Women in Public Life

Do Now:

•Do you think that males and females have the same opportunities?

•Do you think men and women should have equal rights in public life?

•Would you vote for a woman for president?

• During this time, married middle-class women were expected to devote their time to the care of homes and families.

– However, only middle-class and upper-class women could afford to do so.– Poorer women usually had no choice but to work for wages outside the home.

Women in the Work Force

• In addition to household tasks such as cooking, making clothes, and laundering, farm women handled other chores such as raising livestock.

• Often the women had to help plow and plant the fields and harvest the crops.

Farm Women

• Women had new options for finding jobs when better-paying opportunities became available in cities.• The garment trade claimed about half of all women industrial workers.

– Usually held the least skilled positions and received half as much money as males in the same position.– Many of these women were single and were assumed to be only supporting themselves, while men were assumed to be supporting families.

Women in Industry

• Women also began to fill new jobs in offices, stores, and classrooms

– These jobs required a high school education.

Women in Industry

• Women without formal education or industrial skills contributed to the support of the household by doing domestic work, such as cleaning for other families.

Domestic Workers

• African American Women

– Freed from slavery– Poverty drove them into the work force

• Many worked on farms and as domestic workers.• Some took jobs as cooks, laundresses, and maids.

Domestic Workers

• Immigrant Women– Unmarried immigrant women also did domestic labor.

Domestic Workers

Tell your partner…

Identify 3 jobs that women could have

had during this time period.

• Dangerous conditions, low wages, and long hours led many female industrial workers to push for reforms.• By 1910, women’s clubs sometimes grew into reform groups that addressed issues such as temperance (abstaining from alcoholic beverages) or child labor.

Women Lead Reform

• Many of the women who became active in public life in the late 19th century had attended new women’s colleges.• Although women were expected to fulfill traditional domestic roles, women’s colleges sought to grant women an excellent education.

Women in Higher Education

• By the late 19th century, marriage was no longer a woman’s only option.

– Many women entered the work force or sought higher education.– Many of these educated women began to apply their skills for reforms.

Women in Higher Education

Tell your partner…

What did many women use their education for?

• Uneducated laborers started efforts to reform workplace health and safety.

– Because women were not allowed to vote or run for office, women reformers strove to improve conditions at work and home.– Targeted workplace reform, housing reform, educational improvement, and food and drug laws.

Women and Reform

• African American women founded the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) which managed nurseries, reading rooms, and kindergartens.

Women and Reform

• Susan B. Anthony – a leading proponent of women’s suffrage, or the right to vote.• Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton had founded the National Women Suffrage Association (NWSA) which united with another group to become the National American Women Suffrage Association.

Women’s Suffrage

• Women suffrage faced constant opposition.

– The liquor industry feared that women would vote in support of prohibition.– The textile industry worried that women would vote for restrictions on child labor.

Women’s Suffrage

Source: Map Showing the Progress of Woman Suffrage, in New York Times, October 13, 1911. Reprinted in American Women: Their Image (1900–1930s) (New York: Cambridge Book Company, 1973), 40.

• Suffragist leaders tried three approaches to achieve their objective.

Three-Part Strategy for Suffrage

Tried to convince state legislatures to grant the right to vote.

They achieved victories in the territories of Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, and Idaho.

Three-Part Strategy for Suffrage

Women pursued court cases to test the 14th Amendment (declares states that denied their male citizens the right to vote would lose congressional representation.)

Susan B. Anthony and other women attempted to vote at least 150 times in 10 states.

Three-Part Strategy for Suffrage

Women pushed for a national Constitutional Amendment to grant women the vote.

For 41 years, women lobbied to have it reintroduced, only to see it continually voted down.

Three-Part Strategy for Suffrage

School House Rock -- Suffrage

Tell your partner…

What was women’s suffrage?