Women's Rights Thesis

Thesis: The women’s suffrage movement effect many areas around America, including: social expectations, economic roles, and political positions.

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.

Women were not allowed to vote nor were they paid as much as men for completing the same job. In a 1889 payroll from Lyman Mills in Holyoke, MA we see that a man and a woman performing the same work for the same duration of time, could have a three dollar difference in their weekly wages. Three dollars may not seem like much but it is equivalent to $74.36 in today’s money! Suffragist Susan B. Anthony once said that the preamble of the Constitution says “’We the people of the United States…’ It was the people; not we the white male citizens; nor we, the male citizens; but we the whole people, who formed the union.” Women gained their right to vote in 1920 when the nineteenth amendment was passed.

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

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

When you think about women in the work field today, what do you see? A successful lawyer, a doctor, perhaps. That’s true. In fact, there have been more females holding high employment positions in the late 20th and 21st century than ever before. According to Donald M. Fisk in “Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2003”, 60% of working-age women worked in the labor force in 1999. That’s 41% more than that of 1900, where only 19% of women worked in the labor force. Among these women, a vast majority have seen their salaries sky-rocket in the past two decades, almost surpassing those of male workers. However, it is not always this way.

Until 1920s things changed quickly, the women was given the right to vote, they began to attend college. The Equal Rights Amendment was proposed in 1923. The World War I was over and men wanted their jobs back. Women, though, who had taken up men’s jobs while they were at war, had proved themselves worthy of men’s jobs, so many organizations and feminist reformers took up the task to encourage gender equality.

Since the late 19th century, women have been struggling with the issue of not receiving the same amount of pay as men. The gender wage gap was not seen as a major issue until the 1960s, however, and unfortunately, it is still a major issue in our world today. (cite source). In the early 1900’s, World War I caused many men to leave their families behind to fight for their country. As a result of this, women had to take the responsibility of the male roles in the workforce. Women were expected to do the same jobs as men did before they were deployed, but were paid less to do so (cite source). This problem still exists in our world today. In 2011, it was proven that the weekly earnings for a female full-time worker is $684, compared

In history, women’s salaries and earning were almost always lower than men’s. This inequality has continued until the most recent decades. The wage gap difference is getting smaller as time passes by. On one hand, it could be the rise of the feminist movement. Feminist groups fought hard for the rights of women. On the other hand, it may have been caused by the comparable worth policy which was emerged after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Act was implemented to eliminate any discriminations bias against one’s color, nationality, religion or sex. It has gradually raised women’s social position to a level closer to men’s. The comparable worth approach also reduced the wage gap for women and minority workers.

Did you know that the wage gap is affected by more than just wages? Until the Enlightenment of Europe in the 1400s, women were viewed as less than men. They were not expected to work or be in any leadership positions. Now, the modern feminist movement is gaining momentum in raising the equality of women by increasing access to information about inequalities women face and hosting protests. Despite their success, women still face inequalities, especially in the work force. Women’s lack of access to equal employment opportunities leads to a wage disparity, for which political solutions have been implemented without success.

The American economy runs as a cycle of employment and consumer spending for centuries, with profit, cost and salaries as the inputs and outputs. If the market is supplied by workers who are paid and encouraged to spend their wages in order to keep the market running, then the phenomenon of all employees paid equally for the same job should be universally understood in modern society. The working gender gap in the United States has revolutionized since the end of World War II in which the women who were originally temporarily employed in the workforce in place of drafted males were now seeking to be the rising breadwinners of the family. Through the Equal Pay Act, signed into law by President John F. Kennedy on June 10, 1963, the “prohibition of sex discrimination” in all forms of pay intends to eliminate unequal pay for the same jobs occupied by different genders (“The Equal”, n.d.).

Did you know that women could not vote before the Women’s Liberation? Women's liberation means a movement to gain full legal, economic, educational, and social rights and opportunities for women and equal to those of men. The Women’s Lib changed everything including, women’s lives. The women who started this all was Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a mother of 4 in upstate New York. Elizabeth Cady Stanton was going through everything women all over america were dealing with.

Women are more prone to live in low income circumstances than men, hence introducing the social problem of gender discrimination. Women have been discriminated in the workplace over time in that they are paid less than men in specific jobs and are not seen to be ‘suited’ to particular jobs, especially in the manufacturing and trade industries. Marxist feminist Margaret Benston believed that women were oppressed by capitalism in that they were treated almost as a back-up, or secondary option of cheap labour that enabled profits to be kept up. ‘In 1994, 6.41 million women were in low-paid jobs and on average women’s full-time gross weekly pay was 72 percent of that of men’(Kane, 2003:115).

The gender wage gap has been a substantial subject that has had numerous studies done, that included extensive debates and commentary for the past three centuries. In fact, the gender wage gap predominantly affects women. For example, in 2003 people reported that women make eighty cents for every dollar men make(Gender Pay 8). For one thing, women should not be getting paid less for doing the same job as men. The individual hired at the same time as another individual should receive the same starting pay until it is shown they deserve more pay than they are receiving. If the wage gap continues to grow at the rate it has been, it will be another fifty years before women make the same as men (Discrimination 1). The workforce has grown a considerable

Working women in the early part of the twentieth century faced many obstacles, one such obstacle was discrimination. In the work force men always received the better positions and always made higher wages. Women were given unskilled labor and were paid half of what men