women's rights history essay

A global story

This piece is part of 19A: The Brookings Gender Equality Series . In this essay series, Brookings scholars, public officials, and other subject-area experts examine the current state of gender equality 100 years after the 19th Amendment was adopted to the U.S. Constitution and propose recommendations to cull the prevalence of gender-based discrimination in the United States and around the world.

The year 2020 will stand out in the history books. It will always be remembered as the year the COVID-19 pandemic gripped the globe and brought death, illness, isolation, and economic hardship. It will also be noted as the year when the death of George Floyd and the words “I can’t breathe” ignited in the United States and many other parts of the world a period of reckoning with racism, inequality, and the unresolved burdens of history.

The history books will also record that 2020 marked 100 years since the ratification of the 19th Amendment in America, intended to guarantee a vote for all women, not denied or abridged on the basis of sex.

This is an important milestone and the continuing movement for gender equality owes much to the history of suffrage and the brave women (and men) who fought for a fairer world. Yet just celebrating what was achieved is not enough when we have so much more to do. Instead, this anniversary should be a galvanizing moment when we better inform ourselves about the past and emerge more determined to achieve a future of gender equality.

Australia’s role in the suffrage movement

In looking back, one thing that should strike us is how international the movement for suffrage was though the era was so much less globalized than our own.

For example, how many Americans know that 25 years before the passing of the 19th Amendment in America, my home of South Australia was one of the first polities in the world to give men and women the same rights to participate in their democracies? South Australia led Australia and became a global leader in legislating universal suffrage and candidate eligibility over 125 years ago.

This extraordinary achievement was not an easy one. There were three unsuccessful attempts to gain equal voting rights for women in South Australia, in the face of relentless opposition. But South Australia’s suffragists—including the Women’s Suffrage League and the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, as well as remarkable women like Catherine Helen Spence, Mary Lee, and Elizabeth Webb Nicholls—did not get dispirited but instead continued to campaign, persuade, and cajole. They gathered a petition of 11,600 signatures, stuck it together page by page so that it measured around 400 feet in length, and presented it to Parliament.

The Constitutional Amendment (Adult Suffrage) Bill was finally introduced on July 4, 1894, leading to heated debate both within the houses of Parliament, and outside in society and the media. Demonstrating that some things in Parliament never change, campaigner Mary Lee observed as the bill proceeded to committee stage “that those who had the least to say took the longest time to say it.” 1

The Bill finally passed on December 18, 1894, by 31 votes to 14 in front of a large crowd of women.

In 1897, Catherine Helen Spence became the first woman to stand as a political candidate in South Australia.

South Australia’s victory led the way for the rest of the colonies, in the process of coming together to create a federated Australia, to fight for voting rights for women across the entire nation. Women’s suffrage was in effect made a precondition to federation in 1901, with South Australia insisting on retaining the progress that had already been made. 2 South Australian Muriel Matters, and Vida Goldstein—a woman from the Australian state of Victoria—are just two of the many who fought to ensure that when Australia became a nation, the right of women to vote and stand for Parliament was included.

Australia’s remarkable progressiveness was either envied, or feared, by the rest of the world. Sociologists and journalists traveled to Australia to see if the worst fears of the critics of suffrage would be realised.

In 1902, Vida Goldstein was invited to meet President Theodore Roosevelt—the first Australian to ever meet a U.S. president in the White House. With more political rights than any American woman, Goldstein was a fascinating visitor. In fact, President Roosevelt told Goldstein: “I’ve got my eye on you down in Australia.” 3

Goldstein embarked on many other journeys around the world in the name of suffrage, and ran five times for Parliament, emphasising “the necessity of women putting women into Parliament to secure the reforms they required.” 4

Muriel Matters went on to join the suffrage movement in the United Kingdom. In 1908 she became the first woman to speak in the British House of Commons in London—not by invitation, but by chaining herself to the grille that obscured women’s views of proceedings in the Houses of Parliament. After effectively cutting her off the grille, she was dragged out of the gallery by force, still shouting and advocating for votes for women. The U.K. finally adopted women’s suffrage in 1928.

These Australian women, and the many more who tirelessly fought for women’s rights, are still extraordinary by today’s standards, but were all the more remarkable for leading the rest of the world.

A shared history of exclusion

Of course, no history of women’s suffrage is complete without acknowledging those who were excluded. These early movements for gender equality were overwhelmingly the remit of privileged white women. Racially discriminatory exclusivity during the early days of suffrage is a legacy Australia shares with the United States.

South Australian Aboriginal women were given the right to vote under the colonial laws of 1894, but they were often not informed of this right or supported to enroll—and sometimes were actively discouraged from participating.

They were later further discriminated against by direct legal bar by the 1902 Commonwealth Franchise Act, whereby Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were excluded from voting in federal elections—a right not given until 1962.

Any celebration of women’s suffrage must acknowledge such past injustices front and center. Australia is not alone in the world in grappling with a history of discrimination and exclusion.

The best historical celebrations do not present a triumphalist version of the past or convey a sense that the fight for equality is finished. By reflecting on our full history, these celebrations allow us to come together, find new energy, and be inspired to take the cause forward in a more inclusive way.

The way forward

In the century or more since winning women’s franchise around the world, we have made great strides toward gender equality for women in parliamentary politics. Targets and quotas are working. In Australia, we already have evidence that affirmative action targets change the diversity of governments. Since the Australian Labor Party (ALP) passed its first affirmative action resolution in 1994, the party has seen the number of women in its national parliamentary team skyrocket from around 14% to 50% in recent years.

Instead of trying to “fix” women—whether by training or otherwise—the ALP worked on fixing the structures that prevent women getting preselected, elected, and having fair opportunities to be leaders.

There is also clear evidence of the benefits of having more women in leadership roles. A recent report from Westminster Foundation for Democracy and the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership (GIWL) at King’s College London, shows that where women are able to exercise political leadership, it benefits not just women and girls, but the whole of society.

But even though we know how to get more women into parliament and the positive difference they make, progress toward equality is far too slow. The World Economic Forum tells us that if we keep progressing as we are, the global political empowerment gender gap—measuring the presence of women across Parliament, ministries, and heads of states across the world— will only close in another 95 years . This is simply too long to wait and, unfortunately, not all barriers are diminishing. The level of abuse and threatening language leveled at high-profile women in the public domain and on social media is a more recent but now ubiquitous problem, which is both alarming and unacceptable.

Across the world, we must dismantle the continuing legal and social barriers that prevent women fully participating in economic, political, and community life.

Education continues to be one such barrier in many nations. Nearly two-thirds of the world’s illiterate adults are women. With COVID-19-related school closures happening in developing countries, there is a real risk that progress on girls’ education is lost. When Ebola hit, the evidence shows that the most marginalized girls never made it back to school and rates of child marriage, teen pregnancy. and child labor soared. The Global Partnership for Education, which I chair, is currently hard at work trying to ensure that this history does not repeat.

Ensuring educational equality is a necessary but not sufficient condition for gender equality. In order to change the landscape to remove the barriers that prevent women coming through for leadership—and having their leadership fairly evaluated rather than through the prism of gender—we need a radical shift in structures and away from stereotypes. Good intentions will not be enough to achieve the profound wave of change required. We need hard-headed empirical research about what works. In my life and writings post-politics and through my work at the GIWL, sharing and generating this evidence is front and center of the work I do now.

GIWL work, undertaken in partnership with IPSOS Mori, demonstrates that the public knows more needs to be done. For example, this global polling shows the community thinks it is harder for women to get ahead. Specifically, they say men are less likely than women to need intelligence and hard work to get ahead in their careers.

Other research demonstrates that the myth of the “ideal worker,” one who works excessive hours, is damaging for women’s careers. We also know from research that even in families where each adult works full time, domestic and caring labor is disproportionately done by women. 5

In order to change the landscape to remove the barriers that prevent women coming through for leadership—and having their leadership fairly evaluated rather than through the prism of gender—we need a radical shift in structures and away from stereotypes.

Other more subtle barriers, like unconscious bias and cultural stereotypes, continue to hold women back. We need to start implementing policies that prevent people from being marginalized and stop interpreting overconfidence or charisma as indicative of leadership potential. The evidence shows that it is possible for organizations to adjust their definitions and methods of identifying merit so they can spot, measure, understand, and support different leadership styles.

Taking the lessons learned from our shared history and the lives of the extraordinary women across the world, we know evidence needs to be combined with activism to truly move forward toward a fairer world. We are in a battle for both hearts and minds.

Why this year matters

We are also at an inflection point. Will 2020 will be remembered as the year that a global recession disproportionately destroyed women’s jobs, while women who form the majority of the workforce in health care and social services were at risk of contracting the coronavirus? Will it be remembered as a time of escalating domestic violence and corporations cutting back on their investments in diversity programs?

Or is there a more positive vision of the future that we can seize through concerted advocacy and action? A future where societies re-evaluate which work truly matters and determine to better reward carers. A time when men and women forced into lockdowns re-negotiated how they approach the division of domestic labor. Will the pandemic be viewed as the crisis that, through forcing new ways of virtual working, ultimately led to more balance between employment and family life, and career advancement based on merit and outcomes, not presentism and the old boys’ network?

This history is not yet written. We still have an opportunity to make it happen. Surely the women who led the way 100 years ago can inspire us to seize this moment and create that better, more gender equal future.

• December 7,1894: Welcome home meeting for Catherine Helen Spence at the Café de Paris. [ Register , Dec, 19, 1894 ]
• Clare Wright, You Daughters of Freedom: The Australians Who Won the Vote and Inspired the World , (Text Publishing, 2018).
• Janette M. Bomford, That Dangerous and Persuasive Woman, (Melbourne University Press, 1993)
• Cordelia Fine, Delusions of Gender: The Real Science Behind Sex Differences, (Icon Books, 2010)

This piece is part of 19A: The Brookings Gender Equality Series.  Learn more about the series and read published work »

About the Author

Julia gillard, distinguished fellow – global economy and development, center for universal education.

Gillard is a distinguished fellow with the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution. She is the Inaugural Chair of the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership at King’s College London. Gillard also serves as Chair of the Global Partnership for Education, which is dedicated to expanding access to quality education worldwide and is patron of CAMFED, the Campaign for Female Education.

Read full bio

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History of the Women’s Rights Movement

Living the Legacy: The Women’s Rights Movement (1848-1998)

“ Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has. ” That was Margaret Mead’s conclusion after a lifetime of observing very diverse cultures around the world. Her insight has been borne out time and again throughout the development of this country of ours. Being allowed to live life in an atmosphere of religious freedom, having a voice in the government you support with your taxes, living free of lifelong enslavement by another person. These beliefs about how life should and must be lived were once considered outlandish by many. But these beliefs were fervently held by visionaries whose steadfast work brought about changed minds and attitudes. Now these beliefs are commonly shared across U.S. society.

Another initially outlandish idea that has come to pass: United States citizenship for women. 1998 marked the 150th Anniversary of a movement by women to achieve full civil rights in this country. Over the past seven generations, dramatic social and legal changes have been accomplished that are now so accepted that they go unnoticed by people whose lives they have utterly changed. Many people who have lived through the recent decades of this process have come to accept blithely what has transpired. And younger people, for the most part, can hardly believe life was ever otherwise. They take the changes completely in stride, as how life has always been.

The staggering changes for women that have come about over those seven generations in family life, in religion, in government, in employment, in education – these changes did not just happen spontaneously. Women themselves made these changes happen, very deliberately. Women have not been the passive recipients of miraculous changes in laws and human nature. Seven generations of women have come together to affect these changes in the most democratic ways: through meetings, petition drives, lobbying, public speaking, and nonviolent resistance. They have worked very deliberately to create a better world, and they have succeeded hugely.

Throughout 1998, the 150th anniversary of the Women’s Rights Movement is being celebrated across the nation with programs and events taking every form imaginable. Like many amazing stories, the history of the Women’s Rights Movement began with a small group of people questioning why human lives were being unfairly constricted.

A Tea Launches a Revolution The Women’s Rights Movement marks July 13, 1848 as its beginning. On that sweltering summer day in upstate New York, a young housewife and mother, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, was invited to tea with four women friends. When the course of their conversation turned to the situation of women, Stanton poured out her discontent with the limitations placed on her own situation under America’s new democracy. Hadn’t the American Revolution had been fought just 70 years earlier to win the patriots freedom from tyranny? But women had not gained freedom even though they’d taken equally tremendous risks through those dangerous years. Surely the new republic would benefit from having its women play more active roles throughout society. Stanton’s friends agreed with her, passionately. This was definitely not the first small group of women to have such a conversation, but it was the first to plan and carry out a specific, large-scale program.

Today we are living the legacy of this afternoon conversation among women friends. Throughout 1998, events celebrating the 150th Anniversary of the Women’s Rights Movement are looking at the massive changes these women set in motion when they daringly agreed to convene the world’s first Women’s Rights Convention.

Within two days of their afternoon tea together, this small group had picked a date for their convention, found a suitable location, and placed a small announcement in the Seneca County Courier. They called “A convention to discuss the social, civil, and religious condition and rights of woman.” The gathering would take place at the Wesleyan Chapel in Seneca Falls on July 19 and 20, 1848.

In the history of western civilization, no similar public meeting had ever been called.

A “Declaration of Sentiments” is Drafted These were patriotic women, sharing the ideal of improving the new republic. They saw their mission as helping the republic keep its promise of better, more egalitarian lives for its citizens. As the women set about preparing for the event, Elizabeth Cady Stanton used the Declaration of Independence as the framework for writing what she titled a “Declaration of Sentiments.” In what proved to be a brilliant move, Stanton connected the nascent campaign for women’s rights directly to that powerful American symbol of liberty. The same familiar words framed their arguments: “We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

In this Declaration of Sentiments, Stanton carefully enumerated areas of life where women were treated unjustly. Eighteen was precisely the number of grievances America’s revolutionary forefathers had listed in their Declaration of Independence from England.

Stanton’s version read, “The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.” Then it went into specifics:

• Married women were legally dead in the eyes of the law
• Women were not allowed to vote
• Women had to submit to laws when they had no voice in their formation
• Married women had no property rights
• Husbands had legal power over and responsibility for their wives to the extent that they could imprison or beat them with impunity
• Divorce and child custody laws favored men, giving no rights to women
• Women had to pay property taxes although they had no representation in the levying of these taxes
• Most occupations were closed to women and when women did work they were paid only a fraction of what men earned
• Women were not allowed to enter professions such as medicine or law
• Women had no means to gain an education since no college or university would accept women students
• With only a few exceptions, women were not allowed to participate in the affairs of the church
• Women were robbed of their self-confidence and self-respect, and were made totally dependent on men

Strong words… Large grievances… And remember: This was just seventy years after the Revolutionary War. Doesn’t it seem surprising to you that this unfair treatment of women was the norm in this new, very idealistic democracy? But this Declaration of Sentiments spelled out what was the status quo for European-American women in 1848 America, while it was even worse for enslaved Black women.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s draft continued: “Now, in view of this entire disenfranchisement of one-half the people of this country, their social and religious degradation, — in view of the unjust laws above mentioned, and because women do feel themselves aggrieved, oppressed, and fraudulently deprived of their most sacred rights, we insist that they have immediate admission to all the rights and privileges which belong to them as citizens of these United States.”

That summer, change was in the air and Elizabeth Cady Stanton was full of hope that the future could and would be brighter for women.

The First Women’s Rights Convention The convention was convened as planned, and over the two-days of discussion, the Declaration of Sentiments and 12 resolutions received unanimous endorsement, one by one, with a few amendments. The only resolution that did not pass unanimously was the call for women’s enfranchisement. That women should be allowed to vote in elections was almost inconceivable to many. Lucretia Mott, Stanton’s longtime friend, had been shocked when Stanton had first suggested such an idea. And at the convention, heated debate over the woman’s vote filled the air.

Today, it’s hard for us to imagine this, isn’t it? Even the heartfelt pleas of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a refined and educated woman of the time, did not move the assembly. Not until Frederick Douglass, the noted Black abolitionist and rich orator, started to speak, did the uproar subside. Woman, like the slave, he argued, had the right to liberty. “Suffrage,” he asserted, “is the power to choose rulers and make laws, and the right by which all others are secured.” In the end, the resolution won enough votes to carry, but by a bare majority.

The Declaration of Sentiments ended on a note of complete realism: “In entering upon the great work before us, we anticipate no small amount of misconception, misrepresentation, and ridicule; but we shall use every instrumentality within our power to effect our object. We shall employ agents, circulate tracts, petition the State and national Legislatures, and endeavor to enlist the pulpit and the press in our behalf. We hope this Convention will be followed by a series of Conventions, embracing every part of the country.”

The Backlash Begins Stanton was certainly on the mark when she anticipated “misconception, misrepresentation, and ridicule.” Newspaper editors were so scandalized by the shameless audacity of the Declaration of Sentiments, and particularly of the ninth resolution — women demanding the vote!– that they attacked the women with all the vitriol they could muster. The women’s rights movement was only one day old and the backlash had already begun!

In ridicule, the entire text of the Declaration of Sentiments was often published, with the names of the signers frequently included. Just as ridicule today often has a squelching effect on new ideas, this attack in the press caused many people from the Convention to rethink their positions. Many of the women who had attended the convention were so embarrassed by the publicity that they actually withdrew their signatures from the Declaration. But most stood firm. And something the editors had not anticipated happened: Their negative articles about the women’s call for expanded rights were so livid and widespread that they actually had a positive impact far beyond anything the organizers could have hoped for. People in cities and isolated towns alike were now alerted to the issues, and joined this heated discussion of women’s rights in great numbers!

The Movement Expands The Seneca Falls women had optimistically hoped for “a series of conventions embracing every part of the country.” And that’s just what did happen. Women’s Rights Conventions were held regularly from 1850 until the start of the Civil War. Some drew such large crowds that people actually had to be turned away for lack of sufficient meeting space!

The women’s rights movement of the late 19th century went on to address the wide range of issues spelled out at the Seneca Falls Convention. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and women like Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, and Sojourner Truth traveled the country lecturing and organizing for the next forty years. Eventually, winning the right to vote emerged as the central issue, since the vote would provide the means to achieve the other reforms. All told, the campaign for woman suffrage met such staunch opposition that it took 72 years for the women and their male supporters to be successful.

As you might imagine, any 72-year campaign includes thousands of political strategists, capable organizers, administrators, activists and lobbyists. The story of diligent women’s rights activism is a litany of achievements against tremendous odds, of ingenious strategies and outrageous tactics used to outwit opponents and make the most of limited resources. It’s a dramatic tale, filled with remarkable women facing down incredible obstacles to win that most basic American civil right – the vote.

Among these women are several activists whose names and and accomplishments should become as familiar to Americans as those of Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr.

• Elizabeth Cady Stanton, of course. And Susan B. Anthony. Matilda Joslyn Gage. Lucy Stone. They were pioneer theoreticians of the 19th-century women’s rights movement.
• Esther Morris, the first woman to hold a judicial position, who led the first successful state campaign for woman suffrage, in Wyoming in 1869. Abigail Scott Duniway, the leader of the successful fight in Oregon and Washington in the early 1900s.
• Ida B. Wells-Barnett and Mary Church Terrell, organizers of thousands of African-American women who worked for suffrage for all women.
• Harriot Stanton Blatch, daughter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Alice Stone Blackwell, Lucy Stone’s daughter, who carried on their mothers’ legacy through the next generation.
• Anna Howard Shaw and Carrie Chapman Catt, leaders of the National American Woman Suffrage Association in the early years of the 20th century, who brought the campaign to its final success.
• Alice Paul, founder and leader of the National Woman’s Party, considered the radical wing of the movement.
• Ruth Bader Ginsburg, now a Supreme Court Justice, learned the story of the Women’s Rights Movement. Today she says, “I think about how much we owe to the women who went before us – legions of women, some known but many more unknown. I applaud the bravery and resilience of those who helped all of us – you and me – to be here today.”

After the Vote was Won After the vote was finally won in 1920, the organized Women’s Rights Movement continued on in several directions. While the majority of women who had marched, petitioned and lobbied for woman suffrage looked no further, a minority – like Alice Paul – understood that the quest for women’s rights would be an ongoing struggle that was only advanced, not satisfied, by the vote.

In 1919, as the suffrage victory drew near, the National American Woman Suffrage Association reconfigured itself into the League of Women Voters to ensure that women would take their hard-won vote seriously and use it wisely.

In 1920, the Women’s Bureau of the Department of Labor was established to gather information about the situation of women at work, and to advocate for changes it found were needed. Many suffragists became actively involved with lobbying for legislation to protect women workers from abuse and unsafe conditions.

In 1923, Alice Paul, the leader of the National Woman’s Party, took the next obvious step. She drafted an Equal Rights Amendment for the United States Constitution. Such a federal law, it was argued, would ensure that “Men and women have equal rights throughout the United States.” A constitutional amendment would apply uniformly, regardless of where a person lived.

The second wing of the post-suffrage movement was one that had not been explicitly anticipated in the Seneca Falls “Declaration of Sentiments.” It was the birth control movement, initiated by a public health nurse, Margaret Sanger, just as the suffrage drive was nearing its victory. The idea of woman’s right to control her own body, and especially to control her own reproduction and sexuality, added a visionary new dimension to the ideas of women’s emancipation. This movement not only endorsed educating women about existing birth control methods. It also spread the conviction that meaningful freedom for modern women meant they must be able to decide for themselves whether they would become mothers, and when. For decades, Margaret Sanger and her supporters faced down at every turn the zealously enforced laws denying women this right. In 1936, a Supreme Court decision declassified birth control information as obscene. Still, it was not until 1965 that married couples in all states could obtain contraceptives legally.

The Second Wave So it’s clear that, contrary to common misconception, the Women’s Rights Movement did not begin in the 1960s. What occurred in the 1960s was actually a second wave of activism that washed into the public consciousness, fueled by several seemingly independent events of that turbulent decade. Each of these events brought a different segment of the population into the movement.

First: Esther Peterson was the director of the Women’s Bureau of the Dept. of Labor in 1961. She considered it to be the government’s responsibility to take an active role in addressing discrimination against women. With her encouragement, President Kennedy convened a Commission on the Status of Women, naming Eleanor Roosevelt as its chair. The report issued by that commission in 1963 documented discrimination against women in virtually every area of American life. State and local governments quickly followed suit and established their own commissions for women, to research conditions and recommend changes that could be initiated.

Then: In 1963, Betty Friedan published a landmark book, The Feminine Mystique. The Feminine Mystique evolved out of a survey she had conducted for her 20-year college reunion. In it she documented the emotional and intellectual oppression that middle-class educated women were experiencing because of limited life options. The book became an immediate bestseller, and inspired thousands of women to look for fulfillment beyond the role of homemaker.

Next: Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act was passed, prohibiting employment discrimination on the basis of sex as well as race, religion, and national origin. The category “sex” was included as a last-ditch effort to kill the bill. But it passed, nevertheless. With its passage, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission was established to investigate discrimination complaints. Within the commission’s first five years, it received 50,000 sex discrimination complaints. But it was quickly obvious that the commission was not very interested in pursuing these complaints. Betty Friedan, the chairs of the various state Commissions on the Status of Women, and other feminists agreed to form a civil rights organization for women similar to the NAACP. In 1966, the National Organization for Women was organized, soon to be followed by an array of other mass-membership organizations addressing the needs of specific groups of women, including Blacks, Latinas, Asians-Americans, lesbians, welfare recipients, business owners, aspiring politicians, and tradeswomen and professional women of every sort.

During this same time, thousands of young women on college campuses were playing active roles within the anti-war and civil rights movement. At least,that was their intention. Many were finding their efforts blocked by men who felt leadership of these movements was their own province, and that women’s roles should be limited to fixing food and running mimeograph machines. It wasn’t long before these young women began forming their own “women’s liberation” organizations to address their role and status within these progressive movements and within society at large.

New Issues Come to the Fore These various elements of the re-emerging Women’s Rights Movement worked together and separately on a wide range of issues. Small groups of women in hundreds of communities worked on grassroots projects like establishing women’s newspapers, bookstores and cafes. They created battered women’s shelters and rape crisis hotlines to care for victims of sexual abuse and domestic violence. They came together to form child care centers so women could work outside their homes for pay. Women health care professionals opened women’s clinics to provide birth control and family planning counseling — and to offer abortion services — for low-income women. These clinics provided a safe place to discuss a wide range of health concerns and experiment with alternative forms of treatment.

With the inclusion of Title IX in the Education Codes of 1972, equal access to higher education and to professional schools became the law. The long-range effect of that one straightforward legal passage beginning “Equal access to education programs…,” has been simply phenomenal. The number of women doctors, lawyers, engineers, architects and other professionals has doubled and doubled again as quotas actually limiting women’s enrollment in graduate schools were outlawed. Athletics has probably been the most hotly contested area of Title IX, and it’s been one of the hottest areas of improvement, too. The rise in girls’ and women’s participation in athletics tells the story: One in twenty-seven high school girls played sports 25 years ago; one in three do today. The whole world saw how much American women athletes could achieve during the last few Olympic Games, measured in their astonishing numbers of gold, silver, and bronze medals. This was another very visible result of Title IX.

In society at large, the Women’s Rights Movement has brought about measurable changes, too. In 1972, 26% of men and women said they would not vote for a woman for president. In 1996, that sentiment had plummeted to just over 5% for women and to 8% for men. The average age of women when they first marry has moved from twenty to twenty-four during that same period.

But perhaps the most dramatic impact of the women’s rights movement of the past few decades has been women’s financial liberation. Do you realize that just 25 years ago married women were not issued credit cards in their own name? That most women could not get a bank loan without a male co-signer? That women working full time earned fifty-nine cents to every dollar earned by men?

Help-wanted ads in newspapers were segregated into “Help wanted – women” and “Help wanted- men.” Pages and pages of jobs were announced for which women could not even apply. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ruled this illegal in 1968, but since the EEOC had little enforcement power, most newspapers ignored the requirement for years. The National Organization for Women (NOW), had to argue the issue all the way to the Supreme Court to make it possible for a woman today to hold any job for which she is qualified. And so now we see women in literally thousands of occupations which would have been almost unthinkable just one generation ago: dentist, bus driver, veterinarian, airline pilot, and phone installer, just to name a few.

Many of these changes came about because of legislation and court cases pushed by women’s organizations. But many of the advances women achieved in the 1960s and ’70s were personal: getting husbands to help with the housework or regularly take responsibility for family meals; getting a long-deserved promotion at work; gaining the financial and emotional strength to leave an abusive partner.

The Equal Rights Amendment Is Re-Introduced Then, in 1972, the Equal Rights Amendment, which had languished in Congress for almost fifty years, was finally passed and sent to the states for ratification. The wording of the ERA was simple: “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.” To many women’s rights activists, its ratification by the required thirty-eight states seemed almost a shoo-in.

The campaign for state ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment provided the opportunity for millions of women across the nation to become actively involved in the Women’s Rights Movement in their own communities. Unlike so many other issues which were battled-out in Congress or through the courts, this issue came to each state to decide individually. Women’s organizations of every stripe organized their members to help raise money and generate public support for the ERA. Marches were staged in key states that brought out hundreds of thousands of supporters. House meetings, walk-a-thons, door-to-door canvassing, and events of every imaginable kind were held by ordinary women, many of whom had never done anything political in their lives before. Generous checks and single dollar bills poured into the campaign headquarters, and the ranks of NOW and other women’s rights organizations swelled to historic sizes. Every women’s magazine and most general interest publications had stories on the implications of the ERA, and the progress of the ratification campaign.

But Elizabeth Cady Stanton proved prophetic once again. Remember her prediction that the movement should “anticipate no small amount of misconception, misrepresentation, and ridicule”? Opponents of the Equal Rights Amendment, organized by Phyllis Schlafly, feared that a statement like the ERA in the Constitution would give the government too much control over our personal lives. They charged that passage of the ERA would lead to men abandoning their families, unisex toilets, gay marriages, and women being drafted. And the media, purportedly in the interest of balanced reporting, gave equal weight to these deceptive arguments just as they had when the possibility of women winning voting rights was being debated. And, just like had happened with woman suffrage, there were still very few women in state legislatures to vote their support, so male legislators once again had it in their power to decide if women should have equal rights. When the deadline for ratification came in 1982, the ERA was just three states short of the 38 needed to write it into the U.S. constitution. Seventy-five percent of the women legislators in those three pivotal states supported the ERA, but only 46% of the men voted to ratify.

Despite polls consistently showing a large majority of the population supporting the ERA, it was considered by many politicians to be just too controversial. Historically speaking, most if not all the issues of the women’s rights movement have been highly controversial when they were first voiced. Allowing women to go to college? That would shrink their reproductive organs! Employ women in jobs for pay outside their homes? That would destroy families! Cast votes in national elections? Why should they bother themselves with such matters? Participate in sports? No lady would ever want to perspire! These and other issues that were once considered scandalous and unthinkable are now almost universally accepted in this country.

More Complex Issues Surface Significant progress has been made regarding the topics discussed at the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848. The people attending that landmark discussion would not even have imagined the issues of the Women’s Rights Movement in the 1990s. Much of the discussion has moved beyond the issue of equal rights and into territory that is controversial, even among feminists. To name a few:

• Women’s reproductive rights. Whether or not women can terminate pregnancies is still controversial twenty-five years after the Supreme Court ruling in Roe v. Wade affirmed women’s choice during the first two trimesters.
• Women’s enrollment in military academies and service in active combat. Are these desirable?
• Women in leadership roles in religious worship. Controversial for some, natural for others.
• Affirmative action. Is help in making up for past discrimination appropriate? Do qualified women now face a level playing field?
• The mommy track. Should businesses accommodate women’s family responsibilities, or should women compete evenly for advancement with men, most of whom still assume fewer family obligations?
• Pornography. Is it degrading, even dangerous, to women, or is it simply a free speech issue?
• Sexual harassment. Just where does flirting leave off and harassment begin?
• Surrogate motherhood. Is it simply the free right of a woman to hire out her womb for this service?
• Social Security benefits allocated equally for homemakers and their working spouses, to keep surviving wives from poverty as widows.

Today, young women proudly calling themselves “the third wave” are confronting these and other thorny issues. While many women may still be hesitant to call themselves “feminist” because of the ever-present backlash, few would give up the legacy of personal freedoms and expanded opportunities women have won over the last 150 years. Whatever choices we make for our own lives, most of us envision a world for our daughters, nieces and granddaughters where all girls and women will have the opportunity to develop their unique skills and talents and pursue their dreams.

1998: Living the Legacy In the 150 years since that first, landmark Women’s Rights Convention, women have made clear progress in the areas addressed by Elizabeth Cady Stanton in her revolutionary Declaration of Sentiments. Not only have women won the right to vote; we are being elected to public office at all levels of government. Jeannette Rankin was the first woman elected to Congress, in 1916. By 1971, three generations later, women were still less than three percent of our congressional representatives. Today women hold only 11% of the seats in Congress, and 21% of the state legislative seats. Yet, in the face of such small numbers, women have successfully changed thousands of local, state, and federal laws that had limited women’s legal status and social roles.

In the world of work, large numbers of women have entered the professions, the trades, and businesses of every kind. We have opened the ranks of the clergy, the military, the newsroom. More than three million women now work in occupations considered “nontraditional” until very recently.

We’ve accomplished so much, yet a lot still remains to be done. Substantial barriers to the full equality of America’s women still remain before our freedom as a Nation can be called complete. But the Women’s Rights Movement has clearly been successful in irrevocably changing the circumstances and hopes of women. The remaining injustices are being tackled daily in the courts and conference rooms, the homes and organizations, workplaces and playing fields of America.

Women and girls today are living the legacy of women’s rights that seven generations of women before us have given their best to achieve. Alice Paul, that intrepid organizer who first wrote out the Equal Rights Amendment in 1923, said, “I always feel the movement is sort of a mosaic. Each of us puts in one little stone, and then you get a great mosaic at the end.” Women, acting together, adding their small stones to the grand mosaic, have increased their rights against all odds, nonviolently, from an initial position of powerlessness. We have a lot to be proud of in this heroic legacy, and a great deal to celebrate on the occasion of the 150th Anniversary of the founding of the Women’s Rights Movement.

© By Bonnie Eisenberg and Mary Ruthsdotter, the National Women’s History Alliance. 1998

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Collection Civil Rights History Project

Women in the civil rights movement.

Many women played important roles in the Civil Rights Movement, from leading local civil rights organizations to serving as lawyers on school segregation lawsuits. Their efforts to lead the movement were often overshadowed by men, who still get more attention and credit for its successes in popular historical narratives and commemorations.  Many women experienced gender discrimination and sexual harassment within the movement and later turned towards the feminist movement in the 1970s.  The Civil Rights History Project interviews with participants in the struggle include both expressions of pride in women’s achievements and also candid assessments about the difficulties they faced within the movement.

Gwendolyn Zoharah Simmons was a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and one of three women chosen to be a field director for the Mississippi Freedom Summer Project.  She discusses the difficulties she faced in this position and notes that gender equality was not a given, but had to be fought for:  “I often had to struggle around issues related to a woman being a project director.  We had to fight for the resources, you know.  We had to fight to get a good car because the guys would get first dibs on everything, and that wasn’t fair…it was a struggle to be taken seriously by the leadership, as well as by your male colleagues.” She continues, “One of the things that we often don’t talk about, but there was sexual harassment that often happened toward the women.  And so, that was one of the things that, you know, I took a stand on, that ‘This was not – we’re not going to get a consensus on this.  There is not going to be sexual harassment of any of the women on this project or any of the women in this community.  And you will be put out if you do it.’”

Lonnie King was an activist with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in Atlanta. He remembers meeting other students from the Nashville movement when SNCC became a nationwide organization in 1960. He recalls his surprise that Diane Nash was not elected to be the representative from Nashville, and echoes Simmons’ criticisms about male privilege and domination: “Diane Nash, in my view, was the Nashville movement and by that I mean this:  Others were there, but they weren’t Diane Nash. Diane was articulate; she was a beautiful woman, very photogenic, very committed. And very intelligent and had a following. I never did understand how, except maybe for sexism, I never understood how [James] Bevel, Marion [Barry], and for that matter, John Lewis, kind of leapfrogged over her. I never understood that because she was in fact the leader in Nashville. It was Diane. The others were followers of her… I so never understood that to be honest with you. She’s an unsung... a real unsung hero of the movement in Nashville, in my opinion.”

Ekwueme Michael Thewell was a student at Howard University and a leader of the Nonviolent Action Group, an organization that eventually joined with SNCC. He reflects on the sacrifices that women college students at Howard made in joining the struggle, and remarks on the constraints they faced after doing so: “It is only in retrospect that I recognize the extraordinary price that our sisters paid for being as devoted to the struggle as they were. It meant that they weren’t into homecoming queen kind of activities. That they weren’t into the accepted behavior of a Howard lady. That they weren't into the trivia of fashion and dressing up. Though they were attractive women and they took care of themselves, but they weren’t the kind of trophy wives for the med school students and they weren’t—some of them might have been members of the Greek letter organizations, but most of them I suspect weren’t. So that they occupied a place outside the conventional social norms of the whole university student body. So did the men. But with men, I think, we can just say, ‘Kiss my black ass’ and go on about our business. It wasn’t so clear to me that a woman could do the same thing.”

Older interviewees emphasize the opportunities that were available to an earlier generation of women. Mildred Bond Roxborough , a long-time secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, discusses the importance of women leaders in local branches: “Well, actually when you think about women's contributions to the NAACP, without the women we wouldn't have an NAACP.  The person who was responsible for generating the organizing meeting was a woman.  Of course, ever since then we've had women in key roles--not in the majority, but in the very key roles which were responsible for the evolution of the NAACP.  I think in terms of people like Daisy Lampkin, who was a member of our national board from Pittsburgh; she traveled around the country garnering memberships and helping to organize branches.  That was back in the '30s and '40s before it became fashionable or popular for women to travel.  You have women who subsequently held positions in the NAACP nationally as program directors and as leaders of various divisions.” She goes on to discuss the contributions of many women to the success of the NAACP.

Doris Adelaide Derby , another SNCC activist, remembers that the challenge and urgency of the freedom struggle was a formative experience for young activist women, who had to learn resourcefulness on the job:   “I always did what I wanted to do.  I had my own inner drive.  And I found that when I came up with ideas and I was ready to work to see it through, and I think that happened with a lot of women in SNCC.  We needed all hands on deck, and so, when we found ourselves in situations, we had to rely on whoever was around.  And if somebody had XYZ skills, and somebody only had ABC, we had to come together. We used to joke about that, but in reality, the women, you know, were strong.  In the struggle, the women were strong.”

Ruby Nell Sales , who later overcame psychological traumas from the racial violence she witnessed in the movement, encourages us to look beyond the simplistic story of Rosa Parks refusing to move to the back of the bus in Montgomery. As she explains, Parks was a long-time activist who had sought justice for African American women who were frequently assaulted—both verbally and physically-- in their daily lives: “…When we look at Rosa Parks, people often think that she was – she did that because of her civil rights and wanting to sit down on the bus.  But she also did that – it was a rebellion of maids, a rebellion of working class women, who were tired of boarding the buses in Montgomery, the public space, and being assaulted and called out-of-there names and abused by white bus drivers. And that’s why that Movement could hold so long.  If it had just been merely a protest about riding the bus, it might have shattered.  But it went to the very heart of black womanhood, and black women played a major role in sustaining that movement.”

The Civil Rights History Project includes interviews with over 50 women who came from a wide range of backgrounds and were involved in the movement in a myriad of ways. Their stories deepen our understanding of the movement as a whole, and provide us with concrete examples of how vital they were to the gains of the Civil Rights Movement.

Essay On Women Rights

500 words essay on women rights.

Women rights are basic human rights claimed for women and girls all over the world. It was enshrined by the United Nations around 70 years ago for every human on the earth. It includes many things which range from equal pay to the right to education. The essay on women rights will take us through this in detail for a better understanding.

Importance of Women Rights

Women rights are very important for everyone all over the world. It does not just benefit her but every member of society. When women get equal rights, the world can progress together with everyone playing an essential role.

If there weren’t any women rights, women wouldn’t have been allowed to do something as basic as a vote. Further, it is a game-changer for those women who suffer from gender discrimination .

Women rights are important as it gives women the opportunity to get an education and earn in life. It makes them independent which is essential for every woman on earth. Thus, we must all make sure women rights are implemented everywhere.

How to Fight for Women Rights

All of us can participate in the fight for women rights. Even though the world has evolved and women have more freedom than before, we still have a long way to go. In other words, the fight is far from over.

First of all, it is essential to raise our voices. We must make some noise about the issues that women face on a daily basis. Spark up conversations through your social media or make people aware if they are misinformed.

Don’t be a mute spectator to violence against women, take a stand. Further, a volunteer with women rights organisations to learn more about it. Moreover, it also allows you to contribute to change through it.

Similarly, indulge in research and event planning to make events a success. One can also start fundraisers to bring like-minded people together for a common cause. It is also important to attend marches and protests to show actual support.

History has been proof of the revolution which women’s marches have brought about. Thus, public demonstrations are essential for demanding action for change and impacting the world on a large level.

Further, if you can, make sure to donate to women’s movements and organisations. Many women of the world are deprived of basic funds, try donating to organizations that help in uplifting women and changing their future.

You can also shop smartly by making sure your money is going for a great cause. In other words, invest in companies which support women’s right or which give equal pay to them. It can make a big difference to women all over the world.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Conclusion of the Essay on Women Rights

To sum it up, only when women and girls get full access to their rights will they be able to enjoy a life of freedom . It includes everything from equal pay to land ownerships rights and more. Further, a country can only transform when its women get an equal say in everything and are treated equally.

FAQ of Essay on Women Rights

Question 1: Why are having equal rights important?

Answer 1: It is essential to have equal rights as it guarantees people the means necessary for satisfying their basic needs, such as food, housing, and education. This allows them to take full advantage of all opportunities. Lastly, when we guarantee life, liberty, equality, and security, it protects people against abuse by those who are more powerful.

Question 2: What is the purpose of women’s rights?

Answer 2: Women’s rights are the essential human rights that the United Nations enshrined for every human being on the earth nearly 70 years ago. These rights include a lot of rights including the rights to live free from violence, slavery, and discrimination. In addition to the right to education, own property; vote and to earn a fair and equal wage.

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• Library of Congress
• Research Guides
• Multiple Research Centers

American Women: Topical Essays

“with peace and freedom blest”: woman as symbol in america, 1590-1800.

• Introduction
• American Women: An Overview
• Marching for the Vote: Remembering the Woman Suffrage Parade of 1913
• Sentiments of an American Woman
• The House That Marian Built: The MacDowell Colony of Peterborough, New Hampshire
• Women On The Move: Overland Journeys to California
• The Long Road to Equality: What Women Won from the ERA Ratification Effort

Prints & Photographs : Ask a Librarian

Have a question? Need assistance? Use our online form to ask a librarian for help.

Author: Sara Day, Publishing Office (retired)

Editor: Melissa Lindberg, Reference Librarian, Prints & Photographs Division

Note: This guide is adapted from the original essay in "American Women: A Library of Congress Guide for the Study of Women's History and Culture in the United States," 2001.

Created: December 2001

Last Updated: March 2019

Abstract:  Sara Day, one of the editors of "American Women," searched the Library's pictorial and textual collections for images of women in pre-1800 America, analyzed the content of these pictorial depictions, and concluded that stereotypical and allegorical representations of women belied the reality of most women's lives and helped to limit women's roles in early America.

Behold Columbia's empire rise, On Freedom's solid base to stand; Supported by propitious skies, And seal'd by her deliverer's hand. “A Federal Song,” Albany (New York) Journal, August 4, 1788

I would give my daughters every accomplishment which I thought proper, and to crown all, I would early accustom them to habits of industry, and order; . . . they should be enabled to procure for themselves the necessaries of life, independence should be placed within their grasp, and I would teach them to “reverence themselves.” [Judith Sargent Murray,] “The Gleaner No. XV,” Massachusetts Magazine 5 (August 1793): 461 1

American women's ongoing struggle to capture and define their own varying realities has been shaped by western societies' changing attitudes and ideas about gender roles, race, religion, and politics. Reflecting these changing ideologies are the female allegorical representations and visual stereotypes that have in fact helped to limit women's roles in America. From the first illustrations made by Europeans of the American continent's native women to the patriotic model devised for white, middle class women in the late eighteenth century, visual and textual collections of the Library of Congress may be uniquely suited to throw light on the sometimes crude, sometimes subtle shadings of motive behind the early imaging of American women. A trio of engravings—two made in Europe and one in the brand new United States of America—showing the allegorical image of American women, respectively, as sinful Eve, as Indian queen and princess, and as neoclassical Liberty figure, reflects this evolution.

In 1590, Flemish engraver and publisher Theodor de Bry opened part one of America, his illustrated compilation of early travel accounts describing European encounters with the strange peoples in the mysterious “new found lands” across the Atlantic, with his engraving of Adam and Eve and the serpent. 2 Thus the old stereotype of the formerly blessed couple cast out into the wilderness through the perfidy of original woman was transposed to an imagined America, the New Eden. De Bry, an ardent Protestant who never traveled to America, was influenced by European iconographical, cultural, and religious tradition, particularly in his depictions of women. The remainder of de Bry's plates in this volume, despite his tendency to Europeanize drawings made from life, illustrate the lifestyle of the native peoples living on Roanoke Island when the first British settlers arrived in what they called Virginia. Eyewitness and chronicler Thomas Hariot tells us at one point in the text that these peoples believed that “woman was made first,” 3 and subsequent plates show women participating as apparent equals in the impressive economy and ceremony of tribal life.

Nearly 150 years later, Indian women—mother and daughter or, alternatively, queen and princess—had become established as symbols of America, the first for the Western Hemisphere (North and South America), the second for the British colonies in North America. Both dominate the cartouche (the ornamental frame to a map title) of Henry Popple's Map of the British Empire in America (1733). European artists—all male—had turned real and capable Indian women into prurient icons of a new civilization; the “queen” rests a foot on a human head, suggesting highly disturbing behavior.

The third engraving, a handsome rendering of the neoclassical Liberty figure, by American artist Edward Savage, made a few years after the ratification of the U.S. Constitution, represents the young nation struggling to reemphasize the ideals on which it was founded. With the concept of freedom permeating American political and social philosophy and propaganda, who or what did the new country's leaders choose to represent the concepts of nationhood and civic virtue? Abandoned for now was the iconic Indian woman. Instead, a beautiful, young, white, classicized female was invented as an emblem of national values and republican motherhood.

De Bry's work can be seen in original editions found in the extraordinary Rosenwald Collection held in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division of the Library of Congress and in numerous later editions in the Library's General Collections. 4 Woman as symbol or allegory of nationhood, patriotism, and civic and moral virtue—and of sexual temptation, immorality, and willful or unruly conduct—can also be seen in countless examples of images made before 1800—and in a deluge thereafter—in the Library's vast collections. These engravings, etchings, and woodcuts are ubiquitous, whether presented as fine prints, map cartouches, political cartoons, and newspaper mastheads or as illustrations in journals and magazines, on broadsides, paper currency, or stock and benevolent society membership certificates. With the advent of the new national government, designs for the decoration of the U.S. Capitol and other public buildings and monuments came forth, rife with neoclassical females. 5 These visual images are buttressed by standards for women expounded, often allegorically, in sermons and advice literature, and, later, in articles and novels (see Etiquette Books and Prescriptive Literature in the General Collections section and Advice Books in the Rare Book and Special Collections section). Following the generalized female chronologically through North America's history shows how she has been recruited for every manifestation of propaganda and satire, particularly at times of political uncertainty and challenges to the status quo. 6

It was de Bry's engravings, not the watercolors made from real life, that influenced European artists for at least two hundred years. Perhaps most influential as models for iconic images and stereotypes of Indian women were his engravings for Hans Staden's account of his year-long trials as a captive and threatened meal of Brazil's Tupinamba tribe. For this new edition, part 3 of America, de Bry made forty-five engravings based on woodcuts in Staden's original 1557 account, many of which sensationalized the central role of women in the cannibalism of their enemies, particularly the Portuguese, and the preparation of stomach-emptying alcoholic brews. 7 Influenced by Staden's account, and that of Amerigo Vespucci—whose baptismal name, feminized, was placed on the first map of the Western Hemisphere—other artists had begun to represent the unfamiliar continent as a naked Indian maiden in an exotic landscape. 8 They pictured her with severed heads and other gruesome detritus of the alleged cannibalism of the Tupinamba. America, wild and scantily clad, now joined the symbols for her sophisticated sister continents of Europe, Africa, and Asia. 9 For those who were contemplating founding religious settlements in America, these images were evidence—along with many accounts of native females' sexual licentiousness—that Eve, the embodiment of original sin, was already running amok in the new lands. 10

The imaging of America's natives had begun with the purely imaginary woodcuts illustrating a 1494 edition of Columbus's famous printed letter reporting his “discovery.” 11 A few woodcuts illustrating sixteenth-century travel accounts and histories depicted Indians of Brazil and the Caribbean engaged in daily activities, but the reality of native lives in North America remained a matter of speculation until de Bry included his own engravings with travel accounts that he published in the order in which he acquired them. He based his engravings of the Timucua Indians—first published in 1591 as part 2 of America —on artist Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues's watercolors made in 1564 in northeast Florida. 12 Le Moyne, the first professional artist to work in the territory that would become the United States, had accompanied French Huguenot leader René de Laudonnière on an expedition to found a settlement. All but one of his watercolors have been lost but, judging by the remaining example, de Bry made remarkably few changes in designs that depicted native life through a European lens. Timucua women, however, are shown actively involved with men in work and ceremony—planting the fields, loading and transporting baskets with corn and fruits, and worshiping a column left by a previous French expedition. 13

John White's apparently more ethnographically accurate watercolors of southeastern Algonquian peoples, made twenty years later than the Florida designs, were actually the first to be engraved and published by de Bry. 14 Women are shown participating in ceremonial occasions, posing proudly and individually for their portraits as wives and leading citizens of the Algonquian towns of Secotan or Pomeiock, and involved in daily activities, such as a self-confident young woman “sitting at meate” with her husband [ view picture ].

Looking for the women in these images reminds us that, although we may learn much from them about the reality of Indian women's lives during the encounter period, the images reflect the artist's—and particularly the engraver's—own prejudices, preconceptions, and misconceptions. The creator's point of view is central to the interpretation of any historical document, including visual images. Comparison of the Virginia engravings with the original watercolors, most of which have survived, shows that de Bry altered the faces, particularly the women's, making them conform to European ideas of beauty and attractiveness; sometimes removed the tattoos shown in the White watercolors; adjusted poses and physiques—Botticelli's “Three Graces” appear in one of de Bry's versions of ceremonial scenes (plate 18, White: LC-USZ62-572 [ view picture ]; de Bry: LC-USZ62-40055 [ view picture ]); added pastoral landscapes, plants, and animals; and “corrected” the Indian artifacts. 15

During the period of European colonial settlement of America, the colonists' image of their new country derived from their home countries. Travel and missionary accounts continued to depict Indian customs, lifestyles, and, increasingly, territorial conflicts with white settlers. 16 It was not until well toward the end of the eighteenth century, however, several generations after the arrival of the first European settlers in New England and along the mid-Atlantic coast, that American artists and engravers, conscious of their newly separate nationality, began to build a substantial visual record of American life and cultural and political attitudes. Although printing presses had been established in the British colonies by the mid-seventeenth century—and even earlier in the Spanish colonies, the economy and the ideological climate were not yet ripe for the making or printing of images in colonial America. The earliest printed portraits made in America in the early eighteenth century were of men, including a mezzotint of the Congregational minister Cotton Mather, an authoritarian with strong views on women's roles. 17

Despite the fact that women had shared with men the religious persecutions and economic depressions that had driven them to settle British North America, European immigrants—with the notable exception of Quakers—believed explicitly in women's inferiority, intellectually, spiritually, and legally. Students of American women's history, including nineteenth-century suffrage leaders, have remarked on the difference in attitudes toward European women, who, through the feme covert tradition of English common law governing married women, could neither own property in their own right nor make decisions about their children independently of their husbands (see Property Law in the Law Library section), and the apparent sharing of power and division of labor between women and men in many Indian tribes. 18 In the matrilineal Iroquois Five Nations, for example, the household and land up to the forest's edge were the women's domain, giving them economic heft and authority in their tribe, and older women had the right to nominate the council of elders and depose chiefs. 19 Men's work—war, trading, hunting, and international relations—was generally carried out in the forest.

Another factor in the retardation of American-made imagery was that the Protestant sects that came to America tended to shun graven images. As people of the Word, they relied on the sermons of ministers or church elders for definitions and allegories of ideal or dangerous womanhood. Dissidents such as Anne Hutchinson, Mary Dyer, and other “disorderly women,” like Eve, were often demonized, and put to trial, executed, or banished. 20 Women who fulfilled traditional roles as good wives were idealized by the Puritan community. 21 Although women's essential contributions as managers of the domestic economy were more valued in the struggling colonies than they might have been in England, men were imbued with a fear of assertive women that had its roots in Judeo-Christian doctrine. 22 By contrast, religious icons were central to the Spanish conversión of Indians to Christianity—specifically Catholicism—in the Southwest between the seventeenth and early nineteenth centuries. Symbols of the Madonna, the metaphysical image of the Mother Church—especially the ubiquitous Virgin of Guadalupe—and female saints were there revered and held up as exemplars of ideal womanhood. Catholic women generally remained in their submissive place, however, and outspoken, immoral, or otherwise unconventional women risked being singled out for punishment by the Spanish Inquisition. 23

During the seventeenth century, New England colonists intermittently suffered devastating losses from territorial wars with Northeastern Indian tribes and frontier attacks, while the Indians themselves were decimated by war and disease. Ironically, it was often white women—or men writing in their name—who published accounts of their captivity and the murder of their children by vicious savages who mocked white settlers. 24 These descriptions became an influential force in the creation of the American antithesis of the noble savage image promulgated by Europeans. In the meantime, European mapmakers were depicting America in cartouches as an increasingly noble Indian queen, with the trappings of natural wealth and Caribbean culture. 25

As noted earlier, the symbol was initially based on the native women of South and Central America because those areas of the Western Hemisphere were the first to be described. As England began to reap the benefits from trade with its increasingly prosperous colonies in North America in the early eighteenth century, mapmakers began to differentiate and use a separate symbol for those colonies, an Indian princess pictured before a seaport. This evolution from the queen-as-continent to the colonial princess can be traced in many different map cartouches found on the Geography and Map Division's rare maps (see Graphic Images on Maps in Geography and Map "American Women" guide).

The casting of women as universal abstractions for civic virtue and geographical spaces in Europe originated with the classical republics of Greece and Rome, whose political and intellectual elite assigned lofty ideals to womankind while excluding real women from the public and political realm. Marina Warner asks how it is possible to equate Aristotle's claim that woman is a defective male, considered by Greek law to be incapable of running her own finances or bearing witness in a court of law, with the fact that ideals of civic virtue were expressed in the feminine. The answer to this paradox, she says, was to render the female form as generic and universal, removed from all connection to individuality, whereas the male form retained individuality even when it was used to express a generalized idea. 26

As intellectuals and artists inspired the renaissance of classical ideals in Europe in the fifteenth through sixteenth centuries, a long tradition of symbolic imagery became standardized, along with more recent innovations, in a series of emblem books and dictionaries. Among these, the most influential were Cesare Ripa's Iconologia (from 1603) and George Richardson's Iconology or a Collection of Emblematical Figures (1779, found in the Rosenwald Collection), based on Ripa's compositions and published in time to ride the tide of neoclassicism. 27

European mapmakers made ample use of the emblem books, but the books were also at hand for political and intellectual leaders, artists, journalists, printers, or anyone else in search of effective ways to express revolutionary ideas to a largely illiterate populace as America began to loosen “her” bonds with England and England battled to hold onto “her” rich offspring. Following the Stamp Act of 1765, Boston craftsman Paul Revere taught himself the art of engraving and began to produce a number of propagandistic cartoons in support of the American colonies' protest against taxation without representation. Several of these can be seen in the print collections in the Prints and Photographs Division. Revere is credited with introducing the Britannia figure with liberty cap and pole as a symbol of the American rebellion, which the Sons of Liberty—still British subjects—were quick to adopt. 28 The Liberty/Britannia figure soon became part of the iconography of the American Revolution. 29

Switching to fashionable and lofty neoclassical imagery allowed American leaders to avoid associating the newly independent American colonies with now threatening indigenous tribes. 30 Some of the most powerful Indian tribes on the northwest frontier had seized the opportunity to ally with the British and ravage frontier settlements. Europe's “noble savage” again became the colonists' enemy. Even so, the positive equation of Indians with freedom may have prompted the Sons of Liberty to dress up as Mohawk Indians for the Boston Tea Party in 1773.

Would the Sons of Liberty have seen the irony, however, if they had been told that the liberty cap and pole had their origins in an ancient Roman ceremony for the manumission of a slave? 31 Freedom was unknown to the African slaves who had been brought to North America to labor for white owners, particularly in the tobacco-growing southern colonies. A jarring juxtaposition in the Pennsylvania Evening Post of July 2, 1776, of an advertisement for a runaway slave alongside a brief announcement of the Continental Congress's resolution to declare independence, reminds us that slaves—along with free Euro-American women and Native Americans—were ignored in the Declaration of Independence. Many of the runaway advertisements and broadsides that blazoned “Negroes for Sale,” while often providing individual characteristics in the text, were illustrated with crude, cookie-cutter icons representing the actual men, women, and children whose bondage made a mockery of the language of and fight for freedom from the 1760s to the 1780s (by contrast, see the Phillis Wheatley illustration). 32

While Revere was leading the way in establishing an American school of political cartooning, America's friends in England, particularly the merchant class, supported a storm of political propaganda in the form of allegorical prints as the conflict reached hurricane force. These can be seen in pamphlets and magazines in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division and in the British Cartoons collection in the Prints and Photographs Division. The Indian princess remained the preferred English symbol for America, even among her English friends, but she was increasingly shown with the attributes of liberty, alienated from her mother Britannia. In Britain, America, at Length Be Friends, from the January 1774 issue of the London Magazine, the Indian princess wears a feather bonnet and bears a cornucopia representing natural bounty, but her robes are becoming classicized and the goddess Concord is shown trying to reconcile Britannia and her daughter on the wharf of a busy port [ picture ]. 33

Three months later, however, the same magazine offered the shocking image The able doctor, or America swallowing the Bitter Draught, which was also issued as a separate print. It was quickly copied and signed by Paul Revere for publication in the June issue of Boston's Royal American Magazine. 34 On this occasion, he was apparently more taken by the depiction of America's hapless plight than he was wedded to his own preference for the Liberty figure as symbol of America.

But although Liberty was the seceding colonists' new sign for America, the “daughters of Liberty” themselves had no independent political rights, despite the many calls that were made on their own patriotism before and during the Revolutionary War in the form of boycotting English household goods, managing and defending farms and estates in their husbands' absence, and materially supporting the American soldiers. 35

Ideological justification for the effort led by Esther De Berdt Reed, wife of the president of Pennsylvania's supreme executive council, and Benjamin Franklin's daughter Sarah Franklin Bache, to solicit funds for Washington's troops can be seen in the broadside The Sentiments of an American Woman, Philadelphia, June 10, 1780 (RBSC; see essay on this broadside). Declaring that American women were “born for liberty” and that “if the weakness of our Constitution, if opinion and manners did not forbid us to march to glory by the same paths as the Men,” they would at least be found equal in their convictions and loyalty to the “Thirteen United Colonies,” Reed presented a list of historical role models for politically active women, such as Deborah, Judith, and Esther; the great European queens; and the “Maid of Orleans.” 36

While women's broadsides continued to use such biblical and classical allusions to legitimize real American women's courage under trial, the framers of America's Constitution once again chose to ignore women as an independent political class. Instead, classicized “universal woman” was proffered in a number of different guises—Liberty, Columbia, America, Minerva—in the search for a new, national identity on medals, coins, or public decoration following the establishment of the federal government in 1789, and American women were assigned a new role as the moral upholders of the Union. They should confine themselves, they were told, to the domestic sphere and dedicate themselves to “republican motherhood,”as the nurturers, educators, and moral compasses of a nation of public-spirited citizens. 37 The frontispiece for the 1789 Columbian Magazine depicts “the Genius of Foederate America” as a young woman surrounded by the symbols of prosperity and education while Apollo points her way to the Temple of Fame. 38

Personal ambition and political activism were still frowned on for American women, but the tide was in fact about to turn in favor of their education for a higher purpose, that of national unity, and their long march to establish and claim their own image had begun.

The Liberty who nurtures the presumably male bald eagle, or soaring young nationhood, in the Savage print seems to have descended from her classical pedestal and to be moving into real life to challenge the barriers of stereotype, satire, social custom, and law.

Sara Day authored the original essay in American Women: A Library of Congress Guide for the Study of Women's History and Culture in the United States (Library of Congress, 2001), from which this online version is derived.

• Quoted in Linda Kerber, Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980; HQ1418.K47 GenColl), 205. Back to Text
• Thomas Hariot, A Briefe and True Report of . . . Virginia (Frankfurt, 1590; F229.H27 1590 Rosenwald Coll item 723 RBSC). De Bry published this edition in four languages-Latin, English, French, and German. For the entire compilation, see Theodor de Bry, Historia Americae sive Novi Orbis (Frankfurt, 1624; G159.B7 Rosenwald Coll item 1309 RBSC). Back to Text
• “For mankind they say a woman was made first, which by the working of one of the goddes, conceiued and brought foorth children: And in such sort they say they had their beginning.” Hariot, A Briefe and True Report . . . , De Bry's 1590 edition with an introduction by Paul Hulton (New York: Dover Publications, 1972; F229.H27 1972 GenColl), 25. Back to Text
• A census of the editions of de Bry's works found in the Rosenwald Collection appears in A Catalog of the Gifts of Lessing J. Rosenwald (Washington: Library of Congress, 1977; Z881.U5 1977 RBSC, MRR Alc, G&M), 236-39. Back to Text
• See Pamela Scott, Temple of Liberty: Building the Capitol for a New Nation (New York: Oxford University Press with the Library of Congress, 1995; NA4412.W18 S37 1995 GenColl), 9-17, 108-11. Back to Text
• See in particular E. McClung Fleming, “The American Image as Indian Princess, 1765-1783,” Winterthur Portfolio 2 (1965), 65-81 (N9.W52 GenColl), and “From Indian Princess to Greek Goddess: The American Image, 1783-1815,” ibid., 3 (1966), 37-66. Back to Text
• Hans Staden's enormously popular account of his trials among the Tupinamba Indians as well as his woodcuts can be seen in The True History of His Captivity, 1557, translated and edited by Malcolm Letts (London: George Routledge & Sons, 1928; F2528.S753 Gen Coll). Back to Text
• Amerigo Vespucci's Mundus novus (Paris, 1503-4?; facsim., Paris: 14-L1661-END 10/25/01 6:11 PM Page 381 Fontaine, n.d.; Strassburg: J.H.E. Heitz, 1903; E125.V5 V523 RBSC, Gen-Coll). In the classical tradition, cartographer Martin Waldseemüller gave the feminized version of Vespucci's baptismal name to the vast new continent. Earlier Spanish explorers believed, as Columbus did, that the continent was part of eastern Asia, referring to it as the Indies. Back to Text
• The new continent began to be represented as a naked Indian maiden with severed heads and other signs of cannibalism as early as 1575. See Clare Le Corbeiller, “Miss America and Her Sisters: Personifications of the Four Parts of the World,” Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, April 1961 (N610.A4 GenColl), and Hugh Honour, The New Golden Land: European Images of America from the Discoveries to the Present Time (New York: Pantheon Books, 1975; N8214.5.U6 H58 1975 GenColl). Back to Text
• This indictment of women's sensuality was embedded in the Eve stereotype, the sexual interpretation of the Fall. Malleus maleficarum, the crudely misogynistic and dangerous Dominican treatise on witchcraft published in about 1486, asserted that “all witchcraft comes from carnal lust, which in women is insatiable. . . . Wherefore for the sake of fulfilling their lusts they consort even with devils.” John Phillips, Eve: The History of an Idea (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1984; BS580.E85 P48 1984 GenColl), 62-70. Back to Text
• “Insula hyspana,” in Carlo Verardi, Historia Baetica ([Basel], 1494; Incun. 1494.V47 Voll H15942 RBSC). Back to Text
• De Bry had intended to publish Le Moyne's account of Laudonnière's ill-fated Huguenot colony in Florida as the first part of his America for, as he said in the foreword to the Virginia plates, the Florida account “should bee first sett foorthe because yt was discouuered by the Frencheman longe befor the discuerye of Virginia.” De Bry said in a brief notice in his Florida that he had acquired Le Moyne's drawings from his widow after his death in 1587. Back to Text
• The only surviving watercolor by Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues, showing the Timucua Indians worshiping a column, was rediscovered at a French chateau in 1901 and is now at the New York Public Library. It shows that de Bry's translation to a copper plate is remarkably precise and that Le Moyne had already Europeanized the women worshipers. Back to Text
• Hariot, A Briefe and True Report (1590). See note 2. British maritime editor Richard Hakluyt probably persuaded de Bry, when he came to London in 1588 to buy some paintings by French artist Jacques Le Moyne, to publish Hariot's and John White's work first, maybe because White's patron, Sir Walter Raleigh, had offered financial support to promote the Virginia volume. Paul Hulton, America 1585: The Complete Drawings of John White (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press and British Museum Publications, 1984; NC242.W53 A4 1984 GenColl), 17. Back to Text
• W. John Faupel has juxtaposed reproductions of the watercolors with the relevant engravings and provides a convincing analysis of the changes made by de Bry. Faupel, A Brief and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia: A Study of the De Bry Engravings (East Grinstead, West Sussex, England: Antique Atlas Publications, 1989; G159.B8 F38 1989 GenColl). Back to Text
• Of particular interest is Father Joseph François Lafitau's Moeurs des Sauvages Amériquains, comparées aux Moeurs des premiers temps (Paris, 1724; E58.L16 RBSC, MicRR) in which he draws heavily on earlier accounts and illustrations of American Indians, including de Bry's, to make comparisons with peoples of the classical and preclassical world, or “primitive times.” His most original work comes from his observations of the Iroquois, among whom he lived as a Jesuit missionary. According to William N. Fenton and Elizabeth L. Moore, in their translation of Lafitau's classic work and exhaustive examination of his sources (Customs of the American Indians Compared with the Customs of Primitive Times, 2 vols. [Toronto: Champlain Society, 1974-77; E58. L1613 GenColl]), Lafitau was the first to describe the importance of women in Iroquoian tribal life in a chapter on the origin of the peoples of America (I:69-70). In a section on the Iroquois creation myth, he shows the similarities between the biblical story of the expulsion from Paradise and the Iroquois legend of a woman who is cast out of the heavens for being too easily seduced by one of the original six men on earth and becomes the mother of two children who fight one another (I:81-84). William Sturtevant contributed a chapter on “The Sources of Lafitau's American Illustrations”(I:271-97), many of which he traced to de Br y's engravings. Back to Text
• Cottonus Matherus S. theologiae doctor regia societatis Londone. . . ., 1727. Mezzotint by Peter Pelham, 1728 (restrike, 1860; FP—XVIII—P383, no.1). P&P. LC-USZC4-4597. As members of the newly prosperous merchant and landed classes began to acquire the material evidence of their success during the eighteenth century, their wives, dressed in the height of London or Paris elegance, were themselves depicted as status symbols in painted portraits (these are not collected by the Library). Back to Text
• Sara M. Evans, Born for Liberty: A History of Women in America (New York: The Free Press, 1989; HQ1410.E83 1989 GenColl),11, 22. Under French civil law adopted by Spain, Spanish colonial women were allowed to own land but in other ways were regarded no differently from other European women (see Property Law in the Law Library section). Back to Text
• Father Joseph François Lafitau's early eighteenth-century observations on the importance of women in the Iroquois tribe (see note 16) are confirmed and elaborated on in William C. Sturtevant, gen. ed., Handbook of North American Indians (Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 1978-98; E77.H25 MRR Alc), vol. 15, Northeast, 309. Back to Text
• See Carol F. Karlsen, The Devil in the Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New England (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1987; BF1576.K37 1987 GenColl), 179-80. Back to Text
• This is the central thesis of another classic, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich's Good Wives: Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England, 1650-1750 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983; HQ1438.A11 U42 1983 GenColl). Back to Text
• Phillips, Eve, 95. Back to Text
• See in particular the story of Sor Maria de Jesús de Agreda, who, in the 1620s, when not yet twenty years old, was seen on several occasions to levitate following Communion at her remote convent in Spain. She reported that she was carried by angels to preach to Indian tribes in today's New Mexico although she never left her convent. After Franciscan missionaries brought back to Spain testimony by Indians that they had been converted by a beautiful lady in blue, Sor Maria became a focus of the Inquisition. Mary E. Giles, ed., Women in the Inquisition: Spain and the New World (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999; BX1735.W59 1999 Gen Coll), 155-70. Back to Text
• Examples of captivity narratives can be found in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division, the General Collections, and the Microform Reading Room. Back to Text
• Numerous examples can be seen in Donald H. Cresswell, comp., The American Revolution in Drawings and Prints: A Checklist of 1765-1790 Graphics in the Library of Congress (Washington: Library of Congress, 1975; E209.U54 1974 P&P, MRRAlc, G&M, GenColl). Back to Text
• Marina Warner, Monuments & Maidens: The Allegory of the Female Form (New York: Atheneum, 1985; NX650.F45 W3 1985 GenColl), 64. Thus, Uncle Sam and Brother Jonathan, the male symbols for America, were designed to typify the average American, whereas Liberty and Britannia obviously do not typify the average American or English woman. Back to Text
• George Richardson's Iconology; or, A Collection of Emblematical Figures, 2 vols. (London: Printed by G. Scott,1779; N7740.R515 Rosenwald Coll RBSC; reprint ed., New York: Garland Pub., 1979; N7740.R515 1979 Gen Coll), Richardson stated in his introduction that the source of images for abstract ideas and qualities drawn from classical myths and saints calendars was exhausted. He wanted to expand the range of the standard repertoire for new times, to aid modern artists by incorporating Poussin's and Raphael's innovations and new concepts such as “Democracy,” “Liberty,” and “America.” Martha Banta, Imaging American Women: Idea and Ideals in Cultural History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987; NX652.W6 B36 1987 GenColl), 412. Richardson's work includes an Indian woman as America, “The fourth and last part of the world . . .” (Iconology, vol. 1, fig. 6). Back to Text
• John Higham explains that Britannia was shown with the attributes of liberty in England before that symbol was adopted by the rebellious American colonists, and then Americanized following the Declaration of Independence (Higham, “Indian Princess and Roman Goddess: The First Female Symbols of America,” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society (1990), 59-61 (E172.A35 GenColl). See Cresswell, American Revolution in Drawings and Prints, 638, for an etching by G. B. Cipriani after a drawing by F. Bartolozzi of such a Britannia, originally published in William Bollan, Continued Corruption, Standing Armies, and Popular Contents Considered (London: Printed by J. Almon, 1768; E211.B68). Back to Text
• See for instance, Pierre Eugène du Simitière's design for the title page of the 1775 issue of the Pennsylvania Magazine (AP2.A2 P4 RBSC) showing the goddess America with the implements of liberty and war (Cresswell, American Revolution in Drawings and Prints, 691; LC-USZ62-45557). The following year, as independence was declared, du Simitière proposed a design for the U.S. seal with a standing Liberty figure. Back to Text
• Highham, “Indian Princess,” 24. Back to Text
• See Yvonne Korsak, “The Liberty Cap as a Revolutionary Symbol in America and France,” Smithsonian Studies in American Art I:2 (Fall 1987), 53 (N6505.S56 GenColl). Back to Text
• The Pennsylvania Evening Post of July 2, 1776, is available in the Newspaper and Current Periodical Room. Some copies of original newspaper advertisements in the Serial Division collections and broadsides from the Rare Book and Special Collections Division can be studied in the Prints and Photographs Division (LOT 4422A: LC-USZ62-10293 [picture], -10474,-16876). See Barbara E. Lacey, “Visual Images of Blacks in Early American Imprints,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3d series, 53: I(January 1996) (F221 .W71 GenColl). Back to Text
• Britain, America, at Length Be Friends, from the London Magazine, January 1774 [picture] (microfilm 01105, reel 205; Cresswell, American Revolution in Drawings and Prints, 662; LC-USZ62-45498). This allegorical image can be contrasted with the active trading image of male Indians presenting goods for barter to merchants in the cartouche for Pensylvania Nova Jersey es Nova York in Tobias Lotter, Atlas Géographique (Nuremberg, 1778; Cresswell, American Revolution in Drawings and Prints, 743; G1015.L7 1778 Vault G&M; LC-USZ62-46069). Back to Text
• Microfilm 01103, reel 26 AP; Cresswell, American Revolution in Drawings and Prints, 664; LC-USZ62-39592. Back to Text
• Other examples of women's patriotic activism before and during the Revolutionary War can be followed in newspapers, broadsides, and letters of the period, e.g, a Boston Evening Post, February 12, 1770, report that more than three hundred “Mistresses of Families” had promised “totally to abstain from the Use of TEA” (no. 1794, page 4) (N&CPR). See Kerber, Women of the Republic, chap. 2, “'Women Invited to War': Sacrifice and Survival,” 33-67, for many other examples. Back to Text
• See essay by Rosemary Plakas and Kerber, Women of the Republic, 104. Back to Text
• Ibid., 228-31. For the first time, it was made overtly clear that a “woman's place” was in the home, the beginning of the cult of domesticity. Back to Text
• See Carroll Smith Rosenbert, “Dis-Covering the Subject of the 'Great Constitutional Discussion,' 1786-1789,” Journal of American History 79 (December 1992), 841-73 (E171.J87 Gen Coll), for an analysis of the complex ideology behind new allegorical representations of America, particularly those in Columbian Magazine, or Monthly Miscellany (AP2.A2 U6 RBSC, Microfilm 01103, no. II AP MicRR). Back to Text
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Women Rights Throughout History

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• Economist.com. (2018, February 1). China's rising labour costs: The trouble with Foxconn. The Economist.
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• Market-inspector.co.uk. (2018, October 30). Brexit implications for businesses in the UK. Market Inspector.
• McKinsey & Company. (2018, January 1). The road to seamless urban mobility. McKinsey & Company.
• Pidd, H. (2018, March 8). Sadiq Khan unveils plan to make London a cycle-friendly city. The Guardian.
• Smith, J. (2018, February 8). New car tax rules: What you need to know. Auto Express.

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What did the women's suffrage movement fight for?

The women’s suffrage movement fought for the right of women by law to  vote  in national or local elections .

The women’s suffrage movement made the question of women’s voting rights into an important political issue in the 19th century. The struggle was particularly intense in Great Britain  and in the  United States , but those countries were not the first to grant women the right to vote, at least not on a national basis.

By the early years of the 20th century, women had won the right to vote in national elections in  New Zealand  (1893),  Australia  (1902),  Finland  (1906), and  Norway  (1913). World War I  and its aftermath speeded up the enfranchisement of women in the countries of Europe and elsewhere. In the period 1914–39, women in 28 additional countries acquired either equal voting rights with men or the right to vote in national elections.

In the 21st century most countries allow women to vote . In Saudi Arabia women were allowed to vote in municipal elections for the first time in 2015. The  United Nations  Convention on the Political Rights of Women, adopted in 1952, provides that “women shall be entitled to vote in all elections on equal terms with men, without any discrimination.”

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women’s suffrage , the right of women by law to vote in national or local elections.

Women were excluded from voting in ancient Greece and republican Rome, as well as in the few democracies that had emerged in Europe by the end of the 18th century. When the franchise was widened, as it was in the United Kingdom in 1832, women continued to be denied all voting rights . The question of women’s voting rights finally became an issue in the 19th century, and the struggle was particularly intense in Great Britain and the United States , but those countries were not the first to grant women the right to vote, at least not on a national basis. By the early years of the 20th century, women had won the right to vote in national elections in New Zealand (1893), Australia (1902), Finland (1906), and Norway (1913). In Sweden and the United States they had voting rights in some local elections.

World War I and its aftermath speeded up the enfranchisement of women in the countries of Europe and elsewhere. In the period 1914–39, women in 28 additional countries acquired either equal voting rights with men or the right to vote in national elections. Those countries included Soviet Russia (1917); Canada , Germany , Austria , and Poland (1918); Czechoslovakia (1919); the United States and Hungary (1920); Great Britain (1918 and 1928); Burma ( Myanmar ; 1922); Ecuador (1929); South Africa (1930); Brazil , Uruguay , and Thailand (1932); Turkey and Cuba (1934); and the Philippines (1937). In a number of those countries, women were initially granted the right to vote in municipal or other local elections or perhaps in provincial elections; only later were they granted the right to vote in national elections.

Immediately after World War II , France , Italy , Romania , Yugoslavia , and China were added to the group. Full suffrage for women was introduced in India by the constitution in 1949; in Pakistan women received full voting rights in national elections in 1956. In another decade the total number of countries that had given women the right to vote reached more than 100, partly because nearly all countries that gained independence after World War II guaranteed equal voting rights to men and women in their constitutions. By 1971 Switzerland allowed women to vote in federal and most cantonal elections, and in 1973 women were granted full voting rights in Syria . The United Nations Convention on the Political Rights of Women, adopted in 1952, provides that “women shall be entitled to vote in all elections on equal terms with men, without any discrimination.”

Historically, the United Kingdom and the United States provide characteristic examples of the struggle for women’s suffrage in the 19th and 20th centuries.

In Great Britain woman suffrage was first advocated by Mary Wollstonecraft in her book A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) and was demanded by the Chartist movement of the 1840s. The demand for woman suffrage was increasingly taken up by prominent liberal intellectuals in England from the 1850s on, notably by John Stuart Mill and his wife, Harriet. The first woman suffrage committee was formed in Manchester in 1865, and in 1867 Mill presented to Parliament this society’s petition , which demanded the vote for women and contained about 1,550 signatures. The Reform Bill of 1867 contained no provision for woman suffrage, but meanwhile woman suffrage societies were forming in most of the major cities of Britain, and in the 1870s these organizations submitted to Parliament petitions demanding the franchise for women and containing a total of almost three million signatures.

The succeeding years saw the defeat of every major suffrage bill brought before Parliament. This was chiefly because neither of the leading politicians of the day, William Gladstone and Benjamin Disraeli , cared to affront Queen Victoria ’s implacable opposition to the women’s movement. In 1869, however, Parliament did grant women taxpayers the right to vote in municipal elections, and in the ensuing decades women became eligible to sit on county and city councils. The right to vote in parliamentary elections was still denied to women, however, despite the considerable support that existed in Parliament for legislation to that effect. In 1897 the various suffragist societies united into one National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, thus bringing a greater degree of coherence and organization to the movement. Out of frustration at the lack of governmental action, however, a segment of the woman suffrage movement became more militant under the leadership of Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughter Christabel . After the return to power of the Liberal Party in 1906, the succeeding years saw the defeat of seven suffrage bills in Parliament. As a consequence, many suffragists became involved in increasingly violent actions as time went on. These women militants, or suffragettes, as they were known, were sent to prison and continued their protests there by engaging in hunger strikes.

Meanwhile, public support of the woman suffrage movement grew in volume, and public demonstrations, exhibitions, and processions were organized in support of women’s right to vote. When World War I began, the woman suffrage organizations shifted their energies to aiding the war effort, and their effectiveness did much to win the public wholeheartedly to the cause of woman suffrage. The need for the enfranchisement of women was finally recognized by most members of Parliament from all three major parties, and the resulting Representation of the People Act was passed by the House of Commons in June 1917 and by the House of Lords in February 1918. Under this act, all women age 30 or over received the complete franchise. An act to enable women to sit in the House of Commons was enacted shortly afterward. In 1928 the voting age for women was lowered to 21 to place women voters on an equal footing with male voters.

The Evolution of Women’s Rights Through American History Essay

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As with any other society in history, women constituted a vital part of the population in British colonies in North America and, later, of the independent United States. Yet the recognition of their crucial role manifesting in the same social, economic, and political rights that men enjoyed was not quick to come. Throughout American history, women had to proclaim, assert, fight for, and defend their rights, using a broad array of methods available to them.

Finding and supporting intellectual foundations for their claims was always important in this struggle, which is why feminist goals and arguments always evolved with time. From the property-owning women of the late 18 th century to the proponents of the women’s liberation in the 1960s, women always succeeded in using the influential political theories of their time to eventually make feminist agenda a part of everyday American reality.

Women’s striving for social and political rights became clearly manifest in the young republic since the first years of its existence. As early as 1778, Hanna Lee Corbin asked her brother, a prominent Virginian revolutionary, why taxpaying women did not enjoy the same political rights as men. The fact that Corbin expressed her goals in a private letter rather than a public petition indicates how unsure the early American feminists felt about asserting their rights.

Still, it made a valid argument in favor of women’s suffrage, since: according to the republican political theory of the time, voting rights belonged to economically independent taxpayers. The new United States Constitution did not recognize this argument – although the Declaration of Independence began with the premise of universal equality, the world “equal” did not appear in the Constitution before the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection clause.

Some of the early state constitutions, on the other hand, were more open-minded. In New Jersey, unmarried women meeting property qualifications could vote from 1776 to 1807. Thus, the early American feminists already successfully used political theory to advance their cause.

While the early successes of American feminism were local, a national movement for women’s rights soon emerged as well. In 1848, prominent feminists organized the first national convention for women’s rights in Seneca Falls, NY, to discuss “the rights, roles, and relations of women and men.” While there were organizations and events dedicated to the women’s rights both before and after Seneca Falls, the convention signaled the beginning of a formal women’s rights movement on a national stage.

It adopted a Declaration of Sentiments to assert women’s dedication to achieving equality with men and modeled it after the Declaration of Independence – yet another example of well-crafted political rhetoric designed with references to the values shared by most of the nation.

As time marched on, the methods employed by women in the struggle for their rights became more decisive. The earliest proponents of female suffrage, such as Corbin, expressed their wishes in private, and while Seneca Falls Convention was undoubtedly a public event, it was still overshadowed by the national debate on slavery.

The feminists of the early 20 th century, on the other hand, adopted a more energetic and militant approach to the pursuit of their goals. Whether participating in the temperance movement, establishing and maintaining settlement houses, or marching on the cities’ streets, the women struggling for their rights often occupied the forefront of the nation’s attention.

It is no coincidence that “saloon-smashing temperance crusaders [and] marching suffragettes” of the early 20 th century are among the first images that come to mind when discussing the history of women’s rights in the USA. The 19 th century laid down the groundwork for the future advances, but it was the more militant first wave of feminism that eventually won female suffrage in the Nineteenth Amendment.

Several decades after achieving the long-sought voting rights, women’s movement emerged with renewed vigor and energy in the 1960s and 1970s. If the first wave of feminism managed to make suffrage a prominent political concern, the second wave was even more far-reaching and left an impact on every aspect of private and public life.

It also continued the tradition of using advances in political theory to support women’s cause. On the one hand, the National Organization for Women (NOW) adhered to liberal feminism and sought to improve women’s status within the existing social, legal, and political framework. On the other hand, the more radical movement for women’s liberation aimed for structural changes and was skeptical about conventional politics as the means of achieving them.

Just as NOW was based on the centuries-old tradition of American liberalism, women’s liberation, with its focus on raising gender consciousness, came from the New Left and bore some similarities to Marxist political theory – at least in language and concepts, if not always goals. To summarize, while liberal feminism continued the old tradition of seeking legal equality, the notions of women’s liberation sought to challenge the cultural foundations of this inequality as well.

With the passing of time and thanks to the women’s restless effort in promoting their cause, many considerable accomplishments of the second-wave feminism have already become a part of everyday American life. The struggle for legalized abortions was one of the central elements of the second wave’s agenda, and now their legality throughout the USA is a matter of fact and a part of the normal legal landscape.

Institutionalized discrimination is far from being done with, but there is a general belief that it constitutes a problem to be addressed rather than a norm. Just as the voting rights were normalcy rather than a privilege for the women of the 1960s, the reproductive and social rights won by the second-wave feminism have already become a part of the everyday American life rather than the groundbreaking advances they were several decades ago.

As one can see, the US movement for women’s rights spans through the entire history of this nation and has always spearheaded its cause with skillful use of influential political theories of the time. As early as the 1770s, female Americans aspired for suffrage and pointed out that property-owning taxpaying women had as much right to vote as their male counterparts.

The Seneca Falls Convention, with its Declaration of Sentiments, signaled the beginning of the formal and organized struggle and provided a rallying cry for women on the national level. The first wave of feminism, with its more public and militant approach, eventually succeeded in winning female suffrage by 1920.

The second wave followed it several decades after, this time focusing on socio-economic and reproductive rather than political rights and contrasting the traditional liberal feminism with the leftist movement for women’s liberation. By the end of the 20 th century, many achievements of second-wave feminism, such as the right to abortion or affirmative action, are already firmly integrated into mainstream American life, and what was a groundbreaking achievement earlier now constitutes a part of everyday life.

Bibliography

Baxandall, Rosalyn, and Linda Gordon. “Second-Wave feminism.” In A Companion to American Women’s History , edited by Nancy E. Hewitt, 414-432. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2002.

Delegard, Kirsten. “Women’s Movements, 1880s-1920s.” In A Companion to American Women’s History , edited by Nancy E. Hewitt, 328-347. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2002.

Hewitt, Nancy A. “Religion, Reform, and Radicalism in the Antebellum Era.” In A Companion to American Women’s History , edited by Nancy E. Hewitt, 117-131. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2002.

Lewis, Jan E. “A Revolution for Whom? Women in the Era of the American Revolution.” In A Companion to American Women’s History , edited by Nancy E. Hewitt, 83-99. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2002.

McBride, Dorothy E., and Janine A. Perry. Women’s Rights in the USA: Policy Debates and Gender Roles. New York: Routledge, 2016.

Reger, Jo. “Contemporary Feminism and Beyond.” In The Oxford Handbook of US Women’s Social Movement Activism , ed. Holly J. McCammon, V. Taylor, J. Reger, and R. L. Einwohner, 109-119. New York, NY: Oxford UP, 2017.

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• A Century After Women Gained the Right To Vote, Majority of Americans See Work To Do on Gender Equality

About three-in-ten men say women’s gains have come at the expense of men

Table of contents.

• Acknowledgments
• Methodology

Pew Research Center conducted this study to understand Americans’ views of the current state of gender equality and the advancement of women around the 100th anniversary of women getting the right to vote. For this analysis, we surveyed 3,143 U.S. adults in March and April 2020, including an oversample of Black and Hispanic respondents. The adults surveyed are members of the Ipsos Public Affairs KnowledgePanel, an online survey panel that is recruited through national random sampling of residential addresses and landline and cellphone numbers. KnowledgePanel provides internet access for those who do not have it and, if needed, a device to access the internet when they join the panel. To ensure that the results of this survey reflect a balanced cross section of the nation, the data are weighted to match the U.S. adult population by gender, age, education, race and ethnicity and other categories. The survey was conducted in English and Spanish.

Here are the  questions used for this report , along with responses, and the report’s methodology .

References to white and Black adults include only those who are non-Hispanic and identify as only one race. Hispanics are of any race.

All references to party affiliation include those who lean toward that party. Republicans include those who identify as Republicans and independents who say they lean toward the Republican Party. Democrats include those who identify as Democrats and independents who say they lean toward the Democratic Party.

References to college graduates or people with a college degree comprise those with a bachelor’s degree or more. “Some college” includes those with an associate degree and those who attended college but did not obtain a degree.

A hundred years after the 19th Amendment was ratified, about half of Americans say granting women the right to vote has been the most important milestone in advancing the position of women in the country. Still, a majority of U.S. adults say the country hasn’t gone far enough when it comes to giving women equal rights with men, even as a large share thinks there has been progress in the last decade, according to a new Pew Research Center survey.

Among those who think the country still has work to do in achieving gender equality, 77% point to sexual harassment as a major obstacle to women having equal rights with men. Fewer, but still majorities, point to women not having the same legal rights as men (67%), different societal expectations for men and women (66%) and not enough women in positions of power (64%) as major obstacles to gender equality. Women are more likely than men to see each of these as a major obstacle.

Many of those who say it is important for men and women to have equal rights point to aspects of the workplace when asked about what gender equality would look like. Fully 45% volunteer that a society where women have equal rights with men would include equal pay. An additional 19% say there would be no discrimination in hiring, promotion or educational opportunities. About one-in-ten say women would be more equally represented in business or political leadership.

In terms of the groups and institutions that have done the most to advance the rights of women in the U.S., 70% say the feminist movement has done at least a fair amount in this regard. The Democratic Party is viewed as having contributed more to the cause of women’s rights than the Republican Party: 59% say the Democratic Party has done at least a fair amount to advance women’s rights, while 37% say the same about the GOP. About three-in-ten (29%) say President Donald Trump has done at least a fair amount to advance women’s rights, while 69% say Trump has not done much or has done nothing at all. These views vary considerably by party, with Republicans and Republican leaners at least five times as likely as Democrats and those who lean Democratic to say the GOP and Trump have done at least a fair amount and Democrats far more likely than Republicans to say the same about the Democratic Party.

Views of the role the feminist movement has played in advancing gender equality are positive overall, though fewer than half of women say the movement has been beneficial to them personally. About four-in-ten (41%) say feminism has helped them at least a little, while half say it has neither helped nor hurt them. Relatively few (7%) say feminism has hurt them personally. Democratic women, those with a bachelor’s degree or more education and women younger than 50 are among the most likely to say they’ve benefitted personally from feminism.

Views about how much progress the country has made on gender equality differ widely along partisan lines. About three-quarters of Democrats (76%) say the country hasn’t gone far enough when it comes to giving women equal rights with men, while 19% say it’s been about right and 4% say the country has gone too far. Among Republicans, a third say the country hasn’t made enough progress, while 48% say it’s been about right and 17% say the country has gone too far in giving women equal rights with men.

There is also a gender gap in these views, with 64% of women – compared with 49% of men – saying the country hasn’t gone far enough in giving women equal rights with men. Democratic and Republican women are about ten percentage points more likely than their male counterparts to say this (82% of Democratic women vs. 70% of Democratic men and 38% of Republican women vs. 28% of Republican men).

The nationally representative survey of 3,143 U.S. adults was conducted online from March 18-April 1, 2020. 1 Among the other key findings:

More cite women’s suffrage than other milestones as the most important in advancing the position of women in the U.S. About half of Americans (49%) say women gaining the right to vote has been the most important milestone in advancing the position of women in the U.S.; 29% cite the passage of the Equal Pay Act, while smaller shares point to the passage of the Family and Medical Leave Act (12%) or the availability of the birth control pill (8%) as the most important milestone.

A majority of Americans say feminism has had a positive impact on the lives of white, Black and Hispanic women. About six-in-ten or more U.S. adults say feminism has helped the lives of white (64%), Black (61%) and Hispanic (58%) women at least a little. But more say feminism helped white women a lot (32%) than say it’s done the same for Black (21%) or Hispanic (15%) women. About a quarter (24%) say feminism has helped wealthy women a lot; just 10% say it’s been equally helpful to poor women.

About four-in-ten Republican men think women’s gains have come at the expense of men. Most Americans (76%) say the gains women have made in society have not come at the expense of men, but 22% think these gains have come at the expense of men. That view is more common among men (28%) than women (17%). Republican and Democratic men are more likely than their female counterparts to say the gains women have made in society have come at the expense of men. About four-in-ten Republican men (38%) say women’s gains have come at the expense of men, compared with 25% of Republican women, 19% of Democratic men and 12% of Democratic women.

Democrats are more likely than Republicans to say that, when it comes to gender discrimination, the bigger problem is discrimination being overlooked. Two-thirds of U.S. adults say the bigger problem for our country today is people not seeing gender discrimination where it really does exist; 31% say people seeing gender discrimination where it really does not exist is the bigger problem. More than eight-in-ten Democrats (85%) point to people overlooking gender discrimination as the bigger problem; 46% of Republicans say the same.

Most Americans favor adding the ERA to the U.S. Constitution, even as many don’t think this would make much difference for women’s rights. About eight-in-ten U.S. adults (78%), including majorities of men and women and Republicans and Democrats alike, say they at least somewhat favor adding the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the U.S. Constitution. When asked about the impact they think adopting the ERA would have on women’s rights in the U.S., 44% say it would advance women’s rights, while 5% say this would be a setback for women’s rights and 49% say it would not make much of a difference. Even among those who favor adopting the amendment, 44% say doing so wouldn’t have much of an impact on women’s rights (54% say it would advance women’s rights).

A majority of Americans say the country has not gone far enough in giving women equal rights with men

The vast majority of Americans across demographic and partisan groups agree that women should have equal rights with men. More than nine-in-ten U.S. adults say it is very important (79%) or somewhat important (18%) for women to have equal rights with men in this country. Just 3% of Americans say gender equality is not too or not at all important.

Democrats and those who lean to the Democratic Party (86%) are more likely than Republicans and Republican leaners (71%) to say it is very important for women to have equal rights with men. Still, majorities of Republicans and Democrats, including at least two-thirds of men and women in each party, say this is very important.

When it comes to giving women equal rights with men, a majority of adults (57%) think our country has not gone far enough, while 32% say things have been about right; 10% of Americans say the country has gone too far in giving women equal rights with men.

Women (64%) are more likely than men (49%) to say the country hasn’t made enough progress on gender equality. However, there is also a sizable party gap. Roughly three-quarters of Democrats (76%) say the country hasn’t gone far enough when it comes to giving women equal rights with men, compared with 33% of Republicans. Instead, 48% of Republicans – compared with 19% of Democrats – say things are about right when it comes to gender equality and 17% say the country has gone too far; just 4% of Democrats say things have gone too far.

Across parties, women are more likely than men to say the U.S. has not gone far enough in giving women equal rights with men. About four-in-ten Republican women (38%) say that gender equality has not come far enough, compared with 28% of Republican men. Still, about half of Republican men (51%) and 45% of Republican women say things are about right in the country when it comes to gender equality.

Among Democrats, 82% of women, compared with 70% of men, say the country still has work to do on gender equality. About a quarter of Democratic men (24%) say things are about right in the country when it comes to giving women equal rights with men, compared with 14% of Democratic women who say the same.

Among Democrats, those with at least some college education are more likely than those with no college experience to express dissatisfaction with the current state of gender equality. About eight-in-ten Democrats with a bachelor’s degree or more education (82%) and 77% of those with some college education say the country hasn’t gone far enough when it comes to giving women equal rights with men, compared with 71% of Democrats with a high school diploma or less education. Among Republicans, there is generally more agreement across levels of educational attainment.

Overall, Americans express more dissatisfaction with the state of gender equality now than they did in 2017, when this question was last asked. Then, half said the country hadn’t gone far enough in giving women equal rights with men, while 39% said things were about right and 10% said the country had gone too far. Attitudes have shifted among men and women and Republicans and Democrats alike.

Most Democrats and Republicans say the country has made progress in giving women and men equal rights over the last 10 years

While many Americans say there’s still work to be done to achieve gender equality, most say there’s been progress over the past decade. Majorities of men and women say the U.S. has made progress in the last 10 years when it comes to giving women equal rights with men. Still, 25% of Americans say things are the same as they were 10 years ago, and one-in-ten say the country has lost ground when it comes to equal rights for women.

Majorities of Democrats (60%) and Republicans (71%) say that, in the last 10 years, the country has made progress on gender equality. However, Democratic women are the least likely to say this: 58% of Democratic women say this, compared with 63% of Democratic men and 71% of both Republican men and Republican women. Instead, 28% of Democratic women say things are about the same as they were 10 years ago (21% of Republican women say the same).

About three-in-ten U.S. men think women’s gains have come at the expense of men

When it comes to the gains that women have made in society, most Americans (76%) say the gains have not come at the expense of men, but 22% – including 28% of men – think these gains have come at the expense of men.

Republican men (38%) are twice as likely as Democratic men (19%) to say the gains women have made have come at the expense of men. A quarter of Republican women also say this, less than the share of their male counterparts but higher than the shares of Democratic men and women (12%) that hold this view.

Among women, those without a bachelor’s degree are about twice as likely as college graduates to say gains have come at the expense of men (21% vs. 10%); educational differences are less pronounced, though still significant, among men: 30% of men with some college or less education say the gains women have made in society have come at the expense of men, compared with 24% of men with at least a bachelor’s degree.

Most who say the country still has work to do on gender equality say equality is likely in the future

On the whole, the majority of Americans who say that the country has not gone far enough to give women equal rights with men think it is very or somewhat likely that women in our country will eventually have equal rights with men. More than eight-in-ten Americans who say the country hasn’t made enough progress say this is very likely (31%) or somewhat likely (53%); just 16% say they think it is not too likely or not at all likely.

Large majorities of men and women and Republicans and Democrats who say the country has not yet achieved gender equality say it is at least somewhat likely that men and women will eventually have equal rights, but men (37%) are considerably more likely than women (26%)  to say it is very likely.

Among Republicans who say the U.S. has work to do to achieve gender equality, 36% say gender equality is very likely, compared with 29% of Democrats. This difference is driven in part by Democratic women, who are among the least likely to say they expect men and women to eventually have equal rights. Among Democratic women who say the country hasn’t gone far enough to achieve gender equality, 23% say they think it is very likely that there will eventually be gender equality; 38% of Democratic men say the same.

Even among the small share of Americans who say the country has lost ground on gender equality in the last 10 years, 76% say it is very or somewhat likely that women will eventually have equal rights with men.

More cite equality in the workplace than any other example as a sign of a society where men and women are equal

When those who say it is important for women to have equal rights with men are asked what a society with gender equality might look like, about half give examples that focus on equality in the workplace: 45% specifically say equal pay, 19% cite no discrimination in hiring and promotion, 5% say men and women getting equal respect in the workplace, and 2% say better paid leave and paternity and maternity support are things they would expect to see in a society where women have equal rights with men.

About one-in-ten cite more or equal representation of women in leadership, with 6% specifically mentioning political leadership and 5% mentioning business leadership. Relatively few point to reproductive rights (4%) and less traditional gender norms (4%) as markers of a society where women have equal rights with men. (Respondents were asked to answer this question in their own words; for respondents who gave multiple examples, up to three responses were coded.)

For the most part, men and women who say equal rights are important have a similar picture of what a society with gender equality would look like, but a larger share of women than men cite equal pay (51% vs. 40%). Still, the gender pay gap tops the list for both men and women who say gender equality is important.

Among women, references to equal pay differ by age. Women ages 50 and older (56%) are more likely than women under 50 (45%) to mention equal pay when describing a society where men and women have equal rights.

Democrats who say gender equality is important are more likely than their Republican counterparts to cite equal pay when asked about a society with gender equality: 50% of Democrats say this, compared with 41% of Republicans. Democrats are also more likely than Republicans to say that more or equal representation in business and politics is a marker of equality (12% vs. 5%).

Wide party and gender gaps in views of the obstacles women face in achieving gender equality

When Americans who say the country has not gone far enough in giving women equal rights with men are asked about the obstacles to achieving equal rights, sexual harassment tops the list: 77% say this is a major obstacle for women. Roughly two-thirds say women not having the same legal rights as men (67%) and the different expectations that society has for men and women (66%) are major obstacles, and 64% say the same about not enough women in positions of power. Some 43% point to family responsibilities as a major obstacle, while fewer cite men and women having different physical abilities (19%) and women not working as hard as men (13%) as major obstacles. Roughly two-thirds (64%) of those who say the country has work to do on gender equality say women not working as hard as men is not an obstacle to gender equality.

Perceptions of the obstacles to gender equality vary across genders. For example, while 71% of women who say the country hasn’t gone far enough in giving women equal rights with men cite not enough women in positions of power as a major obstacle to gender equality, 55% of men say the same.

A majority of women who say the country hasn’t made enough progress on gender equality also point to women not having the same legal rights as men (73%) and different societal expectations for men and women (72%) as major obstacles to women having equal rights with men. Fewer men who say this see each of these as major obstacles to gender equality (59% and 58%, respectively).

When it comes to the role sexual harassment plays in men and women having equal rights, women who say the country hasn’t gone far enough when it comes to gender equality (82%) are more likely than men who say the same (72%) to cite this as a major obstacle, though large majorities of both groups say this.

Among women who say the country hasn’t made enough progress on gender equality, those with at least a bachelor’s degree are more likely than those who have attended some college or less to say different societal expectations (81% vs. 67%) and not enough women in positions of power (80% vs. 66%) are major obstacles.

Among those who say there’s work to be done on gender equality, a majority of Democrats, but fewer than half of Republicans, see not enough women in power as a major obstacle

Among those who say there’s more work to be done in giving women equal rights with men, Democrats and Republicans differ on the extent to which certain factors are holding women back. A higher share of Democrats than Republicans point to not enough women in positions of power (72% vs. 41%), women not having the same legal rights as men (73% vs. 51%), sexual harassment (81 % vs. 66%) and different societal expectations (69% vs. 57%) as major obstacles to women having equal rights with men.

Republicans who say the country has not gone far enough to give women equal rights (27%) are more likely than similarly minded Democrats (17%) to say differences in the physical abilities of men and women are a major obstacle to women having equal rights with men, although relatively small shares of each group say this is the case. Meanwhile, there are no significant partisan gaps when it comes to views of family responsibilities (44% of Democrats and 40% of Republicans see it as a major obstacle) or women not working as hard as men (13% and 15%, respectively).

Democratic women are particularly likely to see some of these as major obstacles, while Republican men tend to be the least likely to do so. For example, 78% of Democratic women say women not having the same legal rights as men is a major obstacle to equal rights, as do 65% of Democratic men and 58% of Republican women. In contrast, 42% of Republican men say this is a major obstacle.

And while 77% of Democratic women, 65% of Democratic men and 50% of Republican women say not enough women in positions of power is a major obstacle to gender equality, just 31% of Republican men say the same.

Democrats are nearly twice as likely as Republicans to say there are problems with gender discrimination being overlooked

When it comes to gender discrimination, by more than a two-to-one margin Americans say the bigger problem for the country is people not seeing discrimination where it really does exist, rather than people seeing gender discrimination where it really does not exist (67% vs. 31%).

The vast majority of Democrats (85%) say the bigger problem is people not seeing gender discrimination where it really exists. In contrast, more Republicans say the bigger problem is people seeing discrimination where it doesn’t exist (53%) than say the people overlooking discrimination is the bigger problem (46%).

There is a wide gender gap among Republicans. While a majority of Republican men (61%) say the bigger problem is people seeing gender discrimination where it doesn’t exist, fewer than half of Republican women (44%) say the same. Democratic men are also more likely than their female counterparts to say this (19% vs. 11%), but 80% of Democratic men and 89% of Democratic women agree that the bigger problem is people overlooking gender discrimination.

More cite women gaining the right to vote than other milestones as the most important in advancing the position of women

When asked about milestones they see as important in advancing the position of women in the U.S., about half of Americans (49%) point to women gaining the right to vote as the most important milestone, a view that is more common among men (52%) than women (46%). Roughly three-in-ten U.S. adults (29%) cite the passage of the Equal Pay Act, while smaller shares say passage of the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) and the availability of the birth control pill are the most important milestones in advancing the position of women (12% and 8%, respectively).

White adults, as well as those with at least a bachelor’s degree, are more likely than Black and Hispanic adults and those with less education to see women’s suffrage as the most important milestone in advancing the position of women in the U.S. Some 53% of white adults say women getting the right to vote has been a more important milestone than the passage of the Equal Pay Act, passage of the FMLA or the availability of the birth control pill. Black and Hispanic adults are about as likely to cite the passage of the Equal Pay Act as they are to cite women gaining the right to vote.

Among those with at least a bachelor’s degree, 59% see women’s suffrage as the most important milestone, compared with 48% of those with some college education and 41% of those with less education. Even so, across educational attainment, more point to women getting the right to vote than to the other milestones as the most important in advancing women’s rights in the U.S.

These differences by race and ethnicity and educational attainment are also evident when looking separately at the views of men and women. A majority of white men (57%) cite women gaining the right to vote as the most important milestone, compared with 39% of Black men and 43% of Hispanic men. And while white women are less likely than their male counterparts to say this (49% do so), even smaller shares of Black (36%) and Hispanic (38%) women point to women’s suffrage as the most important milestone.

Similarly, men with at least a bachelor’s degree (64%) are more likely than women with the same level of educational attainment (54%) to say women gaining the right to vote was the most important milestone. Both are more likely than their less educated counterparts to say this.

Views on this vary little, if at all, by age or partisanship, but Democrats and those who lean to the Democratic Party are about twice as likely as Republicans and Republican leaners to say the availability of the birth control pill has been the most important milestone in advancing the position of women in the U.S. (11% vs. 5%). Similar shares of Democratic women (12%) and men (11%) say this, compared with 6% of Republican women and an even smaller share of Republican men (3%).

A third of Americans know what year women in the U.S. gained the right to vote

When asked in an open-ended format what year women in the U.S. gained the right to vote, 47% offer a year between 1915 and 1925 (within five years of the correct answer), including 33% who correctly identify 1920 as the year women gained the right to vote. About three-in-ten Americans (31%) say women gained the right to vote in 1926 or later, while just 7% say this happened before 1915. (Some 14% didn’t provide an answer.) Men and women give similar answers.

Those who say women gaining the right to vote has been the most important milestone in advancing women’s rights in the U.S. are not necessarily more knowledgeable about the timing of this milestone. An identical share of those who cite women’s suffrage or the availability of the birth control pill as the most important milestones correctly identify 1920 as the year women gained the right to vote (38% each). Similar shares in these groups offer a year between 1915 and 1925.

Educational attainment is related to knowledge of the year women in the U.S. gained the right to vote. About six-in-ten adults with at least a bachelor’s degree (61%) give a year between 1915 and 1925, with 41% correctly identifying 1920 as the year women gained the right to vote. Smaller shares of those with some college (47%) or with a high school diploma or less education (36%) give an answer within five years of the correct year, and a third and quarter, respectively, give the correct answer.

Adults ages 65 and older are more likely than those who are younger to give an answer within five years of the correct year. More than half of those ages 65 and older (55%) say U.S. women gained the right to vote between 1915 and 1925, compared with 49% of those ages 50 to 64, 42% of those ages 30 to 49 and 47% of adults younger than 30.

Majorities say the feminist movement and the Democratic Party have done at least a fair amount to advance women’s rights in the U.S.

Seven-in-ten Americans say the feminist movement has done a great deal (22%) or a fair amount (48%) to advance women’s rights in the U.S.; 59% say the same about the Democratic Party, including 12% who say it has done a great deal. In contrast, most Americans say the Republican Party (61%) and Donald Trump (69%) have not done much or have done nothing at all to advance women’s rights.

Women (73%) are more likely than men (67%) to say the feminist movement has done at least a fair amount to advance the rights of women in the U.S., but large majorities of each group say this. Meanwhile, a larger share of men (40%) than women (34%) say the GOP has done at least a fair amount in this area.

There are far wider partisan gaps than gender gaps when it comes to these views. About three-quarters of Democrats and those who lean Democratic (73%) say the Democratic Party has done at least a fair amount to advance women’s rights in the U.S.; fewer than half of Republicans and those who lean to the Republican Party (42%) say the same. Conversely, two-thirds of Republicans – but only 13% of Democrats – say the GOP has done a great deal or a fair amount in this area. Similarly, a majority of Republicans (59%) say Donald Trump has done at least a fair amount to advance women’s rights, while just 6% of Democrats say the same.

When it comes to the feminist movement’s impact, majorities of Democrats and Republicans say it has done at least a fair amount. Still, Democrats are far more likely than Republicans to say this (80% vs. 58%).

For the most part, views on this don’t vary considerably by gender within each party. Republican women (62%) are more likely than Republican men (55%) to say the feminist movement has done a great deal or a fair amount to advance women’s rights, but more than half of both say this. And while Democratic men are more likely than their female counterparts to say their party has done at least a fair amount, about seven-in-ten or more of each group share this view (76% of Democratic men and 71% of Democratic women). Republican men and women give similar views when it comes to how much each of the political parties and Donald Trump have done, and there are no significant differences between Democratic men and women in views of the feminist movement, the Republican Party or Trump.

Majorities say feminism has helped white, Black and Hispanic women

In addition to saying the feminist movement has done at least a fair amount to advance women’s rights in the U.S., a majority of Americans think feminism has had a positive impact on the lives of specific groups of women. For example, about six-in-ten or more say feminism has helped the lives of white (64%), Black (61%) and Hispanic (58%) women at least a little, although there are more pronounced differences in the shares saying feminism has helped each of these groups a lot (32% vs. 21% and 15%, respectively). 2  Notably, just 41% of women say the movement has helped them personally.

A majority of Americans (57%) also think feminism has helped lesbian and bisexual women at least a little, including 23% who say it’s helped this group a lot. By comparison, 41% say feminism has helped transgender women, with just 11% saying this group has been helped a lot. About one-in-five (21%) say feminism has hurt transgender women, and 17% say the same about its impact on lesbian and bisexual women.

When asked about the impact of feminism on the lives of wealthy and poor women, 49% say it has helped each of these groups at least a little, but while 24% say feminism has helped wealthy women a lot , just one-in-ten say the same about the impact it’s had on the lives of poor women.

Opinions about how feminism has impacted each of these groups of women don’t differ significantly between men and women. In fact, the shares of men and women saying feminism has helped each of these groups at least a little vary only by 3 percentage points or less.

Majorities of white and Hispanic adults say feminism has helped white, Black and Hispanic women at least a little. Some 64% of Black adults also say feminism has helped white women, more than the shares who say it’s helped Black (49%) or Hispanic (48%) women. Black adults are the most likely to say feminism has helped white women a lot: 42% say this, compared with 34% of Hispanics and an even smaller share of white adults (29%).

Consistent with the difference in the shares of Republicans and Democrats who say the feminist movement has done at least a fair amount to advance women’s rights, Democrats are far more likely than Republicans to say feminism has helped each of these groups of women.

About four-in-ten women say feminism has helped them personally

When asked about the impact of feminism on their own lives, 41% of women say it has helped them at least a little, with one-in-ten saying feminism has helped them a lot; 7% say feminism has hurt them, while half say it has neither helped nor hurt. 3

Some 55% of women with at least a bachelor’s degree say feminism has helped them personally, compared with 41% of women with some college education and an even smaller share of those with a high school diploma or less education (30%). In turn, six-in-ten of those with no college experience and half of those with some college say feminism has neither helped nor hurt them; 36% of women with a bachelor’s degree or more education say the same.

Hispanic women (46%) are more likely than Black women (36%) to say feminism has helped them personally; white women fall somewhere in the middle (41% say feminism has helped them). There are also differences by age, with 47% of women younger than 50 saying feminism has helped at least a little, compared with 35% of those ages 50 and older.

Among Democratic women, half say feminism has helped them personally, while just 5% say it has hurt them and 43% say it has neither helped nor hurt. By comparison, 28% of Republican women say feminism has helped them, while a majority (60%) say it’s neither helped nor hurt; 9% of Republican women say feminism has hurt them.

Most Americans favor adding the ERA to the U.S. Constitution

In January 2020, Virginia became the 38th state to pass the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) , nearly half a century after it passed the Senate in 1972. While the ERA has now been ratified by three-fourths of the states, the number required for amending the U.S. Constitution, it is likely to face legal challenges as the deadline for ratification has passed.

The survey finds widespread support for adding the ERA to the U.S. Constitution: About eight-in-ten Americans (78%) say they favor it, including 35% who strongly favor it being added to the Constitution. Women are more likely than men to say they strongly favor adding the ERA to the Constitution (39% vs. 31%), but about three-quarters or more in each group say they favor it at least somewhat.

Democrats overwhelmingly favor adding the ERA to the U.S. Constitution, with roughly nine-in-ten saying they favor it strongly (51%) or somewhat (37%). There’s less support among Republicans: 66% say they favor adopting the ERA, with 16% expressing strong support for this. Republican women (75%) are far more likely than Republican men (58%) to say they favor adding the ERA to the Constitution. Views on this do not differ by gender among Democrats, but they do vary across other dimensions, including educational attainment, race and ethnicity, and age.

Large majorities of Democrats across levels of educational attainment say they favor adding the ERA to the Constitution, but those with at least a bachelor’s degree are the most likely to express strong support: 62% say they strongly favor adopting the ERA, compared with 55% of Democrats with some college and a smaller share of those of those with a high school diploma or less education (37%).

Among white Democrats, 58% say they strongly favor adding the ERA to the U.S. Constitution. About four-in-ten Black and Hispanic Democrats say the same (42% each). These gaps remain when taking differences in educational attainment into account.

And while more than eight-in-ten Democrats across age groups support adopting the ERA, those ages 65 and older are more likely than those who are younger to express strong support. About six-in-ten Democrats ages 65 and older (63%) say they strongly favor adding the ERA to the Constitution, compared with 46% of Democrats ages 18 to 29 and ages 30 to 49 and 52% of those 50 to 64.

These differences by age, educational attainment and race and ethnicity are present among Democratic men and women. Among Republicans, the only notable demographic split on views of adopting the ERA is along gender lines.

Many say adding the ERA to the Constitution wouldn’t make much difference for women’s rights

Despite widespread support for adding the ERA to the U.S. Constitution, 49% of Americans say this would not make much of a difference when it comes to women’s rights in the country; 44% say this would advance women’s rights and 5% think this would be a setback for women’s rights.

Even among those who favor adding the ERA to the Constitution, a sizable share (44%) is skeptical that this would have much of an impact, while 54% say it would advance women’s rights and just 2% see it as a potential setback. Democratic supporters of the ERA are far more likely than their Republican counterparts to say this would advance women’s rights in our country (63% vs. 38%). A majority of Republican ERA supporters (59%) say adding it to the Constitution wouldn’t make much difference.

Overall, male and female supporters of the ERA offer similar assessments of the impact adding the amendment to the Constitution would have on women’s rights; 54% of women and 53% of men who favor adopting the ERA say this would advance women’s rights in the U.S. Women ages 18 to 29 are more optimistic than women in older age groups to say adding the ERA to the Constitution would advance women’s rights. About six-in-ten women younger than 30 who support the ERA (63%) say adopting the amendment would advance women’s rights, compared with about half of older women who favor the ERA.

For the most part, adults who oppose adding the ERA to the U.S. Constitution say doing so wouldn’t make much difference for women’s rights (69% say this), while 20% think this would be a setback for women’s rights and 10% say it would advance women’s rights.

• For more details, see the Methodology section of the report. ↩
• The shares who say feminism has helped each group of women at least a little may not add to the shares who say “a lot” and “a little” as shown in the chart due to rounding. ↩
• The shares of women who say feminism has helped them personally at least a little may not add to the shares who say “a lot” and “a little” as shown in the chart due to rounding. ↩

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6 Essays on Women's History

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Check out the following 6 blog posts in which the contributions of a number of key figures from women’s history are discussed. Together, these posts shed light on some of the unique ways that women have helped to shape the political landscapes of multiple countries and the experiences of workers in industries including the teaching profession itself.

Fannie Lou Hamer: Unsung Woman of the Civil Rights Movement   Facing History Cleveland recently offered a riveting professional development webinar to Ohio-based educators called “Standing on Their Shoulders: Unsung Women of the Civil Rights Movement.” There, Program Director Pamela Donaldson and Senior Program Associate Lisa Lefstein-Berusch provided educators with strategies and frameworks they can use to broaden students’ knowledge of the contributions Black women made to the movement, as well as deepen students’ understanding of specific strategies that have driven social change.

Dolores Huerta's Life of Indefatigable Resistance A powerful story that is often left out of news stories and history books is that of Dolores Huerta—a Chicana activist whose contributions rival those of the most renowned civil rights leaders in U.S. history, but whose legacy is significantly less known. Awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012 and nine honorary doctorates, Huerta is a living legend in the labor movement and has been a tireless advocate for social justice for over 50 years.

Remembering Daisy Bates: Orator at the March on Washington The March on Washington was the historic 1963 protest in which as many as 500,000 people marched to demand jobs and freedom for Americans of all racial backgrounds. Though many of us remember this as the day that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his iconic “I Have a Dream” speech, it is easy to forget that he was not the only civil rights leader to address the crowd. One of the leaders who joined him was movement veteran Daisy Bates—the only woman permitted to speak, though not in her own words.

How One Lesbian Couple Defied the Nazis: An Interview with Dr. Jeffrey Jackson We spoke with Dr. Jeffrey Jackson—Professor of History at Rhodes College and author of  Paper Bullets: Two Artists Who Risked Their Lives to Defy the Nazis . In this interview. Dr. Jackson discusses the untold story of Lucy Schwob and Suzanne Malherbe, a French lesbian couple who intervened in the Nazi occupation of the Channel Islands through an expansive artistic campaign during World War II. Better known to art historians by their adopted names of Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore, Schwob and Malherbe’s story of resistance is told for the first time in Dr. Jackson’s new book. Here he shares a first look at their incredible story with Facing History.

Women's Suffrage at 100: The Key Role of Black Sororities Tuesday, August 18, 2020 marked the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. This amendment established women's suffrage for the first time, granting white women across the country the right to vote to the exclusion of non-white women. Yet the women's suffrage movement contained many more key players than this outcome suggests. Among them were African American luminaries like Mary Church Terrell and the scores of Black women who joined with her to demand equal rights.

Teaching in the Light of Women's History Though we often think of Women’s History Month as a time to prioritize women’s voices and contributions in the classroom, this month is also a time to examine the profound ways in which women teachers, and broader perceptions of women, have shaped the teaching profession itself. From contemporary perceptions of the profession and the compensation of its workers, to the grounds for collective action that American teachers now enjoy, none can be understood outside the patriarchal context in which modern schooling emerged and women demanded justice. Examining this history offers not only a richer understanding of the challenges faced by today’s teachers, but reveals places where we must continue to disrupt patriarchal rhetoric if we are to cultivate school communities that do right by teachers and students. 

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A demonstrator raises a sign that says, "Human rights are women's rights" at the Women's March in Los Angeles in 2018. Though the concept had long been controversial, the United Nations declared that women's rights are human rights in 1995 at the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing.

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'Women's Rights are Human Rights,' 25 years on

Hillary Rodham Clinton’s speech at a UN conference propelled this idea into the mainstream after centuries of society sidelining gender equality as “women’s issues.”

When Hillary Rodham Clinton approached the podium at a United Nations conference on women in September 1995 in Beijing, she faced an uncertain audience. Only a few people had read the speech, which was a well-guarded secret even to high-ranking members of the president’s cabinet. “Nobody knew what to expect,” recalls Melanne Verveer , the then first lady’s chief of staff, who later served as the first U.S. Ambassador for Global Women’s Issues when Clinton became secretary of state.

Twenty-five years later, a single phrase from Clinton’s speech has entered mainstream parlance: “Women’s rights are human rights.” The concept wasn’t new. But the excitement and energy that Clinton’s speech generated at the Fourth World Conference on Women helped elevate the idea to one that fuels modern feminism and international efforts to achieve gender parity.

Women’s rights advocates have long argued that gender equality should be a human right—but were thwarted for years by those who claimed their rights were subordinate to those of men. During the infancy of the American feminist movement of the 1830s, abolitionists and women’s rights advocates tussled over whether it was more important to seek freedom for enslaved people or equality for women. As women pushed for their rights to vote, access educational opportunities, and own property, male abolitionists like Theodore Weld urged them to wait, arguing that they should first fight for the abolition of slavery as a matter of human rights.

Some women, such as educator Catharine Beecher , argued that women deserved rights because of their morality—as they were uniquely positioned to edify and enlighten men—not their humanity. She cautioned that their roles in public life should not extend into equality in the home. In response, abolitionist and women’s rights advocate Angelina Grimké wrote , “I recognize no rights but human rights,” noting that a society that didn’t give women power or a political voice violated their innate human rights. She was just one of a group of women who invoked the idea throughout the 19 th century. (Grimké later went on to marry Weld, who was her mentor.)

In the 1970s, the idea resurfaced as so-called second-wave feminists, who believed women should have access to full societal and legal rights, attempted to put women’s rights on the international agenda. In many countries, there was no consensus that women had a right to equal partnership in marriage, power over their finances, an equal education, or a life free of sexual assault or harassment. Between 1975 and 1995, the United Nations convened four landmark Conferences on Women that made gender parity a global priority. ( Here are the best and worst countries to be a woman. )

The first conference, held in Mexico City in 1975, recognized women’s equality. Eighty-nine of the 133 nations that participated adopted a framework to help women gain equal access to all facets of society; several western nations abstained , and the United States opposed the framework. In 1980, a follow-up conference in Copenhagen called for stronger protections for women, with an emphasis on property ownership, child custody, and a restructuring of inheritance laws. A third in Nairobi in 1985 called attention to violence against women. But though these conferences brought women’s issues to the international stage, each one fell short because of a lack of consensus and failure to implement the adopted platforms. By 1995, global women’s leaders had agreed it was time to create an action plan to guarantee equality for women.

Slated for Beijing in September 1995, the Fourth World Conference on Women took place in an atmosphere of intense international condemnation of the host nation’s treatment of its own citizens. Human rights groups and governments criticized China’s history of political imprisonment, torture, detention, and denial of religious freedom. The nation’s one-child policy , which put family planning decisions under state control, came under particular fire.

Women watch Hillary Rodham Clinton speak to the abuse against women at the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing. Her call for women's rights to be considered human rights has since become mainstream.

News that Clinton would attend and speak at the meeting prompted an American outcry. “There were serious efforts not to make [the speech] happen,” Verveer recalls. “You had a cacophony of voices that were trying to keep this from being meaningful or successful.” The first lady faced outrage from human rights advocates who objected to the China visit on principle, conservative politicians who disapproved of her outspoken feminism, and people who worried the speech could threaten the bilateral relationship between the U.S. and China.

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“I wanted to push the envelope as far as I could for girls and women,” Clinton said in a virtual public event hosted on September 10 by the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security , of which Verveer is the executive director. ( A century after women’s suffrage in the U.S., the fight for equality isn’t over. )

On September 5, 1995, the second day of the conference, Clinton took the podium in front of representatives from all over the world. As Clinton spoke, Verveer watched the delegates’ faces closely. The speech cited a “litany of violations against women,” including rape, female genital mutilation, dowry burnings, and domestic violence—which Clinton labeled as human rights violations. She excoriated those who forcibly sterilized women and condemned those who restricted civil liberties, a jab at China, which restricted news coverage of the event.

The room was “filled with women who were in the trenches of those issues,” says Verveer. “The audience was completely pulled into their struggle.” The mostly female delegation applauded and cheered during the 20-minute speech, sometimes even pounding their fists on the tables to underscore their approval.

“The reaction was extraordinary,” Verveer says. On September 15, the phrase “women’s rights are human rights” was unanimously adopted as part of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action , which defined 12 areas—including education, health, economic participation, and the environment—in need of urgent international action. The document still governs the global agenda for women’s issues and is credited with helping narrow the education gap, improve maternal health, and reduce violence against women. ( Around the world, women are taking charge of their futures. )

Fourth World Conference on Women participants (from left) Benedita Da Silva of Brazil, Vuyiswa Bongile Keyi of Canada, and Silvia Salley of the United States cheer at the conclusion of the "Women of Color" press briefing where they stated that racism was not adequately addressed in the declaration.

Today, the idea that human rights and women’s rights are synonymous is considered mainstream. “I have rarely seen a single message carry such [an] important meaning and have such a durable life,” former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said at the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security event commemorating the anniversary.

But the work of gender equality is not yet done—and 25 years after Beijing, women still face systemic inequities and gaps in terms of safety, economic and political mobility, and more. “Girls need to know that they stand on the shoulders of other people who struggled to gain the rights they enjoy today,” says Verveer. “They need to play a role in ensuring the work goes on. There has been progress, but there is a long journey ahead.”

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5 Women’s Rights Essays You Can Read For Free

Women and girls are the most disenfranchised group in the world. Even in places where huge strides have been made, gaps in equality remain. Women’s rights are important within the realm of human rights. Here are five essays exploring the scope of women’s rights, which you can download or read for free online:

“A Vindication on the Rights of Woman” – Mary Wollstonecraft

Mother of Mary Shelley, who wrote the novel Frankenstein, Mary Wollstonecraft is a juggernaut of history in her own right, though for a different reason. Self-educated, Wollstonecraft dedicated her life to women’s education and feminism. Her 1792 essay A Vindication on the Rights of Woman represents one of the earliest writings on women’s equality. In the Western world, many consider its arguments the foundation of the modern women’s rights movement. In the essay, Wollstonecraft writes that men are not  more reasonable or rational than women, and that women must be educated with the same care, so they can contribute to society. If women were left out of the intellectual arena, the progress of society would stop. While most of us believe the idea that women are inherently inferior to men is very outdated, it’s still an accepted viewpoint in many places and in many minds. Wollstonecraft’s Vindication is still relevant.

“The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House” – Audre Lorde

Poet and activist Audre Lorde defied the boundaries of traditional feminism and cried out against its racist tendencies. While today debates about intersectional feminism (feminism that takes into account race, sexuality, etc) are common, Audre Lorde wrote her essay on women’s rights and racism back in 1984. In “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House,” Lorde explains how ignoring differences between women – whether its race, class, or sexuality – halts any real change. By pretending the suffering of women is “all the same,” and not defined by differences, white women actually contribute to oppression. Lorde’s essay drew anger from the white feminist community. It’s a debate that feels very current and familiar.

“How to convince sceptics of the value of feminism” – Laura Bates

Laura Bates founded the Everyday Sexism Project website back in 2012. It documents examples of everyday sexism of every degree and has become very influential. In her essay from 2018, Bates takes reader comments into consideration over the essay’s three parts. This unique format allows the essay to encompass multiple views, just not Bates’, and takes into consideration a variety of experiences people have with skeptics of feminism. Why even debate skeptics? Doesn’t that fuel the trolls? In some cases, yes, but skeptics of feminism aren’t trolls, they are numerous, and make up every part of society, including leadership. Learning how to talk to people who don’t agree with you is incredibly important.

“Why Can’t A Smart Woman Love Fashion?” – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is one of the most influential voices in women’s rights writing. Her book, We Should All Be Feminists , is a great exploration of 21st-century feminism. In this essay from Elle, Adichie takes a seemingly “small” topic about fashion and makes a big statement about independence and a woman’s right to wear whatever she wants. There is still a lot of debate about what a feminist should look like, if wearing makeup contributes to oppression, and so on. “Why Can’t A Smart Woman Love Fashion?” is a moving, personal look at these sorts of questions.

“The male cultural elite is staggeringly blind to #MeToo. Now it’s paying for it.” – Moira Donegan

There are countless essays on the Me Too Movement, and most of them are great reads. In this one from The Guardian, Moira Donegan highlights two specific men and the publications that chose to give them a platform after accusations of sexual misconduct. It reveals just how pervasive the problem is in every arena, including among the cultural, intellectual elite, and what detractors of Me Too are saying.

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About the author, emmaline soken-huberty.

Emmaline Soken-Huberty is a freelance writer based in Portland, Oregon. She started to become interested in human rights while attending college, eventually getting a concentration in human rights and humanitarianism. LGBTQ+ rights, women’s rights, and climate change are of special concern to her. In her spare time, she can be found reading or enjoying Oregon’s natural beauty with her husband and dog.

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Early Women’s Rights Activists Wanted Much More than Suffrage

By: Rebecca Edwards

Updated: May 2, 2024 | Original: March 2, 2018

This may sound odd coming from a scholar of women’s history and a newly minted legislator, but I think we’ve heard enough about women’s suffrage .

When New York State recently marked the 100th anniversary of its passage of women’s right to vote, I ought to have joined the celebrations enthusiastically. Not only have I spent 20 years teaching women’s history, but last year’s Women’s March in Washington, D.C. was one of the most energizing experiences of my life. Like thousands of others inspired by the experience, I jumped into electoral politics, and with the help of many new friends, I took the oath of office as a Dutchess County, New York legislator at the start of 2018.

So why do women’s suffrage anniversaries make me yawn? Because suffrage —which still dominates our historical narrative of American women’s rights—captures such a small part of what women need to celebrate and work for. And it isn’t just commemorative events. Textbooks and popular histories alike frequently describe a “battle for the ballot” that allegedly began with the famous 1848 convention at Seneca Falls and ended in 1920 with adoption of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. For the long era in between, authors have treated “women’s rights” and “suffrage” as nearly synonymous terms. For a historian, women’s suffrage is the equivalent of the Eagles’ “Hotel California”: a song you loved the first few times you first heard it, until you realized it was hopelessly overplayed.

A closer look at Seneca Falls shows how little attention the participants actually focused on suffrage. Only one of their 11 resolutions referred to “the sacred right to the elective franchise.” The Declaration of Sentiments, written by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and modeled on the U.S. Declaration of Independence , protested women’s lack of access to higher education, the professions and “nearly all the profitable employments,” observing that most women who worked for wages received “but scanty remuneration.”

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Women’s history is full of trailblazers in the fight for equality in the United States. From Abigail Adams imploring her husband to “remember the ladies” when envisioning a government for the American colonies, to suffragists like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton fighting for women’s right to vote, to the rise of feminism and Hillary […]

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Seneca Falls Convention

What Was the Seneca Falls Convention? Originally known as the Woman’s Rights Convention, the Seneca Falls Convention fought for the social, civil and religious rights of women. The meeting was held from July 19 to 20, 1848 at the Wesleyan Chapel in Seneca Falls, New York. Despite scarce publicity, 300 people—mostly area residents—showed up. On […]

Emancipation for Women

Most of all, the Declaration protested coverture , the legal doctrine that treated a married woman’s possessions, wages, body and children as property of her husband, available for him to use as he pleased. Coverture gave husbands total control—from finances and place of residency to wife-beating and marital rape. A wife, as Stanton wrote, was “compelled to promise obedience to her husband, he becoming, to all intents and purposes, her master.”

In using such language, pre-Civil War women’s-rights advocates of course referenced an even more extreme form of oppression, racial slavery , the legal basis for which also rested on men’s control over women. Partus sequitur ventrem —the legal doctrine that “progeny follows the womb”—perpetuated slavery across the generations by assigning infants at birth to their mothers’ owners. (Notoriously, those owners had sometimes fathered the children they claimed as property.) Though mentioned briefly at Seneca Falls, slavery received far more emphasis at the first national women’s-rights convention, held at Worcester, Massachusetts in 1850. “The cause we are met to advocate,” Worcester delegates declared, “…bids us remember the million and a half of slave women at the South, the most grossly wronged and foully outraged of all women; and in every effort for an improvement in our civilization, we will bear in our heart of hearts the…trampled womanhood of the plantation, and omit no effort to raise it to a share in the rights we claim for ourselves.”

These women never saw suffrage as their only goal or even their main one. The combined injustices of marital coverture, racism, economic oppression and sexual violence were more central to their vision.

Indeed, the 19th Amendment wasn’t a global fix. Passed in the Jim Crow Era, it did little to expand political rights for African-American women in the South, who remained disfranchised until the later civil rights movement. White Southern suffragists, in fact, argued that their states should ratify the amendment because only white women would be enfranchised—and their votes could help bolster white supremacy. In the South, especially, some white women who worked for the vote went on to advocate restrictive anti-immigrant legislation or even join the Ku Klux Klan .

Beyond suffrage, 19th-century American feminists worked more broadly for what they often called “women’s emancipation.” The heroes of that movement include not only Stanton and Susan B. Anthony but also Harriet Jacobs and Frances Watkins Harper , who testified against slavery—including the sexual exploitation of enslaved women and the legal denial of their right to protect their children. After Emancipation , racial-justice activism continued with the leadership of such women as Mary Church Terrell , leader of the National Association of Colored Women and a co-founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People . Such women always treated racial justice and women’s rights as interlinked goals.

Historians of women’s rights have also devoted much attention lately to the American West. There, removal of native peoples was accompanied by widespread rape of native women as well as sexual exploitation of desperate, often starving, indigenous wives and mothers whose plight was as harrowing as that of any refugee today. In some places (like California, as Stacey Smith shows in her haunting book Freedom’s Frontier ), white conquerors undertook the long-term enslavement of indigenous women and children. This history, long soft-pedaled in textbooks, calls our attention to feminist heroes like Paiute activist Sarah Winnemucca and Dakota author Zitkala-Sa .

While American women have never been a unified political force, some began early to work across race and class lines to address shared issues. Before the Civil War, abolitionist women helped build the first cross-racial American movement for social justice. As early as 1848, when Seneca Falls delegates called for access to education and professional careers, working-class women had already launched fights for fair, equal wages and workplaces free of sexual harassment.

The Power of Personal Testimony

Women in these movements sometimes marched, but that was just one arrow in their activist quiver. Personal testimony also played a powerful role in advancing women’s rights. (“Testimony, testimony is the great desideratum,” abolitionist Theodore Weld advised the sisters Angelina and Sarah Grimké , exiles from South Carolina who could speak from personal experience about the horrors of slavery that they witnessed.) In the late 1800s, labor leaders such as Leonora Barry and Eva Valesh interviewed women workers to expose conditions they faced on the job. Journalist Helen Campbell conducted similar investigations in tenement districts, publishing women’s household budgets to show affluent readers what challenges their poorer sisters faced. Author Dorothy Richardson went undercover to work in dangerous and low-paid industries and reported her experiences in The Long Day , published in 1905.

Most courageous were the anti-lynching investigations of African-American journalist Ida B. Wells , who in the 1890s and early 1900s undertook a one-woman crusade to expose the causes of racial violence in the South. Wells proved again and again that lynchings were not precipitated by rape, as Southern apologists claimed, but by whites’ insistence on keeping the political and economic upper hand—and sometimes by their anger at consensual interracial relationships.

On the all-important issues of marriage and coverture, both women and men engaged in direct action. Feminists Lucy Stone and Henry Blackwell issued the most famous “marriage protest” at their wedding on March 1, 1855, publicly rejecting the fundamental unfairness of Massachusetts marriage law. “While we acknowledge our mutual affection,” they wrote, “by publicly assuming the relationship of husband and wife,” they vowed to uphold a “great principle” by rejecting all “such of the present laws of marriage, as refuse to recognize the wife as an independent, rational being, while they confer upon the husband an injurious and unnatural superiority, investing him with legal powers which no honorable man would exercise, and which no man should possess.”

Putting Sex in the Conversation

Given the diverse struggles for women’s emancipation, can we find a coherent way to tell this history that doesn’t overemphasize the fight for the vote? One approach is to reflect on sex and reproduction—issues that suffragists rarely discussed, since only “respectable” women could make claims to civic authority. By the tenets of 19th-century domesticity, such “ladies” could exercise political influence because of their piety, purity and devotion to motherhood and the home. Any hint of sexuality stigmatized women and discredited the causes they worked for. (Given how Hillary Clinton ’s presidential campaign was tainted even by her husband’s infidelities, this seems to be an continuing problem.)

The dilemma wasn’t so obvious in the decades before the Civil War, when “marriage guides” and other information on sexual pleasure and fertility control circulated fairly widely. Charles Knowlton ’s Fruits of Philosophy , the first American birth-control manual, went through dozens of editions after its publication in 1832. Among married couples in the Northeast and parts of the Midwest, abortion became so widely practiced that doctors estimated one in three pregnancies was ending in abortion, obtained through both surgeries and mail-order abortifacient drugs. Lecturers gave talks on family limitation; as April Haynes shows in her book Riotous Flesh , women in Northeastern towns and cities formed “physiological societies” to share information about sexuality, pregnancy and childbirth (though their curriculum included stern warnings about the dangers of masturbation). Many women viewed this as part of their broader campaign for women’s rights.

Two events in the 1870s sharply curtailed such open conversations. First, suffrage activists like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton made a temporary but ill-fated alliance with glamorous “free love” advocate Victoria Woodhull during her moment of national celebrity in the 1870s. Stanton, in particular, was smitten by Woodhull’s bold libertarian attack on marriage. “Governments,” Woodhull declared, “might just as well assume to determine how people shall exercise their right to think…as to assume to determine that they shall not love, or how they may love, or that they shall love.” She topped this with a ringing declaration of her own sexual freedom: “Yes, I am a Free Lover. I have an inalienable, constitutional and natural right to love whom I may… ; to change that love every day if I please, and…neither you nor any law you can frame have any right to interfere.”

Woodhull shocked middle-class America, and suffragists who allied with her found themselves alienated from Protestant ministers and other allies. At the same time, discussions of sexuality and reproduction were forced underground by passage of the federal Comstock Act in 1873, championed and then enforced by anti-vice crusader Anthony Comstock. Along with similar, often harsher state statutes, the law prevented circulation of any “obscene” materials through the U.S. mail—even private letters describing contraceptive methods. While evidence suggests the law didn’t change Americans’ reproductive practices (use of birth control actually increased in the Comstock era, encouraged after the 1880s by the mail-order availability of reliable, cheap rubber condoms and diaphragms), the Comstock law silenced public discussion of sexuality, contraception and abortion. By deepening shame around those issues, it helped isolate “free love” from the more respectable women’s-rights agenda.

Protesting the Double Standard

That, in part, is why the suffrage narrative ended up dominating the women’s-rights story. Stung by her encounter with Woodhull, Susan B. Anthony in particular became convinced that women’s-rights activists should focus solely on suffrage. In her History of Woman Suffrage and other writings, Anthony rewrote the movement’s early years, arguing that women’s rights had focused from the beginning on the ballot. She downplayed women’s myriad efforts to fight marital coverture, abolish slavery, advance labor rights and work for contraception, abortion and “free love.”

Yet the Declaration of Sentiments remains as testimony to a broader vision. Protesting the sexual double standard, Seneca Falls delegates denounced society for “giving to the world a different code of morals for men and women, by which moral delinquencies which exclude women from society, are not only tolerated but deemed of little account in man.” They observed that through patriarchal laws, Man “endeavored, in every way that he could, to destroy [woman’s] confidence in her own powers, to lessen her self-respect, and to make her willing to lead a dependent and abject life.”

We are heirs not just of Anthony’s “suffrage story,” but also of Ida B. Wells, Sarah Winnemucca, Leonora Barry and Lucy Stone and Henry Blackwell. This history belongs to each of us when we go to the polls and when get out there marching—but also when we volunteer at a local women’s shelter, post a #metoo story or learn how to listen and be better allies to one another.

Our foremothers—and some courageous forefathers, too—offered myriad paths, many ways to work for emancipation. That history, I believe, can help us envision a more expansive future.

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