YouTube Encyclopedic
-
1/5Views:2 028 405221 17513 45310 18933 888
-
Women's Suffrage: Crash Course US History #31
-
The historic women’s suffrage march on Washington - Michelle Mehrtens
-
The Surprising Road to Women's Suffrage
-
Chapter 1 | Part 1 | The Vote | American Experience | PBS
-
6 Surprising Facts About the 19th Amendment
Transcription
Episode 31: Feminism and Suffrage Hi, I’m John Green, this is Crash Course U.S. history and today we’re going to talk about women in the progressive era. My God, that is a fantastic hat. Wait, votes for women?? So between Teddy Roosevelt, and Woodrow Wilson, and all those doughboys headed off to war, women in this period have sort of been footnoted shockingly.. Mr. Green, Mr. Green. I’d NEVER make a woman a footnote. She’d be the center of my world, my raison d’etre, my joie de vivre. Oh, Me from the Past. I’m reminded of why you got a C+ in French 3. Let me submit to you, Me from the Past, that your weird worship of women is a kind of misogyny because you’re imagining women as these beautiful, fragile things that you can possess. It turns out that women are not things. They are people in precisely the same way that you are a person and in the progressive era, they demanded to be seen as full citizens of the United States. In short, women don’t exist to be your joie de vivre. They get to have their own joie de vivre. intro So, it’s tempting to limit ourselves to discussion of women getting the right to vote with the passage of the 19th amendment, but if we focus too much on the constitutional history, we’re gonna miss a lot. Some historians refer to the thirty years between 1890 and 1920 as the “women’s era” because it was in that time that women started to have greater economic and political opportunities. Women were also aided by legal changes, like getting the right to own property, control their wages and make contracts and wills. By 1900 almost 5 million women worked for wages, mainly in domestic service or light manufacturing, like the garment industry. Women in America were always vital contributors to the economy as producers and consumers and they always worked, whether for wages or taking care of children and the home. And as someone who has recently returned from paternity leave, let me tell you, that ain’t no joke. And American women were also active as reformers since, like, America became a thing. And those reform movements brought women into state and national politics before the dawn of the progressive era. Unfortunately, their greatest achievement, Prohibition, was also our greatest national shame. Oh, yeah, alright, okay. It’s actually not in our top 5 national shames. But, probably women’s greatest influence indeed came through membership AND leadership in the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. The WCTU was founded in 1874 and by 1890 it had 150,000 members, making it the largest female organization in the United States. Under the leadership of Frances Willard, the WCTU embraced a broad reform agenda. Like it included pushing for the right for women to vote. The feeling was that the best way to stop people from drinking was to pass local laws that made it harder to drink, and to do that it would be very helpful if women could vote. Because American men were a bunch of alcoholic scoundrels who darn well weren’t going to vote to get rid of beer hoses. In 1895 Willard boldly declared, “A wider freedom is coming to the women of America. Too long has it been held that woman has no right to enter these movements (…) Politics is the place for woman.” But the role of women in politics did greatly expand during the Progressive era. As in prior decades, many reformers were middle and upper class women, but the growing economy and the expansion of what might be called the upper-middle class meant that there were more educational opportunities and this growing group of college-educated women leaned in and became the leaders of new movements. Sorry, there was no way I was gonna get through this without one “lean in.” I love that book. So as we’ve talked about before, the 1890s saw the dawning of the American mass consumer society and many of the new products made in the second wave of industrialization were aimed at women, especially “labor-saving” devices like washing machines. If you’ve ever had an infant, you might notice that they poop and barf on everything all the time. Like, I recently called the pediatrician and I was like, “My 14-day-old daughter poops fifteen times a day.” And he was like, “If anything, that seems low.” So the washing machine is a real game-changer. And many women realized that being the primary consumers who did the shopping for the home gave them powerful leverage to bring about change. Chief among these was Florence Kelley, a college-educated woman who after participating in a number of progressive reform causes came to head the National Consumers League. The League sponsored boycotts and shaped consumption patterns encouraging consumers to buy products that were made without child or what we now would call sweatshop labor. Which at the time was often just known as “labor.” And there was also a subtle shift in gender roles as more and more women worked outside the home. African American women continued to work primarily as domestic servants or in agriculture, and immigrant women mostly did low-paying factory labor, but for native-born white women there were new opportunities, especially in office work. And this points to how technology created opportunities for women. Like, almost all the telephone operators in the U.S. were women. By 1920 office workers and telephone operators made up 25% of the female workforce, while domestic servants were only 15%. A union leader named Abraham Bisno remarked that working gave immigrant women a sense of independence: “They acquired the right to personality, something alien to the highly patriarchal family structures of the old country.” Of course this also meant that young women were often in conflict with their parents, as a job brought more freedom, money, and perhaps, if they were lucky, a room of one’s own. Oh, it’s time for the Mystery Document? Please let it be Virginia Woolf, please let it be Virginia Woolf. The rules here are simple. I guess the author of the Mystery Document. I’m either right or I get shocked. Alright, let’s see what we’ve got. “The spirit of personal independence in the women of today is sure proof that a change has come … the radical change in the economic position of women is advancing upon us… The growing individualization of democratic life brings inevitable changes to our daughters as well as to our sons … One of its most noticeable features is the demand in women not only for their own money, but for their own work for the sake of personal expression. Few girls today fail to manifest some signs of the desire for individual expression …” Well, that’s not Virginia Woolf. Stan, I’m going to be honest, I do not know the answer to this one. However, it has been Woodrow Wilson for the last two weeks. You wouldn’t do that again to me, or would you? I’m gonna guess Woodrow Wilson. Final answer. DANG IT. Charlotte Perkins Gilman in the book Women and Economics? What? Aaaaaah! The idea that having a job is valuable just for the independence that it brings and as a form of “individual expression” was pretty radical, as most women, and especially most men, were not comfortable with the idea that being a housewife was similar to being a servant to one’s husband and children. But of course that changes when staying at home becomes one of many choices rather than your only available option. And then came birth control. Huzzah! Women who needed to work wanted a way to limit the number of pregnancies. Being pregnant and having a baby can make it difficult to hold down a job and also babies are diaper-using, stuff-breaking, consumptive machines. They basically eat money. And we love them. But birth control advocates like Margaret Sanger and Emma Goldman also argued that women should be able to enjoy sex without having children. To which men said, “Women can enjoy sex?” Believe it or not, that was seen as a pretty radical idea and it lead to changes in sexual behavior including more overall skoodilypooping. Goldman was arrested more than 40 times for sharing these dangerous ideas about female sexuality and birth control and she was eventually deported. Sanger, who worked to educate working class women about birth control, was sentenced to prison in 1916 for opening a clinic in Brooklyn that distributed contraceptive devices to poor immigrant women. The fight over birth control is important for at least three reasons. First, it put women into the forefront of debates about free speech in America. I mean, some of the most ardent advocates of birth control were also associated with the IWW and the Socialist Party. Secondly, birth control is also a public health issue and many women during the progressive era entered public life to bring about changes related to public health, leading the crusade against tuberculosis, the so-called White Plague, and other diseases. Thirdly, it cut across class lines. Having or not having children is an issue for all women, regardless of whether they went to college, and the birth control movement brought upper, middle, and lower class women together in ways that other social movements never did. Another group of Progressive women took up the role of addressing the problems of the poor and spearheaded the Settlement House movement. The key figure here was Jane Addams. My God, there are still Adamses in American history? Oh, she spells it Addams-family-Addams, not like founding-fathers-Adams. Anyway, she started Hull House in Chicago in 1889. Settlement houses became the incubators of the new field of social work, a field in which women played a huge part. And Addams became one of America’s most important spokespeople for progressive ideas. And yet in many places, while all of this was happening, women could not technically vote. But their increasing involvement in social movements at the turn of the 20th century led them to electoral politics. It’s true that women were voting before the passage of the 19th amendment in 1920. Voting is a state issue, and in many western states, women were granted the right to vote in the late 19th century. States could also grant women the right to run for office, which explains how the first Congresswoman, Jeannette Rankin, could vote against America’s entry into World War I in 1917. That said, the passage and ratification of the 19th Amendment is a big deal in American history. It’s also a recent deal. Like, when my grandmothers were born, women could not vote in much of the United States. The amendment says that states cannot deny people the right to vote because they are women, which isn’t as interesting as the political organization and activity that led to its passage. Alright, let’s go to the Thought Bubble. The suffrage movement was extremely fragmented. There was a first wave of suffrage, exemplified by the women at Seneca Falls, and this metamorphosed into the National American Women’s Suffrage Association, or NAWSA. Most of the leadership of NAWSA was made up of middle to upper class women, often involved in other progressive causes, who unfortunately sometimes represented the darker side of the suffrage movement. Because these upper class progressives frequently used nativist arguments to make their claims for the right to vote. They argued that if the vote could be granted to ignorant immigrants, some of whom could barely speak English, then it should also be granted to native born women. This isn’t to say that the elitist arguments won the day, but they should be acknowledged. By the early 20th century a new generation of college-educated activists had arrived on the scene. And many of these women were more radical than early suffrage supporters. They organized the National Women’s Party and, under the leadership of Alice Paul, pushed for the vote using aggressive tactics that many of the early generation of women’s rights advocates found unseemly. Paul had been studying in Britain between 1907 and 1910 where she saw the more militant women’s rights activists at work. She adopted their tactics that included protests leading to imprisonment and loud denunciations of the patriarchy that would make tumblr proud. And during World War I she compared Wilson to the Kaiser and Paul and her followers chained themselves to the White House fence. The activists then started a hunger strike during their 7-month prison sentence and had to be force-fed. Woodrow Wilson had half-heartedly endorsed women’s suffrage in 1916, but the war split the movement further. Most suffrage organizations believed that wartime service would help women earn respect and equal rights. But other activists, like many Progressives, opposed the war and regarded it as a potential threat to social reform. But, in the end, the war did sort of end up helping the cause. Patriotic support of the war by women, especially their service working in wartime industries, convinced many that it was just wrong to deny them the right to vote. And the mistreatment of Alice Paul and other women in prison for their cause created outrage that further pushed the Wilson administration to support enfranchising women. Thanks, Thought Bubble. So, women’s long fight to gain the right to vote ended with the ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920. But, in some ways, the final granting of the franchise was a bit anti-climactic. For one thing, it was overshadowed by the 18th Amendment, Prohibition, which affected both women and men in large numbers. Also Gatsbys. You could say a lot of bad things about Prohibition, and I have, but the crusade against alcohol did galvanize and politicize many women, and organizations such as the WCTU and the Anti-Saloon League introduced yet more to political activism. But, while the passage of the 19th amendment was a huge victory, Alice Paul and the National Women’s Party were unable to muster the same support for an Equal Rights Amendment. Paul believed that women needed equal access to education and employment opportunities. And here they came into contact with other women’s groups, especially the League of Women Voters and the Women’s Trade Union League, which opposed the ERA fearing that equal rights would mean an unraveling of hard-won benefits like mother’s pensions and laws limiting women’s hours of labor. So, the ERA failed, and then another proposed amendment that would have given Congress the power to limit child labor won ratification in only 6 states. So in many ways the period between 1890 and 1920, which roughly corresponds to the Progressive Era, was the high tide of women’s rights and political activism. It culminated in the ratification of the 19th amendment, but the right to vote didn’t lead to significant legislation that actually improved the lives of women, at least not for a while. Nor were there immediate changes in the roles that women were expected to play in the social order as wives and mothers. Still, women were able to increase their autonomy and freedom in the burgeoning consumer marketplace. But it’s important to note that like other oppressed populations in American history, women weren’t given these rights, they had to fight for the rights that were said to be inalienable. And we are all better off for their fight and for their victory. Women’s liberation is to be sure a complicated phrase and it will take a new turn in the Roaring 20s, which we’ll talk about next week. I’ll see you then. Crash Course is produced and directed by Stan Muller. Our script supervisor is Meredith Danko. The associate producer is Danica Johnson. The show is written by my high school history teacher, Raoul Meyer, Rosianna Rojas, and myself. And our graphics team is Thought Café. Every week there’s a new caption to the Libertage. You can suggest captions in comments where you can also ask questions about today’s video that will be answered by our team of historians. Thanks for watching Crash Course and as we say in my hometown, don’t forget to be awesome. I’m gonna go this way, Stan, just kiiidding! Suffrage -
Major women's suffrage organizations
International
- International Alliance of Women – founded in 1904 to promote women's suffrage.
- Woman's Christian Temperance Union – active in the suffrage movement, especially in the U.S. and New Zealand.
Australia
- Victorian Women's Suffrage Society, founded in 1884, the local suffrage organisation of Victoria and the first suffrage organisation in Australia
Belgium
- Ligue belge du droit des femmes (Belgian League for the Rights of Women), founded 1892, concerned with voting rights from 1912.
Britain
- National Society for Women's Suffrage – Britain's first large suffrage organization, founded in 1867 by Lydia Becker.
- Women's Franchise League – major British group created in 1889 by Emmeline Pankhurst.
- Women's Freedom League – British group founded in 1907 by 70 members of the Women's Social and Political Union in a breakaway following rules changes by Christabel Pankhurst.
Bulgaria
- Bulgarian Women's Union (Bulgarskiat Zhenski Suyut) – Bulgarian organization from 1901 to 1944.
Canada
- Canadian Women's Suffrage Association – founded 1877, name changed in 1883 to Toronto Women's Suffrage Association.
Denmark
- Danish Women's Society (Dansk Kvindesamfund), founded 1871.
- Kvindelig Fremskridtsforening (Women's Progress Association), 1885–1893.
- Kvindevalgretsforeningen (Women's Suffrage Association), 1889–1898.
- Landsforbundet for Kvinders Valgret (National Association for Women's Suffrage), 1907–1915.
Finland
- Suomen Naisyhdistys or Finsk kvinnoförening (Finnish Women's Organization), founded 1884.
France
- Fédération Française des Sociétés Féministes (French Federation of Feminist Societies), 1891–1893.
- French Union for Women's Suffrage (Union française pour le suffrage des femmes), 1909–1940.
- Ligue Française pour le Droit des Femmes (French League for Women's Rights), 1882–1950s.
Germany
- Deutscher Verband für Frauenstimmrecht (German Union for Women's Suffrage), 1902–1919.
Greece
- Greek League for Women's Rights ( Σύνδεσμος για τα Δικαιώματα της Γυναίκας), founded 1920.
Hungary
- Feministák Egyesülete (Feminist Association), 1904–1942.
Iceland
- Icelandic Women's Rights Association (Kvenréttindafélag Íslands), founded 1907.
Ireland
- Dublin Women's Suffrage Association – major Irish organization.
- Irish Women's Franchise League – founded in 1908, more radical than the Dublin Association.
- Irish Women's Suffrage Society – founded by Isabella Tod as the North of Ireland Women's Suffrage Society in 1872, it was based in Belfast but had branches in other parts of the north.[1]
- Women's National Health Association – founded in 1907 to combat tuberculosis and infant mortality.
Lithuania
- Lithuanian Women's Association (Lietuvos moterų susivienijimas), active 1905.
Netherlands
- Vereeniging voor Vrouwenkiesrecht – Dutch organization from 1894 to 1919.
- Nederlandsche Bond voor Vrouwenkiesrecht – Dutch organization from 1907 to 1920.
Norway
- Kvindestemmeretsforeningen (Women's Voting Rights Association), 1885–1913.
- Norwegian Association for Women's Rights, Norsk Kvinnesaksforening, founded 1884.
- National Association for Women's Suffrage (Landskvinnestemmerettsforeningen) – Norwegian organization from 1898 to 1913.
Poland
- Polish Women's League (Liga Kobiet Polskich), founded 1913.
Russia
- League for Women's Equality (Всероссийская лига равноправия женщин), 1907–1917
- Union for Women's Equality (Всероссийский союз равноправия женщин), 1905–1917
Spain
- Asociación Nacional de Mujeres Españolas – Spanish organization from 1918 to 1936
Sweden
- Fredrika Bremer Association (Fredrika Bremer Förbundet), founded 1884
- Gothenburg's Women's Association (Göteborgs Kvinnoförening), 1884–1891
- National Association for Women's Suffrage (Landsföreningen för kvinnans politiska rösträtt) – Swedish organization from 1902 to 1921
Switzerland
- Association internationale des femmes (International Association of Women), Geneva, 1868–1872
United Kingdom
- National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies – a major United Kingdom organization.
- Women's Social and Political Union – a major suffrage organization in United Kingdom (breakaway from the National Union for Women's Suffrage).
- Women's Freedom League
- Men's League for Women's Suffrage
- Northern Men's League for Women's Suffrage
- Edinburgh National Society for Women's Suffrage
- Glasgow and West of Scotland Association for Women's Suffrage
- Actresses' Franchise League
United States
- Alpha Suffrage Club – believed to be the first black women's suffrage association in the United States, it began in Chicago, Illinois in 1913 under the initiative of Ida B. Wells-Barnett and Belle Squire.
- American Equal Rights Association – from 1866 to 1869, early attempt at a national organization by Lucy Stone, Susan B. Anthony and others.
- American Woman Suffrage Association – American suffrage organization formed in 1869 by Lucy Stone and Antoinette Brown Blackwell after a split in the American Equal Rights Association. It joined the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) in 1890.
- College Equal Suffrage League – U.S. group founded in 1900 by Maud Wood Park and Inez Haynes Irwin to attract younger women to the movement. Merged with NAWSA in 1908.
- Congressional Union – radical U.S. organization formed in 1913 to campaign for a constitutional amendment for women's voting rights. Led by Alice Paul and Lucy Burns, In 1915 changed its name to National Woman's Party.
- Equal Franchise Society – created and joined by American women of wealth, a politically active organization conducted within a socially comfortable milieu.
- Leslie Woman Suffrage Commission, formed by Carrie Chapman Catt in March 1917 using funds willed for the purpose by Miriam Leslie. The commission, based in New York City, promoted woman's suffrage by educating the public and was affiliated with NAWSA.
- The Men's League, formed by Oswald Garrison Villard with Max Eastman. Also known as the Men's Equal Suffrage League, Men's League for Woman Suffrage and the National Men's League for Woman Suffrage.[2][3][4]
- National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) – formed in 1890 by the joining of the American Woman Suffrage Association and the National Woman Suffrage Association.
- National Woman's Party – major United States organization founded in 1915 by Alice Paul and Lucy Burns to campaign for a constitutional amendment. Organized the Silent Sentinels. From 1913 to 1915 the same core group's name was the Congressional Union.
- National Women's Rights Convention – a series of major U.S. organizing conventions, held from 1850 to 1869.
- National Woman Suffrage Association – American organization founded in 1869 by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton after the split in the American Equal Rights Association, joined NAWSA in 1890.
- New England Woman Suffrage Association (NEWSA) – formed in 1868 as the first major political organization with women's suffrage as its goal, active until 1920, principal leaders were Julia Ward Howe and Lucy Stone, played key role in forming the American Woman Suffrage Association.
- Silent Sentinels – Members of the National Woman's Party who picketed America's White House from January 1917 to June 1919 during Woodrow Wilson's presidency and until the 19th Amendment was passed, initiated and led by Alice Paul.
- Women's Trade Union League – American organization formed in 1903, later involved with the campaign for the 19th amendment.
- Massachusetts
- Boston Equal Suffrage Association for Good Government – an American organization devoted to women's suffrage in Massachusetts, it was active from 1901 to 1920.
- New York
- Woman Suffrage Party – inclusive New York suffrage party founded by Carrie Chapman Catt.
Women's suffrage publications
- Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution – drafted by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton in 1878, ratified in 1920
- Declaration of Sentiments – major statement for women's rights, including the right to vote, passed and signed at the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848. Mainly written by Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
- History of Woman Suffrage – six books produced from 1881 to 1922 by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Matilda Joslyn Gage and Ida Husted Harper.
- Jus Suffragii was the official journal of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, published monthly from 1906 to 1924.
- Suffrage Atelier – publishing collective in England, founded 1909.
- The Freewoman, a feminist weekly which, among other topics, covered the suffrage movement, was published between November 1911 and October 1912 and edited by Dora Marsden and Mary Gawthorpe.
- The Liberator – weekly newspaper published by William Lloyd Garrison which, although primarily supporting abolition of slavery, also took up the suffrage cause from 1838 until it closed in 1865.
- The Revolution – weekly U.S. newspaper, 1868–1872. Official publication of the National Woman Suffrage Association.
- Suffragette Sally – a 1911 suffrage novel by Gertrude Colmore.
- The Una – 1853 paper devoted to the enfranchisement of woman, owned and edited by Paulina Wright Davis, and first published in Providence, Rhode Island.[5][6] The Una was the first paper focused on woman suffrage, and the first distinctively woman's rights journal.[7]
- The Vote – Publication of British Women's Freedom League.
- Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly – weekly publication founded by Victoria Woodhull and Tennessee Claflin, 1870–1876.
- The Woman Voter – Publication of the New York Woman Suffrage Party.
- Woman's Journal and Suffrage News – major weekly newspaper founded by Lucy Stone and Henry Blackwell in 1870, eventually absorbed other suffrage publications
- Women's Suffrage Journal – magazine published from 1870 to 1890 in the United Kingdom.
Belgium: publications
- Ligue belge du droit des femmes (1892–1914)
Denmark: publications
- Kvinden & Samfundet (Woman & Society), founded 1885 by the Danish Women's Society.
Russia: publications
- Women's Union (Союз женщин), published by the Union for Women's Equality, 1907–1909.
Sweden: publications
See also
- List of suffragists and suffragettes
- Timeline of women's suffrage
- Timeline of first women's suffrage in majority-Muslim countries
- Women's suffrage in Australia
- Women's suffrage in Japan
- Women's suffrage in New Zealand
- Women's suffrage in the United Kingdom
- Women's suffrage in the United States
- Open Christmas Letter
- Seneca Falls Convention
- Suffrage Hikes
References
- ^ "Belfast suffragettes". Retrieved 25 July 2013.
- ^ "The Suffrage Cause and Bryn Mawr – American Speakers II". Bryn Mawr. Retrieved 2020-10-12.
- ^ Neuman, Johanna (July 2017). "Who Won Women's Suffrage? A Case for 'Mere Men'". The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. 16 (3): 347–367. doi:10.1017/S1537781417000081. ISSN 1537-7814.
- ^ "They Remembered the Ladies and Did Much More Than That". Brooke Kroeger. 2017-05-30. Retrieved 2020-10-13.
- ^ Lemay, Kate Clarke; Goodier, Susan; Tetrault, Lisa; Jones, Martha (2019). Votes for Women: A Portrait of Persistence. 269: Princeton University Press. ISBN 9780691191171.
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location (link) - ^ Stanton, Anthony & Gage 1889, p. 46, 246.
- ^ Stanton, Anthony & Gage 1889, p. 286-87.