Women's Rights In The 1800s

For as long as before the American Revolution, an apparent inequality already existed between men and women. These gender roles resulted in men being the dominant people in families while women were usually confined in their homes, doing a limited amount of societal, economical, and political influence in America and themselves. Therefore, many women, particularly in the late 1800s to 1900s, began to realize their potential in society and the deterioration their imprisonment caused, demonstrating signs of resistance through two waves of feminist movements. They first targeted the voting rights of women, which occurred in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The following is directed to achieving equal rights for women, which was inspired by the

And if they do, women have the right to rebel in order to speak their voice about a law (1776). The outcome of this suggestion is the inequality in the American Society as the document only appealed to white men, and has been so until Mrs. Adams’ idea drove women like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott in 1848 to launch the first women’s suffrage movement at Seneca Falls in order to gain their voting rights as at the time, only men in America were allowed to vote, which demonstrated the sexism in America at the time (Danzer 64). According to The Americans, in 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment, which granted the voting rights of women, was ratified, making the efforts of women in the First Wave Feminist Movement successful (Danzer 64). This event set the bar for women’s rights as according to “Chronology of the Equal Rights Amendment”, three years later, Alice Paul wrote the Equal Rights Amendment and introduced it to Congress for the first time

Francis describes that Alice Paul believed in the freedom of women from legal sex discrimination, so she drafted the Equal Rights Amendment, which stated that all sexes in the U.S. should have equal rights (Francis). Although this amendment did not get passed on the first round, in 1972, Martha Griffiths, the first woman to serve on the House Committee on Ways and Means, reworded the amendment and reintroduced it to Congress as HJ Res. 208, which passed on the 22nd of March, 1972, granting a seven-year deadline for states to ratify it (Archives.gov). Hence, the fact that it took Americans to elect a woman in this position almost two hundred years describes the continued sexism in the institution. Additionally, according to Now.org, in 1970, twenty members of the National Organization for Women interrupted U.S. Senate hearings on Constitutional Amendments in order to demand the ERA to be heard and considered, which contributed to its passing (Now.org). What propelled these women to take a stand was to resolve the conflict that the patriarchal society enforces upon them, as Betty Friedan, one of the key players of the event, as well as others, describe this