Women's Rights 1848

Women’s Rights

The movement for women’s rights began in Seneca Falls, New York in 1848. 32 men and 68 women attended this meeting and created a Declaration of Sentiments which demanded that men and women both have equal voting rights. The National Woman’s Suffrage Association was next formed in 1869 by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Stanton to fight for an amendment allowing women to vote. Wyoming was the first state to create a women’s suffrage law later that year and women were finally allowed their right to be picked to serve as the jury.

In 1893, Colorado becomes the first to get the amendment for women’s right to vote, leading fifteen other states to do the same in years following. In 1903, the National Women’s Trade Union League works to improve working conditions for women, and raise the amount that they were getting payed for their hard work. Alice Paul and Lucy Burns in 1913, try their hardest to make the amendment for women to vote become federal. They, and other people from their organization protest in front of the White House and disobey requests for them to be civil.

Big ideas begin coming about in 1916. The first birth control center was opened in Brooklyn, New York by a woman named Margaret Sanger. About ten days after the clinic was opened, Margaret Sanger was arrested and the clinic was shut down by authority officials. Even though this attempt was “ripped to shreds” by the government, other women began joining together and coming up with new ideas that could create more rights for women. Seeing the disagreement in other women for this clinic getting shut down, the court began to support it and only seven years later, Sanger was legally allowed to open another clinic, but this time in New York City. Many years later in 1960, the Food and Drug Administration finally allowed birth-control pills.

An extremely important part of American history happened in 1919, when the women’s suffrage amendment was passed by the Senate and House of Representatives and later became the 19th Amendment to the Constitution. Finally, on August 26th, 1920, this amendment became official and was signed into law.

Mary McLeod Bethune, who was a child of former slaves, put together an organization called the “National Council of Negro Women”. This group of women fought for their rights as black American women, and fought against sexism, job discrimination because of their race, and racism. Along with other prejudices that were occurring in America, the Daughters of Bilitis was founded, and transformed into a political group that were doing their part to try and make lesbians more accepted and less judged in the United States. Later in 1964, the Civil Rights Act basically had no tolerance for discrimination towards people of other race and sex when searching for employment. Businesses who were caught discriminating and businesses that people had complained about would be given whatever consequences necessary. An affirmative action policy was created in 1965 by President Lyndon Johnson. This policy is similar to the Civil Rights Act, which did not allow employers to discriminate against any persons gender when hiring. At this point, every federal employer must carefully make sure that all women and men; all blacks, whites, and Latino’s; all gay, straight and bisexual Americans have the same and equal amounts of opportunities in the work place and educational systems as the already wealthy white males. Advertisement which separate races and sexes become illegal in 1968.

In 1961, President John F. Kennedy had a huge impact on new women’s rights in America. In a report, Kennedy strongly recommends and demands for improved working conditions for women, a paid maternity leave, relatively cheap child care, etc. Within two years of this report issued by Kennedy and within the same year that Betty Friedan released her book The Feminine Mystique, the Equal Pay Act was passed by congress. There were requests for “adjustments which equalize wage or salary rates paid to females with the rates paid to males for comparable quality and quantity of work on the same or similar operations,” therefore once the Equal Pay Act was passed, females began to get the same pay as males in the labor force. In 1970, a United states court pleas rules similar to the ones in the Equal Pay Act. A business owner, or employer, cannot alter the job description or title in order to get away with paying them less than they would pay a male with the same job.