Towards the start of the 20th century, women were excluded from the American political structures. They were not allowed to vote, serve on juries, or be elected to office. Women were also liable to colossal segregation that stamped them as second-class citizens. However, throughout the span of the century, American women moved significantly, although still not equally, into most parts of American public life, such as politics, workforce, profession, media, and mainstream culture. Following the evident class, race, religion, region, and ethnicity differences, they did not relate to each other well. Hence, their collective personality and the feeling of solidarity as women diminished. During the 20th century, a critical signal of women’s advocacy campaigns created a gush of progress in terms of their prominence. Every wave proceeded in less visible courses into the coming decades. This progression provides an account of diligent women’s activism. It also offers an account of sensational change as women seek authority to invest fully in American political and public life.
In the 1900s, women’s lawful standing was administered by their conjugal status in a general sense. They did not enjoy most of the women’s rights. A wedded woman had no different legitimate personality from that of her spouse. She had no privilege to control her biological breeding. For instance, passing on information regarding contraception was illicit. Such women had no privilege to sue or be sued because they had no identity in the courtyard. They had no privilege to possess a property using their particular names. They had no choice in terms of their professional career. As stated by the High Court, females were not considered ‘individuals’ with reference to the 14th modification to the law. The clause warrants all individual impartial defence. These notions reflected a basic philosophy about men and women in terms of work and legislative issues.
Since women were restricted to the home domain, their obligation to society lay in bringing up upright sons and obedient daughters. Throughout the span of the 19th century, women were limited to their household tasks, both by necessity and choice. In the 1830s, when women such as Sarah and Angelina Grimke started to talk openly against bondage, the minor appearance of a woman as an open speaker was viewed as outrageous. By 1900, women showed up in all ways of open settings as a way of establishing a framework for change in the 20thcentury. This short-term representation of women’s conditions towards the start of the century focused on a few seeds of progress that would prove fruitful in the subsequent few decades.
From numerous points of view, the case of citizenship was a profound, radical test to the belief system of separate spheres for women and men. It attested to the privilege of all mature females to take part in any public agenda as people instead of their roles being played via their spouses or parents. The developing force of their suffrage movement rested on their collective awareness, female affiliations, and the expanded independence among them in an urbanising and industrialising economy. In spite of the fact that the suffrage movement was obviously ruled by educated white women, it turned into a mass movement in the 1910s when average workers and African-American women imparted the movement’s objectives in favour of their political plans, which were connected to battles of working individuals. The plans were against racial separation. The segregation that all different females’ assemblies shared in America ranged from their personal privileges to public contributions. It highlighted their universal independence.
After their triumph when the 19th constitutional Act consented, pioneers of some women movements cheerfully demolished others’ associations and reconvened a universal body, namely the League of Women Voters, whose agenda was to address women’s issues. Their new undertaking was to prepare women to exercise their individual rights as citizens. The creation of a consumer economy that stressed delight while at the same time utilising sexuality to sell items offered women a way out of the humble family life into more confident manifestations of independence. These ways did not oblige solidarity. Rather, they challenged it. This new environment caused the women subculture that depended on a particular meaning of “woman” to disintegrate. Women’s reform endeavours remained an intense drive in the American governmental issues, thus laying a great foundation for the rise of a welfare state, although a wide-based movement for women’s rights ceased to exist after 1920. The pace of change in different areas such as education and the workforce was levelled. It remained moderately unaltered for quite a few years after 1920.
Acknowledging the changes that were witnessed in the lives of women, the public and the press began to call them the ‘New Woman’. Such a naming was denoted a youthful woman who was not only educated, dynamic in sports, and career-oriented, but also one who was interested in a marriage that upheld equality. These married average females who were still anticipated to work indoors turned to reform activities as an outlet for their intelligence and innovativeness. The young professionals established constructive business agendas inside the reform movement. They worked in settlement houses as social workers and health care nurses.
Women accomplished numerous essential reforms. They were involved in recommending and realising Roosevelt’s New Deal law, which exemplified numerous reforms that had been planned and fought for by women during the Progressive Era. By demonstrating their conventional personality, women public activists who reigned during the late 1900s and WWI carved fresh opportunities that were meant to benefit all women in the home and state administration prior to getting a chance to participate in election processes. They created new chances for wage labour in occupations such as public health and social work. They also emphasised the crucial needs of the deprived women and children while at the same time laying the foundation for support for the nation’s early welfare state.
In 1920, the joint efforts of different women movements and suffragists led to the ratification of the 19th Amendment, which enfranchised women. This victory was believed to be the most important accomplishment of women during the Progressive Era. It was also the single major expansion of democracy concerning voting rights in the nation’s history. Its peaceful attainment was deeply rooted in the American democratic processes.
Works Cited
Rosenzweig, Roy. Who Built America?: Working People and the Nation’s History. Boston: Beford/St. Martin’s, 2008. Print.
Domhoff, William. Who Rules America: The rise and Fall of Labour Unions in the U.S, n.d. Web.
The Enterprise of a Thousand Tears.
“The Woman Behind the New Deal: The Life of Frances Perkings, FDR (Democracy Now). Web.
Women in American Politics in the Twentieth Century (Women in American Politics in the Twentieth Century). Web.