainly fighting to gain that equality, but gender roles are very important in our society. They have become important in life from birth, and society continues to push these gender roles. The treatment of the male gender is very different from that of the female, and this issue has become very important to me, as a woman. As children we learn and adapt to specific gender roles, and as we grow they become more evident and more important to our role in a society. There is a lot of discrimination against the female gender. Carol Gilligan argued that

In the 1800’s a women was suppose to have four things Piety, Purity, submissiveness, and domesticity. These principles shaped the “Cult of True Womanhood” an idea that women were to be seen but not heard. Women had no say when it came to politics, they couldn’t own property, they were not allowed to do many jobs, and they couldn’t even speak in front of men. They had the duty to be a mother and raise their children but even thought they had this responsibility it was the husband who had the complete control and guardianship of the children. Because of these ideas it was very difficult for change to happen. When women started to receive more education they began to ask questions about why they were being denied these rights, which began the

"People who are liberal thinkers have been enslaved by these poseurs, these racketeers, people who are pretending to be liberal but who are in fact just naïve politically. I have been congratulated by women...who are so sick of being bullied by these sanctimonious puritans who call themselves feminists." --Camille Paglia