Feminism in the Wild West
Women’s rights in America have been a long-standing fight that has been swept under the rug for decades. In Britain, the same battle was taking place, protesting women being jailed and sometimes borderline tortured. New Zealand was the first country to legalize equal voting in 1893, 27 years before the United States. Before the nineteenth amendment, most of the western states and territories allowed women 's votes of a sort. Women in the West won the right to vote before the East because of separate gender’s jobs, daring role models, and the relaxed government of territories. After the migration of wayward families in the homestead era, the strength of all the members in the family was tested. Bob Boze Bell wrote,
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The Wyoming territory was the first area in the United States to grant women the right to vote and hold office. Wyoming Grants Women the Vote suggests the motive for this may be men wanting to attract more women to the west, where the population of adult men was more than six thousand, and there was around one thousand women. Some parts of the government were persuaded by their wives, as Lucy Stone, a suffragist of the time, offered, “when he says good morning, tell him you want to vote; when he asks what you are going to have for dinner, tell him you want to vote”. This persistence won some battles, but did not help in more modern cities, where free speech was more taboo. Edward E. Lee, a Wyoming politician, argued that it was “unfair for his mother to be denied a privilege granted to African-American males”. The first state to get full suffrage was Colorado in 1893. In the territories, the decision was through legislative action, unlike the states, where it had to undergo voting. Original speculation was that women were given the right to vote because of the so-called “myth of the frontier” explained Jennifer Frost. “Woman suffrage did not just ‘happen,’ men did not simply ‘give’ women the right to vote… [women 's] suffrage was won only after decades of political work” She explained; Women activists worked for some time, starting out with small …show more content…
The frontier ladies worked daily to survive and keep their families alive, earning well-deserved respect from husbands and sons. Bandits and rodeo stars served as heroines suggesting that women were not meant to be behind the scenes. Despite the women’s pushing and shoving, government of the territories allowed women to vote mainly to attract more people to the areas. A rights activist of the time, Alice Paul, stated “when you put your hand to the plow, you can 't put it down until you get to the end of the row.” Through tough times and rough circumstances, the noble women of the west refused to give in and give
The Fifteenth amendment was ratified in March 1870 (encouraged women, particularly Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott/ Women’s Rights Movement/ The Declaration of Sentiments – campaigning for equal rights – not only are women allowed to vote today, some are being elected to public office at all levels of government (example: Hilary Clinton, running as Democratic candidate for nomination in the U.S. presidential election of
Summary of article: The National American Woman Suffrage Association have tried to influence the federal government of giving the women the opportunity to vote. The association has gone through a long battle with the states on letting the path of the women’s right to vote for the next presidential election. Indiana, Minnesota, Missouri, Maine, Wisconsin, and Tennessee are the states they are fighting for presidential suffrage. Unfortunately, New Mexico was against women’s right to vote, and Vermont was under challenge.
For example, the extension of property and voting rights to women in the United states was largely driven by political reasons rather than any desire to make women equal to men before the law. In many cases this reason was the need to promote settlement on the frontier. Evidence of this comes from the geographic distribution of the granting of women’s suffrage on the state level before women’s suffrage was granted federally. Nearly all of the states who granted women the right to vote early were western states that needed respectable women to move there in order to create a sustainable population with families. Sometimes, women’s suffrage was granted in order to bolster constituencies.
During war times women were allowed to vote since their husbands were out at war and they needed able voters, even though it was limited, it was still progress. They
The first being the ratification of the 19th amendment on August 18, 1920, which finally granted American women the right to vote. For all of the years America has existed, the entire population of women did not have the same rights as men, including the ability to vote. It wasn’t until 1848 that movements for women’s rights began to launch all across the nation with just one convention in Seneca Falls, New York, created by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott. Finally, after 70 years of fighting these groups have emerged victorious as the amendment
1849 to 1910 was an important time for America. Reforms were happening all across the board, affecting workers, African Americans, and children. It was also very crucial for women’s rights – voting rights in particular. This period saw the beginning of the women’s suffrage movement; however, it also marked the start of anti-suffrage. During this time, society was divided with one of the simplest and most complicated questions of the era: what is the proper role of women?
During the suffrage movement after 1890, women activists from various backgrounds, started to tackling with various social problems dealing with industrialization and other important topics during that time era. Women wanted to focus on topics that appealed to them as women, and mothers. The campaign to get women’s suffrage took over twenty years to get women the right to vote just like the men around them. In these two decades, women had over 480 campaigns in legislatures, over 200 campaigns in state party conventions and almost 20 campaigns in congress before the women got the same right as men. Women's work in the abolitionist movement played a particularly important role in the creation of an organized women's rights movement.
Americans in Western states have had womans rights for almost 20 years longer than those in the east. The United States was very progressive with Women's Rights, some parts more than others. Wyoming was the first state to pass the Women's Suffrage Act, this was in 1869 ( Imbornoni ) It was not until 1917 that any state in the east passed the bill, and the first was New York. Between those two times, 11 other states in the West had already passed the bill.
In the Women’s Suffrage movement, Wyoming granted women’s suffrage in 1869, and by 1900 some states allowed women to vote in local elections. This was a big step up in
In 1848 Black women made their first bid for equality in meetings with black men. “At one meeting of the National Convention of Colored Freedmen in Cleveland, Ohio a black woman proposed that women delegates be allowed to speak and vote as equals, eventually, they reclassified eligible voters as “persons” instead of men and women were allowed to participate equally”. Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Stanton changed the 15th Amendment by supporting that it should voting rights to former slaves, and that it should also include women. The northern part of the country often gave more rights to black women, the southern part of the country was sadly more close minded and still saw women as incapable and not as good as men. During the Civil War white and free black women in the North established soldiers’ aid societies.
In 1869, the Wyoming territory was first to grant women suffrage, hoping to attract women to the territory. Not all Western states promoted gender equality—in fact, in 1870 Wyoming denied women the right to serve on juries. Even so, it was the Western state of Montana that elected the first female member of the House of Representatives, Jeannette Rankin, in 1916, and the first female governors also hailed from the West (Hensley). In the West, women were allowed to own property in their own name through homesteading.
And their traditional roles included staying home, rearing children and looking after their families. Women were not granted the right to vote until August 18th 1920 (The 19th Amendment, n.d.). The 19th Amendment to the U.S Constitution granted American women the right to vote—a right known as woman suffrage. This was only less than a hundred years ago, while men have been given that right since the beginning
Finally in 1920, the nineteenth amendment was presented and allowed the women in the United States the right to vote (Kirk, G. & Okazawa-Rey, M. (2013). When thinking about how the women felt about not be able to speak up with voting situations is horrible. We are truly blessed that there were women who spoke their mind and changed the women’s lives for the
We all know that women didn 't have as many rights as men, and they still don 't. Women can now do more than they used to, but they still aren 't equal with men. They have had to fight for so many things like the right to vote and to be equal to men. The 19th amendment, the one that gave women the right to vote, brought us a big step closer. The Equal Rights Movement also gave us the chance to have as many rights as men. Women have always stayed home, cleaned the house, and didn 't even get an education.
In the year 1920, the 19th amendment was passed, giving women all across America the right to vote in elections. America has come to be the land of the free and the home of the brave. In our country, everyone is supposed to be equal no matter their race, gender, religious beliefs or sexual preference. People are allowed to do or believe in anything they want. Women gaining the right to vote was a large step for this country; a step closer to equality.