In the late 19th century, woman’s suffrage was an extreme idea usually promoted by outspoken people on the outside of polite society. The beginning of the movement was weak and fragile, with supporters trying their best to push woman’s suffrage into the spotlight and onto the main party platforms. The movement could not afford to have supporters more volatile than the already radical idea of allowing woman the vote. In an effort to push support for woman’s suffrage in the 1880s, the National Woman’s Suffrage Association (NWSA) decided that they needed to portray themselves and their supporters as respectable and honorable women. Matilda Joslyn Gage was one of several woman whose contributions were downplayed by the history books and by …show more content…
While the three types are not designated to a specific era, they often follow a linear path with the history of woman’s suffrage and woman’s rights. Examples of rights feminists include early reformers like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Rights feminists believed that woman should be given suffrage because it was their right as citizens. Following these woman are difference feminists, like Frances Willard. These feminists believed that woman should be given the vote because woman would represent different ideas and beliefs in the polls. Finally, there are emancipation feminists who believe in the total and absolute freedom for woman.
Some feminists align clearly with one type, while others are a mixture of both, or even change later in their lives. Matilda Joslyn Gage was a rights feminist who believed that woman should be given their rights because off of their humanity and that woman needed to break free from the harsh social constructions of the Christian Churches. Gage’s beliefs can clearly be seen throughout her life and inspired from her childhood.
Matilda Joslyn Gage was born on the 24th of March 1826 to Dr. Hezekiah Joslyn and Helen Leslie in Cicero, New York. Gage was an only child and was raised in a reformist home. Dr. Hezekiah Gage was a well-known and open supporter of abolition and their family home was a stop on the famed Underground Railroad. Her childhood created a lifelong passion for civil rights
There are people, groups, and events that helped women gain equal rights as women. The Seneca Falls Conventions occurred in 1848 and Congress were introduced to the amendment granting women’s suffrage in 1878. (Document 3) After many women began to realize that their rights were limited, about 300 women and men came to the Seneca Falls Convention. The Seneca Falls Convention occurred on July 19 to 20 in the year of 1848. It was the first convention on women’s right and everything except women’s suffrage was approved. Women suffrage is the right to vote. Elizabeth Cady Stanton ,Lucretia Mott and Frederick Douglass were one of the many that fought for women's suffrage. Lucretia Mott was one of the leading women abolitionist and decided it
Susan B. Anthony was perhaps the most well-known women’s rights activists. After the Civil War ended, Anthony refused to support any suffrage amendments to the Constitution unless the changes included women as equals to men. According to history.com, Anthony believed that any amendment that granted African-American men the right to vote should not be ratified unless it granted women the right to vote as well. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, another well-known activist, was National American Woman Suffrage Association’s first president with Susan B. Anthony as the second. Anthony kept fighting for the cause until her death in April of 1906. Unfortunately, she didn’t live to see the changes she made. Neither did Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
The battle for suffrage was a long and slow process. Many women tried to initiate the fight for suffrage, like Alice Paul and Lucy Burns. “These were the New Suffragists: women who were better educated, more career-oriented, younger, less apt to be married and more cosmopolitan than their previous generation.” (pg 17) Eventually, in 1920, the 19th amendment was ratified; allowing women to vote, but it was not any one person or event that achieved this great feat. It was the confluence of certain necessary factors, the picketing and parades led by Alice Paul, militaristic suffrage parties and the influence of the media that caused the suffrage amendment to be passed and ratified in 1920. But most importantly, they successfully moved both
Women’s suffrage is commonly known as women’s right to vote and the ability to stand for electoral office. The match-up between men and women was never close to being fair in the beginning. Women weren’t allowed to do anything men were. It all started in 1840, when Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were banned from attending the World Anti-Slavery Convention held in London. (Francisco 1997.) This fired them to rally a Women's Convention in the United States. They eventually hosted this convention in 1848 in Seneca Falls, New York where Ms. Stanton wrote "The Declaration of Sentiments," which created an outline of the events to come in the next upcoming years (Lott 1999.) In
Women’s rights did not officially begin to be a problem until 1848. Many believe that it’s been a problem from at most the 1600’s. Colonial women didn’t give a thought about their rights, but there were some female political leaders. Margaret Brent, a woman who had been given power-of-attorney from Lord Baltimore. Judith Sargent Stevens Murray, the writer of the United States’ first feminist theory. “Will it be said that the judgment of a male of two years old is more sage than that of a female the same age? I believe the reverse is generally observed to be true. But from that period what partiality! How is the one exalted and the other depressed…. The one is taught to aspire, and the other is early confined and limited.”
When slavery was abolished, people finally managed to realize one simple thing- its just a pigment in our skin that makes us different. But why couldn 't they realize another thing- its just our sex organs that make us different? Until the fairly recent 1920, women and men were held so different they were not even allowed to cast their ballots for the president of the United States. It drove some women, such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B Anthony to start extremely important conventions that even led to a movement. Their supporters were often arrested just for just speaking out for equality. Women finally gained suffrage in the United States due to the National Women’s Rights Convention, American Equal Rights Association, and hard headed women who took a stand for their right to vote.
After the Civil War, the movement of women’s suffrage had a new inspiration, as they used African American suffrage as a stepping stone towards women’s suffrage. Organizations, such as the National Association Women’s Suffrage Association and Women’s Christian Temperance, had clear goals to reform the urban areas with women’s suffrage. As this empowering reform took place, women of the late 19th and early 20th centuries started to question their own roles within society. As women faced opposition and had diminished roles within society, the women of the late 19th century sought equality.
In the late 1800’s women were tired of being put on the back burner. Women were not able to vote, work certain jobs and some were not able to get a basic education.
Between December 1st and 2nd 1900, John Hossack (a farmer from Warren County, Iowa) was murdered with an ax by his wife while in bed (Iowa Cold Cases, Inc). This play was inspired by the true story of Margaret Hossack, an Iowa farm wife who was charged with the murder of her husband John. One of the reporters, Susan Glaspell, decided to write a literary version of this investigation and “Trifles” came to be. Susan Glaspell is a feminist writer from Davenport, Iowa who started off writing for a newspaper called Des Moines Daily News. Later on in her literary career she left the journalism industry and founded a theatrical organization called ‘Provincetown Players’ on Cape Cod, Massachusetts (Waterman). In Trifles, Susan Glaspell exposes women’s suffrage through a feminist voice by covering issues regarding female oppression and patriarchal domination and symbolically illustrating the 19th century married woman as a caged bird.
During the late 19th century, women were in a society where man was dominant. Women not having natural born rights, such as the right to vote, to speak in public, access to equal education, and so forth, did not stop them to fight for their rights. Women's lives soon changed when Lucy Stone, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony played a prominent role to help bring about change.
The timeline of women’s suffrage is a one that spans from 1848 to 1920. The women’s rights movement in the United States started in the year 1848 with the first women’s rights convention held in Seneca Falls, New York. During this convention the ‘Declaration of sentiments’ was signed by 68 women who agreed that women deserved their own political identities. This document set forward the agenda for the women’s rights movement. In the year 1869, Susan B Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton formed the National Women’s suffrage Association which demanded that the 15th amendment be changed to include women right to vote. In the year 1890, The National Women Suffrage Association and the American Women Suffrage Association merged to form National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). Colorado was the first state to grant women the right to vote in the year 1893, followed by Utah, Idaho, Washington, California, Oregon, Kansas, Arizona, Alaska, Illinois, Montana, Nevada, New York, Michigan, South Dakota and Oklahoma. The National Association of Colored Women was formed in the year 1896 to promote the civil rights of colored women. The National Women’s Trade Union League was established in the year 1903 in order to improve the working condition for women and also to bring their wages in par with that of men.
It was Theodore Roosevelt, who stated that, “Nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care”, conveying the idea that with no voice comes no change. In the morning of August 26, 1920, the 19th amendment was ratified, which centralized mainly on the enfranchisement of women. Today, they have the legal right to vote, and the ability to speak openly for themselves, but most of all they are now free and equal citizens. However this victorious triumph in American history would not have been achieved without the strong voices of determined women, risking their lives to show the world how much they truly cared. Women suffragists in the 19th century had a strong passion to change their lifestyle, their jobs around the
The National Woman Suffrage Association was founded in 1869, one of the main suffrage organizations in the US during the 19th century. It was a unification of the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) and the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA). The (NAWSA) became the parent that combined all of women’s suffrage small and stated organizations. It was one of the largest and most important suffrage organizations as well as being the primary promoter to woman's right to vote. Women during the gilded age, progressive Era received many injustices and suffered from inequality. The National Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) main goal is to pursue the right to vote in different ways. The organization was established in 1890. In 1890 it became necessary to combine the efforts to try to pursue their goals. Their strategy is to pressure federal government to offer women the same constitutional protections in the Fifteenth Amendment (Keyssar,2009). After establishing (NAWSA) it became the mainstream and the most nationally visible women suffrage organization. NAWSA was the largest women's organization established to help pass woman suffrage legislation. For decades the woman suffrage movement story has been written as national stories. It’s a story that has been written through individuals and collective biography (Sneider, 2010).
Social change in Britain has been achieved primarily through the hard work of organized political groups. These groups created events to recruit and educate supporters of social equality to join them in fighting for progress. The Women’s Suffrage Movement between 1866 and 1928 in Britain is no exception to this trend. The reason for the great efficacy of these political groups, including the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies and the Women’s Social and Political Union, was the women who pioneered the groups and fought alongside them to create the change that they believed in. The goal of these political groups was finally realized in 1928 with the passing of the Representation of the People Act. However, the Women’s Suffrage Movement in Britain would not have been successful without the influential actions of several significant women. In addition to the overall necessity of female leadership for British Women’s Suffrage, the central efforts of Millicent Fawcett, Lydia Becker, and Emmeline Pankhurst particularly played a large role in the movement’s success.
This new generation of activists fought with this new agenda for almost 20 years until a few states in the West began to extend the vote to women. The Eastern and Southern states still refused to give in, but this didn’t stop the National American Woman Suffrage Association. In 1916, Carrie Chapman Catt, president of the NAWSA, worked vigorously to get women’s organizations from all over the country together and fight side by side. “One group of activists, led by Alice Paul and her National Woman’s Party, lobbied for full quality for women under the law” (Divine). She used mass marches and hunger strikes as strategies, but she was eventually forced to resign because of her insistence on the use of militant direct-action tactics (Grolier). Finally, during World War 1, women were given more opportunities to work, and were able to show that they were just as deserving as men when it came to the right to vote. On August 18th, 1920, the 19th amendment was ratified, allowing women to vote. This drawn-out and arduous battle opened a new window of opportunity for women all over the country. Significant changes in both social life and job availability began to create what is now referred to as the “new women.”