Women's History Scholarship Summary

"Changing attitudes in Britain Society towards women was the major reason why some women received the vote in 1918". How accurate is this view?

Historiographical interpretations of the Civil Rights Movement have often been documented as a history of great men mostly focusing on black men like Dr. Martin Luther King, John Lewis, Jim Lawson, and Malcom X. As scholars of the civil rights movement, we now recognize the ways in which the prevailing forces of both patriarchy and sexism have done the work of minimizing and erasing the important contributions of women throughout the progression of human history. Whether we look to the development of the ancient the Roman empire or more contemporarily at the development of the United States of America, women have played a very important role in ensuring the success and sustainability of said nations. The same trend follows when considering various social movements throughout society. From the protestant reformation to the civil rights movement, we can observe that women played a big role in both their formation and in their conclusion.

As the United States was continuing recovering from the Civil War and embracing the expansion of the West, industrialization, immigration and the growth of cities, women’s roles in America were changing by the transformation of this new society. During the period of 1865-1912, women found themselves challenging to break the political structure, power holders, cultural practices and beliefs in their “male” dominated world.

After studying women and gender history in early America for the past semester, my views about American history have changed tremendously. Having very little prior experience with history, I had many assumptions and preconceived notions from high school history classes. Women were never even mentioned in my previous learning about U.S. history, so I assumed they took on unimportant roles and had little, if any, impact on shaping our country’s history. However, after this semester of delving deeply into the women of early America, I could not have been more incorrect. Although they were not typically in the public realm, we cannot fully understand history without studying women. The following readings uncovered the roles of women in the private sphere and were crucial to my new understanding of the importance of women in American history by bringing women to the forefront.

Through Women’s Eyes by Ellen Carol DuBois and Lynn Dumenil addresses American History from 1865 until present day. The third edition of this textbook includes visual and primary sources over several centuries. I used this textbook in a history course, “Women in the United States, 1890 – Present;” I found the textbook to be engaging, helpful, and useful throughout the course. The way in which in the information was presented allowed me to learn, assess, and analyze the difficulties women faced.

Women’s rights is apparent in the fight for suffrage in the late 1800’s-early 1900’s . It can

Females across the nation started speaking out against gender inequality. Discrimination in areas such as the workplace, marriage, and government had become overwhelmingly obvious and women started fighting back (Banks 207). This uprising coincided with the Civil Rights Movement. During the same time, African-Americans were standing up against segregation and for racial equality. These two movements went hand-in-hand, as they both had similar motives. Both women and blacks were fighting against oppression in their own country, and they benefitted from each other’s successes. But it wasn’t strictly these two minority groups standing up for themselves during this time, as Mexicans and Native Americans joined the cause too. They also spoke out against inequality by hosting similar protests and demonstrations as the black and women’s rallies. This showed how the 1960’s were a popular time for minority groups to take a stand and make their voices heard, and women were only one of the many groups of people who rallied for change during that time.

In A Woman’s Crusade, Alice Paul and the Battle for the Ballot, Mary Walton argues how important it is for women to actively know the history with their equality rights, and how Alice Paul and other women fought so hard for those rights throughout time. All through time women have fought for the right to vote, equal rights in the workplace, and rights for our own body, these fights have been so important for woman to move on in our society to been seen as equals and not the weaker sex. Moving back in time with Mary Walton’s book “A Woman’s Crusade,” in the early stages of women’s suffrage is an inspiring crusade of inspiration. Alice Paul started her early days as an eighth generation American Quaker, living a life as a Quaker Alice Paul

Kerber, Linda K., Jane Sherron De Hart, Cornelia Hughes Dayton, and Judy Tzu-Chun Wu. Women's America: Refocusing the Past: Rosalyn Baxandall and Linda Gordon, “The Women’s Liberation Movement”. 8th ed. NY, NY: Oxford University Press, 2016.

A fresh, personal, bottom-up approach to the women’s labor movement in the early 20th century

The United States was founded by the principle that “all men are created equal” but as we struggled for the fight of equality for African Americans, we forgot about the fight for equality for women. It is not until thirty years after the Gilded Age when the 19th Amendment was passed, giving women the right to vote. A major advocate for women’s suffrage was Elizabeth Cady Stanton who believed that “that the isolation of every human soul… must give each individual the right to choose her own surroundings” (188). Even though women were able to come together during this period, they could not fully unite as African American women were left out of the movement, as illustrated in Live Pryor’s plea for help from Susan B. Anthony, another strong advocate for women’s rights. Ultimately

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

Women had attempted to call attention to the issue of woman’s suffrage for hundreds of years. Until August 18th, 1920 women had no right to vote for the politicians that governed them. Many women wondered why they had not been given suffrage, but African American men were given the right to vote nearly 50 years earlier. The fifteenth amendment states that citizens “shall not be denied the right to vote based on race, color, or previous condition of servitude”. Why couldn’t gender have been included in the amendment? Many claimed that was not fair to the women who had helped Americans in the most crucial of times. During previous wars women were left to take care of the household while men were at war. They also worked

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

Even though women make up approximately half of the United States population, there were few opportunities for women to have female role models or perspectives of history that focused on women until a little over a century ago, when World War I and the First Wave of Feminism changed the role women played in society forever. However, it is remarkable to examine how women had and been continuously pushed to the back of the conversation, even as feminism became a nationally recognised issue. Even now, our nation’s history is told in an androcentric fashion; even if gender inequality throughout our nation’s history has shaped many social structures today, there is a lack of recognition of the importance of women. On top of that, such an androcentric