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In the Beginning: North America's Women-1750

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In the Beginning: North America's Women-1750

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Pocahontas first encountered English settlers from Jamestown. She was taken captive for almost a year before she married John Rolfe to become the first mixed- race marriage in North America. Finally her family traveled to England where she was treated as a celebrity before dying due to disease.

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Mistress Margaret Brent from Maryland an unmarried woman of substantial property and standing rattled the status quo. She was appointed lord proprietor's attorney and petitioned the colonial government for the right to vote. Her request was turned down but it showed in 1640's class status trumped gender

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Indian women acted as cultural mediators or negotiators of change between English settlers and Natives. Native women supplied the social skills and knowledge to bridge the cultural gap and mediate trade. Native gender roles regarded women forced to do the important work as her lazy husband was off in the woods. It was not until English missionaries devalued women's work and thought men should be in charge.

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The legal system stated a slave woman's child inherited her unfree status. This focus of maternal succession absolves fathers from paternal responsibility.

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The Glorious Revolution(1688), John Locke's "Two Treatises on Government" (1690) and new understanding of biology and physiology(After 1700) encouraged the division of humans into a two-sex model, rather than women being seen simply as lesser or inadequate versions of men. This new emphasis on difference grounded in fixed biological categories encouraged the view that women as a group were fundamentally different from- and potentially inferior to- men.

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Salem Witch-hunts- Witches predominantly older women were posed as a potential threat of making a pact with the devil. 115 residents were accused 3/4 women and 19 executed. It represented premodern beliefs in the supernatural were more common to rural colonists than a secular approach.

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Women's lives were defined by their roles as wives, daughters and widows. The "Women's sphere" did not exist because they were seen as members of a family. The split between public and private life assigned a higher priority to motherhood as a specific role for women.

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The Revolutionary War disrupted gender expectations. When the war began the Ladies Association of Philadelphia raised funds for the army earning commendation from General George Washington for "female patriotism". Also women had to cope on their own with their husbands gone for war.  Women later received pensions for donning men's clothing. Finally, women were tasked the responsibility of "republican motherhood" which was teaching their sons the qualities of virtue, piety and patriotism.

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Sally Hemings, an African American slave, journeyed to Paris as a servant in the household of her master Thomas Jefferson. Thomas Jefferson had a long standing relationship with Sally Hemings and their relationship was an open secret. Sally was a significant historical figure for the role as she mocks the Declaration of Independence.

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Wages earned by men were barely enough to support their families, so it was up to the wives by substituting their own labor to bring in the additional cash needed. Early industrialization reshaped the domestic chores and brought women's work more in line with the "time and task" routines characteristic of industrial labor.

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Many forms of literature, specifically women's magazines, books and religious tracts dedicated to telling women how they ought to act. No one pushed this message more than Sarah Josepha Hale editor of "The Ladies Magazine"(1828), housekeeping manuals by Lydia Maria Child's "The Frugal Housewife"(1829) and if women wanted to escape demands of domestricity Catharine Sedgwick's "New England Tale"(1827).

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Women flocked to Lowell mills which welcomed female labor to make textile products. At first the excitement of living independently in the companies boardinghouses compensated for the poor conditions, but then female mill workers organized strike to protest the long hours, low pay and poor working conditions. Even though the Lowell mill girls only worked for a couple of years the experience had a lifelong impact and was a transformative experience for multiple generations of American women.

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William Lloyd Garrison founded the New England AntiSlavery Society and welcomed women who shared his views, such as Quaker activist Lucretia Mott, former slave Sojourner Truth, and Angelina/ Sarah Grimké. Their presence caused consternation in the movement, but when other women added their public voices to the cause the participation opened eyes to the plight of African American slaves and women.

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As many as 400 moral reform societies existed tackling many social problems of destitute widows and orphaned children. Women ran meetings, organized outreach drives, raised and distributed vast sums of money, and publicized their activities, all while managing to keep up with their ongoing domestic responsibilities in the private sphere. All of this was done in the name of female moral superiority.

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The Seneca Falls Convention was the first conference ever held on the question of women's rights. Approximately three hundred people met in response to discuss the social, civil and religious condition of Women, Elizabeth Cady Stanton was the wordsmith and turned to the Declaration of Independence to restate it central concept "All men and women are created equal". The Declaration of Sentiments presented eighteen instances of denial of basic right of citizenship, the lack of married women's property rights, the exclusion of women from profitable employment and the lack of access to education. The document pulled all of the circulating issues together to make a compelling case for women as necessary subject of a reform movement of their own.

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Susan B. Anthony met Elizabeth Cady Staton forming one of the greatest political partnerships in women's history.They released a statement in "Women in the Nineteenth Century" saying "We would have every arbitrary barrier thrown down. We would have every path laid open to Women as freely as to Man". This ferment was a worldwide phenomenon constituting the first international women's movement to demand changes in women's status in society.

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Women fought for access to educate in different ways in each section of the country. In the West and Midwest the Morrill Land Grant Act of 1862 spurred the growth of land grant colleges and state universities, which were mainly coeducational from the start, an important boost for women who aspired to learn alongside men. Higher education for women failed to flourish in the Post Civil War South, even for white women, but showed strong growth in the East. While some schools, such as Boston University and Cornell, opened their doors early to women, a more prevalent pattern was the establishment of women's colleges, such as the Seven Sisters.

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The original women's right movement and abolitionism went hand in hand setting aside their activist agenda to build support for the Union cause. The wording of the 14th Amendment introduced "male into the Constitution in the context of voting right. The dispute became who had priority: African American men or white women who wanted to be include in the post Civil War expansion of political liberties. The nod went to African Americans, but the unified women's rights movement split into 2 branches (AWSA) by Lucy Stone in support of what Wendell Phillips called "the negro hour" and (NWSA) by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton which did not.

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Many freed slaves relocated to southern cities such as Atlanta, Charleston and New Orleans to try their luck. In many way black men had more option than black women, since under slavery they had sometimes learned a skilled trade like blacksmithing or carpentry. Black women seeking wages had only one option: domestic service. For example, in Atlanta in 1880, 98% of employed black women worked as domestic worker which was hard work but in contrast to the bondage of slavery they enjoyed definite advantages beyond wage.

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The Chinese faced not just virulent racial prejudice but discriminatory legislation. The Chinese Exclusion Act a legislation designed to limit the entry of Chinese men and women into the United States. With a sex ratio of 13:1 men to women this law made it extremely difficult for Chinese men to establish families.

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Ida B. Wells was forcibly evicted from the "ladies" car and relocated to the "colored" car. She sued the railroad company for her right to ride in the ladies car, when she bought the ticket. Her initial victory in the settlement was overturned confirming the deteriorating climate for African American rights at the end of the 19th century and the Supreme Court's upheld practice of Jim Crow segregation.

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Dawes Severalty Act divided reservation lands into individual family allotments and encouraged Native Americans to remake their societies and gender roles along a European model. At school, female students were expected to learn basic domestic and housewifery skills and conform to Angelo values and customs, including dressing in non- Indian clothing and speaking English. Being torn from tribal customs and familial networks was often wrentching experience, as students found themselves educated to be part of a white society that had no place for them and increasingly out of step with the Native cultures from which they came.

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The two rival factions reunited as the National American Woman Suffrage Association(NAWSA). The arguments for suffrage were undergoing a subtle but important shift. Whereas the early demands had rested on questions of equality, citizenship and women's right to vote as citizens by the 1890's the justification turned more to what women would do with the vote, an argument from expediency. The focus of the movement narrowed from a broad definition of women's rights to a single minded focus on the vote. Now civic minded women dramatically increased their involvement in public life and civic affairs, their contributions strengthened the case for giving women the vote.

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37% of all students in college were women and the percentage increased to 48% by 1920, however the question of profession after college remained. For most the choice remained marriage, but the minority used their higher education for professional options like teaching, librarianship, nursing, social work and home economics.

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After the original suffrage leaders, Elizabeth Stanton, Susan Anthony, Lucy Stone had died off, New NAWSA leaders such as Anna Howard Shaw and Carrie Chapman Catt shifted the momentum. New tactics, recruits and a more supportive political climate paved the way to victory. There was a new focus on spectacle, which literally took the battle to the streets in the form of suffrage parades, meetings and the hawking of suffrage newspapers. Many states adopted suffrage Washington(1910), California(1911), Kansas(1912), New York(1917). Also other movements relating to women picked up like the first birth control clinic in New York (1916). Finally, the term feminism was first introduced at a mass meeting in 1914.

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Post Civil War preserved the Union, abolished slavery, and encouraged westward migration, but it also acted as an important spur to industrialization including the female wage labor. In 1870 women made up 14% of the workforce but by 1910 the percentage had grown to 20%. Women's jobs were shaped by the needs of the economy and individual women seizing new opportunities created by broader economic change.

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A fire broke out at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in Greenwich Village New York City, when workers tried to escape they found the exits were locks by employers preventing them from leaving work early. All 146 working women died, 2 years before the garment workers in New York City sweatshops had gone on strike "the rising of 20,000" led by the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU). The strike lasted 3 moths and ended in concessions (52hr weeks). But the Triangle Shirtwaist Company refused to join the settlement.

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Creation of the U.S. Children's Bureau headed bu Hull House alumna Julia Lathrop and tasked with investigating and improving the conditions of children's lives. One important byproduct was that professionally trained women found employment opportunities in government as it expanded its purview to include issues of vital concern to the nation's Progressive- minded women and women did this without the ability to vote.

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Alice Paul organized a huge parade in Washington to compete with President Wilson's inauguration. Four years later, when Wilson still refused to support suffrage, Paul and members of the National Woman's Party began picketing the White House, an unprecedented act of civil disobedience and was thrown into jail, and went on hunger strikes

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Black Women felt the call of civic engagement through the club movement and settlement houses conducted separately from those of white women. Mary Church Terrell served as the first president of the National Association of Colored organization and by 1914 there were 50,000 women in 1000 clubs. Clubs came into existence to work for educational and social welfare goals in local communities, driven by an emphasis on race pride accompanied by strong leadership role for African American women.

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Carrie Chapman Catt president of the NAWSA concentrated on what she called her "Winning Plan"(1917). The new emphasis downplayed the costly and time consuming focus effort on winning referenda state by state in favor of a massive lobbying effort behind a federal amendment. The suffrage amendment passed the House in (1918), Senate(1919) and sent to the states for ratification where on August 26th, 1920 it was passed.

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Women played a prominent tole in the passage of the Sheppard-Towner Federal Maternity and Infancy Act(1921), the nation's first federally funded public health campaign

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The courts interpreted similar legislation for men as an infringement of the freedom of contract but it allowed for women because of their supposed weakness and need for special protection. An equal rights amendment(ERA) would likely have knocked down those hard fought gain, supporters such as Alice Paul argued that these laws restricted women's economic rights, were demeaning in their stereotyped views of women, and hindered, rather than helped women on the job. This issue split the feminist movement into two camps until 1960's by which time the extension of workplace protection to both sexes had made protective legislation for women unnecessary.

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None of the nations housewives lost their jobs during the Great Depression, by substituting their own labor for goods and services previously purchased, housewives could stretch the family budget to cover periods of unemployment or cut in pay. In the homes the women's world remained largely intact and the round of cooking, housecleaning, and mending became absorbing. The number of married women working doubled during the decade, linking the gendered occupational structure of the economy.

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Eleanor Roosevelt published a book called "It's Up to the Women" challenging America's female citizens to pull the country through the gravest economic crisis it had ever faced. As FDR took unprecedented steps to address the economic crisis and its underlying causes, Eleanor was as his side, always pushing him to do more and perhaps the most influential and admired woman of the 20th century.

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Wagner Labor Relations Act(1935) caused the women's union participation to surge after the federal government put its force behind labor's right to organize. Membership provided higher wages, benefits, and job security

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The New Deal responded to the broad economic crisis with a mix of relief programs, stimulus spending, and economic reforms. The government implemented rudiments of a modern welfare state such as accepting responsibility for the successful performance of the economy and guaranteeing the basic needs of its citizens. The New Deal provided opportunities for professional women long active in those fields revitalizing the Democratic Party. Bound together women showed the continuity between Progressive era reform and the New Deal but also demonstrated women's new post-suffrage roles

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The wartime climate was liberating for single women, who seized opportunities for increased autonomy and independence in their work and personal lives. The female workforce grew 50% between 1940-1945. 350,000 women directly helped by joining the war effort (140,000 served with the Women's Army Corps WAC), (100,000 in the WAVES Women Appointed for Volunteer Emergency Service), (WASP Women Airforce Service Pilots).

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Challenging the perception of the 1950's as an era of conformity and political apathy, women were major agents of change in the postwar period. Groups like the League of Women Voters continued to provide an entry point for women into local civic activities. Women in the labor movement worked to consolidate the gains in the 1930's and 1940's, and the progressive women came together in groups such as Women Strike for peace, to support disarmament and the banning of nuclear testing

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Black women played especially large roles in the emerging civil rights movement dating back to the 1930's and events such as Brown v.s Board(1954), Bus Boycotts(1955-1956), Integration in Little Rock High School(1957), Sit Ins/Freedom Rides(1960-1961), and March on Washington(1963). Support at the grassroots level were supplied by black women who knew how to get things done in the community.

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Eleanor Roosevelt helped chair the President's Commission on the Status of Women in 1961, which helped encourage spirited womanhood that still resonates today. Eleanor Roosevelt represented the enormous contributions modern women made to American life in the years after suffrage was won.

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Second wave of feminism kept the suffrage momentum going until it was time for another mass mobilization to coalesce fueled by women's rights activism. The creation of the President's Commission on the Status of Women in 1961 encouraged the passage of the Equal Pay Act of 1963 and the addition of "sex" to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Finally in 1966 a group of women lead by Friedan formed the National Organization for Women, which styled itself as a civil rights organization for women and later became the largest feminist organization in the country.

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In 1972Congress passed the Equal Rights Amendment and the Education Amendments Act, which prohibited sex discrimination in all aspects of education and provided a huge spur to women's sports. In January of 1973 the Supreme Court upheld women's constitutional right to abortion in Roe v.s Wade.

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Conflicts arose at the National Women's Conference in Houston including support for abortion, lesbian rights, and the ERA. However many women asserted their allegiance to more traditional gender roles, including the differences between sexes and saw the basis for family and civic life. Finally, the election of Ronald Reagan(1980) caused a period of stalemate and retrenchment for the women's movement

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Feminists acclaimed women's newly legal constitutional right to abortion in the Roe v.s Wade, but opponents immediately mobilized to overturn the decision. A powerful right to left movement placed the rights of the fetus ahead of the right of the women. Then in 1977 Congress passed the Hyde Amendment prohibiting federal funds to pay for abortions for welfare recipients even if the procedure was necessary to save the life of the mother.

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As the country moved into a post industrial, service oriented economy, many relatively well paid industrial jobs disappeared, often outsourced to other countries causing a large wealth gap. The economic pressures on women to work intensified to the point where most women, even those with small children, now expected to work for most of their lives and cope on their own

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Clarence Thomas had hearings for sexual harassment. Several women who had worked with Thomas at the Department of Education and the Economic informally contacted the Senate Judiciary Committee. Anita Hill was allowed to testify providing compelling details about patterns of inappropriate conversations, but failed to sway the all male committee.

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The biggest change was the number of women living outside traditional marriage. The large number of single mothers, mainly divorced, separated or widowed women raising children, joined by a much smaller number of single women who chose to have children on their own. One out of three children was born to an unmarried mother with generally lower wages, often hovered near the poverty line in what sociologists call the feminization of poverty.

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How did this book develop your perspective on US history and your understanding of what it means to be an American in 2021?

American Women’s History: A Very Short Introduction by Susan Ware developed my perspective on US history because gender roles are subjective and are constantly fluid through reform over history. For example, our preconceived notion of gender expectations came from the Natives who thought women were most important in society in comparison to their lazy husband wasting their days hunting. It wasn't until the English missionaries devalued women and thought men should be in charge, which gave the baseline for reformation. Also the book made me realize the Civil Rights and Suffrage movements were interconnected with similar beliefs and people fighting for the same rights regarding equality, voting,  jobs, abortion and economic status.
The book broadened my understanding of what it means to be an American because it gave numerous examples of Americans going against traditional standards in the country to fight for themselves. The majority of Americans including women, African Americans, Native Americans and Chinese American immigrants all faced some sort of discrimination which they had to overcome through various led organizations with the purpose of reforming different rights to make the country more inclusive and equal. Finally, these organizations such as the (NAACP & NAWSA) success was partial based on the main figures (MLK Jr., Eleanor Roosevelt, Susan B. Anthony) surrounding the cause, but it was the support at the grassroots level were supplied by black women and everyday civic women who spurred the growth of each cause.