Equality: History of Women's Movement

[Music] foreign [Music] as we near the completion of what has become known as the American Century one of the most remarkable stories of our nation has been the sea change in the roles of American women at the turn of the 20th century the vast majority of women worked at home today nearly half of the country's females are an integral part of the workforce a shift of this magnitude is unprecedented in history but it did not happen easily or overnight from the time of the founding of our nation women have fought for their rights their positions their achievements in every segment of society that's [Applause] not true those who succeeded have done so with more difficulty than most men today women are on their way to being the sought after equal Partners in American society [Music] this is the story of the women's movement in America how it began the people who shaped its course the events that defined its missions The Story begins at the time of the Revolutionary War with one of America's most persuasive champions of the rights of women Abigail Adams the year was 1776 members of the Continental Congress were meeting in Philadelphia to frame the Declaration of Independence the American colonies were about to separate from England and War was not far away one of the leaders of the Revolution was John Adams of Massachusetts a respected lawyer and legislator and a future president of the United States his wife Abigail was in Boston warning him about the British movements John basically sort of fled Massachusetts and went down to Philadelphia for the first and second continental congresses and it was then that Abigail remained in Boston and wrote constantly sneaking letters out so the British wouldn't get them about what was happening he would write to her and say I want to hear your thoughts I want to see what you think and even when they disagreed he still wanted her opinion because he knew she was the only one he could trust and he knew that Abigail had a great political Acuity so what he would ask for her advice the prevailing social philosophy of the age was called the enlightenment which maintained that reason could triumph over poverty and oppression and that a society of citizens could be enlightened through public education but in the 18th century only men could be citizens and the natural rights of Liberty and equality so eloquently referred to in the American Declaration of Independence were available only to free men not to Slaves or women late 18th century women in England and in the new United States had almost no rights once married a woman lost all rights to property if she hadn't Inherited property it went automatically to her husband and he could use it if my technically belonged to her but she had no right to control it and he could do anything he wanted with it but Abigail Adams believed things should be different and educated and cultured woman she believed that women should have equal rights under the law and knew the value that women could add to the political dialogue of the nation in 1777 as the men were drafting America's laws in Philadelphia Abigail wrote to her husband one of the most famous and enduring documents of the women's movement I desire you would remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the husbands remember all men would be tyrants if they could if particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies we are determined to foment a rebellion and will not hold ourselves Bound By any laws in which we have no voice or representation these women women of the educated middle class that were the first to demand to have a public voice to who had the education and the opportunity to be able to express themselves to form opinions to to write in public so it was from this class that you would get women speaking for women's rights and an enlargement of women's roles yet as enlightened as John Adams was for his time and as much regard as he obviously held for Abigail he could not fathom her plea for more consideration of women's issues as to your extraordinary code of laws I cannot but laugh we've been told that our struggle has loosened the bands of government everywhere the children and apprentices were disobedient that schools and colleges were grown turbulent that Indians slighted their Guardians and Negroes grew insolent to their masters but your letter was the first intimation that another tribe more numerous and powerful than all the rest were grown discontented in 1797 John Adams was elected the second President of the United States and Abigail was the first lady to live in the White House and although the ideals that launched the new nation were ambitious the exclusion of women in the political dialogue continued although independence from England had been won the fruits of Freedom were not enjoyed by all women and African Americans did not share the same rights as the men who drafted the laws of this new nation therefore their struggles for equality had just begun but it wasn't that long ago that women of all Races and men of color were objects they were owned like tables and chairs they were not people they were not citizens they were not voters it took 150 years of very deep struggle to and bringing the country to a halt and a Civil War and everything else to gain a legal identity as human beings for for women of all Races the leaders who emerged in the 1840s as the champions for women's rights were a few educated dedicated Fighters women's rights activists such as Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Katie Stanton knew that society and laws must change if women were to move forward Stanton and Mott became fast friends and years later in the in 1848 Luke Elizabeth Cady Stanton with many children and um a not very happy marriage was living in Western New York State when Lucretia Mott came to visit her sister at Seneca Falls and the two women got together for the first time in about 10 years since the since meeting in London and they decided to have a meeting of women which is the origins of the American women's suffrage movement in 1848 Stanton Mott and other activists held the now famous Women's Rights Convention in Seneca Falls New York at the Seneca Falls Convention the women adopted a declaration of sentiments which demanded that women receive all rights and privileges which belong to them as citizens of the United States the major thrust of these social reformers was for the abolition of laws denying women their property rights and other legal constraints but the biggest push was for the right to vote and in that battle one name stands above the others Susan B Anthony through her Temperance work met Elizabeth Katie Stanton in 1852 from that point on she dove in into the women's suffrage movement and into the early women's rights movement and dedicated the rest of her life to it starting with 1850 she devoted her energies to the women's movement which included as at its core abolition criticism of slavery and a concern with Temperance she and those other two movements she never became as visible or as outspoken a figure she was sort of one of the women in the trenches in in these battles but she never assumed the leadership that she did in the women's movement the difference was that in the woman's movement she was both one of the executive leaders in terms of making decisions and calling meetings Etc but she was also one of the leading writers and for the next 50 years Elizabeth Katie Stanton and Susan B Anthony worked together to achieve the right for a woman to vote in America in 1866 when the 14th Amendment granted the right to vote to black men but denied the same rights to women Susan B Anthony was outraged there shall never be another season of Silence until women have the same rights men have on this green earth within the women's movement there were battles over strategy and how fast and far to push the male politicians some activists held out for a slower course Susan B Anthony advocated fiercely for full reform at the earliest possible date and lobbied state legislatures for years to get property law reforms so women could control their assets after Decades of struggle it became clear to the women of the National American Woman Suffrage Association that the only way to gain the vote was a constitutional amendment Congress the Supreme Court and the two major political parties were still hostile but the women fought on she was politically convinced of the rightness of her cause and she felt that if she didn't do this no one would do it and the cause would die and she was probably to a large extent right in the last Decades of her life Susan B Anthony and Stanton wrote their highly acclaimed record of their struggles titled the history of woman suffrage and Anthony continued her hectic schedule never wavering from her goal of seeing women get the right to vote at the age of 86 she declared to a suffrage convention in Baltimore I'm here for a little time only then my place will be filled the fight must not cease you must see that it does not stop failure is impossible Susan B Anthony died in her home in Rochester in 1906 14 years before her dream would come true by 1900 the National American Woman Suffrage Association had succeeded in persuading the Wyoming legislature to Grant the right for women to vote in local elections by 1912 Nine States had granted women the same rights but the real challenge was the 19th Amendment to the U.S Constitution that would enable all American women to vote new leaders like Carrie Chapman cat and Alice Paul advocated militant strategies such as mass marches and hunger strikes to help turn the tide Congress was beginning to get the message meanwhile another kind of activism was being seen the Industrial Revolution during the 19th century had changed the face of America greatly jobs that had been done at home for centuries were now being performed in factories and small shops working-class women filled these new jobs and brought home something new a paycheck but this shift from an agricultural economy to an industrial one did not Empower women workers factory work is very frequently women would for instance be locked into the room in which they worked and there would be no ventilation in that because if they were for instance making textiles it was thought that the fresh air would was counter was not helpful in the making of textiles you wanted pot damp air or the threads would break so this Windows would be sealed and then the women would be locked into the room so that they couldn't go to the bathroom and there would be Factory fires there was a major factory fire in New York City for instance the Triangle shirt waste fire in which dozens and dozens of women burned to death because they were locked into rooms that burst into fire 150 women and girls perished in the blaze people were outraged thousands of mourners marched in the streets of New York City to demonstrate the need to improve working conditions well I think that one of the things that's really important to realize is how active women were indirectly in politics throughout the late 19th century and early 20th century and the extent to which women especially were involved in creating the educational and social welfare infrastructure of America at that time America had become a Haven of Hope for millions of immigrants seeking a better life since no government agencies were created to help them a few Brave women took it upon themselves to Aid the masses in the heart of Chicago's worst slums Jane Adams established the first settlement house Hull House in an effort to improve the lives of America's newest citizens Jane Adams was certainly one of the most important women during her lifetime a very influential person she started a whole house in 1889 and out of this institution she built a reputation for caring about human welfare on many levels other women took up her cause creating settlement houses in other major cities these were women defined institutions which were formed by people like Jade Adams Florence Kelly where women who were college graduates but really had no careers to go into because the society did not provide for careers for them came together to live together in in houses and for the most part inner city areas of Chicago New York Boston Etc to try to deal with the problems of the of the Immigrant populations and the the health problems of malnutrition and of poor factory conditions and to work with the people in the neighborhood to try to make their lives better and different the area Adams and her fellow progressives had the most impact was in child labor laws which outlawed hiring anyone under age 16 and limited the number of hours a laborer could work it was a Monumental effort and took years to accomplish it was the beginning of an effort to get a national child labor law passed and whole house people and settlement house people in general were really the Pioneers in that effort they were they were the spearheads of the whole effort to establish child labor legislation the settlement attracted some of the best educated and creative women in the country and that in turn helped politicize the process of national reform in laws concerning women and children one of the earliest supporters of the settlement house approach for helping cure societal ills was Eleanor Roosevelt a niece of President Theodore Roosevelt and the wife of future President Franklin Delano Roosevelt Eleanor Roosevelt begins in the settlement house movement she is part of the Remington Street settlement in New York in 1903 she really gets activated politically by that settlement house experience with other women she's very active with the women's Trade Union League which is trying to organize women workers in the in the textile and garment factories she's very much involved in working toward developing more inclusive women's organizations that are much fairer to Immigrant women and black women and things like that so that she is commanding a major political presence herself in the late 1920s well before her husband's elected president a number of forces finally came together to make the political and judicial establishment see the light the social climate in America had sufficiently changed to favor the vote for women activism won the day and the 19th Amendment passed in June of 1919 and was ratified by the states and became the law of the land in August 1920. with the vote in 1920 great changes occurred because we had the power of the franchise we could make our vote count Maggie a lifelong activist remembers that historic day I can remember my mother and I went to the polling place and voted I can it's as clear as a day in my mind I always remember it and be grateful for it the rights that we have now are entirely due to the people who fought for them things don't happen automatically they happen because we we make them happen so the idea that women of all Races and men of color are counted as Citizens and human beings is entirely due to the Abolitionist Movement against slavery and the suffragist movement for the rights of women of all Races with suffrage enacted many women believe the battle to be over in reality winning the right to vote was just the first step in a long journey towards social and political equality the Great Depression of the 1930s stifled any significant job creation for women but the onset of World War II turned out to be a watershed for economic and social advancement for women World War II is one of those occasions when a whole lot of things get turned upside down throughout the 1930s for example you have a situation where women who are married are being prohibited from working teachers are made to leave their jobs if they get married more than 75 percent of the school systems in the country will not hire a woman to teach if she's married well suddenly the war happens and you've got over 13 million soldiers being drafted you have a major problem of providing the munition you suddenly have a complete reversal with attitude and policy to where women work so you've got this extraordinary experience that within a five-year period from 1940 to 1945 you've got a 57 increase in the female labor force but when the men came home from war women were strongly encouraged to leave their jobs and go back to their traditional roles the problem was that 80 percent of those women had taken jobs wanted to stay on the job they enjoyed working they enjoyed being paid they enjoyed the camaraderie of being together with other women and men and in the workforce and so you have this kind of cultural schizophrenia which develops all during the late 40s 50s and 60s in which on the one hand you have what Betty Ferdinand calls the feminine mistake the whole notion that home engineering is the highest professional woman can aspire to that building a home in the words of one McCall's magazine article is an active craftsmanship like creating a cathedral uh and that any woman who wants to work is a feminist neurotic the reality of course is that all during the 1950s women's labor force participation is skyrocketing uh women's employment rates increasing four times faster than men's during the 1950s they're not doing they're not entering careers they're not competing with men as Engineers or doctors or lawyers but what they're doing is taking jobs in sex irrigated occupations like clerical work or sales work and yet their work is absolutely indispensable toward the development of what we now call a middle class lifestyle in the socially active 1960s America witnessed a steady Resurgence of the women's movement on many fronts civil rights demonstrations and protests against the war in Vietnam brought women activists to the Forefront Civil Rights Movement creates a generation of women activists who have initially become involved in civil rights because they are committed as well to trying to uh to Andrea and racial discrimination and then they discovered that in fact even in the process of doing that they are victims of sexual discrimination even within the Civil Rights Movement by male leaders in the movement they're they can be equals of men in marching down the street and facing police but they're not asked to be part of the decision-making process and so there's a the development over time of the need to focus as much on issues of gender discrimination as on Race discrimination well when I graduated from college in 1963 it was legal to discriminate against women I mean most people realize that it happened but they forget that it was actually legal until the Civil Rights Act of 1964. the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited discrimination on the basis of race religion and gender but many women found the social climate resisting their advancement so in 1966 the National Organization for Women now was established to make certain that federal and state laws concerning sex discrimination were being enforced now focuses on things like abolishing the separate classified ads for female only and male only employment abolishing the notion that women should not be allowed to drink in certain bars or eat in certain restaurants attacking the whole assumption that um careers Partnerships in law firm should be not available for women we have seen gradual changes and a lot of them have been in connection to legislation and to civil rights laws and to litigation um people that was the first wave in a sense of changes if if you might call it the women's eyes on the prize generation was gaining access to things that were close to them by the 1970s the women's movement was in full swing women began to take charge of their bodies and their lives many younger women in particular felt this was the beginning of a new era one that would usher in opportunities for personal and professional growth under the impact of the women's movement and the civil rights movement that changes dramatically the applications from women to go to medical school accelerate by four or five hundred percent within five years so that from five percent in 1970 you go up to entering classes of 45 in 1990 a major difference the same thing happens in law schools same thing happens in Business Schools but as the social tide turned more conservative in the 1980s there was a backlash against the women's movement on many fronts the media focus on Reproductive Rights overshadowed women's rights and the Equal Rights Amendment which was designed to grant women equality with men throughout Society was not ratified by the necessary number of state legislatures and died less Sensational but no less turbulent was the ongoing struggle for advancement in the workplace as many women in Corporate America experience the limitations of the so-called glass ceiling when I first started in business I think we were all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and we believed that if we were educated properly dressed right talked right and just behaved ourselves we would eventually be accepted and make our way up up through the layers well it's now the mid 90s practically and not so it doesn't matter how well your educated dressed or how well you talk the glass ceiling is there and it seems to be intransigent and so more and more women of a certain age are starting very exciting companies all over the country the fastest growing part of the economy are women-owned businesses and to me that's a lot of good news and this in that it's a little questionable news it's good news because these women have a lot of personal sense of power and entrepreneurial spirit and they feel good about taking something on and doing it which I think is terrific the bad news to a certain extent is a lot a number of these women are fed up with the corporations they worked for that in order to do their jobs they had to hassle so much in a rigid and by and large male structure that too much of their energy was going to coping with the corporation not enough of it was going to business and so a lot of the best and the brightest of a generation of women have left the ibms you know because I don't want to deal with it Professor do you swear to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth will help you God I do in the early 1990s attention shifted to the political Arena during the highly publicized Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Clarence Thomas many women were outraged by the treatment of Anita Hill a former employee who accused him of sexual harassment the Anita Hill Clarence Thomas hearings proved to be a catalyst for many women seeking political office in 1992 a year that was called the year of the woman this is the year of the woman because this is the year of change thank you a record number of women were elected to public office in 1992. Pulitzer prize-winning correspondent Anna Quinlan formerly of the New York Times puts the recent years into perspective the changes have been huge I mean I just went back and looked at statistics for 1973 exactly 20 years ago there were no women in the Senate and there were 12 women in the House of Representatives and Pat Nixon was the first lady to just look at Carol Mosley Braun and Hillary Clinton and Janet Reno in light of those figures shows how far we've traveled in terms of role models for women and for men and there are many other battles still to be waged I I do think that the movements of the first wave continue now it isn't as if they stopped they continue in in different ways so where we were fighting for the vote say in the 19th century and early 20th century we are now fighting for Reproductive freedom for the right to decide whether and when to have children so we have the right to have children and not to have children until we control our lives from the skin in we aren't going to have a very easy time controlling our lives from from the skin out the future of the women's movement in America is full of opportunity and promise never before have women had so many legal rights yet never before have those rights been under attack by those who want to confine the roles of women in society strides have been made but pressure will always have to be exerted in order to ensure the rights of all women in America most of us have learned that women's position in life is not due to biology or Freud or God it's due to politics in the deepest sense of politics and similarly men and women of color their position is not due to any racial theory of intelligence or whatever or separation of the races it's due to a system of of power and the minute you realize that the minute you realize that there's hope that there's change that there's a future that can be different foreign [Music] thank you

Channel: Kelly Wolfington

Views: 100,820

Keywords: Equality, Women's Movement, Abigail Adams, Susan B. Anthony, Advancement, Jane Addams, seneca falls, right, to, vote, 19th, admendment, history, suffrage, suffragettes, History of the women's movement, women's vote

Id: u_n1MuocuE4

Length: 30min 25sec (1825 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 18 2016