FREE ESSAY ON WOMENS MOVEMENT

WOMENS MOVEMENT

The Women's Movement
To have drunkards, idiots, horse racing rum-selling rowdies, ignorant foreigners, and
silly boys fully recognized, while we ourselves are thrust out from all the rights that
belong to citizens, is too grossly insulting to be longer quietly submitted to. The right
is ours. We must have it (Rynder 3). This quote from one of Cady Stanton's speeches shows
what great injustices women had to suffer. Stanton is saying that even the scum of the
earth had more rights than highly cultured women. In many aspects of life, women's rights
were dramatically less than those of men. Women were not allowed to vote, yet they had to
pay taxes. Women were subjects of their husbands, and expected to do all of the house
work. The fight for women's rights, also known as the women's movement, changed women's
civil rights, social rights, and opened doors for generations of women to come.
The most important civil right that women were denied of was the right to vote. When the
United States became a country, women were never included in which people had the right
to vote. The right to vote in our country was restricted to white men that owned
property. Women wanted this right. The women's movement was already in action before the
civil war. Women were fighting for suffrage, the right to vote, and prohibition, which
would outlaw alcohol. During the war, women's attentions were diverted to war issues, but
the movement was strong again after the war. In the United States, individual states
decided who was allowed to vote. In the western frontier states men and women had to work
equally hard to survive, and men recognized this. In light of this fact, women were given
the privilege of voting. When the civil war ended, all of the slaves were free. This was
also the time when women strove their hardest to pass an amendment that would give women
the right to vote (Sigerman 3). With all the slaves free, the men and women would want
suffrage, and they joined in the fight. One of the women that stands out in history as
being a leader in the women's movement was Susan B. Anthony. When Anthony voted in the
election of 1872, she did so illegally. As a result of her action, Anthony and 16 other
women were arrested. They were then released on bail and were ordered to appear before a
grand jury. Susan was found guilty and given a sentence to pay $100 and the cost of
persecution. She was never forced to pay. Before this, the women's movement had suffered
its largest blow on February 3, 1870 when the 15th amendment was passed. The amendment
stopped states from denying citizens the right to vote on account of race, color, or
previous condition of servitude, but said nothing about not discriminating based on sex.
In this amendment, men were saying that the African-American men they had enslaved were
of higher stature than their own wives (Stevenson 54). Despite this setback women
continued to work for suffrage. Stanton and other wrote the Sentiments and Resolution 9
in order to get more people to join in the fight. Many women worked hard to achieve
suffrage, and finally they got it. In 1920 the 19th amendment was finally passed giving
women the most important civil right, the right to vote.
Beside not having the right to vote, women did not have the basic civil right of owning
property. When a women entered into marriage, it was believed that the husband and wife
became one unit. The husband was considered the head of that unit. If a women owned any
property, when she was married, it would legally become her husbands. Besides owning
plain property, women were not allowed to own businesses either. It was believed that it
was the husband's duty to make money for the family. A women may have been able to sell a
few goods out of her home, but that was the extend of it. Over time women were given more
freedom from their husbands. They were allowed to receive some possessions in a divorce,
and women started opening their own businesses. Today women have the same opportunities
to own property as men (Chafe 53).
Along with civil rights, women's social rights were not equal to those of men. Women were
to be submissive to their husbands. As wives, women's were expected to perform all of the
household duties. They were expected to cook, clean, and take care of the children (Chafe
67). As the women's movement went on, new methods of performing these duties became
available. Catherine Beeches wrote The New Housekeeper's Manual. showing women how to lay
out their homes in order to save time, and create a cleaner, more comfortable home
(Rydner 2). New appliances such as toasters and washing machines started becoming
available to aid women with their chores. Today men and women do housework, and our
society has a lot of new technology that helps with housework. 
Before about 1900, were still not able to control their own bodies, and were not allowed
to use birth control. A woman was bound by law to her husband. She was forced to consent
to his wishes. If she did not, it was legal for him to beat her as punishment (Rydner
34). A women was not allowed to control whether or not she wanted children. Before 1873
women could learn about birth control through advertisements in women's magazines. This
right was taken away from women in 1873 when Congress passed the Comstock Act after Mr.
Comstock's prodding. This law prohibited selling distributing, or mailing obscene
literature and defined contraceptive devices and any information about them as obscene.
The new form of birth control was voluntary motherhood (Rydner 37). Supporters of this
form stated that if women were able to have children when they wanted to, the women would
have happier, healthier children because they were wanted. In order to use this form of
birth control, women needed the right to say no to their husbands. Some religions
encouraged this practice because it prevented sexual excess. It is not known to what
extent this method worked, but from 1800 to 1900 the birthrate among American women
declined by about one half (Ryder 39). Today, women are allowed to use birth control, and
in some cases, are encouraged to do so. Different religions say different things on what
to use for birth control, and every women has to decide for herself what is best.
Material is made widely available for women to research and find answers to their
questions. This is very