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This is a history of the role of women throughout the history of the United States and of feminism in the United States.
Women in Colonial Times
The experiences of women during the colonial era varied greatly from colony to colony. In New England, the Puritan settlers brought their strong religious values with them to the New World,
which dictated that the wife be subordinate to her husband and dedicate
herself to rearing God-fearing children to the best of her ability. In
the early Chesapeake
colonies, very few women were present. Much of the population consisted
of young, single, white indentured servants, and as such the colonies,
to a large degree, lacked any social cohesiveness. African women
entered the colony as early as 1619, although their status: free, slave
or indentured servant remains a historical debate. Hispanic women also
emerged in Spanish controlled areas such as New Mexico, California and
Arizona. These women were of either Spanish, Indian, African or mixed
descent.
Much later on in the colonial experience, as the values of the Enlightenment were imported from Britain, the philosophies of such thinkers as John Locke
weakened the view that husbands were natural "rulers" over their wives
and replacing it with a (slightly) more liberal conception of marriage.
Women also lost most control of their property when marrying. Even
single women could not sue anyone or be sued, or make contracts, and
divorce was almost impossible until the late eighteenth century.
The American Revolution
had a deep effect on the philosophical underpinnings of American
society. One aspect that was drastically changed by the democratic
ideals of the Revolution was the roles of women. The idea of republican motherhood was born in this period. The mainstream political philosophy of the day assumed that a republic rested upon the virtue
of its citizens. Thus, women had the essential role of instilling their
children with values conducive to a healthy republic. During this
period, the wife's relationship with her husband also became more
liberal, as love and affection instead of obedience and subservience
began to characterize the ideal marital relationship. In addition, many
women contributed to the war effort through fundraising and running
family businesses in the absence of husbands.
Whatever gains they had made, however, women still found themselves
subordinated, legally and socially, to their husbands, disenfranchised
and with only the role of mother open to them. The desire of women to
have a place in the new republic was most famously expressed by Abigail Adams to her husband:
- I desire you would remember the Ladies, and be more generous and
favourable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power
into the hands of the Husbands.
However, The Declaration of Independence still remained androcentric, stating, "all men are created equal".
The Cult of True Womanhood
During the 1830s and 1840s, many of the changes in the status of
women that occurred in the post-Revolutionary period – such as the
belief in love between spouses and the role of women in the home –
continued at an accelerated pace. This was an age of reform movements,
in which Americans sought to improve the moral fiber of themselves and
of their nation in unprecedented numbers. The wife's role in this
process was important because she was seen as the cultivator of
morality in her husband and children. Besides domesticity, women were
also expected to be pious, pure, and submissive to men. These four
components were considered by many at the time to be "the natural
state" of womanhood, echoes of this ideology still existing today. The
view that the wife should find fulfillment in these values is called
the Cult of True Womanhood or the Cult of Domesticity.
Early Feminists
Early feminists active in the abolition movement increasingly began
to compare women's situation with the plight of African American
slaves. This new polemic squarely blamed men for all the restrictions
of women's role, and argued that the relationship between the sexes was
one-sided, controlling and oppressive.
Most of the early women's advocates were Christians, especially Quakers. It started with Lucretia Mott's effort to join the Quaker abolitionist
men in the abolitionist movement. The result was that Quaker women like
Lucretia Mott learned how to organize and pull the levers of representative government. Starting in the mid-1830s,
they decided to use those skills for women's advocacy. It was those
early Quaker women who taught other women their advocacy skills, and
for the first time used these skills for women's advocacy. As these new
women's advocates began to expand on ideas about men and women,
religious beliefs were also used to support them. Sarah Grimké suggested in her Letters on the Equality of the Sexes
(1837) that the curse placed upon Eve in the Garden of Eden was God's
prophecy of a period of universal oppression of women by men. Early
feminists set about compiling lists of examples of women's plight in
foreign countries and in ancient times.
Seneca Falls and the growth of the movement
Anti-Suffrage political cartoon
At the Seneca Falls convention in 1848, Elizabeth Cady Stanton modeled her Declaration of Sentiments on the United States Declaration of Independence.
Men were said to be in the position of a tyrannical government over
women. This separation of the sexes into two warring camps was to
become increasingly popular in feminist thought, despite some reform
minded men such as William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips who supported the early women's movement.
As the movement broadened to include many women like Susan B. Anthony from the temperance movement,
the slavery metaphor was joined by the image of the drunkard husband
who batters his wife. Ideas that women were morally superior to men
reflected the social attitudes of the day. They also led to the focus
on women's suffrage over more practical issues in the latter half of
the 19th century. Feminists assumed that once women had the vote, they
would have the political will to deal with any other issues.
Victoria Woodhull argued in the 1870s that the 14th amendment to the United States Constitution
already guaranteed equality of voting rights to women. She anticipated
the arguments of the United States Supreme Court a century later. But
there was a strong movement opposed to suffrage, and it was delayed
another 50 years, during which time most of the practical issues
feminists campaigned for, including the 18th amendment's prohibition on alcohol, had already been won.
Feminism during the Progressive Era
Speaker of the House Frederick Huntington Gillett signing the Suffrage Bill
Anarcho-communist organizer Emma Goldman
theorized and advocated for an integrated philosophy of women's
liberation, anti-capitalism and anti-authoritarianism. Aside from
advocating free choice in sexual relations, she called for access to
birth control. She served as a mentor to Margaret Sanger who went to found the American Birth Control League (which eventually became Planned Parenthood) and become an extremely visible advocate for access to family planning.[1]
Women's suffrage was finally guaranteed by Constitutional Amendment through the 19th Amendment. It was passed by Congressional vote in May and June 1919, and ratified by thirty-six states in a little over a year.
Depression and War
Rosie the Riveter: "We Can Do It!" - Many women first found economic strength in World War II-era manufacturing jobs.
The economic crisis known as the Great Depression
(1929-40) saw massive new government intervention into the economy,
with striking effects on issues of gender. Among the most important for
women were systems of economic guarantees granted to retirees, their
wives and children and their widows, through the Social Security Act.
Women played multiple roles on the United States home front during World War II (1941-1945). Sixteen million men served in uniform along with 350,000 women who were WACS, WAVES, SPARS,
Marines and nurses. The munitions industries temporarily employed
millions of women who had been housewives or students, or (most often)
held low-paying service jobs. Rosie the Riveter became an icon of civilian and women's involvement in war.
After the war, women's employment status was not guaranteed, and
much of the industrial economy rushed to rehire men. However, in many
white collar sectors, such as banking and clerical work, the glass ceiling
was moved significantly upward. Both during and after the war, women
rarely earned as much in the occupations that became female-dominated
(such as cashiers, tellers, and low-level loan officers) as their male
colleagues had before.[2] Government investments, such as the GI Bill, fueled suburbanization, and the reuniting of separated spouses fostered the baby boom. With radical political activity suppressed by McCarthyism, consumerism
being fostered by the retooling of wartime factories for domestic use,
and the nuclear family at one of its historic peaks, women were home
bound, as wives and mothers. Eventually a major backlash and
reconsideration of women's roles occurred, in Betty Friedan's 1963 exposé The Feminine Mystique, which critiqued contemporary educated American women's socialization and restrictions and judged them to be intolerable.
The growth of modern feminism
Feminism of the second wave
in the 1960s focused more on lifestyle and economic issues; "The
personal is the political" became a catchphrase. Second wave feminism
emerged with battles on three fronts. Many came from within the New Left, seeking to expand the agenda of civil rights
and campus to the status of women, while becoming increasing vocal on
the mistreatment of women within the movement. Others pursued a
primarily economic agenda, advocating for equal access to and equality
within the workplace. A third section confronted sexist socialization in the family, romantic relationships and at the interpersonal level.
Sexual assault and domestic violence became central targets of women's activism. The crime of rape began to assume its contemporary form, sex without consent, both legally and socially. Existing laws were extended to include marital rape (usually, in practice, of wives by husbands) and sex when a person is too physically or mentally incapacitated to consent. Susan Brownmiller's Against Her Will examined the history of rape. Feminists worked to create domestic violence shelters and rape crisis hotlines, which had been extremely scarce prior to 1965. Some radical feminists, notably Andrea Dworkin (although she said later that her writings had been misunderstood while they created this argument)[citation needed],
argued that the dominant metaphor describing heterosexual relationships
between men and women is itself rape; men raped women physically,
economically and spiritually. (See misandry.) Lesbian separatists appealed to lesbian women, advocating the complete independence of women from what was seen as a male-dominated society.
Access to contraception and abortion continued to be major issues
for women's rights advocates. The contraceptive pill was approved by
the FDA in 1960 for use by married women only. The "age of majority"
law was changed from age 21 to 18 in 1972 because of Vietnam; men said
if they were old enough to die, then they were old enough to vote.
Vietnam therefore had an indirect effect on the availability of the
contraceptive pill, as it made it more widely available for younger,
non-married women. The first hormonal contraception method, the combined oral contraceptive pill,
technologically revolutionized control over reproduction, while laws
restricting access to birth control and abortion were rolled back by
legislative action and judicial decisions such as Griswold v. Connecticut (contraception, 1965) and Roe v. Wade
(abortion, 1973). Numerous women's health collectives, women-run
reproductive health clinics and several clandestine abortion services
(most notably Jane, organized by members of the Chicago Women's Liberation Union) were organized prior to these rulings, providing immediate access and increasing pressure for legalization.
Radical feminists, particularly Catharine MacKinnon, began to dominate feminist jurisprudence. Whereas first-wave feminism
had concerned itself with challenging laws restricting women, the
second wave tended to campaign for new laws that aimed to compensate
women for what they perceived as societal discrimination. The idea of male privilege began to take on a legal status as judicial decisions echoed it, even in the United States Supreme Court.
Recently, proponents of New feminism have argued against many second and third
wave feminist proposals, including abortion, contraception, and what
they view as masculine emphases on "sexual freedom" and material work
that result in a devaluation of family life.
Progress towards integration in politics
Women's participation in national political life remained low long
after the right to vote was gained in 1920. No more than two women
served in the Senate at any time until 1994, and fewer than a dozen
were Congressional Representatives until 1955. Current representation
is 16 senators and 67 representatives, around 15% of the United States
Congress. One quarter of women in Congress are people of color, which
reflects the American population, but bucks the trend of the Congress.
No woman has been a major party presidential nominee, although
several have run for the position of Vice President or sought their
party's nomination. (Center for American Women and Politics, Women in Elected Office 2006)
Still, the past generation has seen a remarkable shift in American's
stated willingness to vote for a woman as president, according to polls
more than 80% of Americans would vote for a female candidate. [3]
In 1879, Belva Lockwood became the first woman to practice law before the U.S. Supreme Court, and in 1981, Sandra Day O'Connor became the first woman to become a member of the Supreme Court. Ruth Bader Ginsburg is the second woman serving on the Court. On January 4, 2007 Nancy Pelosi became the first female Speaker of the United States House of Representatives.
Bibliography
- Brownmiller, Susan, In Our Time: Memoir of a Revolution, Dial Books 1999, ISBN 0-385-31486-8
- Crow, Barbara A., Radical Feminism: A Documentary Reader, New York University Press 2000. ISBN 0-8147-1555-9
- Echols, Alice, Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America, 1967-1975, University of Minnesota Press 1990, ISBN 0-8166-1787-2
- Flexner, Eleanor, Century of Struggle: The Woman's Rights Movement in the United States, Paperback Edition, Belknap Press 1996, ISBN 0-674-10653-9
- Lerner, Gerda, Black Women in White America: A Documentary History, Random House 1988 ISBN 0-679-74314-6
- Keetley, Dawn, editor, Public Women, Public Words: A Documentary History of American Feminism, 3 vls.:
- Vol. 1: Beginnings to 1900, Madison, Wis. : Madison House, 1997
- Vol. 2: 1900 to 1960, Lanham, Md. [u.a.] : Rowman & Littlefield, 2002
- Vol. 3: 1960 to the present , Lanham, Md. [u.a.] : Rowman & Littlefield, 2002
Classical
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