Women’s Sufferage

The traditional roles women occupied from our early history through the Victorian period made the idea of women participating in the political life of the country a strange notion. These views are in contrast to the strong roles women frequently played in settling new territories. What woman would ever take time away from the domestic arts and responsibilities to engage in something that was clearly the domain and concern of her husband and male citizens more generally? To acquire the necessary education on the issues of the day, to know candidate’s positions and engage in political debate was moreover considered unladylike. Why enter the smoky parlors, the men’s cave of the day, to gain such an education when her husband was the more qualified and informed member of the household to speak and vote for her and the family (Adams, 2003)?

By 1848, a group of women led by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton had had enough of such talk and met in Seneca Falls, New York to gather numbers of volunteers and make a commitment to educate the public about the validity and necessity of women’s suffrage. These were women who were veterans in advocating for a variety of social causes -abolition, child labor conditions and temperance among them. They knew how to use the press, public speaking at rallies, protests and other means to gain and shift public opinion. Moreover, the vignette of women ensconced in the kitchen and sewing rooms at home was a picture that was changing in many ways with the rise of industrialism and the work many women performed in the factories and shops springing up across the country. A sense of identity, solidarity with fellow workers, and pride in earning a paycheck bolstered the sense of empowerment among working women as well as the sense that they were just as deserving as their male counterparts in having a voice that decided on matters that concerned them as much as it did men. How were politicians to listen to their concerns on issues that mattered to them when they were a disenfranchised group that office holders could ignore? Only with achieving the vote for women would matters change (Adams, 2003).

Group portrait monument to the pioneers of the woman suffrage movement, Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony, sculpted by Adelaide Johnson (1859-1955).

The women who led in the Seneca Falls movement formally drew up the “Declaration of Sentiments” which voiced the collective grievances of millions of women who lacked many of the rights enjoyed by men. It is no surprise that the document enunciates the lack of liberty, equality and inalienable rights promised in the Declaration of Independence. Using the language of that founding document, Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote: “We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men and women are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Those liberties denied to women in the 19th century were numerous and significant, they included the fact that women (Adams, 2003):

• lacked legal standing when married;
• lacked property rights if married
• were not allowed to vote
• must obey laws they had no part in forming
• were subject to imprisonment and beating by husbands who had full legal authority over them and were favored in divorce and child custody matters
• were required to pay property taxes while lacking opportunity to participate in levying such taxes
• were paid a fraction of what men earned for their labor
• were excluded from many professions including law and medicine
• were also excluded from most institutions of higher education
• were not allowed to participate in the affairs of churches with few exceptions and
• were “robbed of their self-confidence and self-respect while being made to be totally dependent on men.”

The women of the suffrage movement arose to remind the men in power during their day what Abigail Adams wrote to remind her husband to bear in mind when he came to write legislation for the newly formed nation: “And, by the way, in the new code of laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make, I desire you would remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors.” This advice went largely unheeded by Adams and his contemporaries  (Adams, 2003).

As support among women grew into the millions, the National American Woman Suffrage Association under the leadership of Carrie Chapman Catt along with the National Women’s Party headed by Alice Paul, both in their own moderate and militant ways respectively, gathered sufficient support to convince President Woodrow Wilson and Congress to pass and ratify the 19^th Amendment to the Constitution by 1920, a milestone in helping women to gain a voice and a greater role in the public square (Adams, 2003).

Idealized housewives, ca. 1950s.

Having gained the vote in 1920, women remained committed to the social agenda of the Declaration of Sentiments. Making headway on the particulars would come slowly and with the necessary concession to the adage that “every good cause must fight for its life.” The women who carried the torch beyond securing the right to vote were not those raised in the Victorian Era but represented modernity with a new ideal and image for women of a new century. This generation embraced new expressions of sexuality and fashion and demonstrated a greater presence in the workforce, education, entertainment and politics. Their values and concerns would come to be more widely accepted and contributed to a feminist movement seeking greater equality. When the Second World War brought more traditional work roles left many women still wanting the independence, sense of pride and financial rewards that came with their success at filling the more traditional male occupations and opportunities (Adams, 2003).

Tulane University students

Many young women in the 1950’s and 1960’s were the first in their families to seek a college education, resulting in exposure to new ideas, world views and employment prospects. While many still filled a traditional domestic role, the cultural front found in movies, television, the news media and a growing women’s print media fed a number of alternative pathways for women to pursue. Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, and Helen Gurley Brown spoke to women’s intent not to be sex objects but to be in control of their sexual lives and desires; to be personally empowered in a new way with more of the lifestyle and family options that were available to men. As the birth control pill became available women were able to fully participate in the emerging sexual revolution. This led women to be free of male control over their bodies and if they chose, to flaunt the religious mores that confined sex to marriage and procreation as the only goal of sexual activity. Women still found the work place an arena of deep discrimination, lacking equal opportunity and pay, with male superiors often blocking advancement and glass ceilings limiting their careers. The attempt to pass an Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution fell just short of being ratified, a victim of the culture wars. It would have enshrined in law the guarantee of equal rights for all Americans regardless of their gender. Nonetheless, women in ever increasing number entered active politics, standing for office and working for progressive and conservative candidates for office. In 1984, Rep. Geraldine “Gerry” Ferraro of New York was chosen to run as the Democratic vice presidential candidate by presidential candidate Walter Mondale. They too would lose adding to more setbacks to women’s efforts to move the goal posts towards greater equality (Adams, 2003).

As more and more single-parent women became the sole bread winner of their families, and more women filled positions in fields previously held only by men, the necessity for pay equity became ever more urgent. Long delayed despite the passage of the earlier Equal Pay Act of 1963, it was not until the Obama administration that the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act be would be signed into law. This extended the time when pay discrimination claims could be filed against employers. Women have found it necessary to press their claims for full equal rights on behalf of a number of women’s issues still. The Occupy movement, #Me Too, #ChurchToo, the Women’s March of 2017, the Standing Rock Pipeline protests and other campaigns have brought a wider segment of the whole population across demographic groups to raise the collective consciousness and address critical issues such as sexual assault and abuse, domestic violence, universal health care, climate crisis, reproductive rights and other issues of importance to women. Women and girls along with their male counterparts all benefit when the restrictive and oppressive barriers of sexism and discrimination, along with stereotypical and prejudicial attitudes detrimental to women are critically examined, and women are as able as others to pursue their dreams and aspirations without fear, threat and compulsion (Adams, 2003).

The lesson learned here was that the status quo could be changed in an orderly and peaceable manner with education, organization, the willingness to speak truth to power and by putting bodies on the marching line. This was a formula that would be followed in the campaign for other civil rights causes as the 20th century proceeded (Adams, 2003).

The Civil Rights Movement, Women, LGBTQ Individuals

Equal opportunity in education is but one civil right among many to which all should be entitled. The legacy of equal rights under the law for minorities has been like the long march for universal education, a strenuous and difficult struggle. In the lyrics of “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” the “stony ground” trod not only by African Americans, but women and members of the LGBTQ community seeking equal opportunity and rights is likewise a rocky and lengthy path with much opposition and many setbacks. When change is demanded with prophetic cries for justice by those denied their rights, the only way social change has come is, as we have seen, a resolute commitment to educate, organize, speak truth to power and show a willingness to pay the price of opposition, whether by going to jail for civil disobedience, by facing the fire hoses, dogs and clubs of the opposition, or even by facing death. The march also most always takes an eventual course toward the legislatures and courts where the redress of grievances yields new legislation, court precedents and case law being written to expand and enforce the newly won civil rights. Long before the Civil Rights Movement the efforts of blacks, women and gays were seeking recognition, a place at the table along with a voice in the larger society. The climate of the 1950’s and 1960’s was the cauldron in which the necessary catalyst brought these movements increasing organization, greater social support and eventually some progress in achieving the aims of these respective minority efforts (Burkett, n.d., Carson, n.d., Levy, n.d.).