US Suffrage Movement.

EVOLUTION
INTRODUCTION

Through most of history, women generally have had fewer legal rights and career
opportunities than men. Wifehood and motherhood were regarded as womens
most significant professions. In the 20th century, however, women in most
nations won the right to vote and increased their educational and job
opportunities. Perhaps most important, they fought for and to a large degree
accomplished a revolution of traditional views of their role in society.

STRUGGLE

Women have been struggling for their human rights for many decades. Some of
their actions along the American history were:

1792 British author Mary Wollstonecraft argues for the equality of the sexes in her
book, the Vindication of the Rights of Women.

1821 Emma Willard founds the Troy Female Seminary, the first school to offer girls
classical and scientific studies on a collegiate level.

1828 Englishwoman Frances Wright is the first woman to address an American

audience composed of both men and women.

1833 Oberlin College is founded as the first coeducational institution of higher learning.

1837 Mount Holyoke, the first college for women, is founded by Mary Lyon in South
Hadley, MA.

1840 The World's Anti-Slavery Convention is held in London, England. When the
women delegates from the United States are not allowed to participate, Lucretia Mott
and Elizabeth Cady Stanton determine to have a women's rights convention when they
return home.

1848 July 19: In 1848, a group of abolitionist activistsmostly women, but some
mengathered in Seneca Falls, New York to discuss the problem of womens
rights. (They were invited there by the reformers Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia
Mott.) Most of the delegates agreed: American women were autonomous individuals
who deserved their own political identities. We hold these truths to be self-evident,
proclaimed the Declaration of Sentiments that the delegates produced, 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. What this meant,
among other things, was that they believed women should have the right to vote.

During the Civil War (1861-1865) the role of the women turned their attention to
the world outside the home thousands of women in the North and South joined
volunteer brigades and signed up to work as nurses first time in American history
that women played a significant role in a war effort.

Later, with the Union victory in the Civil War, women abolitionists hoped their
hard work would result in suffrage for women as well as for blacks. But the 14th and
15th amendments to the Constitution, adopted in 1868 and 1870 respectively,
granted citizenship and suffrage to blacks, but not to women.

This led to a split in the womens rights movement in 1869:

1869 National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) is founded by Elizabeth Cady

Stanton and Susan B.Anthony. American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA) is
founded by Lucy Stone

1890 After several years of negotiations, struggles and arrestments, the NWSA and the
AWSA merge to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA)
with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony and Lucy Stone as officers. Wyoming
joins the union as the first state with voting rights for women. By 1900 women also
have full suffrage in Utah, Colorado and Idaho. New Zealand is the first nation to
give women suffrage.

1892 Susan B. Anthony becomes president of the NAWSA, but in 1900 she resigned
and was succeeded by Carrie Chapman Catt

1910 Some states in the West began to extend the vote to women for the 1st time
more stablished southern and Eastern states resisted

1911 National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage is founded.

1916 Nawsa president Carrie Chapman unveiled what she called a winning plan to
get the vote at last in all the USA: a blitz campaign that mobilized state and local
suffrage organizations all over the country, with special attention on those regions that
were against woman suffrage.

a splinter group called the National Womens Party focused on more radical
militant tactics hunger strikes and White House pickets, with the aim of winning
dramatic publicity for their cause

1917 Members of the National Woman's Party picket the White House. Alice Paul and
ninety-six other suffragists are arrested and jailed for "obstructing traffic." When they
go on a hunger strike to protest their arrest and treatment, they are force-fed. Women
win the right to vote in North Dakota, Ohio, Indiana, Rhode Island, Nebraska,
Michigan, New York, and Arkansas.

1918 Women of Austria, Canada, Czechoslovakia, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Poland,

Scotland, and Wales are enfranchised. House of Representatives passes a resolution
in favor of a woman suffrage amendment. The resolution is defeated by the Senate.
1919 Women of Azerbaijan Republic, Belgium, British East Africa, Holland, Iceland,
Luxembourg, Rhodesia, and Sweden are enfranchised. The Nineteenth Amendment to
the Constitution granting women the vote is adopted by a joint resolution of Congress
and sent to the states for ratification. July 2: Anna Howard Shaw dies. New York and
twenty-one other states ratify the Nineteenth Amendment.

1920 Henry Burn casts the deciding vote that makes Tennessee the thirty-sixth, and
final state, to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment. August 26: The Nineteenth
Amendment is adopted and the women of the United States are finally
enfranchised.

CONSEQUENCES OF THIS STRUGGLE:

1933 Frances Perkins is appointed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt as first

female Secretary of Labor. In the New Deal years, at urging of First Lady Eleanor
Roosevelt and Democratic women's leader Molly Dewson, many women gain
positions in federal social service bureaus, including Mary McLeod Bethune,
director of the Negro Affairs Division of the National Youth Administration.

1936 Federal court rules birth control legal for its own sake, rather than solely for
prevention of disease.

1941 United States enters World War II. Millions of women are recruited for defense
industry jobs in war years and become significant parts of labor force. WAC and
WAVE are established as first women's military corps.

1960 FDA approves birth control pills.

1961 President's Commission on the Status of Women is established, headed by Eleanor

Roosevelt. Commission successfully pushes for passage in 1963 of Equal Pay Act,
first federal law to require equal compensation for men and women in federal jobs.

1964 Civil Rights Act prohibits job discrimination on the basis of race or sex and
establishes Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to address discrimination
claims.

1966 National Organization for Women, founded by Betty Friedan and associates,
promotes child care for working mothers, abortion rights, the Equal Rights Amendment,
and "full participation in the mainstream of American society now."

1972 After nearly 50 years, Equal Rights Amendment passes both houses and is signed
by President Richard Nixon. Civil Rights Act bans sex discrimination in employment
and education. Shirley Chisholm is first black American to run for president.

1973 In Roe v. Wade, U.S. Supreme Court affirms women's right to first trimester
abortions without state intervention.

1992 More women run for and are elected to public office than in any other year in
United States history.
Today The fight for equality is waged on many fronts; women are seeking political
influence, better education, health reform, job equity, and legal reform. The demands
echo those of the movement throughout its history. In 1848 Elizabeth Cady Stanton,
Lucretia Mott, and others claimed on behalf of American women "all the rights and
privileges which belong to them as citizens." What would the reformers from Seneca
Falls do today to contribute toward a future of equality? What will you do?