Essay Now We Can Begin: Women's Fight For Equality

Up until the early 1900’s, women were seen by society as people with household roles that consisted of cooking, cleaning, and tending their children. As time progressed, the view of women in society gradually changed, but their opinions still did not seem to matter. It wasn’t until 1920, that women gained suffrage with the 19th amendment. This amendment was a huge step in gaining full and equal rights for women, but unfortunately discrimination against them still happens today. There are various different situations in which the issue of gender inequality occurs. Although the law states that everyone has equal opportunities and rights, women are highly discriminated against in everyday roles such as employment, extracurricular activities, military, and in the government.

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.

The gender roles in America have changed tremendously since the end of the American Civil War. Women and men, who once lived in separate spheres are now both contributing to American society. Women have gone from the housewife so playing key roles in the country's development in all areas. Though our society widely accepts women and the idea that our society is gender neutral, the issues that women once faced in the late 1860s are still here.

The Women's Rights Movement was a significant crusade for women that began in the late nineteenth century and flourished throughout Europe and the United States for the rest of the twentieth century. Advocates for women's rights initiated this movement as they yearned for equality and equal participation and representation in society. Throughout all of history, the jobs of women ranged from housewives to factory workers, yet oppression by society, particularly men, accompanied them in their everyday lives. Not until the end of the nineteenth century did women begin to voice their frustrations about the inequalities among men and women, and these new proclamations would be the basis for a society with opportunities starting to open for

With the advancement of suffrage to equal pay, over the last century, women’s rights have progressed immensely. Through historic marches and demonstrations across the United States, women protested for their equal place in politics and social progress. Despite the fear-mongering components used in achieving these rights, women’s rights are still thoroughly debated within society today. Over the last century, incredible and unreachable goals have been fulfilled for women, such as the right to vote and a sense of equal state in the “Free World,” and can only improve in the years to come.

Women have come a long way ever since the 19th Amendment was passed in 1920 and thereafter with the Equal Rights Amendment Act in 1972 to the U.S Constitution. After decades of struggling and protesting, the 19th Amendment was passed and ratified to grant women the right to vote. Fifty-two years later worth of revisions and persistency, the Equal Rights Amendment was ratified in which it declared that everyone had both Human and Civil rights in the States regardless of sex. Not only did these amendments have an immense impact on the lives of women and sequentially with the rest of the citizens of this nation, but on the people of today’s century. Women have done a tremendous job in proving society wrong about the roles women are

Looking back with a historical lens, it’s evident that the fight for women’s rights has progressed in a step wise process. The nineteenth amendment opened a new door of opportunities for women to take advantage of. In modern times, the continued push for equal rights is evident through the fight for reproductive rights and equal pay. Even with the right to vote, women are still being under represented and out of control when it comes to their reproductive rights and in the workplace. Opposing beliefs regarding feminism have prevented the progression of more gender equality in the United States. What originally started as a plea for a political voice helped to shape the history of the nation. Women’s suffrage paved the way for countless groups and further feminist

    Women’s rights in the United States have come a long way in the last two centuries. Women have gone from being seen as minorities to being viewed as powerful and independent by many. Basic rights such as initiating divorce, working and earning a salary, going to college, owning property, and voting were denied to them. The list of these denied rights goes on, but women such as Sojourner Truth, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Elizabeth Blackwell worked to change this. They helped women gain the rights they know today.

Since the enactment of the nineteenth amendment, which granted women suffrage during the late 1920s, a woman’s role in society has drastically changed. Perhaps the most drastic shift occurred during World War II when women successfully integrated into the workforce after most of the nation’s men left for war. Fast forward to the 21st century and women are seen in almost any career previously deemed as a man’s job from an engineer, mayor, chief executive officer, and so much more. At the surface, it seems as if the United States has achieved complete gender equality, but that could not be further from the truth. Women certainly have the same opportunities as men in this country, but we do not have the same resources.

In the 19th century women began fighting for more rights. For example, in 1848 Elizabeth Cady Stanton made a speech about better education for women at Seneca Falls. In this speech she states, “The right is ours. The question now is: how shall we get possession of what rightfully belongs to us?”

Since the beginning of time, women have rarely been seen as equal alongside men. They were always expected to focus on housework and were never given the opportunity to own property, touch money, or vote. It wasn’t until the late 1800s when women decided to make a drastic change. Women’s rights activists, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, organized the first women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls. At this convention,

America is the land of opportunity. It is a place of rebirth, hope, and freedom. However, it was not always like that for women. Many times in history women were oppressed, belittled, and deprived of the opportunity to learn and work in their desired profession. Instead, their life was confined to the home and family. While this was a noble role, many females felt that they were being restricted and therefore desired more independence. In America, women started to break the mold in 1848 and continued to push for social, political, educational, and career freedom. By the 1920s, women had experienced significant “liberation”, as they were then allowed to vote, hold public office, gain a higher education, obtain new jobs, drastically change

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