Post on 19-Jan-2016
Women Suffrage
Mr. Williams 10th Grade U.S. History
New Opportunities for Women• By 1900, more than one-third of
college students were women
• Started out engaging in reform movements: Example Jane Addams and the Settlement Houses
•Women worked as teachers and nurses, but also as bookkeepers, typists, secretaries, shop clerks, and journalists•Working class women worked
in the garment industry
•Educated women blocked from medicine, law, and the clergy• Fewer than 1500 women
practiced law in 1900, only 6% of women practiced medicine
“This is the women’s age. At last…women are coming into the labor and festival of life on equal terms with men.”
Why Organize?• Sense of Christian Mission• Fear of social upheaval because of
political tensions• Concern about power of wealthy
individuals and corporations • Wanting to Americanize immigrants
and fight for rights of others who needed help
Women’s Trade Union League (WTUL)
•Middle class women workers•Wanted to limit hours • Regulate working conditions• 1908 Muller v. Oregon : Limited
work day for women to 10 hours a day
Jane Addams• Opened the Hull House in Chicago
in 1889• Practiced Idea of Social Gospel-
advocates worked to better conditions of the city through philanthropy and social work
Social Gospel •Woman’s Christian Temperance
Union (WCTU)• Attacks on alcohol as part of push
for social purity • Drinking was linked to prostitution,
wife and child abuse, unemployment and work accidents
18th Amendment (Prohibition)
• Ratified in 1919, this banned the manufacturing, sale and distribution of alcohol
• Using state by state approach, suffragists had achieved success• 1869 Wyoming became first
territory to grant women the right to vote• In New York, suffragists waged
massive door-to-door referendum campaign but was defeated
NAWSA•National American Woman’s
Suffrage Association•Campaigned for a
constitutional amendment to give women the vote•Also supported organized
labor
Susan B. Anthony•Wrote pamphlets, gave speeches,
also testified before every Congress between 1869 and 1906• Registered to vote, and on Election
Day she voted in New York and was arrested fined $100• This is an example of Civil
Disobedience
NWP•National Woman’s Party•Militant Suffragist Movement
led by Alice Paul•Continuously picketed the
White House and went on hunger strikes in prison
• “Every day that the Government sends women to prison for holding harmless banners…makes the position of the Government more indefensible and therefore strengthens our position.”
-Alice Paul 1917
19th Amendment•Passed by Congress in 1919•Granted Women Right to Vote
(Suffrage)•Ratified by states in 1920
Anti-Suffrage Arguments • Voting would interfere with
women’s duties at home or destroy family •Women did not have education or
experience to be competent voters•Women did not want to vote