THE ORIGINS OF MODERN FEMINISM:When did women gain the right to vote?

1869: Wyoming Territory

1893: New Zealand

1906: Finland

1913: Norway, Denmark

1918: Great Britain, Germany, Austria, USSR, Sweden

1920: USA

1931: Spain

1944/45: France, Italy

1971: Switzerland

Rural family scene (Germany, 1839): Work & housework were closely linked in the old household economy

“The Sewing Room” (1823): In modern, middle-class familiesthe husband “went to work” as the women stayed home

The tyranny of French fashion (Iris, 1852) and a whalebone corset

ARGUMENTS AGAINST WOMEN’S EQUALITY AROUND 1850

SOCIOLOGICAL: That all progress of civilization depends on a strict division of labor between the sexes and devotion by women to child-rearing.NEUROPHYSIOLOGICAL: That only the male brain is suited for quantitative and abstract reasoning.MEDICAL: That adolescent girls would become barren if asked to study as hard at school as boys.PSYCHOLOGICAL: That women are especially prone to mental illness (“hysteria”).

Experts began to challenge all these arguments in the 1880s and ‘90s….

THE SPREAD OF FAMILY PLANNING IN GERMANY:Total number of children born by women married in the

years--

Pre-1905

1905-09 1910-14 1915-19

In cities with over 100,000 people

Self-employed

3.30 2.40 1.98 1.61

White-collar 3.01 2.40 2.04 1.74

Blue-collar 4.03 3.16 2.64 2.18

Among the peasantry (villages with under 2,000)

Self-employed

5.42 4.64 4.10 3.52

Farmworker 6.18 5.38 4.87 4.26

THE FINDINGS OF JOAN SCOTT & LOUISE TILLY FOR FRANCE

Most women in the 19th century faced a grim choice between families and careers

Only recently has it become feasible to

combine motherhood with a career.

THE ORIGINS OF A MASS MOVEMENT FOR WOMEN’S RIGHTS

1880s: A Doll’’s House by Henrik Ibsen and The Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff become international literary hits

1890s: European socialist parties embrace the demand for women’s suffrage

1896: Formation in Germany of the liberal League of German Women’s Clubs, which grew to 300,000 members by 1914

1903: Emmeline Pankhurst founds the Women’s Social and Political Union in England, dedicated to “militant tactics”

1900-1913: The moderate British National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies grows to 300,000 members

Rally of the Women’s Social and Political Union, Manchester, 1908

Emmeline Pankhurst arrested at Buckingham Palace

Emmeline Pankhurst in prison, 1910

The French Union for Women’s Suffrage (founded in 1909,

with 12,000 members in 1914):

“French Women Want the Vote:Against alcohol, slums, and war”

(ca. 1913)

Some of the first German women university students (1908)

Delegates to the Women’s Suffrage Congress in Munich, 1912

“Women’s Dreams about the Marriage of the Future” (1908)

Madeleine Pelletier(1874-1939),

the first woman psychiatrist in France