History of women in the United States
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

The history of women in the United States encompasses the lived experiences and contributions of
women A woman is an adult female human. Prior to adulthood, a female human is referred to as a girl (a female child or Adolescence, adolescent). The plural ''women'' is sometimes used in certain phrases such as "women's rights" to denote female hum ...
throughout
American history The history of the lands that became the United States began with the arrival of the first people in the Americas around 15,000 BC. Numerous indigenous cultures formed, and many saw transformations in the 16th century away from more densely ...
.
The earliest women living in what is now the United States were Native Americans. During the 19th century, women were primarily restricted to domestic roles in keeping with
Protestant Protestantism is a Christian denomination, branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Reformation, Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century agai ...
values. The campaign for
women's suffrage in the United States In the 1700's to early 1800's New Jersey did allow Women the right to vote before the passing of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, 19th Amendment, but in 1807 the state restricted the right to vote to "...tax-paying, ...
culminated with the adoption of the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1920. During World War II, many women filled roles vacated by men fighting overseas. Beginning in the 1960s, the second-wave feminist movement changed cultural perceptions of women, although it was unsuccessful in passing the
Equal Rights Amendment The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) is a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution designed to guarantee equal legal rights for all American citizens regardless of sex. Proponents assert it would end legal distinctions between men and ...
. In the 21st century, women have achieved greater representation in prominent roles in American life. The study of
women's history Women's history is the study of the role that women have played in history and the methods required to do so. It includes the study of the history of the growth of woman's rights throughout recorded history, personal achievement over a period of ...
has been a major scholarly and popular field, with many scholarly books and articles, museum exhibits, and courses in schools and universities. The roles of
women A woman is an adult female human. Prior to adulthood, a female human is referred to as a girl (a female child or Adolescence, adolescent). The plural ''women'' is sometimes used in certain phrases such as "women's rights" to denote female hum ...
were long ignored in textbooks and popular histories. By the 1960s, women were being presented more often. An early feminist approach underscored their
victimization Victimisation ( or victimization) is the process of being victimised or becoming a victim. The field that studies the process, rates, incidence, effects, and prevalence of victimisation is called victimology. Peer victimisation Peer victimisati ...
and inferior status at the hands of men. In the 21st century, writers have emphasized the distinctive strengths displayed inside the community of women, with special concern for minorities among women.


Colonial era

The experiences of women during the colonial era varied from colony to colony, but there were some overall patterns. Most of the British settlers were from
England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...
and
Wales Wales ( cy, Cymru ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by England to the Wales–England border, east, the Irish Sea to the north and west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the ...
, with smaller numbers from
Scotland Scotland (, ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a border with England to the southeast and is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the ...
and
Ireland Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...
. Groups of families settled together in
New England New England is a region comprising six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York to the west and by the Canadian provinces ...
, while families tended to settle independently in the Southern colonies. The American colonies absorbed several thousands of
Dutch Dutch commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands * Dutch people () * Dutch language () Dutch may also refer to: Places * Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States * Pennsylvania Dutch Country People E ...
and Swedish settlers. After 1700, most immigrants to
Colonial America The colonial history of the United States covers the history of European colonization of North America from the early 17th century until the incorporation of the Thirteen Colonies into the United States after the Revolutionary War. In the ...
arrived as
indentured servant Indentured servitude is a form of labor in which a person is contracted to work without salary for a specific number of years. The contract, called an " indenture", may be entered "voluntarily" for purported eventual compensation or debt repayment ...
s—young unmarried men and women seeking a new life in a much richer environment. After the 1660s, a steady flow of black slaves arrived, chiefly from the
Caribbean The Caribbean (, ) ( es, El Caribe; french: la Caraïbe; ht, Karayib; nl, De Caraïben) is a region of the Americas that consists of the Caribbean Sea, its islands (some surrounded by the Caribbean Sea and some bordering both the Caribbean Se ...
. Food supplies were much more abundant than in Europe, and there was an abundance of fertile land that needed farm families. However, the disease environment was hostile in the
malaria Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease that affects humans and other animals. Malaria causes symptoms that typically include fever, tiredness, vomiting, and headaches. In severe cases, it can cause jaundice, seizures, coma, or death. S ...
-ridden South, where a large portion of the arrivals died within five years. The American-born children were immune from the fatal forms of malaria.
Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón (c. 1480 – 18 October 1526) was a Spanish magistrate and explorer who in 1526 established the short-lived San Miguel de Gualdape colony, one of the first European attempts at a settlement in what is now the United State ...
’s unsuccessful
American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...
colony in 1526–1527 (
San Miguel de Gualdape San Miguel de Gualdape (sometimes San Miguel de Guadalupe) is a former Spanish colony in present-day Georgetown County, South Carolina, founded in 1526 by Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón.In early 1521, Ponce de León had made a poorly documented, disast ...
) involved about 600 colonizers, including women; only about 150 returned home alive. The first English people to arrive in America were the members of the
Roanoke Colony The establishment of the Roanoke Colony ( ) was an attempt by Sir Walter Raleigh to found the first permanent English settlement in North America. The English, led by Sir Humphrey Gilbert, had briefly claimed St. John's, Newfoundland, in 15 ...
who came to
North Carolina North Carolina () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States. The state is the 28th largest and 9th-most populous of the United States. It is bordered by Virginia to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, Georgia and So ...
in July 1587, with 17 women, 91 men, and 9 boys as the founding colonists. On August 18, 1587,
Virginia Dare Virginia Dare (born August 18, 1587, in Roanoke Colony, date of death unknown) was the first English child born in a New World English colony. What became of Virginia and the other colonists remains a mystery. The fact of her birth is known bec ...
was born in the colony; she was the first English child born in the territory of the United States. Her mother was
Eleanor Dare Eleanor Dare (née White; c. 1568 – after August 18, 1587) of Westminster, London, England, was a member of the Roanoke Colony and the daughter of John White, the colony's governor. While little is known about her life, more is known abo ...
, the daughter of John White, governor of the Roanoke colony. It is not known what happened to the members of the Roanoke colony; however, it is likely that they were attacked by Native Americans, and those not killed were assimilated into the local tribes.


Virginia

Jamestown, the first English settlement in America, was established in 1607 in what is now
Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography and climate of the Commonwealth ar ...
. In 1608 the first English women (two of them,
Mistress Forrest Mistress Forrest (Margaret Foxe) and her maid servant Anne Burras, were the first two European women to come to the Virginia Colony. Arriving on October 1, 1608, in what is known as the Second Supply aboard the English ship the ''Mary and Margaret' ...
and her maid
Anne Burras Anne Burras was an early English settler in Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mounta ...
) arrived in Jamestown.Billings, Warren M. ''Jamestown and the Founding of the Nation''. Gettysburg, PA: Thomas Publications, 1991. Originally published 1988. . p. 35. See also previous citation. Burras became the first English woman to marry in the
New World The term ''New World'' is often used to mean the majority of Earth's Western Hemisphere, specifically the Americas."America." ''The Oxford Companion to the English Language'' (). McArthur, Tom, ed., 1992. New York: Oxford University Press, p. 3 ...
, and her daughter Virginia Laydon was the first child of English colonists to be born in Jamestown.Dorman, John Frederick, ''Adventurers of Purse and Person'', 4th ed., v.2, p. 431. The first Africans since those in
Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón (c. 1480 – 18 October 1526) was a Spanish magistrate and explorer who in 1526 established the short-lived San Miguel de Gualdape colony, one of the first European attempts at a settlement in what is now the United State ...
’s unsuccessful colony in 1526–1527 (
San Miguel de Gualdape San Miguel de Gualdape (sometimes San Miguel de Guadalupe) is a former Spanish colony in present-day Georgetown County, South Carolina, founded in 1526 by Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón.In early 1521, Ponce de León had made a poorly documented, disast ...
) were brought to Jamestown in 1619; they consisted of about twenty people, including at least one woman. They were captives originally from the
Kingdom of Ndongo The Kingdom of Ndongo, formerly known as Angola or Dongo, was an early-modern African state located in what is now Angola. The Kingdom of Ndongo is first recorded in the sixteenth century. It was one of multiple vassal states to Kongo, though ...
in modern
Angola , national_anthem = " Angola Avante"() , image_map = , map_caption = , capital = Luanda , religion = , religion_year = 2020 , religion_ref = , coordina ...
, who had been part of a larger group heading to Mexico, and were taken after an attack on their Portuguese slave ship by English
privateer A privateer is a private person or ship that engages in maritime warfare under a commission of war. Since robbery under arms was a common aspect of seaborne trade, until the early 19th century all merchant ships carried arms. A sovereign or deleg ...
s. Their arrival is seen as a beginning of the
history of slavery in Virginia Slavery in Virginia began with the capture and enslavement of Native Americans during the early days of the English Colony of Virginia and through the late eighteenth century. They primarily worked in tobacco fields. First Africans in Virginia, ...
and also as a starting point for
African-American history African-American history began with the arrival of Africans to North America in the 16th and 17th centuries. Former Spanish slaves who had been freed by Francis Drake arrived aboard the Golden Hind at New Albion in California in 1579. The ...
, given that they were the first such group in mainland
British America British America comprised the colonial territories of the English Empire, which became the British Empire after the 1707 union of the Kingdom of England with the Kingdom of Scotland to form the Kingdom of Great Britain, in the Americas from 16 ...
. Also in 1619, 90 young single women from England went to Jamestown to become wives of the men there, with the women being auctioned off for 150 pounds of tobacco each (to be paid to the shipping company), as that was the cost of each woman's travel to America. Such voyagers were often called " tobacco brides". There were many such voyages to America for this purpose (the 1619 voyage being the first), with the tobacco brides promised free passage and trousseaus for their trouble.


New England

In
New England New England is a region comprising six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York to the west and by the Canadian provinces ...
, the
Puritan The Puritans were English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries who sought to purify the Church of England of Catholic Church, Roman Catholic practices, maintaining that the Church of England had not been fully reformed and should become m ...
settlers from England brought their strong religious values and highly organized social structure with them. They believed a woman should dedicate herself to rearing God-fearing children to the best of her ability. There were ethnic differences in the treatment of women. Among Puritan settlers in New England, wives almost never worked in the fields with their husbands. In German communities in
Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...
, however, many women worked in fields and stables. German and Dutch immigrants granted women more control over property, which was not permitted in the local English law. Unlike English colonial wives, German and Dutch wives owned their own clothes and other items and were also given the ability to write wills disposing of the property brought into the marriage. The New England regional economy grew rapidly in the 17th century, thanks to heavy immigration, high birth rates, low death rates, and an abundance of inexpensive farmland. The population grew from 3000 in 1630 to 14,000 in 1640, 33,000 in 1660, 68,000 in 1680, and 91,000 in 1700. Between 1630 and 1643, about 20,000 Puritans arrived, settling mostly near
Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...
; after 1643 fewer than fifty immigrants a year arrived. The average size of a completed family 1660–1700 was 7.1 children; the birth rate was 49 babies per year per 1000 people, and the death rate was about 22 deaths per year per 1000 people. About 27 percent of the population comprised men between 16 and 60 years old. The benefits of economic growth were widely distributed, with even farm laborers better off at the end of the colonial period. The growing population led to shortages of good farm land on which young families could establish themselves; one result was to delay marriage, and another was to move to new lands further west. In the towns and cities, there was strong entrepreneurship, and a steady increase in the specialization of labor. Wages for men went up steadily before 1775; new occupations were opening for women, including weaving, teaching, and tailoring. The region bordered
New France New France (french: Nouvelle-France) was the area colonized by France in North America, beginning with the exploration of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence by Jacques Cartier in 1534 and ending with the cession of New France to Great Britain and Spai ...
, which used Indian warriors to attack outlying villages. Women were sometimes captured. In the numerous
French and Indian Wars The French and Indian Wars were a series of conflicts that occurred in North America between 1688 and 1763, some of which indirectly were related to the European dynastic wars. The title ''French and Indian War'' in the singular is used in the U ...
the British government poured money in to purchase supplies, build roads and pay colonial soldiers. The coastal ports began to specialize in fishing, international trade and shipbuilding—and after 1780 in
whaling Whaling is the process of hunting of whales for their usable products such as meat and blubber, which can be turned into a type of oil that became increasingly important in the Industrial Revolution. It was practiced as an organized industry ...
. Combined with a growing urban markets for farm products, these factors allowed the economy to flourish despite the lack of technological innovation.


Schooling

Tax-supported schooling for girls began as early as 1767 in New England. It was optional and some towns proved reluctant.
Northampton, Massachusetts The city of Northampton is the county seat of Hampshire County, Massachusetts, United States. As of the 2020 census, the population of Northampton (including its outer villages, Florence and Leeds) was 29,571. Northampton is known as an acade ...
, for example, was a late adopter because it had many rich families who dominated the political and social structures and they did not want to pay taxes to aid poor families. Northampton assessed taxes on all households, rather than only on those with children, and used the funds to support a grammar school to prepare boys for college. Not until after 1800 did Northampton educate girls with public money. In contrast, the town of
Sutton, Massachusetts Sutton, officially the Town of Sutton, is a town in Worcester County, Massachusetts. The population was 9,357 in the 2020 United States Census. Located in the Blackstone Valley, the town was designated as a Preserve America community in 2004. H ...
, was diverse in terms of social leadership and religion at an early point in its history. Sutton paid for its schools by means of taxes on households with children only, thereby creating an active constituency in favor of universal education for both boys and girls. Historians point out that reading and writing were different skills in the colonial era. School taught both, but in places without schools reading was mainly taught to boys and also a few privileged girls. Men handled worldly affairs and needed to read and write. Girls only needed to read (especially religious materials). This educational disparity between reading and writing explains why the colonial women often could read, but could not write so they used an "X" to sign their names.


Hispanic

New Mexico ) , population_demonym = New Mexican ( es, Neomexicano, Neomejicano, Nuevo Mexicano) , seat = Santa Fe , LargestCity = Albuquerque , LargestMetro = Tiguex , OfficialLang = None , Languages = English, Spanish ( New Mexican), Navajo, Ker ...

Hispanic women played a central role in traditional family life in the Spanish colonies of New Mexico; their descendants comprise a large element in northern New Mexico and southern
Colorado Colorado (, other variants) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It encompasses most of the Southern Rocky Mountains, as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of t ...
. Gutierrez finds a high level of illegitimacy, especially among the Indians who were used as
slaves Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...
. He finds, "Aristocrats maintained mistresses and/or sexually exploited to their slaves but rarely admitted to fathering illegitimate children."


Colonial personalities and activities


Pocahontas

The American Indian woman has been seen as a symbolic paradox. Depending on the perspective, she has been viewed as either the "civilized
princess Princess is a regal rank and the feminine equivalent of prince (from Latin ''princeps'', meaning principal citizen). Most often, the term has been used for the consort of a prince, or for the daughter of a king or prince. Princess as a subst ...
" or the "destructive
squaw The English word ''squaw'' is an ethnic and sexual slur, historically used for Indigenous North American women. Contemporary use of the term, especially by non-Natives, is considered derogatory, misogynist, and racist.King, C. Richard,De/Scri ...
". A highly favorable image has surrounded
Pocahontas Pocahontas (, ; born Amonute, known as Matoaka, 1596 – March 1617) was a Native American woman, belonging to the Powhatan people, notable for her association with the colonial settlement at Jamestown, Virginia. She was the daughter of ...
, the daughter of the Native American
chief Powhatan Powhatan ( c. 1547 – c. 1618), whose proper name was Wahunsenacawh (alternately spelled Wahunsenacah, Wahunsunacock or Wahunsonacock), was the leader of the Powhatan, an alliance of Algonquian-speaking Native Americans living in Tsenacommaca ...
in Virginia. John Smith himself said she saved him from being clubbed to death by her father in 1607, though there is some doubt as to whether this is what really happened. She was taken hostage by the colonists in 1612, when she was seventeen. She converted to Christianity and married planter
John Rolfe John Rolfe (1585 – March 1622) was one of the early English settlers of North America. He is credited with the first successful cultivation of tobacco as an export crop in the Colony of Virginia in 1611. Biography John Rolfe is believed ...
in 1614. It was the first recorded
interracial marriage Interracial marriage is a marriage involving spouses who belong to different races or racialized ethnicities. In the past, such marriages were outlawed in the United States, Nazi Germany and apartheid-era South Africa as miscegenation. In 19 ...
in American history. This marriage brought a peace between the colonists and the Indians. She and Rolfe sailed to England in 1616, where she was presented at the court of
King James I James VI and I (James Charles Stuart; 19 June 1566 – 27 March 1625) was King of Scotland as James VI from 24 July 1567 and King of England and Ireland as James I from the union of the Scottish and English crowns on 24 March 1603 until ...
; she died soon after. Townsend argues that Pocahontas was not a powerful princess, but just one of many of the chief's daughters. She was assertive, youthful, and athletic; she returns Rolfe's love while also observing the Algonquin practice of constructing alliances through marriage, and she accepts Christianity as complementing her
Algonquin Algonquin or Algonquian—and the variation Algonki(a)n—may refer to: Languages and peoples *Algonquian languages, a large subfamily of Native American languages in a wide swath of eastern North America from Canada to Virginia **Algonquin la ...
religious worldview. Many leading families in Virginia to this day proudly claim her as an ancestor. Pocahontas quickly became part of early
American folklore American folklore encompasses the folklores that have evolved in the present-day United States since Europeans arrived in the 16th century. While it contains much in the way of Native American tradition, it is not wholly identical to the tribal ...
, reflecting myth, culture, romanticism, colonialism, and historical events as well as narratives of intermarriage, heroic women, and gender and sexuality as metaphors for national, religious, and racial differences.


Cecily Jordan Farrar

Cecily Jordan Farrar was an early woman settler of colonial Jamestown. She came to the colony as a child aboard the ''
Swan Swans are birds of the family (biology), family Anatidae within the genus ''Cygnus''. The swans' closest relatives include the goose, geese and ducks. Swans are grouped with the closely related geese in the subfamily Anserinae where they form t ...
'' in 1610. Arriving in the middle of the
first Anglo-Powhatan war The AngloPowhatan Wars were three wars fought between settlers of the Virginia Colony and Algonquin Indians of the Powhatan Confederacy in the early seventeenth century. The first war started in 1609 and ended in a peace settlement in 1614. The ...
, she established herself as one of the few female
ancient planter "Ancient planter" was a term applied to early colonists who migrated to the Colony of Virginia in what is now the United States, when the colony was managed by the Virginia Company of London. They received land grants if they stayed in the colony fo ...
s. She married
Samuel Jordan Samuel Jordan (died 1623) was an early settler and ancient planter of colonial Jamestown. He arrived in Virginia around 1610, and served as a Burgess in the first representative legislative session in North America. Jordan patented a planta ...
sometime before 1620. After Samuel’s death in 1623, Cecily established herself as one of the heads of household at Jordan’s Journey. In the same year, Cecily became the defendant in the first
breach of promise Breach of promise is a common law tort, abolished in many jurisdictions. It was also called breach of contract to marry,N.Y. Civil Rights Act article 8, §§ 80-A to 84. and the remedy awarded was known as heart balm. From at least the Middle ...
lawsuit in English North America when she chose the marriage proposal of William Farrar over that of Grivell Pooley (see
Cecily Jordan v. Greville Pooley dispute The Cecily Jordan v. Greville Pooley dispute was the first known prosecution for breach of promise in colonial America and the first in which the defendant was a woman. This case was tried in the chambers of the Virginia Company, and never went to ...
).


Mayflower

On November 21, 1620, the
Mayflower ''Mayflower'' was an English ship that transported a group of English families, known today as the Pilgrims, from England to the New World in 1620. After a grueling 10 weeks at sea, ''Mayflower'', with 102 passengers and a crew of about 30, r ...
arrived in what is today
Provincetown, Massachusetts Provincetown is a New England town located at the extreme tip of Cape Cod in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, in the United States. A small coastal resort town with a year-round population of 3,664 as of the 2020 United States Census, Provincet ...
, bringing the Puritan pilgrims. There were 102 people aboard – 18 married women traveling with their husbands, seven unmarried women traveling with their parents, three young unmarried women, one girl, and 73 men. Three fourths of the women died in the first few months; while the men were building housing and drinking fresh water the women were confined to the damp and crowded quarters of the ship. By the time of the
first Thanksgiving Thanksgiving is a federal holiday in the United States celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November. It is sometimes called American Thanksgiving (outside the United States) to distinguish it from the Canadian holiday of the same name and re ...
in autumn 1621, there were only four women from the Mayflower left alive.


Anne Hutchinson

In the 1630s,
Anne Hutchinson Anne Hutchinson (née Marbury; July 1591 – August 1643) was a Puritan spiritual advisor, religious reformer, and an important participant in the Antinomian Controversy which shook the infant Massachusetts Bay Colony from 1636 to 1638. Her ...
(1591–1643) began to hold religious meetings in her home, which attracted the attendance not only of women but of prominent men, including affluent young civil officials. Hutchinson's charisma indeed was so great that it became a threat to the ability of the clergy to govern; this was especially clear when some of her male supporters refused to join the militia in pursuit of
Pequot The Pequot () are a Native American people of Connecticut. The modern Pequot are members of the federally recognized Mashantucket Pequot Tribe, four other state-recognized groups in Connecticut including the Eastern Pequot Tribal Nation, or th ...
natives. The authorities, led by Reverend
John Winthrop John Winthrop (January 12, 1587/88 – March 26, 1649) was an English Puritan lawyer and one of the leading figures in founding the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the second major settlement in New England following Plymouth Colony. Winthrop led t ...
(who was also the colony's governor), first attacked her indirectly by banishing her brother-in-law, a minister who shared her views. Hutchinson herself was summoned to trial late in 1637 and also banished, but allowed to remain under house arrest until the end of winter. In March 1638, she was again brought before the court and formally excommunicated; she and her children soon joined her husband, who had prepared a home for them in the new colony of
Rhode Island Rhode Island (, like ''road'') is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is the List of U.S. states by area, smallest U.S. state by area and the List of states and territories of the United States ...
, which had been founded less than two years earlier by other dissidents exiled from Massachusetts. At nearly 47, In 1660,
Mary Dyer Mary Dyer (born Marie Barrett; c. 1611 – 1 June 1660) was an English and colonial American Puritan turned Quaker who was hanged in Boston, Massachusetts Bay Colony, for repeatedly defying a Puritan law banning Quakers from the colony. ...
, a
Quaker Quakers are people who belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of Christian denomination, denominations known formally as the Religious Society of Friends. Members of these movements ("theFriends") are generally united by a belie ...
who had been among Hutchinson's followers, was hanged in Massachusetts for repeatedly returning to Massachusetts and proselytizing for Quakerism.


Enslaved People

In 1655,
Elizabeth Key Grinstead Elizabeth Key Grinstead (Greenstead) (1630 – January 20, 1665) was one of the first black people of the Thirteen Colonies to sue for freedom from slavery and win. Key won her freedom and that of her infant son John Grinstead on July 21, 1656, i ...
, who was enslaved in Virginia, won her freedom in a lawsuit based on her father's status as a free Englishman (her mother was a slave and her father was her mother's owner), helped by the fact that her father had baptized her as Christian in the Church of England. However, in 1662 the Virginia House of Burgesses passed a law stating that any child born in the colony would follow the status of its mother, slave or free. This was an overturn of a longheld principle of English Common Law, whereby a child's status followed that of the father; it enabled white men who raped enslaved women to hide the mixed-race children born as a result and removed their responsibility to acknowledge, support, or emancipate those children. When Europeans began to arrive in the New World, many indigenous people converted. As a result, religion was less useful as a way to differentiate and skin color became more important. Many elite men had children with enslaved people. Pregnancy out of wedlock was encouraged among nonwhite women as the children would become workers/enslaved. The number of births out of wedlock in Latin America was much higher than in Europe. On the other hand, unmarried white women who had mixed-race children were treated worse than those who had white children. Despite the expectation of men to father mixed-raced children with nonwhite women, rape of a woman by a black man could lead to castration and European women who married indigenous men lost their "European" status. As more white women moved to the new colonies, interracial sex became less common since Europeans became concerned with "racial survival".


Witches

In the small Puritan community of
Salem Village Danvers is a town in Essex County, Massachusetts, United States, located on the Danvers River near the northeastern coast of Massachusetts. The suburb is a fairly short ride from Boston and is also in close proximity to the renowned beaches of Glo ...
, Massachusetts, the
Salem witch trials The Salem witch trials were a series of hearings and prosecutions of people accused of witchcraft in colonial Massachusetts between February 1692 and May 1693. More than 200 people were accused. Thirty people were found guilty, 19 of whom w ...
began in 1692. They began when a group of girls gathered in the evenings in the home of Reverend Parris to listen to stories told by one of his slaves, Tituba. They played fortune-telling games, which were strictly forbidden by the Puritans. The girls began acting strangely, leading the Puritan community to suspect that the girls were victims of witchcraft. The girls named three townswomen as witches –
Tituba Tituba Indian was an enslaved woman who was one of the first to be accused of witchcraft during the Salem witch trials of 1692-1693. She was brought to colonial Massachusetts from Barbados by Samuel Parris, the minister of Salem Village. She w ...
,
Sarah Good Sarah Good (, 1653 – , 1692)Contemporary records commonly used the Julian calendar and the Annunciation Style of enumerating months and years. By the Gregorian calendar and using modern style dating, all of the witch trial events in this artic ...
, and Sarah Osbourne; Tituba confessed to having seen the devil and also stated that there was a coven of witches in the Salem Village area. The other two women insisted they were innocent, but had a formal legal trial where they were found guilty of practicing witchcraft. The affected girls accused other townspeople of torturing them with witchcraft, and some on trial also named others as witches. By the end of the trials in 1693, 24 people had died, some in jail but 19 by hanging, and one by being pressed to death. Some of the accused confessed to being witches, but none of those were hanged, only those who maintained their innocence; those who were hanged include 13 women and 6 men. Salem was the beginning, but it was quickly followed by witchcraft scares in 24 other Puritan communities, with 120 more accused witches. Outside Salem, the episodes were short and not dramatic, and usually involved only one or two people. Most were older women, often widowed or single, with a history of bickering and disputes with neighbors. In October 1692, the governor of Massachusetts halted court proceedings, restricted new arrests, and then dissolved the Court of Oyer and Terminer, thereby ending the witch hunts.


Housewives

"Housewife" (called a "
Goodwife Goodwife ( Scots: ''Guidwife''), usually abbreviated Goody, was a polite form of address for women, formerly used where "Mrs.", "Miss" and "Ms." would be used today. Its male counterpart is Goodman. However, a woman addressed by this title was of ...
" in New England) refers to the married women's economic and cultural roles. Under legal rules of "
coverture Coverture (sometimes spelled couverture) was a legal doctrine in the English common law in which a married woman's legal existence was considered to be merged with that of her husband, so that she had no independent legal existence of her own. U ...
," a wife had no separate legal identity; everything she did was under her authority of her husband. He controlled all the money, including any dowry or inheritance she might have brought to the marriage. She had certain legal rights to a share of the family property when the husband died. She was in charge of feeding, cleaning and medical care for everyone in the household, as well as supervising the servants. The housewife's domain, depending upon wealth, would also include "cellars, pantries, brew houses, milk houses, wash houses and butteries". She was responsible for home manufacturing of clothing, candles, and foodstuffs. At harvest time she helped the menfolk gather the crops. She typically kept a vegetable garden, and cared for the poultry and milked the cows. The husband handled the other livestock and the dogs. Mothers were responsible for the spiritual and civic well being of her children. Good housewives raised good children who would become upstanding citizens in the community. Legal statutes and societal norms allowed for husbands to exert physical power over their wives, which could result in violence. A few housewives were able to file for divorces.


Writers

In 1650, Anne Dudley Bradstreet became America's first published poet, with the publication of her book of poetry entitled ''The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung up in America''. It was also published in London that same year, making Bradstreet the first female poet ever published in both England and the New World. Bradstreet linked sexual and cultural reproduction and posited the nuclear family as the place where individual and community identities are formed; she located education within a familial rather than an institutional setting. The earliest known work of literature by an African American and by a slave, Lucy Terry's poem "Bars Fight," was composed in 1746 and was first published in 1855 in Josiah Holland's "History of Western Massachusetts The poem describes a violent incident that occurred between settlers and Native Americans in Deerfield, Massachusetts in 1746. Former slave
Phillis Wheatley Phillis Wheatley Peters, also spelled Phyllis and Wheatly ( – December 5, 1784) was an American author who is considered the first African-American author of a published book of poetry. Gates, Henry Louis, ''Trials of Phillis Wheatley: Ameri ...
became a literary sensation in 1770 after she wrote a poem on the death of the evangelical preacher George Whitefield. In 1773, 39 of Phillis Wheatley's poems were published in London as a book entitled ''Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral''. This was the first published book by an African American.


One voter

In 1756, Lydia Chapin Taft of
Uxbridge, Massachusetts Uxbridge is a town in Worcester County, Massachusetts first colonized in 1662 and incorporated in 1727. It was originally part of the town of Mendon, MA, Mendon, and named for the Marquess of Anglesey, Earl of Uxbridge. The town is located south ...
became the only colonial woman known to vote, casting a vote in the local town hall meeting in place of her deceased husband. From 1775 until 1807, the state constitution in New Jersey permitted all persons worth fifty pounds who resided in the state for one year to vote; free black people and single women therefore had the vote until 1807, but not married women, as their property ownership was invariably limited.


Great Awakening

In the 1740s evangelists ignited a religious revival—called the
First Great Awakening The First Great Awakening (sometimes Great Awakening) or the Evangelical Revival was a series of Christian revivals that swept Britain and its thirteen North American colonies in the 1730s and 1740s. The revival movement permanently affecte ...
—which energized Protestants up and down the 13 colonies. It was characterized by ecstatic emotionalism and egalitarianism, which split several denominations into old and new factions. They expanded their membership among the white farmers; women were especially active in the Methodist and Baptist churches that were springing up everywhere. Although the women were rarely allowed to preach, they had a voice and a vote in church affairs, and were especially interested in close monitoring of the moral behavior of church members. The Awakening led many women to be introspective; some kept diaries or wrote memoirs. The autobiography of Hannah Heaton (1721–94), a farm wife of North Haven, Connecticut, tells of her experiences in the Great Awakening, her encounters with Satan, her intellectual and spiritual development, and life on the farm. The evangelicals worked hard to convert the slaves to Christianity and were especially successful among black women, who played the role of religious specialists in Africa and again in America. Slave women exercised wide-ranging spiritual leadership among Africans in America in healing and medicine, church discipline, and revivalistic enthusiasm.


American Revolution


The coming of the Revolution

Using the colonies of Virginia and Maryland as a case study, Mellen argues that women in the mid-18th century had a significant role in the world of print and the public sphere. The voice of women was spread through books, newspapers, and popular almanacs. Some women writers sought equal treatment under the law and became involved in public debates even before the Stamp Act controversy of 1765. A powerful coercive tool the Americans used to protest British policies after 1765 was the boycott of imported British consumer goods. Women played an active role in encouraging patriotic boycotts and monitoring compliance. They refused to purchase imports, while emphasizing the virtues of avoiding luxury by using homespun clothing and other locally made products.


The impact of the Revolution

The Revolution had a deep effect on the philosophical underpinnings of American society. One aspect that was drastically changed by the democratic ideals of the Revolution was the roles of women. The idea of
republican motherhood "Republican Motherhood" is an 18th-century term for an attitude toward women's roles present in the emerging United States before, during, and after the American Revolution. It centered on the belief that the patriots' daughters should be raised ...
was born in this period and reflects the importance of Republicanism as the dominant American ideology. Republicanism assumed that a successful republic rested upon the virtue of its citizens. Thus, women had the essential role of instilling their children with values conducive to a healthy republic. During this period, the wife's relationship with her husband also became more liberal, as love and affection instead of obedience and subservience began to characterize the ideal marital relationship. In addition, many women contributed to the war effort through fundraising and running family businesses in the absence of husbands. Whatever gains they had made, however, women still found themselves subordinated, legally and socially, to their husbands, disenfranchised and with only the role of mother open to them.
Deborah Sampson Deborah Sampson Gannett, also known as Deborah Samson or Deborah Sampson, was born on December 17, 1760 in Plympton, Massachusetts. She disguised herself as a man, and served in the Continental Army under the name Robert Shirtliff – sometimes s ...
was the only woman historians know of who fought disguised as a man in the Revolutionary War. In 1782, she disguised herself as a man and joined the 4th Massachusetts Regiment. When her gender was finally discovered she was given an honorable discharge. Many women were attached to the Army to help their husbands, and to handle cooking and cleaning. In 1776, Margaret Corbin fired her husband's cannon after he was killed; she was herself severely wounded in the battle. She received a pension from Congress in recognition of her service, making her the first American woman ever to receive a government pension. At the battle of Monmouth in 1778, Mary Ludwig Hays McCauley fired her husband's cannon after he was wounded in battle. Her story morphed into the "Molly Pitcher" legend. In March 1776,
Abigail Adams Abigail Adams ( ''née'' Smith; November 22, [ O.S. November 11] 1744 – October 28, 1818) was the wife and closest advisor of John Adams, as well as the mother of John Quincy Adams. She was a founder of the United States, an ...
wrote to her husband
John Adams John Adams (October 30, 1735 – July 4, 1826) was an American statesman, attorney, diplomat, writer, and Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Father who served as the second president of the United States from 1797 to 1801. Befor ...
, a leader in the Continental Congress, recommending "In the new code of laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make, I desire you would remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the husbands." Her husband wrote back, "As to your extraordinary code of laws, I cannot but laugh...Depend upon it, we know better than to repeal our masculine systems." Zagarri argues the Revolution created an ongoing debate on the rights of woman and created an environment favorable to women's participation in politics. She asserts that for a brief decade, a "comprehensive transformation in women’s rights, roles, and responsibilities seemed not only possible but perhaps inevitable." women took a small but visible role in the public sphere after 1783. First Lady
Martha Washington Martha Dandridge Custis Washington (June 21, 1731 — May 22, 1802) was the wife of George Washington, the first president of the United States. Although the title was not coined until after her death, Martha Washington served as the inaugural ...
sponsored social events in the national capital. The socializing became known as "the Republican Court" and provided elite women with an opportunity to play backstage political role. This reached a climax in the
Petticoat affair The Petticoat affair (also known as the Eaton affair) was a political scandal involving members of President Andrew Jackson's Cabinet and their wives, from 1829 to 1831. Led by Floride Calhoun, wife of Vice President John C. Calhoun, these wome ...
of 1830, in which the wives of President Andrew Jackson's cabinet members humiliated the wife of the Secretary of War, leading to a political crisis for the president. However the opening of possibilities also engendered a backlash that actually set back the cause of women's rights and led to a greater rigidity that marginalized women from political life.


Quakers

Quakers Quakers are people who belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of denominations known formally as the Religious Society of Friends. Members of these movements ("theFriends") are generally united by a belief in each human's abil ...
were strong in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and had developed equalitarian views of the role of women. They believed that all human beings, regardless of sex, had the same
Inner light The inward light, Light of God, Light of Christ, Christ within, That of God, Spirit of God within us, Light within, and inner light are related phrases commonly used within the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) as metaphors for Christ's li ...
. Quakers were represented among the Founding Fathers by
John Dickinson John Dickinson (November 13 Julian_calendar">/nowiki>Julian_calendar_November_2.html" ;"title="Julian_calendar.html" ;"title="/nowiki>Julian calendar">/nowiki>Julian calendar November 2">Julian_calendar.html" ;"title="/nowiki>Julian calendar" ...
and
Thomas Mifflin Thomas Mifflin (January 10, 1744January 20, 1800) was an American merchant, soldier, and politician from Pennsylvania, who is regarded as a Founding Father of the United States for his roles during and after the American Revolution. Mifflin wa ...
, although Mifflin was expelled by the Society of Friends because of his leadership role in the Continental Army.


1800–1900


Sacagawea

The best known Indian woman after Pocahontas was
Sacagawea Sacagawea ( or ; also spelled Sakakawea or Sacajawea; May – December 20, 1812 or April 9, 1884)Sacagawea
...
(1788–1812), who accompanied the Lewis and Clark Expedition (1804–1806) overland expedition to the Pacific coast and back. The two captains hired her husband, a fur trapper, as an interpreter, with the understanding that she would come along to interpret the Shoshone language, which she did. Sacagawea was only about 16 and delivered a son on the trip. Her role has been greatly exaggerated, in large part because writers wanted to use her as an Indian endorsement of
Manifest Destiny Manifest destiny was a cultural belief in the 19th century in the United States, 19th-century United States that American settlers were destined to expand across North America. There were three basic tenets to the concept: * The special vir ...
.


Midwestern pioneers

Clear-cut gender norms prevailed among the farm families who settled in the Midwestern region between 1800 and 1840. Men were the breadwinners who considered the profitability of farming in a particular location – or "market-minded agrarianism" – and worked hard to provide for their families. They had an almost exclusive voice regarding public matters, such as voting and handling the money. During the migration westward, women's diaries show little interest in and financial problems, but great concern with the threat of separation from family and friends. Furthermore, women experienced a physical toll because they were expected to have babies, supervise the domestic chores, care for the sick, and take control of the garden crops and poultry. Outside the German American community, women rarely did fieldwork on the farm. The women set up neighborhood social organizations, often revolving around church membership, or quilting parties. They exchanged information and tips on child-rearing, and helped each other in childbirth.


Reform movements

Many women in the 19th century were involved in reform movements, particularly
abolitionism Abolitionism, or the abolitionist movement, is the movement to end slavery. In Western Europe and the Americas, abolitionism was a historic movement that sought to end the Atlantic slave trade and liberate the enslaved people. The Britis ...
. In 1831,
Maria W. Stewart Maria W. Stewart ( Miller) (1803 – December 17, 1879) was a free-born African American who became a teacher, journalist, lecturer, abolitionist, and women's rights activist. The first known American woman to speak to a mixed audience of men ...
(who was African-American) began to write essays and make speeches against slavery, promoting educational and economic self-sufficiency for African Americans. The first woman of any color to speak on political issues in public, Stewart gave her last public speech in 1833 before retiring from public speaking to work in women's organizations. Although her career was short, it set the stage for the African-American women speakers who followed;
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (September 24, 1825 – February 22, 1911) was an American Abolitionism in the United States, abolitionist, suffragist, poet, Temperance movement, temperance activist, teacher, public speaker, and writer. Beginning in 1 ...
,
Sojourner Truth Sojourner Truth (; born Isabella Baumfree; November 26, 1883) was an American abolitionist of New York Dutch heritage and a women's rights activist. Truth was born into slavery in Swartekill, New York, but escaped with her infant daughter to f ...
, and
Harriet Tubman Harriet Tubman (born Araminta Ross, March 10, 1913) was an American abolitionist and social activist. Born into slavery, Tubman escaped and subsequently made some 13 missions to rescue approximately 70 slaves, including family and friends, us ...
, among others. Since more direct participation in the public arena was fraught with difficulties and danger, many women assisted the movement by boycotting slave-produced goods and organizing fairs and food sales to raise money for the cause. To take one example of the danger, Pennsylvania Hall was the site in 1838 of the Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women, and as 3,000 white and black women gathered to hear prominent abolitionists such as
Maria Weston Chapman Maria Weston Chapman (July 25, 1806 – July 12, 1885) was an American abolitionist. She was elected to the executive committee of the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1839 and from 1839 until 1842, she served as editor of the anti-slavery jour ...
, the speakers' voices were drowned out by the mob which had gathered outside. When the women emerged, arms linked in solidarity, they were stoned and insulted. The mob returned the following day and burned the hall, which had been inaugurated only three days earlier, to the ground. Furthermore, the
Grimké sisters Sarah Moore Grimké (1792–1873) and Angelina Emily GrimkéUnited States. National Park Service. "Grimke Sisters." U.S. Department of the Interior, October 8, 2014. Accessed:October 14, 2014. (1805–1879), known as the Grimké sisters, were th ...
from South Carolina ( Angelina and
Sarah Grimké Sarah (born Sarai) is a biblical matriarch and prophetess, a major figure in Abrahamic religions. While different Abrahamic faiths portray her differently, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all depict her character similarly, as that of a pi ...
), received much abuse and ridicule for their abolitionist activity, which consisted of traveling throughout the North, lecturing about their first-hand experiences with slavery on their family plantation. Even so, many women's anti-slavery societies were active before the Civil War, the first one having been created in 1832 by free black women from Salem, Massachusetts Fiery abolitionist
Abby Kelley Foster Abby Kelley Foster (January 15, 1811 – January 14, 1887) was an American abolitionist and radical social reformer active from the 1830s to 1870s. She became a fundraiser, lecturer and committee organizer for the influential American Anti-Sl ...
was an ultra-abolitionist, who also led Lucy Stone, and
Susan B. Anthony Susan B. Anthony (born Susan Anthony; February 15, 1820 – March 13, 1906) was an American social reformer and women's rights activist who played a pivotal role in the women's suffrage movement. Born into a Quaker family committed to s ...
into the anti-slavery movement.


Education

In 1821,
Emma Willard Emma Hart Willard (February 23, 1787 – April 15, 1870) was an American woman's education activist who dedicated her life to education. She worked in several schools and founded the first school for women's higher education, the Troy Female S ...
founded the Troy Female Seminary in Troy, New York, which was the first American educational institution to offer young women a pre-college education equal to that given to young men. Students at this private secondary school for girls were taught academic subjects that usually were reserved for males. Subjects included algebra, anatomy, natural philosophy and geography.
Mary Lyon Mary Mason Lyon (; February 28, 1797 – March 5, 1849) was an American pioneer in women's education. She established the Wheaton Female Seminary in Norton, Massachusetts, (now Wheaton College) in 1834. She then established Mount Holyoke Femal ...
(1797–1849) founded Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in 1837. It was the first college opened for women and is now
Mount Holyoke College Mount Holyoke College is a private liberal arts women's college in South Hadley, Massachusetts. It is the oldest member of the historic Seven Sisters colleges, a group of elite historically women's colleges in the Northeastern United States. ...
, one of the Seven Sisters. Lyon was a deeply religious Congregationalist who, although not a minister, preached revivals at her school. She greatly admired colonial theologian Jonathan Edwards for his theology and his ideals of self-restraint, self-denial, and disinterested benevolence. Georgia Female College, now
Wesleyan College Wesleyan College is a private, liberal arts women's college in Macon, Georgia. Founded in 1836, Wesleyan was the first college in the world chartered to grant degrees to women. History The school was chartered on December 23, 1836, as the Geo ...
opened in 1839 as the first Southern college for women.
Oberlin College Oberlin College is a Private university, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college and conservatory of music in Oberlin, Ohio. It is the oldest Mixed-sex education, coeducational liberal arts college in the United S ...
opened in 1833 as Oberlin Collegiate Institute, in the heavily Yankee northeastern corner of Ohio. In 1837, it became the first coeducational college by admitting four women. Soon women were fully integrated into the college, and comprised from a third to a half of the student body. The religious founders, especially evangelical theologian
Charles Grandison Finney Charles Grandison Finney (August 29, 1792 – August 16, 1875) was an American Presbyterian minister and leader in the Second Great Awakening in the United States. He has been called the "Father of Old Revivalism." Finney rejected much of trad ...
, saw women as inherently morally superior to men. Indeed, many alumnae, inspired by this sense of superiority and their personal duty to fulfill God's mission engaged in missionary work. Historians have typically presented coeducation at Oberlin as an enlightened societal development presaging the future evolution of the ideal of equality for women in higher education The enrollment of women in higher education grew steadily after the Civil War. In 1870, 8,300 women comprised 21% of all college students. In 1930, 480,000 women comprised 44% of the student body.Mabel Newcomer, ''A century of higher education for American women'' (1959). p 46


Asylums and health

Women were heavily involved with the rights of people confined in institutions.
Dorothea Dix Dorothea Lynde Dix (April 4, 1802July 17, 1887) was an American advocate on behalf of the indigent mentally ill who, through a vigorous and sustained program of lobbying state legislatures and the United States Congress, created the first gene ...
(1802–1887) was especially well known. She investigated the conditions of many jails, mental hospitals, and almshouses, and presented her findings to state legislatures, leading to reforms and the building of 30 new asylums. In the Civil War she became the Union's Superintendent of Female Nurses. Many women worked at prison reform, and health reform.


Feminism

Judith Sargent Murray Judith Sargent Stevens Murray (May 1, 1751 – June 9, 1820) was an early American advocate for women's rights, an essay writer, playwright, poet, and letter writer. She was one of the first American proponents of the idea of the equality of the ...
published the early and influential essay ''
On the Equality of the Sexes "On the Equality of the Sexes", also known as "Essay: On the Equality of the Sexes", is a 1790 essay by Judith Sargent Murray. Murray wrote the work in 1770 but did not release it until April 1790, when she published it in two parts in two separate ...
'' in 1790, blaming poor standards in female education as the root of women's problems. However, scandals surrounding the personal lives of English contemporaries
Catharine Macaulay Catharine Macaulay (née Sawbridge, later Graham; 23 March 1731 – 22 June 1791), was an English Whig republican historian. Early life Catharine Macaulay was a daughter of John Sawbridge (1699–1762) and his wife Elizabeth Wanley (died 1733 ...
and
Mary Wollstonecraft Mary Wollstonecraft (, ; 27 April 1759 – 10 September 1797) was a British writer, philosopher, and advocate of women's rights. Until the late 20th century, Wollstonecraft's life, which encompassed several unconventional personal relationsh ...
pushed feminist authorship into private correspondence from the 1790s through the early decades of the nineteenth century. Feminist essays from John Neal, particularly those in ''
Blackwood's Magazine ''Blackwood's Magazine'' was a British magazine and miscellany printed between 1817 and 1980. It was founded by the publisher William Blackwood and was originally called the ''Edinburgh Monthly Magazine''. The first number appeared in April 1817 ...
'' and ''
The Yankee ''The Yankee'' (later retitled ''The Yankee and Boston Literary Gazette'') was one of the first cultural publications in the United States, founded and edited by John Neal (1793–1876), and published in Portland, Maine as a weekly periodical ...
'' in the 1820s, filled an intellectual gap between Murray and the leaders of the 1848
Seneca Falls Convention The Seneca Falls Convention was the first women's rights convention. It advertised itself as "a convention to discuss the social, civil, and religious condition and rights of woman".Wellman, 2004, p. 189 Held in the Wesleyan Methodist Church ...
, which is generally considered the beginning of the
first wave of feminism First-wave feminism was a period of feminist activity and thought that occurred during the 19th and early 20th century throughout the Western world. It focused on legal issues, primarily on securing women's right to vote. The term is often used ...
. As a male writer insulated from many common forms of attack against female feminist thinkers, Neal’s advocacy was crucial to bringing feminism back into the American mainstream. The 1848 Convention was inspired by the fact that in 1840, when
Elizabeth Cady Stanton Elizabeth Cady Stanton (November 12, 1815 – October 26, 1902) was an American writer and activist who was a leader of the women's rights movement in the U.S. during the mid- to late-19th century. She was the main force behind the 1848 Seneca ...
met
Lucretia Mott Lucretia Mott (''née'' Coffin; January 3, 1793 – November 11, 1880) was an American Quaker, abolitionist, women's rights activist, and social reformer. She had formed the idea of reforming the position of women in society when she was amongs ...
at the
World Anti-Slavery Convention The World Anti-Slavery Convention met for the first time at Exeter Hall in London, on 12–23 June 1840. It was organised by the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, largely on the initiative of the English Quaker Joseph Sturge. The exclu ...
in London, the conference refused to seat Mott and other women delegates from America because of their gender. Stanton, the young bride of an antislavery agent, and Mott, a Quaker preacher and veteran of reform, talked then of calling a convention to address the condition of women. An estimated three hundred women and men attended the Convention, including notables
Lucretia Mott Lucretia Mott (''née'' Coffin; January 3, 1793 – November 11, 1880) was an American Quaker, abolitionist, women's rights activist, and social reformer. She had formed the idea of reforming the position of women in society when she was amongs ...
and
Frederick Douglass Frederick Douglass (born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, February 1817 or 1818 – February 20, 1895) was an American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. After escaping from slavery in Maryland, he became ...
. At the conclusion, 68 women and 32 men signed the "
Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions The Declaration of Sentiments, also known as the Declaration of Rights and Sentiments, is a document signed in 1848 by 68 women and 32 men—100 out of some 300 attendees at the first women's rights convention to be organized by women. Held in Sen ...
", which was written by
Elizabeth Cady Stanton Elizabeth Cady Stanton (November 12, 1815 – October 26, 1902) was an American writer and activist who was a leader of the women's rights movement in the U.S. during the mid- to late-19th century. She was the main force behind the 1848 Seneca ...
and the M'Clintock family. The style and format of the "Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions" was that of the "
Declaration of Independence A declaration of independence or declaration of statehood or proclamation of independence is an assertion by a polity in a defined territory that it is independent and constitutes a state. Such places are usually declared from part or all of the ...
;" for example the "Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions" stated, "We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men and women are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights." The Declaration further stated, "The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man towards woman." The declaration went on to specify female grievances in regard to the laws denying married women ownership of wages, money, and property (all of which they were required to turn over to their husbands; laws requiring this, in effect throughout America, were called coverture laws), women's lack of access to education and professional careers, and the lowly status accorded women in most churches. Furthermore, the Declaration declared that women should have the right to vote. 2 weeks later, some of the participants in the Seneca Falls Convention organized the Rochester Women's Rights Convention in
Rochester, New York Rochester () is a City (New York), city in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York, the county seat, seat of Monroe County, New York, Monroe County, and the fourth-most populous in the state after New York City, Buffalo, New York, Buffalo, ...
. This convention elected
Abigail Bush Abigail Norton Bush (March 19, 1810 – December 10, 1898) was an abolitionist and women's rights activist in Rochester, New York. She served as president of the Rochester Women's Rights Convention, which was held in 1848 immediately after the fi ...
as its president, making it the first public meeting composed of both men and women in the U.S. to choose a woman as its presiding officer. It was followed by other state and local conventions in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York. The first
National Woman's Rights Convention The National Women's Rights Convention was an annual series of meetings that increased the visibility of the early women's rights movement in the United States. First held in 1850 in Worcester, Massachusetts, the National Women's Rights Convention ...
was held in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1850. Women's rights conventions were held regularly from 1850 until the start of the Civil War.


Medicine

In 1849,
Elizabeth Blackwell Elizabeth Blackwell (3 February 182131 May 1910) was a British physician, notable as the first woman to receive a medical degree in the United States, and the first woman on the Medical Register of the General Medical Council for the United Ki ...
(1821–1910), graduated from
Geneva Medical College Geneva Medical College was founded on September 15, 1834, in Geneva, New York, as a separate department (college) of Geneva College, currently known as Hobart and William Smith Colleges. In 1871, the medical school was transferred to Syracuse ...
in New York at the head of her class and thus became the first female doctor in America. In 1857, she and her sister Emily, and their colleague
Marie Elisabeth Zakrzewska Marie Elisabeth Zakrzewska (6 September 1829 – 12 May 1902) was a Polish-American physician who made her name as a pioneering female doctor in the United States. As a Berlin native, she found great interest in medicine after assisting her mother ...
(1829–1902), founded the
New York Infirmary for Indigent Women and Children NewYork-Presbyterian Lower Manhattan Hospital is a nonprofit, acute care, teaching hospital in New York City and is the only hospital in Lower Manhattan south of Greenwich Village. It is part of the NewYork-Presbyterian Healthcare System and one ...
, the first American hospital run by women and the first dedicated to serving women and children.


Industry

The rapid growth of textile manufacturing in New England 1815–1860 caused a shortage of workers. Recruiters were hired by mill agents to enlist young women. Between 1830 and 1850, thousands of unmarried farm women moved from rural areas, where there was no paid employment, to the nearby mill villages. Farmers' daughters worked to aid their families financially, save for marriage, and widen their horizons. As the textile industry grew, immigration also grew. By the 1850s the mill owners replaced all the Yankee girls with immigrants, especially
Irish Irish may refer to: Common meanings * Someone or something of, from, or related to: ** Ireland, an island situated off the north-western coast of continental Europe ***Éire, Irish language name for the isle ** Northern Ireland, a constituent unit ...
and
French Canadians French Canadians (referred to as Canadiens mainly before the twentieth century; french: Canadiens français, ; feminine form: , ), or Franco-Canadians (french: Franco-Canadiens), refers to either an ethnic group who trace their ancestry to Fren ...
.


Abolitionists

Women continued to be active in reform movements in the second half of the 19th century. In 1851, former slave
Sojourner Truth Sojourner Truth (; born Isabella Baumfree; November 26, 1883) was an American abolitionist of New York Dutch heritage and a women's rights activist. Truth was born into slavery in Swartekill, New York, but escaped with her infant daughter to f ...
gave a famous speech, called "
Ain't I a Woman? "Ain't I a Woman?" is a speech, delivered extemporaneously, by Sojourner Truth (1797–1883), born into slavery in New York State. Some time after gaining her freedom in 1827, she became a well known anti-slavery speaker. Her speech was deliver ...
”, at the Women's Convention in Akron, Ohio. In this speech she condemned the attitude that women were too weak to have equal rights with men, noting the hardships she herself had endured as a slave. In 1852,
Harriet Beecher Stowe Harriet Elisabeth Beecher Stowe (; June 14, 1811 – July 1, 1896) was an American author and abolitionist. She came from the religious Beecher family and became best known for her novel ''Uncle Tom's Cabin'' (1852), which depicts the harsh ...
wrote the abolitionist book ''
Uncle Tom's Cabin ''Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly'' is an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in two volumes in 1852, the novel had a profound effect on attitudes toward African Americans and slavery in the U. ...
''. Begun as a serial for the Washington anti-slavery weekly, the
National Era ''The National Era'' was an abolitionist newspaper published weekly in Washington, D.C., from 1847 to 1860. Gamaliel Bailey was its editor in its first year. ''The National Era Prospectus'' stated in 1847: Each number contained four pages of ...
, the book focused public interest on the issue of slavery, and was deeply controversial for its strong anti-slavery stance at the time it was written. In writing the book, Stowe drew on her personal experience: she was familiar with slavery, the antislavery movement, and the
Underground Railroad The Underground Railroad was a network of clandestine routes and safe houses established in the United States during the early- to mid-19th century. It was used by enslaved African Americans primarily to escape into free states and Canada. T ...
because Kentucky, across the Ohio River from Cincinnati, Ohio, where Stowe had lived, was a slave state. ''Uncle Tom's Cabin'' was a best-seller, selling 10,000 copies in the United States in its first week; 300,000 in the first year; and in Great Britain, 1.5 million copies in one year. Following publication of the book, Harriet Beecher Stowe became a celebrity, speaking against slavery both in America and Europe. She wrote ''
A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin ''A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin'' is a book by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. It was published to document the veracity of the depiction of slavery in Stowe's anti-slavery novel ''Uncle Tom's Cabin'' (1852). First published in 1853 by Jewet ...
'' in 1853, extensively documenting the realities on which the book was based, to refute critics who tried to argue that it was inauthentic; and published a second anti-slavery novel, ''Dred'', in 1856. Later, when she visited
President Abraham Lincoln Abraham Lincoln ( ; February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was an American lawyer, politician, and statesman who served as the 16th president of the United States from 1861 until his assassination in 1865. Lincoln led the nation throu ...
, the family's oral tradition states that he greeted her as "the little lady who made this big war." Campaigners for other social changes, such as Caroline Norton who campaigned for women's rights, respected and drew upon Stowe's work. In the years before the Civil War,
Harriet Tubman Harriet Tubman (born Araminta Ross, March 10, 1913) was an American abolitionist and social activist. Born into slavery, Tubman escaped and subsequently made some 13 missions to rescue approximately 70 slaves, including family and friends, us ...
, a runaway slave herself, freed more than 70 slaves over the course of 13 secret rescue missions to the South. In June 1863, Harriet Tubman became the first woman to plan and execute an armed expedition in United States history. Acting as an advisory to Colonel James Montgomery and his 300 soldiers, Tubman led them in a raid in South Carolina from Port Royal to the interior, some twenty-five miles up the Combahee River, where they freed approximately 800 slaves.


Civil War


Civil War North

During the
American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states th ...
(1861–1865)
Dorothea Dix Dorothea Lynde Dix (April 4, 1802July 17, 1887) was an American advocate on behalf of the indigent mentally ill who, through a vigorous and sustained program of lobbying state legislatures and the United States Congress, created the first gene ...
served as the Union's Superintendent of Female Nurses throughout the war, and was in charge of all female nurses working in army hospitals, which was over 3,000 nurses. Women provided casualty care and nursing to Union and Confederate troops at field hospitals and on the Union Hospital Ship ''
Red Rover Red Rover (also known as The King's Run and Forcing the City Gates) is a team game played primarily by children on playgrounds, requiring 10+ players. The game has changed over several decades, evolving from a regular "running across" game, wit ...
''. Dr. Mary Edwards Walker served as assistant surgeon with General Burnside's Union forces in 1862 and with an Ohio regiment in East Tennessee the following year. Imprisoned in Richmond as a spy, she was eventually released and returned to serve as a hospital surgeon at a women's prisoner-of-war hospital in Louisville, Kentucky. After the war, President Andrew Johnson awarded her the
Medal of Honor The Medal of Honor (MOH) is the United States Armed Forces' highest military decoration and is awarded to recognize American soldiers, sailors, marines, airmen, guardians and coast guardsmen who have distinguished themselves by acts of valor. ...
, making her the only woman ever to receive the United States' highest military honor. The number of female soldiers who served in disguise was perhaps 400 to 750.


Confederacy

At the start southern women gave zealous support for their menfolk going off to war. They saw the men as protectors and invested heavily in the romantic idea of men fighting to defend the honor of their country, family, and way of life. Mothers and wives were able to keep in contact with their loved ones who had chosen to enlist by writing them letters. African American women, on the other hand, had experienced the breakup of families for generations and were once again dealing with this issue at the outbreak of war. By summer 1861, the Union naval blockade virtually shut down the export of cotton and the import of manufactured goods. Food that formerly came overland was cut off. Women had charge of making do. They cut back on purchases, brought out old spinning wheels and enlarged their gardens with peas and peanuts to provide clothing and food. They used ersatz substitutes when possible, but there was no real coffee and it was hard to develop a taste for the okra or chicory substitutes used. The households were severely hurt by inflation in the cost of everyday items and the shortages of food, fodder for the animals, and medical supplies for the wounded. The Georgia legislature imposed cotton quotas, making it a crime to grow an excess. But food shortages only worsened, especially in the towns. The overall decline in food supplies, made worse by the collapsing transportation system, led to serious shortages and high prices in urban areas. When bacon reached a dollar a pound in 1863, the poor women of Richmond, Atlanta and many other cities began to riot; they broke into shops and warehouses to seize food. The women expressed their anger at ineffective state relief efforts, speculators, merchants and planters. As wives and widows of soldiers they were hurt by the inadequate welfare system.


Postwar South

About 250,000 Southern soldiers never came home, or 30% of all white men aged 18 to 40 in 1860. Widows who were overwhelmed often abandoned the farm and merged into the households of relatives, or even became refugees living in camps with high rates of disease and death. In the Old South, being an "old maid" was something of an embarrassment to the woman and her family. Now it became almost a norm. Some women welcomed the freedom of not having to marry. Divorce, while never fully accepted, became more common. The concept of the "New Woman" emerged—she was self-sufficient, independent, and stood in sharp contrast to the "Southern Belle" of antebellum lore. The work patterns of elite white women changed radically after the Civil War, depending on their stage in the life cycle. Women over age 50 changed least, insisting that they needed servants and continuing their traditional managerial roles. The next generation, comprising the young wives and mothers during the Civil War, depended much less on black servants, and displayed greater flexibility toward household work. The youngest generation, which matured during the war and Reconstruction, did many of their own domestic chores. Some sought paid jobs outside the household, especially in teaching, which allowed an escape from domestic chores and obligatory marriage.


Settling the Great Plains

The arrival of the railroads in the 1870s open up the
Great Plains The Great Plains (french: Grandes Plaines), sometimes simply "the Plains", is a broad expanse of flatland in North America. It is located west of the Mississippi River and east of the Rocky Mountains, much of it covered in prairie, steppe, an ...
for settlement, for now it was possible to ship wheat and other crops at low cost to the urban markets in the East, and Europe. Immigrants poured in, especially from
Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...
and
Scandinavia Scandinavia; Sámi languages: /. ( ) is a subregion#Europe, subregion in Northern Europe, with strong historical, cultural, and linguistic ties between its constituent peoples. In English usage, ''Scandinavia'' most commonly refers to Denmark, ...
. On the plains, very few single men attempted to operate a farm or ranch by themselves; they clearly understood the need for a hard-working wife, and numerous children, to handle the many chores, including child-rearing, feeding and clothing the family, managing the housework, feeding the hired hands, and, especially after the 1930s, handling the paperwork and financial details. During the early years of settlement in the late 19th century, farm women played an integral role in assuring family survival by working outdoors. After a generation or so, women increasingly left the fields, thus redefining their roles within the family. New conveniences such as sewing and washing machines encouraged women to turn to domestic roles. The scientific housekeeping movement, promoted across the land by the farm magazines and (after 1914) by government extension agents, as well as county fairs which featured achievements in home cookery and canning, advice columns for women in the farm papers, and home economics courses in the schools. Although the eastern image of farm life in the prairies emphasized the isolation of the lonely farmer and farm wife, supposedly with few neighbors within range. In reality, they created a rich social life for themselves. They often sponsored activities that combined work, food, and entertainment such as barn raisings, corn huskings, quilting bees, Grange meetings, church activities, and school functions. The womenfolk organized shared meals and potluck events, as well as extended visits between families. The
Grange Grange may refer to: Buildings * Grange House, Scotland, built in 1564, and demolished in 1906 * Grange Estate, Pennsylvania, built in 1682 * Monastic grange, a farming estate belonging to a monastery Geography Australia * Grange, South Austral ...
was a nationwide farmers' organization; it reserved high offices for women, gave them a voice in public affairs, and promoted equality and suffrage.


Suffrage

The
women's suffrage movement Women's suffrage is the women's rights, right of women to Suffrage, vote in elections. Beginning in the start of the 18th century, some people sought to change voting laws to allow women to vote. Liberal political parties would go on to gran ...
began with the 1848
Seneca Falls Convention The Seneca Falls Convention was the first women's rights convention. It advertised itself as "a convention to discuss the social, civil, and religious condition and rights of woman".Wellman, 2004, p. 189 Held in the Wesleyan Methodist Church ...
; many of the activists became politically aware during the abolitionist movement. The movement reorganized after the Civil War, gaining experienced campaigners, many of whom had worked for prohibition in the
Women's Christian Temperance Union The Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) is an international temperance organization, originating among women in the United States Prohibition movement. It was among the first organizations of women devoted to social reform with a program th ...
. By the end of the 19th century a few western states had granted women full voting rights, though women had made significant legal victories, gaining rights in areas such as property and child custody. In 1866, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony formed the
American Equal Rights Association The American Equal Rights Association (AERA) was formed in 1866 in the United States. According to its constitution, its purpose was "to secure Equal Rights to all American citizens, especially the right of suffrage, irrespective of race, color o ...
, an organization for white and black women and men dedicated to the goal of suffrage for all. In 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment was passed, this was the first Amendment to ever specify the voting population as "male". In 1869, the women's rights movement split into two factions as a result of disagreements over the Fourteenth and soon-to-be-passed Fifteenth Amendments, with the two factions not reuniting until 1890. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony formed the more radical, New York-based National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA). Lucy Stone, Henry Blackwell, and
Julia Ward Howe Julia Ward Howe (; May 27, 1819 – October 17, 1910) was an American author and poet, known for writing the " Battle Hymn of the Republic" and the original 1870 pacifist Mother's Day Proclamation. She was also an advocate for abolitionism ...
organized the more conservative American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA), which was centered in Boston. In 1870, the Fifteenth Amendment enfranchised black men. NWSA refused to work for its ratification, arguing, instead, that it be "scrapped" in favor of a Sixteenth Amendment providing universal suffrage. Frederick Douglass broke with Stanton and Anthony over NWSA's position. In 1869, Wyoming became the first territory or state in America to grant women suffrage. In 1870,
Louisa Ann Swain Louisa Ann Swain (née Gardner; 1801 – January 25, 1880) was the first woman in the United States to vote in a General election (U.S.), general election. She cast her ballot on September 6, 1870, in Laramie, Wyoming. Biography Born Louisa An ...
became the first woman in the
United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
to vote in a
general election A general election is a political voting election where generally all or most members of a given political body are chosen. These are usually held for a nation, state, or territory's primary legislative body, and are different from by-elections ( ...
. She cast her ballot on September 6, 1870, in
Laramie, Wyoming Laramie is a city in and the county seat of Albany County, Wyoming, United States. The population was estimated 32,711 in 2019, making it the third-largest city in Wyoming after Cheyenne and Casper. Located on the Laramie River in southeastern ...
. From 1870 to 1875 several women, including
Virginia Louisa Minor Virginia Louisa Minor (March 27, 1824 – August 14, 1894) was an American women's suffrage activist. She is best remembered as the plaintiff in '' Minor v. Happersett'', an 1875 United States Supreme Court case in which Minor unsuccessfully arg ...
,
Victoria Woodhull Victoria Claflin Woodhull, later Victoria Woodhull Martin (September 23, 1838 – June 9, 1927), was an American leader of the women's suffrage movement who ran for President of the United States in the 1872 election. While many historians ...
, and
Myra Bradwell Myra Colby Bradwell (February 12, 1831 – February 14, 1894) was an American publisher and political activist. She attempted in 1869 to become the first woman to be admitted to the Illinois bar to practice law, but was denied admission by the ...
, attempted to use the Fourteenth Amendment in the courts to secure the vote (Minor and Woodhull) or the right to practice law (Bradwell), but they were all unsuccessful. In 1872, Susan B. Anthony was arrested and brought to trial in Rochester, New York, for attempting to vote for Ulysses S. Grant in the presidential election; she was convicted and fined $100 and the costs of her prosecution but refused to pay. At the same time,
Sojourner Truth Sojourner Truth (; born Isabella Baumfree; November 26, 1883) was an American abolitionist of New York Dutch heritage and a women's rights activist. Truth was born into slavery in Swartekill, New York, but escaped with her infant daughter to f ...
appeared at a polling booth in Battle Creek, Michigan, demanding a ballot; she was turned away. Also in 1872,
Victoria Woodhull Victoria Claflin Woodhull, later Victoria Woodhull Martin (September 23, 1838 – June 9, 1927), was an American leader of the women's suffrage movement who ran for President of the United States in the 1872 election. While many historians ...
became the first woman to run for President, although she could not vote and only received a few votes, losing to Ulysses S. Grant. She was nominated to run by the Equal Rights Party, and advocated the
8-hour work day The eight-hour day movement (also known as the 40-hour week movement or the short-time movement) was a social movement to regulate the length of a working day, preventing excesses and abuses. An eight-hour work day has its origins in the 1 ...
, graduated income tax, social welfare programs, and profit sharing, among other positions. Victoria Woodhull was an activist for women's rights and advocated for " Free Love" which focused on the right to marriage, divorce and child birth The double standards of men and their will was strong to keep women powerless. In addition, to resisting full equality between race and gender. It was an era of battling for what one believed and should be entitled to. Victoria Woodhull fought for her universal rights and took advantage of the amendments in her favor. Tensions were high during 1872, it was a pivotal year in Reconstruction politics and the death of radical republicanism in national politics. As nominees of The Equal Rights Party, Woodhull and Fredrick Douglas, provided a provocative campaign as the deliberately challenged the fear of miscegenation and gender bias. They restored hope and universal rights for everyone regardless of gender and race as well as offered to reunite divided reformers. Although Woodhull did not win election, her election demanded new political views and equal rights for everyone. In 1874, The Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) was founded by Annie Wittenmyer to work for the prohibition of alcohol; with Frances Willard at its head (starting in 1876), the WCTU also became an important force in the fight for women's suffrage. In 1878, a woman suffrage amendment was first introduced in the United States Congress, but it did not pass.


Domesticity

Kristin Hoganson’s essay ‘Cosmopolitan Domesticity: Importing the American Dream, 1865-1920' sets out how ‘bourgeois American women, in their capacity as homemakers, participated in international relations’. After the Civil War, there was a boom in interior design writing, with many advocating the adoption of foreign styles throughout the household. Interior design in middle-class houses was seen at this time as an important means of self-expression, shown by the fact that a popular design manual commented that ‘We judge her woman’stemperament, her habits, her inclinations, by the interior of her home’. Pre-war, foreign styles were usually limited to the European fashions, but in the second half of the century, objects were being imported from further afield. Women wanted to show their status through the extravagant interior design of their homes, but as Kristin Hoganson points out, ‘their decision to do so through exhibiting imported objects and replicating distant styles illuminates something beyond local jostling’. The increasingly expansionist nature of U.S. foreign policy post-civil war contributed to the level of interest in cosmopolitan interior design, as it led to an increased geographical awareness amongst the middle classes of America through travel writings, photographs, missionary exhibits, etc. Moreover, it wasn't just tourists who were bringing foreign goods and ideas back to America; it was also via missionaries, professionals, businessmen, servicemen and government agents.


Cult of Domesticity

The "
Cult of Domesticity The Culture of Domesticity (often shortened to Cult of Domesticity) or Cult of True Womanhood is a term used by historians to describe what they consider to have been a prevailing value system among the upper and middle classes during the 19th ce ...
" was a new ideal of womanhood that emerged at this time. This ideal rose from the reality that a 19th-century middle-class family did not have to make what it needed in order to survive, as previous families had to, and therefore men could now work in jobs that produced goods or services while their wives and children stayed at home. The ideal woman became one who stayed at home and taught children how to be proper citizens. ''
American Cookery ''American Cookery'', by Amelia Simmons, is the first known cookbook written by an American, published in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1796. Until then, the cookbooks printed and used in the Thirteen Colonies were British. Its full title is: '' ...
'' written in 1796 by
Amelia Simmons Amelia Simmons is an American writer noted for publishing the '' American Cookery''. This cookbook is considered an important text that provided insights into the language and culinary practices of former colonists, helping shape American identit ...
, was the first published cookbook written by an American. It was popular and was published in many editions. The culture of honor in the antebellum South was linked to women's social status and Southern evangelicalism. The re were no sharp gender lines such that women strictly inhabited the realm of evangelicalism while men upheld honor. Women felt subject to notions of honor related to patriarchy, sexuality, class identity, and virtue. The different sex roles inhabited by Southern men and women affected masculine and feminine honor, as is the moral authority women held over men.


Jobs and professions

Many young women worked as servants or in shops and factories until marriage, then typically became full-time housewives. However black, Irish and Swedish adult women often worked as servants. After 1860, as the larger cities opened
department stores A department store is a retail establishment offering a wide range of consumer goods in different areas of the store, each area ("department") specializing in a product category. In modern major cities, the department store made a dramatic appea ...
, middle-class women did most of the shopping; increasingly they were served by young middle-class women clerks. Typically, most young women quit their jobs when they married. In some ethnic groups, However, married women were encouraged to work, especially among African-Americans, and Irish Catholics. When the husband operated a small shop or restaurant, wives and other family members could find employment there. Widows and deserted wives often operated boarding houses. Career women were few. The teaching profession had once been heavily male, but as schooling expanded many women took on teaching careers. If they remained unmarried they could have a prestigious, poorly paying lifetime career. At the end of the period nursing schools opened up new opportunities for women, but medical schools remained nearly all male. Business opportunities were very rare, unless it was a matter of a widow taking over her late husband's small business. However the rapid acceptance of the
sewing machine A sewing machine is a machine used to sew fabric and materials together with thread. Sewing machines were invented during the first Industrial Revolution to decrease the amount of manual sewing work performed in clothing companies. Since the inv ...
made housewives more productive and opened up new careers for women running their own small millinery and dressmaking shops. American women achieved several firsts in the professions in the second half of the 1800s. In 1866,
Lucy Hobbs Taylor Lucy Hobbs Taylor (March 14, 1833 – October 3, 1910) was an American school teacher and a dentist, known for being the first woman to graduate from dental school ( Ohio College of Dental Surgery in 1866). She was originally denied admittance ...
became the first American woman to receive a dentistry degree. In 1878, Mary L. Page became the first woman in America to earn a degree in architecture when she graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In 1879, Belva Lockwood became the first woman allowed to argue before the Supreme Court; the first case in which she did so was the 1880 case ''Kaiser v. Stickney''. Arabella Mansfield had previously become America's first female lawyer when she was admitted to the bar in 1869. In 1891, Marie Owens, born in Canada, was hired in Chicago as America's first female police officer. Due to women's greater involvement in law and law enforcement, in 1871 the first state laws specifically making wife beating illegal were passed, though proliferation of laws to all states and adequate enforcement of those laws lagged very far behind. One of the first female photojournalists,
Sadie Kneller Miller Sadie Kneller Miller (October 7, 1867 – November 21, 1920) was a Baltimore journalist, known for being one of the earliest female baseball reporters, as well as the only female correspondent covering some international events. Miller was born i ...
used her initials, SKM, as a byline, which hid her gender. She covered sports, disasters, diseases, and was recognized as the first female war correspondent.


Missionaries

By the 1860s Most of the large Protestant denominations developed missionary roles for women beyond that of the wife of a male missionary. European Catholic women in their role as religious sisters worked in the immigrant enclaves of American cities. Mother Cabrini (1850–1917) founded the
Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus The Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus is a Roman Catholic female religious congregation, founded in 1880 by Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini. Their aim is to spread devotion to the Sacred Heart by means of spiritual and corporal works ...
in Italy in 1880; she moved to New York in 1889. The orphanages, schools and hospitals built by her order provided major support to the Italian immigrants. She was canonized as a saint in 1946.


Settlement houses

In 1889,
Jane Addams Laura Jane Addams (September 6, 1860 May 21, 1935) was an American settlement activist, reformer, social worker, sociologist, public administrator, and author. She was an important leader in the history of social work and women's suffrage ...
and
Ellen Gates Starr Ellen Gates Starr (March 19, 1859 – February 10, 1940) was an American social reformer and activist. With Jane Addams, she founded Chicago's Hull House, an adult education center, in 1889; the settlement house expanded to 13 buildings in ...
established the first settlement house in America (a settlement house is a center in an underprivileged area that provides community services), in what was then a dilapidated mansion in one of the poorest immigrant slums of Chicago on the corner of Halstead and Polk streets. This settlement house, called
Hull House Hull House was a settlement house in Chicago, Illinois, United States that was co-founded in 1889 by Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr. Located on the Near West Side of the city, Hull House (named after the original house's first owner Cha ...
, provided numerous activities and services including health and child care, clubs for both children and adults, an art gallery, kitchen, gymnasium, music school, theater, library, employment bureau, and a labor museum. By 1910, 400 settlement houses had been established in America; the majority of settlement house workers were women.


Nursing

During the Spanish–American War (1898) thousands of US soldiers sick with typhoid, malaria, and yellow fever overwhelmed the capabilities of the Army Medical Department, so Dr. Anita Newcomb McGee suggested to the Army Surgeon General that the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) be appointed to select professionally qualified nurses to serve under contract to the US Army. Before the war ended, 1,500 civilian contract nurses were assigned to Army hospitals in the US, Hawaii (not a state at that time), Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines, as well as to the hospital ship ''Relief''. Twenty nurses died. The Army appointed Dr. McGee as Acting Assistant Surgeon General, making her the first woman ever to hold the position. The Army was impressed by the performance of its contract nurses and had Dr. McGee write legislation creating a permanent corps of Army nurses.


Progressive era: 1900–1940

Across the nation, middle-class women organized on behalf of social reforms during the
Progressive Era The Progressive Era (late 1890s – late 1910s) was a period of widespread social activism and political reform across the United States focused on defeating corruption, monopoly, waste and inefficiency. The main themes ended during Am ...
. They were especially concerned with Prohibition, suffrage, school issues, and public health. Focusing on the
General Federation of Women's Clubs The General Federation of Women's Clubs (GFWC), founded in 1890 during the Progressive Movement, is a federation of over 3,000 women's clubs in the United States which promote civic improvements through volunteer service. Many of its activities ...
, a national network of middle-class women who formed local clubs, historian Paige Meltzer puts the women's clubs in the context of the
Progressive Movement Progressivism holds that it is possible to improve human societies through political action. As a political movement, progressivism seeks to advance the human condition through social reform based on purported advancements in science, techno ...
, arguing that its policies: :built on Progressive-era strategies of municipal housekeeping. During the Progressive era, female activists used traditional constructions of womanhood, which imagined all women as mothers and homemakers, to justify their entrance into community affairs: as "municipal housekeepers," they would clean up politics, cities, and see after the health and wellbeing of their neighbors. Donning the mantle of motherhood, female activists methodically investigated their community's needs and used their "maternal" expertise to lobby, create, and secure a place for themselves in an emerging state welfare bureaucracy, best illustrated perhaps by clubwoman
Julia Lathrop Julia Clifford Lathrop (June 29, 1858 – April 15, 1932) was an American social reformer in the area of education, social policy, and children's welfare. As director of the United States Children's Bureau from 1912 to 1922, she was the first wo ...
's leadership in the Children's Bureau. As part of this tradition of maternal activism, the Progressive-era General Federation supported a range of causes from the pure food and drug administration to public health care for mothers and children to a ban on child labor, each of which looked to the state to help implement their vision of social justice.


Jane Addams

One representative woman of the Progressive Era was
Jane Addams Laura Jane Addams (September 6, 1860 May 21, 1935) was an American settlement activist, reformer, social worker, sociologist, public administrator, and author. She was an important leader in the history of social work and women's suffrage ...
(1860–1935). She was a pioneer social worker, leader of community activists at
Hull House Hull House was a settlement house in Chicago, Illinois, United States that was co-founded in 1889 by Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr. Located on the Near West Side of the city, Hull House (named after the original house's first owner Cha ...
in Chicago, public philosopher, sociologist, author, and spokesperson for suffrage and world peace. Alongside presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, she was the most prominent reformer of the
Progressive Era The Progressive Era (late 1890s – late 1910s) was a period of widespread social activism and political reform across the United States focused on defeating corruption, monopoly, waste and inefficiency. The main themes ended during Am ...
. She helped turn the nation's attention to issues of concern to mothers, such as the needs of children, public health, and world peace. She said that if women were to be responsible for cleaning up their communities and making them better places to live, they needed the vote to be effective in doing so. Addams became a role model for middle-class women who volunteered to uplift their communities. In 1931, she became the first American woman to be awarded the
Nobel Peace Prize The Nobel Peace Prize is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Swedish industrialist, inventor and armaments (military weapons and equipment) manufacturer Alfred Nobel, along with the prizes in Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Chemi ...
. Some critics in the 1960s portrayed her as an unoriginal racist determined to civilize helpless immigrants while other biographers in the 1990s tended to regard her more favorably.


French Canadians

French Canadian French Canadians (referred to as Canadiens mainly before the twentieth century; french: Canadiens français, ; feminine form: , ), or Franco-Canadians (french: Franco-Canadiens), refers to either an ethnic group who trace their ancestry to Fren ...
women saw New England as a place of opportunity and possibility where they could create economic alternatives for themselves distinct from the expectations of their subsistence farms in Quebec. By the early 20th century some saw temporary migration to the United States to work as a rite of passage and a time of self-discovery and self-reliance. Most moved permanently to the United States, using the inexpensive railroad system to visit Quebec from time to time. When these women did marry, they had fewer children with longer intervals between children than their Canadian counterparts. Some women never married, and oral accounts suggest that self-reliance and economic independence were important reasons for choosing work over marriage and motherhood. These women conformed to traditional gender ideals in order to retain their 'Canadienne' cultural identity, but they also redefined these roles in ways that provided them increased independence in their roles as wives and mothers.


Midwest

Most young urban women took jobs before marriage, then quit. Before the growth of high schools after 1900, most women left school after the eighth grade aged around fifteen. Ciani (2005) shows that type of work they did reflected their ethnicity and marital status. African-American mothers often chose day labor, usually as domestic servants, because of the flexibility it afforded. Most mothers receiving pensions were white and sought work only when necessary. Across the region, middle-class society women shaped numerous new and expanded charitable and professional associations, and promoted mother's pensions, and expanded forms of social welfare. Many of the Protestant homemakers were active in the temperance and suffrage movements as well. In Detroit, the Federation of Women's Clubs (DFWC) promoted a very wide range of activities for civic-minded middle-class women who conformed to traditional gender roles. The Federation argued that safety and health issues were of greatest concern to mothers and could only be solved by improving municipal conditions outside the home. The Federation pressured Detroit officials to upgrade schools, water supplies and sanitation facilities, and to require safe food handling, and traffic safety. However, the membership was divided on going beyond these issues or collaborating with ethnic or groups or labor unions. Its refusal to stretch traditional gender boundaries, gave it a conservative reputation in the working-class. Before the 1930s, the women's affiliates of labor unions were too small and weak to fill the gap.


South

Rebecca Latimer Felton Rebecca Ann Felton (née Latimer; June 10, 1835 – January 24, 1930) was an American writer, lecturer, feminist, suffragist, reformer, slave owner, and politician who was the first woman to serve in the United States Senate, although she serve ...
(1835–1930) was the most prominent woman leader in Georgia. Born into a wealthy plantation family, she married an active politician, managed his career, and became a political expert. An outspoken feminist, she became a leader of the prohibition and woman's suffrage movements, endorsed lynching (white Southerners should "lynch a thousand lack mena week if it becomes necessary" to prevent the rape of white women), fought for reform of prisons, and filled leadership roles in many reform organizations. In 1922, she was appointed to the
U.S. Senate The United States Senate is the upper chamber of the United States Congress, with the House of Representatives being the lower chamber. Together they compose the national bicameral legislature of the United States. The composition and powe ...
. She was sworn in on November 21, 1922, and served one day; she was the first woman to serve in the Senate. Although middle class urban women were well-organized supporters of suffrage, the rural areas of the South were hostile. The state legislatures ignored efforts to let women vote in local elections. Georgia not only refused to ratify the Federal 19th Amendment, but took pride in being the first to reject it. The Amendment passed nationally and Georgia women gained the right to vote in 1920. However, black women, as well as black men, continued to face substantial barriers designed to prevent black Americans from voting until the passage of the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965 enforced their constitutional rights. The woman's reform movement flourished in cities; however the South was still heavily rural before 1945. In
Dallas, Texas Dallas () is the third largest city in Texas and the largest city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, the fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States at 7.5 million people. It is the largest city in and seat of Dallas County w ...
, women reformers did much to establish the fundamental elements of the social structure of the city, focusing their energies on families, schools, and churches during the city's pioneer days. Many of the organizations which created a modern urban scene were founded and led by middle-class women. Through voluntary organizations and club work, they connected their city to national cultural and social trends. By the 1880s women in temperance and suffrage movements shifted the boundaries between private and public life in Dallas by pushing their way into politics in the name of social issues. During 1913–19, advocates of woman suffrage in Dallas drew on the educational and advertising techniques of the national parties and the lobbying tactics of the women's club movement. They also tapped into popular culture, successfully using popular symbolism and traditional ideals to adapt community festivals and social gatherings to the task of political persuasion. The
Dallas Equal Suffrage Association The Dallas Equal Suffrage Association (DESA) was an organization formed in Dallas, Texas in 1913 to support the cause of women's suffrage in Texas. DESA was different from many other suffrage organizations in the United States in that it adopted ...
developed a suffrage campaign based on social values and community standards. Community and social occasions served as recruiting opportunities for the suffrage cause, blunting its radical implications with the familiarity of customary events and dressing it in the values of traditional female behavior, especially propriety. Black female reformers usually operated separately.
Juanita Craft Juanita Craft (born Juanita Jewel Shanks; February 9, 1902 – August 6, 1985) was an American activist and politician. Craft was an activist in the civil rights movement and also served as a member of the Dallas City Council in Texas. Biography ...
was a leader in the Texas civil rights movement through the Dallas NAACP. She focused on working with black youths, organizing them as the vanguard in protests against segregation practices in Texas.


West

The Progressive movement was especially strong in California, where it aimed to purify society of its corruption, and one way was to enfranchise supposedly "pure" women as voters in 1911, nine years before the 19th Amendment enfranchised women nationally in 1920. Women's clubs flourished and turned a spotlight on issues such as public schools, dirt and pollution, and public health. California women were leaders in the temperance movement, moral reform, conservation, public schools, recreation, and other issues. The women did not often run for office—that was seen as entangling their purity in the inevitable backroom deals routine in politics.


Health issues

Bristow shows there was a gendered response of health caregivers to the
1918 flu pandemic The 1918–1920 influenza pandemic, commonly known by the misnomer Spanish flu or as the Great Influenza epidemic, was an exceptionally deadly global influenza pandemic caused by the H1N1 influenza A virus. The earliest documented case was ...
that killed over 500,000 Americans. Male doctors were unable to cure the patients, and they felt like failures. Women nurses also saw their patients die, but they took pride in their success in fulfilling their professional role of caring for, ministering, comforting, and easing the last hours of their patients, and helping the families of the patients cope as well.


Birth control

] In March 1873, the United States Congress passed the
Comstock Act The Comstock laws were a set of federal acts passed by the United States Congress under the Grant administration along with related state laws.Dennett p.9 The "parent" act (Sect. 211) was passed on March 3, 1873, as the Act for the Suppression of ...
, which made it illegal to distribute birth control information or contraceptives through the U.S. postal system.
Margaret Sanger Margaret Higgins Sanger (born Margaret Louise Higgins; September 14, 1879September 6, 1966), also known as Margaret Sanger Slee, was an American birth control activist, sex educator, writer, and nurse. Sanger popularized the term "birth control ...
was an influential campaigner for birth control rights in the 1910s. She originally worked as a visiting nurse in the New York City's tenements and wrote about sex education and women's health. In 1914, Sanger's articles in "The Woman Radical" brought her a federal indictment for violating the
Comstock Act The Comstock laws were a set of federal acts passed by the United States Congress under the Grant administration along with related state laws.Dennett p.9 The "parent" act (Sect. 211) was passed on March 3, 1873, as the Act for the Suppression of ...
(which since 1873 had banned the mailing of birth control devices and information on birth control devices,
sexually transmitted diseases Sexually transmitted infections (STIs), also referred to as sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and the older term venereal diseases, are infections that are spread by sexual activity, especially vaginal intercourse, anal sex, and oral sex ...
, human sexuality, and abortion). Sanger and her sister
Ethel Byrne Ethel Byrne ( Higgins; 18831955) was an American Progressive Era radical feminist. She was the younger sister of birth control activist Margaret Sanger, and assisted her in this work. Background Ethel and Margaret were two out of eleven children ...
, also a nurse, opened the first birth control clinic in the United States in 1916, modeled after those Sanger had seen in the
Netherlands ) , anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau") , image_map = , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands , established_title = Before independence , established_date = Spanish Netherl ...
. The police quickly closed it down but the publicity surrounding Sanger's activities had made birth control a matter of public debate. In 1936, Margaret Sanger helped bring the case ''
United States v. One Package ''United States v. One Package of Japanese Pessaries'', 86 F.2d 737 (2d Cir. 1936) (often just ''U.S. v. One Package''), was an ''in rem'' United States Court of Appeals case in the Second Circuit involving birth control. Background In 1873 C ...
'' to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The decision in that case allowed physicians in New York, Connecticut, and Vermont to legally mail birth control devices and information to married people. For unmarried people, the dissemination of birth control did not become legal until the 1972 Supreme Court decision ''
Eisenstadt v. Baird ''Eisenstadt v. Baird'', 405 U.S. 438 (1972), was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court that established the right of unmarried people to possess contraception on the same basis as married couples. The Court struck down a Massachusetts la ...
''.


Suffrage

The campaign for women's suffrage picked up speed in the 1910s as the established women's groups won in the western states and moved east, leaving the conservative South for last. Parades were favorite publicity devices. In 1916,
Jeannette Rankin Jeannette Pickering Rankin (June 11, 1880 – May 18, 1973) was an American politician and women's rights advocate who became the first woman to hold federal office in the United States in 1917. She was elected to the U.S. House of Representat ...
, a Republican from Montana, was elected to Congress and became the first woman to serve in any high federal office. A lifelong pacifist, she was one of fifty members of Congress who voted against entry into World War I in 1917, and the only member of Congress who voted against declaring war on Japan after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.
Alice Paul Alice Stokes Paul (January 11, 1885 – July 9, 1977) was an American Quaker, suffragist, feminist, and women's rights activist, and one of the main leaders and strategists of the campaign for the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ...
was the leader of a small militant faction that courted arrest to publicized the injustice of denying women the vote. After 1920, Paul spent a half century as leader of the
National Woman's Party The National Woman's Party (NWP) was an American women's political organization formed in 1916 to fight for women's suffrage. After achieving this goal with the 1920 adoption of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, the NW ...
, which fought for her
Equal Rights Amendment The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) is a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution designed to guarantee equal legal rights for all American citizens regardless of sex. Proponents assert it would end legal distinctions between men and ...
to secure constitutional equality for women. It never passed, but she won a large degree of success with the inclusion of women as a group protected against discrimination by the
Civil Rights Act of 1964 The Civil Rights Act of 1964 () is a landmark civil rights and United States labor law, labor law in the United States that outlaws discrimination based on Race (human categorization), race, Person of color, color, religion, sex, and nationa ...
. She insisted that her National Woman's Party focus exclusively on the legal status of all women and resisted calls to address issues like birth control.


International activity

Women's support for international missionary activity peaked in the 1900 to 1930 era. The Great Depression caused a dramatic cut back in funding for missions. Mainstream denominations generally transition to support for locally -controlled missions. Black women Increase their role in international women's conferences and their independent travels abroad. Leaders including
Ida B. Wells Ida B. Wells (full name: Ida Bell Wells-Barnett) (July 16, 1862 – March 25, 1931) was an American investigative journalist, educator, and early leader in the civil rights movement. She was one of the founders of the National Association for ...
, Hallie Quinn Brown, and
Mary Church Terrell Mary Church Terrell (born Mary Eliza Church; September 23, 1863 – July 24, 1954) was one of the first African-American women to earn a college degree, and became known as a national activist for civil rights and suffrage. She taught in the Lati ...
addressed issues of American race and gender discrimination when they traveled abroad. The
International Council of Women of the Darker Races The International Council of Women of the Darker Races (ICWDR) was an organization for black women based in the United States and headed by Margaret Murray Washington. In existence from 1922 to 1940, the ICWDR was "the first autonomous international ...
brought together women of color to eliminate language, cultural, and regional barriers.


Peace movement

Jane Addams was a noted peace activist who founded the
Woman's Peace Party The Woman's Peace Party (WPP) was an American pacifist and feminist organization formally established in January 1915 in response to World War I. The organization is remembered as the first American peace organization to make use of direct action ...
in 1915; it was the American branch of the
Women's International League for Peace and Freedom The Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) is a non-profit non-governmental organization working "to bring together women of different political views and philosophical and religious backgrounds determined to study and make kno ...
, of which Addams was the first president in 1915. Addams received the
Nobel Peace Prize The Nobel Peace Prize is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Swedish industrialist, inventor and armaments (military weapons and equipment) manufacturer Alfred Nobel, along with the prizes in Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Chemi ...
in 1931.


World War I

World War I was a total war, and the nation moved to mobilize its women for material and psychological support of the war effort in and out of the home. All the states organized women's committees. Representative was the women's state committee in North Carolina. Motivated by the public service ideals of the
Progressive Movement Progressivism holds that it is possible to improve human societies through political action. As a political movement, progressivism seeks to advance the human condition through social reform based on purported advancements in science, techno ...
, it registered women for many volunteer services, promoted increased food production, and the elimination of wasteful cooking practices, helped maintain social services, worked to bolster moral well-being of white and black soldiers, improved public health and public schools, encouraged black participation in its programs, and helped with the devastating
Spanish flu The 1918–1920 influenza pandemic, commonly known by the misnomer Spanish flu or as the Great Influenza epidemic, was an exceptionally deadly global influenza pandemic caused by the H1N1 influenza A virus. The earliest documented case was ...
epidemic that struck worldwide in late 1918, with very high fatalities. The committee was generally successful in reaching middle-class white and black women, but it was handicapped by the condescension of male lawmakers, limited funding, and tepid responses from women on the farms and working-class districts. Women served in the military as nurses, and in support roles. Tens of thousands were employed in the United States, and thousands more in France. The Army Nurse Corps (all female until 1955) was founded in 1901, and the Navy Nurse Corps (all female until 1964) was founded in 1908, and nurses in both served overseas at military hospitals during the war. During the course of the war, 21,480 Army nurses served in military hospitals in the United States and overseas and eighteen African-American Army nurses served stateside caring for German prisoners of war (POWs) and African-American soldiers. More than 1,476 Navy nurses served in military hospitals stateside and overseas. More than 400 military nurses died in the line of duty during World War I; the vast majority of these women died from a highly contagious form of influenza known as the "Spanish Flu," which swept through crowded military camps and hospitals and ports of embarkation. In 1917, women were first able to join the Navy for jobs other than nurse; they were able to become yeomen, electricians (radio operators), and any other ratings necessary to the naval district operations. 13,000 women enlisted, and the majority became yeomen and were designated as yeoman (F) for female yeoman. The Army employed 450 female telephone operators who served overseas, beginning in March 1918 and continuing until the war ended. These women, who retained their civilian status and were not officially considered veterans until 1978, were the members of the Signal Corps Female Telephone Operators Unit 25, better known as the "Hello Girls". They were required to be fluent in both French and English, and assisted the French and British, both allies of America, in communicating with each other. Over 300 women served in the Marines during World War One, performing duties within the United States so that the male Marines could fight overseas. After the war ended in 1918, American women were no longer allowed to serve in the military, except as nurses, until 1942. However, in 1920 a provision of the Army Reorganization Act granted military nurses the status of officers with "relative rank" from second lieutenant to major (but not full rights and privileges).


19th amendment

Like most major nations, the United States gave women the right to vote at the end of the war. The 19th Amendment to the Constitution, giving American white women the right to vote, passed in 1920. It came up before the House of Representatives in 1918 with the two-thirds votes needed for passage barely within reach; Representative Frederick Hicks of New York had been at the bedside of his dying wife but left at her urging to support the cause. He provided the final, crucial vote, and then returned home for her funeral. However, the Senate failed to pass the amendment that year. The amendment was approved by Congress next year on June 4, 1919, and the states started ratifying. In 1920, Tennessee was the 36th to do so, meeting the 3/4s (of then 48 states) required for enactment; the remaining states ratified later. The amendment passed the Tennessee Senate easily. However, as it moved on to the House, vigorous opposition came from people in the liquor industry, who thought that if women got the vote, they would use it to pass Prohibition. The House ratified by one vote. It officially became part of the Constitution when it was certified as law on August 26, 1920; August 26 later became known as
Women's Equality Day Nancy Pelosi, Anna Eshoo, Barbara Lee">Anna_Eshoo.html" ;"title="Nancy Pelosi, Anna Eshoo">Nancy Pelosi, Anna Eshoo, Barbara Lee and Jackie Speier on the 96th anniversary of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, when women won the right to v ...
. Suffragist Carrie Chapman Catt calculated that the campaign for women's right to vote had involved 56 referendum campaigns directed at male voters, plus 480 campaigns to get Legislatures to submit suffrage amendments to voters, 47 campaigns to get constitutional conventions to write woman suffrage into state constitutions; 277 campaigns to get State party conventions to include woman suffrage planks, 30 campaigns to get presidential party campaigns to include woman suffrage planks in party platforms and 19 campaigns with 19 successive Congresses.


Black women in 1920s

Black women who had moved to northern cities could vote starting in 1920, and they played a new role in urban politics. In Chicago, the issue of black women voters was a competition between the middle-class women's clubs, and the black preachers. Prominent women activists in Chicago included
Ida B. Wells Ida B. Wells (full name: Ida Bell Wells-Barnett) (July 16, 1862 – March 25, 1931) was an American investigative journalist, educator, and early leader in the civil rights movement. She was one of the founders of the National Association for ...
and Ada S. McKinley, Who attracted a national audience, as well as Ella Berry, Ida Dempsey and Jennie Lawrence. By 1930, blacks comprised upwards of 1/5 of the Republican vote, and had a growing role in primary elections. For example, the Colored Women's Republican Club of Illinois Show their power in the 1928 primary, when their favorite
Ruth Hanna McCormick Ruth McCormick (née Hanna, also known as Ruth Hanna McCormick Simms; March 27, 1880 – December 31, 1944), was an American politician, activist, and publisher. She served one term in the United States House of Representatives, winning an at-l ...
outpolled former governor
Charles S. Deneen Charles Samuel Deneen (May 4, 1863 – February 5, 1940) was an American lawyer and Republican politician who served as the 23rd Governor of Illinois, from 1905 to 1913. He was the first Illinois governor to serve two consecutive terms totalli ...
three to one in the black wards and won the nomination for U.S. Senate. Year after year the white Republican leadership held out the hope of anti-lynching legislation, even though lynching had largely disappeared in most of the South by 1920, and in any case the votes were not there to pass it in Congress. Loyalty to the Republicans as the "party of Lincoln" persisted until the New Deal Coalition offered more opportunities for patronage and welfare in the mid-1930s. There was a
class division Class or The Class may refer to: Common uses not otherwise categorized * Class (biology), a taxonomic rank * Class (knowledge representation), a collection of individuals or objects * Class (philosophy), an analytical concept used differently ...
as well, as the middle class black women reformers spoken language of utopian promise that did not ring true to the poor uneducated maids and laundry workers, who listened every Sunday to the promises of salvation from their preachers.


Black women in business

Most of the African-Americans in business were men, however women played a major role especially in the area of beauty. Standards of beauty were different for whites and blacks, and the black community developed its own standards, with an emphasis on hair care. Beauticians could work out of their own homes, and did not need storefronts. As a result, black beauticians were numerous in the rural South, despite the absence of cities and towns. They pioneered the use of cosmetics, at a time when rural white women in the South avoided them. As Blain Roberts has shown, beauticians offered their clients a space to feel pampered and beautiful in the context of their own community because, "Inside black beauty shops, rituals of beautification converged with rituals of socialization." Beauty contests emerged in the 1920s, and in the white community they were linked to agricultural county fairs. By contrast in the black community, beauty contests were developed out of the homecoming ceremonies at their high schools and colleges. The most famous entrepreneur was Madame C.J. Walker (1867–1919); she built a national franchise business called
Madame C.J. Walker Manufacturing Company The Madam C. J. Walker Manufacturing Company (Madam C. J. Walker Manufacturing Co., The Walker Company) was a cosmetics manufacturer incorporated in Indianapolis, Indiana in 1910 by Madam C. J. Walker. It was best known for its African-American ...
based on her invention of the first successful hair straightening process.


Feminism in 1920s

The first wave of feminism petered out in the 1920s. After gaining suffrage, the political activities of women generally subsided or were absorbed in the main political parties. In the 1920s they paid special attention to such issues as world peace and child welfare. The achievement of suffrage led to feminists refocusing their efforts towards other goals. Groups such as the National Women's Party (NWP) continued the political fight.. Led by
Alice Paul Alice Stokes Paul (January 11, 1885 – July 9, 1977) was an American Quaker, suffragist, feminist, and women's rights activist, and one of the main leaders and strategists of the campaign for the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ...
, the group proposing the
Equal Rights Amendment The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) is a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution designed to guarantee equal legal rights for all American citizens regardless of sex. Proponents assert it would end legal distinctions between men and ...
in 1923 and working to remove laws that used sex to discriminate against women. But many women shifted their focus from politics to challenge traditional definitions of womanhood. Carrie Chapman Catt and others established The
League of Women Voters The League of Women Voters (LWV or the League) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan political organization in the United States. Founded in 1920, its ongoing major activities include registering voters, providing voter information, and advocating for vot ...
to help women carry out their new responsibilities as voters.


Roaring Twenties

A generational gap began to form between the "new" women of the 1920s and older women. Prior to the 19th Amendment, feminists commonly thought that women could not pursue both a career and a family successfully, believing that one would inherently inhibit the development of the other. This mentality began to change in the 1920s as more women began to desire not only successful careers of their own but also families. The "new" woman was less invested in social service than the Progressive generations, and in tune with the capitalistic spirit of the era, she was eager to compete and to find personal fulfilment. The 1920s saw significant change in the lives of working women. World War I had temporarily allowed women to enter into industries such as chemical, automobile, and iron and steel manufacturing, which were once deemed inappropriate work for women. Black women, who had been historically closed out of factory jobs, began to find a place in industry during World War I by accepting lower wages and replacing the lost immigrant labor and in heavy work. Yet, like other women during World War I, their success was only temporary; most black women were also pushed out of their factory jobs after the war. In 1920, seventy-five percent of the black female labor force consisted of agricultural laborers, domestic servants, and laundry workers. The booming economy of the 1920s meant more opportunities even for the lower classes. Many young girls from working-class backgrounds did not need to help support their families as prior generations did and were often encouraged to seek work or receive vocational training which would result in social mobility. Young women, especially, began staking claim to their own bodies and took part in a sexual liberation of their generation. Many of the ideas that fueled this change in sexual thought were already floating around New York intellectual circles prior to World War I, with the writings of
Sigmund Freud Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating psychopathology, pathologies explained as originatin ...
, Havelock Ellis, and Ellen Key. There, thinkers outed that sex was not only central to the human experience but that women were sexual beings with human impulses and desires just like men and restraining these impulses was self-destructive. By the 1920s, these ideas had permeated the mainstream. The 1920s saw the emergence of the co-ed, as women began attending large state colleges and universities. Women entered into the mainstream middle-class experience, but took on a gendered role within society. Women typically took classes such as home economics, "Husband and Wife", "Motherhood" and "The Family as an Economic Unit". In an increasingly conservative post-war era, it was common for a young woman to attend college with the intention of finding a suitable husband. Fueled by ideas of sexual liberation, dating underwent major changes on college campuses. With the advent of the automobile, courtship occurred in a much more private setting. "Petting", sexual relations without intercourse, became the social norm for college students. Despite women's increased knowledge of pleasure and sex, the decade of unfettered capitalism that was the 1920s gave birth to the ‘feminine mystique’. With this formulation, all women wanted to marry, all good women stayed at home with their children, cooking and cleaning, and the best women did the aforementioned and in addition, exercised their purchasing power freely and as frequently as possible in order to better their families and their homes.


Flappers

The "new woman" was in fashion throughout the twenties; this meant a woman who rejected the pieties (and often the politics) of the older generation, smoked and drank in public, had casual sex, and embraced consumer culture. Also called "flappers", these women wore short skirts (at first just to the ankles, eventually up to the knees) and bobbed hair in a short cut – like a boy's, but longer. Just as the flapper rejected the long hair popular in earlier years, she also discarded Victorian fashions, especially the corset, which accentuated women's curves. Flappers preferred to be slender, although it sometimes meant dieting or binding their breasts and wearing restrictive undergarments to appear thin, flat-chested, and long-limbed. Cultivating a flapper image and adhering to modern beauty standards also involved purchasing and applying cosmetics, which had not often been done previously by women other than prostitutes. These women further pushed the boundaries of what was considered proper for a woman by their public activities; swearing, smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol (illegal from 1920 until 1933), dancing, and dating.


Firsts

Women achieved many groundbreaking firsts in the 1920s and 1930s. In 1921,
Edith Wharton Edith Wharton (; born Edith Newbold Jones; January 24, 1862 – August 11, 1937) was an American novelist, short story writer, and interior designer. Wharton drew upon her insider's knowledge of the upper-class New York "aristocracy" to portray ...
became the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, for her novel "The Age of Innocence". In 1925,
Nellie Tayloe Ross Nellie Davis Tayloe Ross (November 29, 1876 – December 19, 1977) was an American educator and politician who served as the 14th governor of Wyoming from 1925 to 1927, and as the 28th and first female director of the United States Mint from 193 ...
became the first woman elected as a governor in the United States, for the state of Wyoming. Also in 1925, the World Exposition of Women's Progress (the first women's world's fair) opened in Chicago. In 1926,
Gertrude Ederle Gertrude Caroline Ederle (October 23, 1906 – November 30, 2003) was an American competition swimmer, Olympic champion, and world record-holder in five events. On August 6, 1926, she became the first woman to swim across the English Channel. ...
, born in New York, became the first woman to swim across the English channel, arriving in almost two hours less time than any of the men who had swum across before her. In 1928, women competed for the first time in Olympic field events. By 1928, women earned 39% of all college degrees in America, up from 19% at the turn of the 20th century.


Italian American resistance

The American scene in the 1920s featured a widespread expansion of women's roles, starting with the vote in 1920, and including new standards of education, employment and control of their own sexuality. "
Flappers Flappers were a subculture of young Western women in the 1920s who wore short skirts (knee height was considered short during that period), bobbed their hair, listened to jazz, and flaunted their disdain for what was then considered acceptab ...
" raised the hemline and lowered the old restrictions in women's fashion. The Italian-American media disapproved. It demanded the holding of the line regarding traditional gender roles in which men controlled their families. Many traditional patriarchal values prevailed among Southern European male immigrants, although some practices like dowry were left behind in Europe. The community spokesman Were shocked that the image of a woman with a secret ballot. They ridiculed flappers and proclaimed that feminism was immoral. They idealizes an old male model of Italian womanhood. Mussolini was popular, and when he expanded the electorate to include some women voting at the local level, the Italian American editorialists went along, arguing that the true Italian woman was, above all, a mother and a wife and, therefore, would be reliable as a voter on local matters. Feminist organizations in Italy were ignored, as the editors purposely associated emancipation with Americanism and transformed the debate over women's rights into a defense of the Italian-American community to set its own boundaries and rules.


Great Depression of 1930s

In 1932,
Hattie Caraway Hattie Ophelia Wyatt Caraway (February 1, 1878 – December 21, 1950) was an Americans, American politician who became the first woman elected to serve a full term as a United States Senate, United States Senator. Caraway represented Arkansas. Sh ...
of Arkansas became the first woman elected to the Senate. Furthermore, in 1932
Amelia Earhart Amelia Mary Earhart ( , born July 24, 1897; disappeared July 2, 1937; declared dead January 5, 1939) was an American aviation pioneer and writer. Earhart was the first female aviator to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. She set many oth ...
became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic, taking her journey on the 5th anniversary of Lindbergh's solo Atlantic flight . She was awarded the National Geographic Society's gold medal from President Herbert Hoover, and Congress awarded her the Distinguished Flying Cross. Later in 1932 she became the first woman to fly solo nonstop coast to coast, and set the women's nonstop transcontinental speed record, flying 2,447.8 miles in 19 hours 5 minutes. In 1935, she became the first person to solo the 2,408-mile distance across the Pacific between Honolulu and Oakland, California; this was also the first flight where a civilian aircraft carried a two-way radio. Later in 1935, she became the first person to fly solo from Los Angeles to Mexico City. Still later in 1935, she became the first person to fly solo nonstop from Mexico City to Newark. In 1937, Amelia Earhart began a flight around the world but vanished during it; her remains, effects, and plane have never been found. The first woman to fly solo around the world and return home safely was the American amateur pilot
Jerrie Mock Geraldine "Jerrie" Fredritz Mock (November 22, 1925 – September 30, 2014) was an American pilot and the first woman to fly solo around the world. She flew a single engine Cessna 180 (registered N1538C) christened the '' Spirit of Columbus'' an ...
, who did so in 1964. In 1933,
Frances Perkins Frances Perkins (born Fannie Coralie Perkins; April 10, 1880 – May 14, 1965) was an American workers-rights advocate who served as the 4th United States secretary of labor from 1933 to 1945, the longest serving in that position. A member of th ...
was appointed by President Franklin Roosevelt as his Secretary of Labor, making her the first woman to hold a job in a Presidential cabinet. However, women also faced many challenges during this time. A National Education Association survey showed that between 1930 and 1931, 63% of cities dismissed female teachers as soon as they became married, and 77% did not hire married women as teachers. Also, a survey of 1,500 cities from 1930 to 1931 found that three-quarters of those cities did not employ married women for any jobs. In January 1932, Congress passed the Federal Economy Act which stipulated that no two persons in the family could be working in government service at the same time; three-fourths of employees discharged as a result of this Act were women. However, during the
Great Depression The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...
white women's unemployment rate was actually lower than that for men, because women were paid less and because men would not take what they considered to be "women's jobs" such as clerical work or domestic service. Yet as a result of rising unemployment, white women's movement into professional and technical work slowed. Birth control activism was an important cause in the 1930s. In 1936,
Margaret Sanger Margaret Higgins Sanger (born Margaret Louise Higgins; September 14, 1879September 6, 1966), also known as Margaret Sanger Slee, was an American birth control activist, sex educator, writer, and nurse. Sanger popularized the term "birth control ...
helped bring the case of "
United States v. One Package ''United States v. One Package of Japanese Pessaries'', 86 F.2d 737 (2d Cir. 1936) (often just ''U.S. v. One Package''), was an ''in rem'' United States Court of Appeals case in the Second Circuit involving birth control. Background In 1873 C ...
" to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The decision in that case allowed physicians to legally mail birth control devices and information; however, it applied only to New York, Connecticut, and Vermont; birth control did not become legal for married couples throughout the United States until the 1965 Supreme Court decision ''
Griswold v. Connecticut ''Griswold v. Connecticut'', 381 U.S. 479 (1965), was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that the Constitution of the United States protects the liberty of married couples to buy and use contraceptives withou ...
'', and did not become legal for unmarried couples throughout the United States until the 1972 Supreme Court decision ''
Eisenstadt v. Baird ''Eisenstadt v. Baird'', 405 U.S. 438 (1972), was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court that established the right of unmarried people to possess contraception on the same basis as married couples. The Court struck down a Massachusetts la ...
''. In 1937, The
American Medical Association The American Medical Association (AMA) is a professional association and lobbying group of physicians and medical students. Founded in 1847, it is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. Membership was approximately 240,000 in 2016. The AMA's state ...
officially recognized birth control as an integral part of medical practice and education, and North Carolina became the first state to recognize birth control as a public health measure and to provide contraceptive services to indigent mothers through its public health program. In 1939, black singer
Marian Anderson Marian Anderson (February 27, 1897April 8, 1993) was an American contralto. She performed a wide range of music, from opera to Spiritual (music), spirituals. Anderson performed with renowned orchestras in major concert and recital venues throu ...
sang on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, which was considered a milestone in the civil rights movement. She had originally wanted to sing at Washington D.C.'s largest venue, Constitution Hall, but The Daughters of the American Revolution barred her from performing there because of her race. Due to this, Eleanor Roosevelt, who was then the First Lady, resigned from the organization. This stands as one of the first actions taken by someone in the White House to address the era's racial inequality. Anderson performed at the White House three years prior in 1936, making her the first African-American performer to do so.


New Deal

Women received symbolic recognition under the
New Deal The New Deal was a series of programs, public work projects, financial reforms, and regulations enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United States between 1933 and 1939. Major federal programs agencies included the Civilian Cons ...
(1933–43) but there was no effort to deal with their special needs. In relief programs, they were eligible for jobs only if they were the breadwinner in the family. Nevertheless, relief agencies did find jobs for women. The WPA employed about 500,000. The largest number, 295,000, worked on sewing projects, producing 300 million items of clothing and mattresses for people on relief and for public institutions such as orphanages. Many other women worked in school lunch programs. Roosevelt appointed more women to office than any previous president, headed by the first woman to the cabinet, Secretary of Labor
Frances Perkins Frances Perkins (born Fannie Coralie Perkins; April 10, 1880 – May 14, 1965) was an American workers-rights advocate who served as the 4th United States secretary of labor from 1933 to 1945, the longest serving in that position. A member of th ...
. His wife Eleanor played a highly visible role in support of relief programs. In 1941, Eleanor became co-head of the
Office of Civil Defense The Office of Civil Defense (OCD) was an agency of the United States Department of Defense from 1961–64. It replaced the Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization. The organization was renamed the Defense Civil Preparedness Agency on May 5, 197 ...
, the major civil defense agency. She tried to involve women at the local level, but she feuded with her counterpart Mayor
Fiorello H. La Guardia Fiorello Henry LaGuardia (; born Fiorello Enrico LaGuardia, ; December 11, 1882September 20, 1947) was an American attorney and politician who represented New York in the House of Representatives and served as the 99th Mayor of New York City fro ...
, and had little impact on policy. Historian Alan Brinkley states: :Nor did the New Deal make much more than a symbolic effort to address problems of gender equality....New Deal programs (even those designed by New Deal women) continued most mostly to reflect traditional assumptions about women's roles and made few gestures toward the aspirations of women who sought economic independence and professional opportunities. The interest in individual and group rights that became so central to the postwar liberalism... was faint, and at times almost invisible, within the New Deal itself.


Since 1941


World War II

When the United States entered World War II in 1941, 12 million women were already working (making up one quarter of the workforce), and by the end of the war, the number was up to 18 million (one third of the workforce). Eventually 3 million women worked in war plants, but the majority of women who worked during World War II worked in traditionally female occupations, like the service sector. During this time, Government propaganda calling on women to enter the workforce during the emergency popularized the "
Rosie the Riveter Rosie the Riveter is an allegorical cultural icon in the United States who represents the women who worked in factories and shipyards during World War II, many of whom produced munitions and war supplies. These women sometimes took entirely new ...
" image of women assuming male roles. Standlee (2010) argues that during the war the traditional gender division of labor changed somewhat, as the "home" or domestic female sphere expanded to include the "home front". Meanwhile, the public sphere—the male domain—was redefined as the international stage of military action.


Employment

Wartime mobilization drastically changed the sexual divisions of labor for women, as young-able bodied men were sent overseas and war time manufacturing production increased. Throughout the war, according to Susan Hartmann (1982), an estimated 6.5 million women entered the labor force. Women, many of whom were married, took a variety of paid jobs in a multitude of vocational jobs, many of which were previously exclusive to men. The greatest wartime gain in female employment was in the manufacturing industry, where more than 2.5 million additional women represented an increase of 140 percent by 1944. This was catalyzed by the "
Rosie the Riveter Rosie the Riveter is an allegorical cultural icon in the United States who represents the women who worked in factories and shipyards during World War II, many of whom produced munitions and war supplies. These women sometimes took entirely new ...
" phenomenon. The composition of the marital status of women who went to work changed considerably over the course of the war. One in every ten married women entered the labor force during the war, and they represented more than three million of the new female workers, while 2.89 million were single and the rest widowed or divorced. For the first time in the nation's history there were more married women than single women in the female labor force. In 1944, thirty-seven percent of all adult women were reported in the labor force, but nearly fifty percent of all women were actually employed at some time during that year at the height of wartime production. In the same year the unemployment rate hit an all-time historical low of 1.2%. According to Hartmann (1982), the women who sought employment, based on various surveys and public opinion reports at the time suggests that financial reasoning was the justification for entering the labor force; however, patriotic motives made up another large portion of women's desires to enter. Women whose husbands were at war were more than twice as likely to seek jobs. Fundamentally, women were thought to be taking work defined as "men's work;" however, the work women did was typically catered to specific skill sets management thought women could handle. Management would also advertise women's work as an extension of domesticity. For example, in a
Sperry Corporation Sperry Corporation was a major American equipment and electronics company whose existence spanned more than seven decades of the 20th century. Sperry ceased to exist in 1986 following a prolonged hostile takeover bid engineered by Burroughs ...
recruitment pamphlet the company stated, "Note the similarity between squeezing orange juice and the operation of a small drill press." A
Ford Motor Company Ford Motor Company (commonly known as Ford) is an American multinational automobile manufacturer headquartered in Dearborn, Michigan, United States. It was founded by Henry Ford and incorporated on June 16, 1903. The company sells automobi ...
at
Willow Run Willow Run, also known as Air Force Plant 31, was a manufacturing complex in Michigan, United States, located between Ypsilanti Township and Belleville, built by the Ford Motor Company to manufacture aircraft, especially the B-24 Liberator hea ...
bomber plant publication proclaimed, "The ladies have shown they can operate drill presses as well as egg beaters." One manager was even stated saying, "Why should men, who from childhood on never so much as sewed on buttons be expected to handle delicate instruments better than women who have plied embroidery needles, knitting needles and darning needs all their lives?" In these instances, women were thought of and hired to do jobs management thought they could perform based on sex-typing. Following the war, many women left their jobs voluntarily. One
Twin Cities Army Ammunition Plant The Twin Cities Army Ammunition Plant was a United States Army ammunition plant located in Ramsey County, Minnesota in the current boundaries of the suburbs of Arden Hills, Minnesota, Arden Hills and New Brighton, Minnesota, New Brighton, bounded ...
(formally Twin Cities Ordnance Plant) worker in
New Brighton, Minnesota New Brighton is a city in Ramsey County, Minnesota, United States. It is a suburb of the Twin Cities. The population was 22,753 at the 2020 census. History In the mid 18th century, Mdewakanton Dakota tribes lived in the vicinity of New Brighto ...
confessed, "I will gladly get back into the apron. I did not go into war work with the idea of working all my life. It was just to help out during the war." Other women were laid off by employers to make way for returning veterans who did not lose their seniority due to the war. By the end of the war, many men who entered into the service did not return. This left women to take up sole responsibility of the household and provide economically for the family.


Black women

Before the war most black women had been farm laborers in the South or domestics in Southern towns or Northern cities. Working with the federal Fair Employment Practices Committee, the NAACP, and CIO unions, these black women fought a "
Double V campaign The Double V campaign was a slogan and drive to promote the fight for democracy in overseas campaigns and at the home front in the United States for African Americans during World War II. The Double V refers to the "V for victory" sign prominen ...
" —fighting against the Axis abroad and against restrictive hiring practices at home. Their efforts redefined citizenship, equating their patriotism with war work, and seeking equal employment opportunities, government entitlements, and better working conditions as conditions appropriate for full citizens. In the South, black women worked in segregated jobs; in the West and most of the North, they were integrated. However,
wildcat strike The wildcat is a species complex comprising two small wild cat species: the European wildcat (''Felis silvestris'') and the African wildcat (''F. lybica''). The European wildcat inhabits forests in Europe, Anatolia and the Caucasus, while the ...
s erupted in Detroit, Baltimore, and
Evansville, Indiana Evansville is a city in, and the county seat of, Vanderburgh County, Indiana, United States. The population was 118,414 at the 2020 census, making it the state's third-most populous city after Indianapolis and Fort Wayne, the largest city in ...
where white migrants from the South refused to work alongside black women.


Nursing

Nursing became a highly prestigious occupation for young women. A majority of female civilian nurses volunteered for the Army Nurse Corps or the
Navy Nurse Corps The United States Navy Nurse Corps was officially established by United States Congress, Congress in 1908; however, unofficially, women had been working as nurses aboard Navy ships and in Navy hospitals for nearly 100 years. The Corps was all-fem ...
. These women automatically became officers. Teenaged girls enlisted in the Cadet Nurse Corps. To cope with the growing shortage on the homefront, thousands of retired nurses volunteered to help out in local hospitals.


Volunteer activities

Women staffed millions of jobs in community service roles, such as nursing, the
USO The United Service Organizations Inc. (USO) is an American nonprofit-charitable corporation that provides live entertainment, such as comedians, actors and musicians, social facilities, and other programs to members of the United States Armed F ...
, and the
Red Cross The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement is a Humanitarianism, humanitarian movement with approximately 97 million Volunteering, volunteers, members and staff worldwide. It was founded to protect human life and health, to ensure re ...
. Unorganized women were encouraged to collect and turn in materials that were needed by the war effort. Women collected fats rendered during cooking, children formed balls of aluminum foil they peeled from chewing gum wrappers and also created rubber band balls, which they contributed to the war effort. Hundreds of thousands of men joined civil defense units to prepare for disasters, such as enemy bombing. The
Women Airforce Service Pilots The Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) (also Women's Army Service Pilots or Women's Auxiliary Service Pilots) was a civilian women pilots' organization, whose members were United States federal civil service employees. Members of WASP became t ...
(WASP) mobilized 1,000 civilian women to fly new warplanes from the factories to airfields located on the east coast of the U.S. This was historically significant because flying a warplane had always been a male role. No American women flew warplanes in combat.


Baby boom

Marriage and motherhood came back as prosperity empowered couples who had postponed marriage. The birth rate started shooting up in 1941, paused in 1944–45 as 12 million men were in uniform, then continued to soar until reaching a peak in the late 1950s. This was the "
Baby Boom A baby boom is a period marked by a significant increase of birth rate. This demographic phenomenon is usually ascribed within certain geographical bounds of defined national and cultural populations. People born during these periods are often ca ...
." In a New Deal-like move, the federal government set up the "EMIC" program that provided free prenatal and natal care for the wives of servicemen below the rank of sergeant. Housing shortages, especially in the munitions centers, forced millions of couples to live with parents or in makeshift facilities. Little housing had been built in the Depression years, so the shortages grew steadily worse until about 1949, when a massive housing boom finally caught up with demand. (After 1944, much of the new housing was supported by the
G.I. Bill The Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, commonly known as the G.I. Bill, was a law that provided a range of benefits for some of the returning World War II veterans (commonly referred to as G.I.s). The original G.I. Bill expired in 1956, bu ...
.) Federal law made it difficult to divorce absent servicemen, so the number of divorces peaked when they returned in 1946. In long-range terms, divorce rates changed little.


Housewives

Juggling their roles as mothers due to the Baby Boom and the jobs they filled while the men were at war, women strained to complete all tasks set before them. The war caused cutbacks in automobile and bus service, and migration from farms and towns to munitions centers. Those housewives who worked found the dual role difficult to handle. Stress came when sons, husbands, fathers, brothers, and fiancés were drafted and sent to faraway training camps, preparing for a war in which nobody knew how many would be killed. Millions of wives tried to relocate near their husbands' training camps. At the end of the war, most of the munitions-making jobs ended. Many factories were closed; others retooled for civilian production. In some jobs women were replaced by returning veterans who did not lose seniority because they were in service. However the number of women at work in 1946 was 87% of the number in 1944, leaving 13% who lost or quit their jobs. Many women working in machinery factories and more were taken out of the work force. Many of these former factory workers found other work at kitchens, being teachers, etc.


Military service

Furthermore, during World War II 350,000 women served in the military, as WACS,
WAVES Waves most often refers to: *Waves, oscillations accompanied by a transfer of energy that travel through space or mass. * Wind waves, surface waves that occur on the free surface of bodies of water. Waves may also refer to: Music * Waves (ban ...
, SPARS, Marines and nurses. More than 60,000 Army nurses served stateside and overseas during World War II; 67 Army nurses were captured by the Japanese in the Philippines in 1942 and were held as POWs for over two and a half years. More than 14,000 Navy nurses served stateside, overseas on hospital ships, and as flight nurses during the war. Five Navy nurses were captured by the Japanese on the island of Guam and held as POWs for five months before being exchanged; a second group of eleven Navy nurses were captured by the Japanese in the Philippines and held for 37 months. Over 150,000 American women served in the Women's Army Corps (WAC) during World War II; the Corps was formed in 1942. Many Army WACs computed the velocity of bullets, measured bomb fragments, mixed gunpowder, and loaded shells. Others worked as draftswomen, mechanics, and electricians, and some received training in ordnance engineering. Later in the war, women were trained to replace men as radio operators on U.S. Army hospital ships. The "Larkspur", the "Charles A. Stafford", and the "Blanche F. Sigman" each received three enlisted women and one officer near the end of 1944. This experiment proved successful, and the assignment of female secretaries and clerical workers to hospital ships occurred soon after. Eventually the Air Force obtained 40% of all WACs in the Army; women were assigned as weather observers and forecasters, cryptographers, radio operators and repairmen, sheet metal workers, parachute riggers, link trainer instructors, bombsight maintenance specialists, aerial photograph analysts, and control tower operators. Over 1,000 WACs ran the statistical control tabulating machines (the precursors of modern-day computers) used to keep track of personnel records. By January 1945 only 50% of AAF WACs held traditional assignments such as file clerk, typist, and stenographer. A few Air Force WACs were assigned flying duties; two WAC radio operators assigned to Mitchel Field, New York, flew as crew members on B-17 training flights. WAC mechanics and photographers also made regular flights. Three WACs were awarded Air Medals, including one in India for her work in mapping "the Hump," the mountainous air route overflown by pilots ferrying lend-lease supplies to the Chinese Army. One woman died in the crash of an aerial broadcasting plane. In 1942, the
WAVES Waves most often refers to: *Waves, oscillations accompanied by a transfer of energy that travel through space or mass. * Wind waves, surface waves that occur on the free surface of bodies of water. Waves may also refer to: Music * Waves (ban ...
(Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service) division was founded as an all-female division of the Navy, and more than 80,000 women served in it, including computer scientist
Grace Hopper Grace Brewster Hopper (; December 9, 1906 – January 1, 1992) was an American computer scientist, mathematician, and United States Navy Rear admiral (United States), rear admiral. One of the first programmers of the Harvard Mark I, Harvard Mar ...
, who later achieved the rank of rear admiral. While traditionally female secretarial and clerical jobs took a large portion of the WAVES women, thousands of WAVES performed previously atypical duties in the aviation community, Judge Advocate General Corps, medical professions, communications, intelligence, science and technology. The WAVES ended and women were accepted into the regular Navy in 1948. The first six enlisted women to be sworn into the regular Navy on July 7, 1948 were Kay Langdon, Wilma Marchal, Edna Young, Frances Devaney, Doris Robertson. and Ruth Flora. On October 15, 1948, the first eight women to be commissioned in the regular Navy, Joy Bright Hancock, Winifred Quick Collins, Ann King, Frances Willoughby, Ellen Ford, Doris Cranmore, Doris Defenderfer, and Betty Rae Tennant took their oaths as naval officers. Semper Paratus Always Ready, better known as SPARS, was the United States Coast Guard Women's Reserve, created November 23, 1942; more than 11,000 women served in SPARS during World War II. SPARs were assigned stateside and served as storekeepers, clerks, photographers, pharmacist's mates, cooks, and in numerous other jobs. The program was largely demobilized after the war. The Marine Corps created a Women's Reserve in 1943; women served as Marines during the war in over 225 different specialties, filling 85% of the enlisted jobs at Headquarters Marine Corps and comprising one-half to two-thirds of the permanent personnel at major Marine Corps posts. Marine women served stateside as clerks, cooks, mechanics, drivers, and in a variety of other positions. The Women's Airforce Service Pilots (also known as
WASP A wasp is any insect of the narrow-waisted suborder Apocrita of the order Hymenoptera which is neither a bee nor an ant; this excludes the broad-waisted sawflies (Symphyta), which look somewhat like wasps, but are in a separate suborder. Th ...
) was a civilian agency that had uniforms but no military status. It was created in 1943 to free male pilots for combat service. WASPs flew stateside missions as ferriers, test pilots, and anti-aircraft artillery trainers. Some 25,000 women applied to join the WASP, but only 1,830 were accepted and took the oath, and out of those only 1,074 women passed the training and joined. The WASPs flew over 60 million miles in all, in every type of aircraft in the
AAF AAF may refer to: Aviation * Aigle Azur (ICAO code), a French airline * Apalachicola Regional Airport (IATA code), in Apalachicola, Florida Corporations * American Air Filter, today a part of HVAC-equipment-maker Daikin Military * Albanian Arm ...
arsenal. WASPs were granted veteran status in 1977, and given the Congressional Gold Medal in 2009. Some women were spies for America during World War II, for example the singer
Josephine Baker Josephine Baker (born Freda Josephine McDonald; naturalised French Joséphine Baker; 3 June 1906 – 12 April 1975) was an American-born French dancer, singer and actress. Her career was centered primarily in Europe, mostly in her adopted Fran ...
, whose long residency in France helped her form an underground network, and
Claire Phillips Claire Maybelle Snyder (December 2, 1907 – May 22, 1960), also known as Clara Fuentes, Clara Phillips, Dorothy Fuentes as well as High Pockets, was an American spy, entertainer, club owner, and writer most noted for her exploits in the Japanes ...
, a spy in the Philippines (then occupied by Japan) who in addition to spying sent aid and supplies to the American POWs; Claire was tortured, but never admitted to knowing the people in her spy ring, and after the war she was recognized by the American and Philippine governments for her heroism.


Postwar

Once World War II ended in 1945, female munitions workers were expected to give up their jobs to returning male veterans and go back home to have, and care for children put off by the war. In 1946, 4,000,000 women were fired from their jobs. But for many women, work was an economic necessity, and they simply went back to the sort of
low-paying job The working poor are working people whose incomes fall below a given poverty line due to low-income jobs and low familial household income. These are people who spend at least 27 weeks in a year working or looking for employment, but remain und ...
s they had held before the war. However, most people in the 1950s felt that ideally women should be homemakers and men should be breadwinners. A booming economy helped to make this possible; by the mid-1950s, 40% of Americans were living in the suburbs with, on average, 3.8 children, two cars and two television sets. This lifestyle affected the aspirations of housewives and mothers: only 38% of women went to college in 1958 compared to 47% in 1920, despite the availability of more federal aid to pay for university education in the post-war America. Furthermore, although 46% of women worked during the 1950s, 75% of them worked in simple clerical or sales jobs. The average working woman in the 1950s earned 60% of the average working man's salary. However, there were still advances for women in the military. The Army-Navy Nurse Act of 1947 made the Army Nurse Corps and Women's Medical Specialist Corps part of the regular Army and gave permanent commissioned officer status to Army and Navy nurses. In 1948, Congress passed the Women's Armed Forces Integration Act, which authorized women to enlist in the military alongside men, rather than in their own separate units, although women were still not allowed to serve in combat. Furthermore, in 1948 Executive Order 9981 ended racial segregation in the armed services. In 1949, the Air Force Nurse Corps was established (the Air Force itself was created in 1947). That same year, the first African-American women enlisted in the Marine Corps. The
Korean War , date = {{Ubl, 25 June 1950 – 27 July 1953 (''de facto'')({{Age in years, months, weeks and days, month1=6, day1=25, year1=1950, month2=7, day2=27, year2=1953), 25 June 1950 – present (''de jure'')({{Age in years, months, weeks a ...
was fought from 1950–53. Many servicewomen who had joined the Reserves following World War II were involuntarily recalled to active duty during the Korean War. 540 Army nurses (all military nurses during the Korean War were female) served in the combat zone and many more were assigned to large hospitals in Japan during the war. One Army nurse (Genevieve Smith) died in a plane crash en route to Korea on July 27, 1950, shortly after hostilities began. Navy nurses served on hospital ships in the Korean theater of war as well as at Navy hospitals stateside. Eleven Navy nurses died en route to Korea when their plane crashed in the Marshall Islands. Air Force nurses served stateside, in Japan and as flight nurses in the Korean theater during the war. Three Air Force nurses were killed in plane crashes while on duty. Many other servicewomen were assigned to duty in the theater of operations in Japan and Okinawa.


Civil rights

Women were heavily involved in lesbian rights and civil rights throughout the 1950s. The 1954 case '' Oliver Brown et al. v. The Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas'' was named after Oliver Brown as a legal strategy to have a man at the head of the roster, although the 13 plaintiffs included 12 women and only one man: Oliver Brown, Darlene Brown, Lena Carper, Sadie Emmanuel, Marguerite Emerson, Shirley Fleming,
Zelma Henderson Zelma Henderson (February 29, 1920 – May 20, 2008) was the last surviving plaintiff in the 1954 landmark federal school desegregation case, ''Brown v. Board of Education''. The case outlawed segregation nationwide in all of the United States' ...
, Shirley Hodison, Maude Lawton, Alma Lewis, Iona Richardson, and Lucinda Todd. In 1955, the first national lesbian political and social organization in the United States, called
Daughters of Bilitis The Daughters of Bilitis , also called the DOB or the Daughters, was the first lesbian civil and political rights organization in the United States. The organization, formed in San Francisco in 1955, was conceived as a social alternative to lesb ...
, was founded by four lesbian couples in San Francisco (including
Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon Dorothy Louise Taliaferro "Del" Martin (May 5, 1921 – August 27, 2008) and Phyllis Ann Lyon (November 10, 1924 – April 9, 2020) were an American lesbian couple known as feminist and gay-rights activists. Martin and Lyon met in 1950 ...
). On December 1, 1955,
Rosa Parks Rosa Louise McCauley Parks (February 4, 1913 – October 24, 2005) was an American activist in the civil rights movement best known for her pivotal role in the Montgomery bus boycott. The United States Congress has honored her as "the ...
, a seamstress and volunteer secretary for the NAACP, was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama for refusing to give up her seat on a bus to a white man, as required by law at the time; shortly after this a bus boycott began, inspired by her actions, advocating for an end to all segregated busing. The night of Rosa Parks' arrest, with her permission, Mrs. Jo Ann Robinson stayed up mimeographing 35,000 handbills calling for a boycott of the Montgomery bus system. Prior to Rosa Parks' action,
Claudette Colvin Claudette Colvin (born Claudette Austin; September 5, 1939) is an American pioneer of the 1950s civil rights movement and retired nurse aide. On March 2, 1955, she was arrested at the age of 15 in Montgomery, Alabama, for refusing to give up ...
and Mary Louise Smith had refused to give up their seats on buses to white women, but their cases were eventually rejected by civil rights lawyers as they were not considered sympathetic enough. Aurelia Shines Browder refused to give up her seat to a white man in Montgomery, Alabama in April 1955, and she filed suit against the city and its
Democrat Democrat, Democrats, or Democratic may refer to: Politics *A proponent of democracy, or democratic government; a form of government involving rule by the people. *A member of a Democratic Party: **Democratic Party (United States) (D) **Democratic ...
Mayor W.A. "Tacky" Gayle. It was on her case, known as '' Browder v Gayle'', that the Supreme Court ruled in 1956 that segregated busing was unconstitutional, thus ending the bus boycott. Aurelia Browder was the lead plaintiff in the case, and Susie McDonald, Claudette Colvin, and Mary Louise Smith were the other plaintiffs. In the 1960s, legal scholar
Pauli Murray Anna Pauline "Pauli" Murray (November 20, 1910 – July 1, 1985) was an American civil rights activist who became a lawyer, gender equality advocate, Episcopal priest, and author. Drawn to the ministry, in 1977 she became one of the first women ...
coined the term "Jane Crow" to highlight racial inequality experienced by women of color.


Status of women

Yet women still occupied a lower position than men in many sectors of American life. In 1957, the National Manpower Council (NMC) at Columbia University published its study, "Womanpower, A Statement by the National Manpower Council with Chapters by the Council Staff". It was a comprehensive look at the experience of women in the labor force, their employment needs, and the implications of both for education, training, and public policy. This NMC analysis called women "essential" and "distinctive" workers and recommended that the Secretary of Labor establish a committee to review "the consequences and adequacy of existing Federal and state laws which have a direct bearing on the employment of women." But this suggestion was not acted upon by the Eisenhower Administration. In 1959, three landmark books on women were published: ''A Century of Struggle'' by
Eleanor Flexner Eleanor Flexner (October 4, 1908 – March 25, 1995) was an American distinguished independent scholar and pioneer in what was to become the field of women's studies. Her much praised ''Century of Struggle: The Woman's Rights Movement in the Unite ...
, the first professional history of the 19th century women's movement, which contained an implicit call to arms; ''A Century of Higher Education for American Women'' by Mabel Newcomer, which disclosed that the relative position of women in the academic world was in decline; and ''Women and Work in America'' by Robert Smuts, which drew attention to the fact that "the picture of women's occupations outside the home between 1890 and 1950 had changed in only a few essentials.” In reaction to such findings, by 1961, President John F. Kennedy was under pressure to establish a
President's Commission on the Status of Women The President's Commission on the Status of Women (PCSW) was established to advise the President of the United States on issues concerning the status of women. It was created by John F. Kennedy's signed December 14, 1961. In 1975 it became the ...
. Esther Peterson, Assistant Secretary of Labor and director of the Women's Bureau, and the highest ranking woman in the Kennedy Administration, wanted such a commission. Along with equal pay legislation, it had long been on the agenda of labor movement women and it was in that movement that Peterson's working career had been concentrated. Another wish of the women's movement, effective birth control, came true as in 1961 the first
birth control pill The combined oral contraceptive pill (COCP), often referred to as the birth control pill or colloquially as "the pill", is a type of birth control that is designed to be taken orally by women. The pill contains two important hormones: progest ...
, called Enovid, received FDA approval and went on the market. Women's organizations, notably the American Association of University Women and Business and Professional Women, had been proposing a women's rights commission for many years; they found a champion in
Eleanor Roosevelt Anna Eleanor Roosevelt () (October 11, 1884November 7, 1962) was an American political figure, diplomat, and activist. She was the first lady of the United States from 1933 to 1945, during her husband President Franklin D. Roosevelt's four ...
, who backed the proposal when she met with Kennedy at the White House after his election. The establishment of the Commission may also have been regarded by Kennedy as an expedient way to pay off his political debts to the women who had supported his campaign but were disappointed with his poor record of appointments of women to his administration. There was also a desire to have Eleanor Roosevelt, one of the most respected women in the country, associated with the Kennedy Administration. Roosevelt had only reluctantly supported JFK's presidential candidacy after her first choice, Adlai Stevenson, lost the nomination. However, she agreed to be the Chairperson of the President's Commission on the Status of Women, which was held from 1961 until 1963. The Commission's Report, called "The American Woman" and issued in 1963, noted discrimination against women in the areas of education, home and community services, employment, social insurance and taxation, and legal, civil and political rights. The report also recommended continued network-building. President Kennedy implemented two Commission recommendations that established an
Interdepartmental Committee on the Status of Women The Interdepartmental Committee on the Status of Women (ICSW) was established by John F. Kennedy, by Executive Order 11126, dated November 1, 1963 and as amended by Executive Order 11221 of May 8, 1965. It was an interdepartmental committee within t ...
and a Citizens' Advisory Council on the Status of Women, composed of twenty private citizens appointed by the President. These two groups co-sponsored four national conferences of state commissions on the status of women. Another important event of 1963 was the publication of
Betty Friedan Betty Friedan ( February 4, 1921 – February 4, 2006) was an American feminist writer and activist. A leading figure in the women's movement in the United States, her 1963 book ''The Feminine Mystique'' is often credited with sparking the se ...
’s influential book ''
The Feminine Mystique ''The Feminine Mystique'' is a book by Betty Friedan, widely credited with sparking second-wave feminism in the United States. First published by W. W. Norton on February 19, 1963, ''The Feminine Mystique'' became a bestseller, initially selling ...
'', which is often cited as the founding moment of second-wave feminism. This book highlighted Friedan's view of a coercive and pervasive post-World War-II ideology of female domesticity that stifled middle-class women's opportunities to be anything but homemakers. Friedan's book is credited with sparking second-wave feminism by directing women's attention to the broad social basis of their problems, stirring many to political and social activism. Also in 1963, President Kennedy signed the
Equal Pay Act of 1963 The Equal Pay Act of 1963 is a United States labor law amending the Fair Labor Standards Act, aimed at abolishing wage disparity based on sex (see gender pay gap). It was signed into law on June 10, 1963, by John F. Kennedy as part of his New Fr ...
into law, which amended the
Fair Labor Standards Act The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA) is a United States labor law that creates the right to a minimum wage, and "time-and-a-half" overtime pay when people work over forty hours a week. It also prohibits employment of minors in "oppres ...
to prohibit pay discrimination because of sex. It requires the employer to pay equal wages to men and women doing equal work on jobs requiring equal skill, effort, and responsibility, which are performed under similar working conditions. However, it did not originally cover executives, administrators, outside salespeople, or professionals. In 1972, Congress enacted the
Education Amendments of 1972 The Education Amendments of 1972, also sometimes known as the Higher Education Amendments of 1972 (Public Law No. 92‑318, 86 Stat. 235), were U.S. legislation enacted on June 23, 1972. It is best known for its Title IX, which prohibited disc ...
, which (among other things) amended the
Fair Labor Standards Act The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA) is a United States labor law that creates the right to a minimum wage, and "time-and-a-half" overtime pay when people work over forty hours a week. It also prohibits employment of minors in "oppres ...
to expand the coverage of the Equal Pay Act to these employees, by excluding the Equal Pay Act from the professional workers exemption of the Fair Labor Standards Act. Another accomplishment for feminism in 1963 was that feminist activist
Gloria Steinem Gloria Marie Steinem (; born March 25, 1934) is an American journalist and social-political activist who emerged as a nationally recognized leader of second-wave feminism Second-wave feminism was a period of feminist activity that began in ...
published her article ''I Was a Playboy Bunny'', a behind the scenes look at the sexist treatment of
Playboy ''Playboy'' is an American men's lifestyle and entertainment magazine, formerly in print and currently online. It was founded in Chicago in 1953, by Hugh Hefner and his associates, and funded in part by a $1,000 loan from Hefner's mother. K ...
bunnies, which was one of her first major assignments in investigative journalism. There were several political firsts for women in the 1960s. On November 22, 1963, following the assassination of President Kennedy, federal judge
Sarah T. Hughes Sarah Tilghman Hughes (August 2, 1896 – April 23, 1985) was an American lawyer and federal judge who served on the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas. She is best known as the judge who swore in Lyndon B. Johnson ...
administered the Presidential Oath of Office to Lyndon Johnson aboard Air Force One, the only time a woman has done so, as the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court normally has this honor. 1964 was the first year in which more women voted in a Presidential election than men; more women have voted than men in every Presidential election since. One of the most important advances for women's rights in this decade was not begun by a feminist. On Saturday, February 8, 1964, while the Civil Rights Act was being debated on the House floor,
Howard W. Smith Howard Worth Smith (February 2, 1883 – October 3, 1976) was an American politician. A Democratic U.S. Representative from Virginia, he was a leader of the informal but powerful conservative coalition. Early life and education Howard W ...
of Virginia, Chairman of the Rules Committee and staunch opponent of all civil rights legislation, rose up and offered a one word amendment to Title VII, which prohibited employment discrimination. He proposed to add "sex" to that one title of the bill in order "to prevent discrimination against another minority group, the women,".... (110 Cong. Rec., February 8, 1964, 2577). This stimulated several hours of humorous debate, later called "ladies day in the House", before the amendment was passed by a teller vote of 168 to 133. The ''Congressional Record'' shows Smith made serious arguments, voicing concerns that white women would suffer greater discrimination without a protection for gender. Liberals—who knew Smith was hostile to civil rights for blacks—assumed that he was hostile to rights for women, unaware of his long connection with white feminists. The
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is a federal agency that was established via the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to administer and enforce civil rights laws against workplace discrimination. The EEOC investigates discrimination ...
, in charge of the enforcement of Title VII, ignored sex discrimination complaints, and the prohibition against sex discrimination in employment went unenforced for the next few years. One EEOC director called the prohibition "a fluke...conceived out of wedlock," and even the liberal magazine ''The New Republic'' asked, "Why should a mischievous joke perpetrated on the floor of the House of Representatives be treated by a responsible administration body with this kind of seriousness?" 1965 saw the Supreme Court case ''
Griswold v. Connecticut ''Griswold v. Connecticut'', 381 U.S. 479 (1965), was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that the Constitution of the United States protects the liberty of married couples to buy and use contraceptives withou ...
'', 381 U.S. 479 (1965), a landmark case in which the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the Constitution protected a right to privacy. The case involved
Estelle Griswold Estelle Naomi Trebert Griswold (June 8, 1900 – August 13, 1981) was a civil rights activist and feminist most commonly known as a defendant in what became the Supreme Court case '' Griswold v. Connecticut'', in which contraception for married ...
acting against a Connecticut "Comstock law" that prohibited any person from using "any drug, medicinal article or instrument for the purpose of preventing conception." By a vote of 7–2, the Supreme Court invalidated the law on the grounds that it violated the "right to marital privacy", establishing the basis for the right to privacy with respect to intimate practices. In 1966, at the third National Conference of State Commissions on the Status of Women, the conference organizers did not allow resolutions or actions of any kind meant to abolish discrimination against women, so some women who were attending decided to form an advocacy organization of their own. Cornering a large table at the conference luncheon, so that they could start organizing before they had to rush for planes, each of those women chipped in five dollars, Betty Friedan wrote the acronym NOW on a napkin, and the
National Organization for Women The National Organization for Women (NOW) is an American feminist organization. Founded in 1966, it is legally a 501(c)(4) social welfare organization. The organization consists of 550 chapters in all 50 U.S. states and in Washington, D.C. It ...
was created. Its first meeting was held on June 28, 1966 in Betty Friedan's hotel room, with 28 women attending. At its first conference in October 1966, Friedan was elected NOW's first president, and her fame as the author of the bestselling book ''The Feminine Mystique'' helped attract thousands of women to the organization. Friedan drafted NOW's original Statement of Purpose, which began, "The purpose of NOW is to take action to bring women into full participation in the mainstream of American society now, exercising all the privileges and responsibilities thereof in truly equal partnership with men." Furthermore, in 1966, Congresswoman
Martha Griffiths Martha Wright Griffiths (January 29, 1912 – April 22, 2003) was an American lawyer and judge before being elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1954. Griffiths was the first woman to serve on the House Committee on Ways and M ...
admonished the EEOC on the floor of Congress for their failure to enforce the prohibition against sex discrimination in employment. Employment discrimination against women began to be taken more seriously in the late 1960s. In 1967, President
Lyndon Johnson Lyndon Baines Johnson (; August 27, 1908January 22, 1973), often referred to by his initials LBJ, was an American politician who served as the 36th president of the United States from 1963 to 1969. He had previously served as the 37th vice ...
issued Executive Order 11375, which declared that federal employers must take affirmative action to ensure that employees receive equal treatment and opportunities regardless of gender, race, color, or religion. In 1968, the EEOC, following two years of protests by NOW, banned all help wanted ads which specified which sex a job applicant should be, except those jobs for which being a certain sex was a bona fide occupational requirement (such as actress), opening many hitherto unattainable jobs to women. The Supreme Court ruled the ban legal in '' Pittsburgh Press Co. v Pittsburgh Commission on Human Relations'', 413 U.S. 376 (1973).


Late 1960s

There were several other feminist advances in the late 1960s, in both conservative and liberal circles. In 1968, conservative women separated from NOW and organized
Women's Equity Action League The Women's Equity Action League, or WEAL, was a United States women's rights organization founded in 1968 with the purpose of addressing discrimination against women in employment and education opportunities. Made up of conservative women, they use ...
(WEAL) to campaign for equal opportunities for women in education, economics, and employment, while avoiding issues such as abortion, sexuality, and the Equal Rights Amendment. Also in 1968, there was a protest of the Miss America pageant in Atlantic City; at the protest a group of about one hundred women tossed items that they considered symbolic of women's oppression into a Freedom Trash Can, including copies of Playboy, high-heeled shoes, corsets, and girdles. They also crowned a sheep as Miss America. Lindsy Van Gelder, a reporter for the Post, wrote a piece about the protest in which she compared the trash-can procession to the burning of draft cards at antiwar marches. However, the rumor that women burned their bras at the protest is not true.


1970s

Litigation for women's rights now began to have a serious impact on American life. In 1970, California adopted the nation's first
no-fault divorce In a no-fault divorce the dissolution of a marriage does not require a showing of wrongdoing by either party. Laws providing for no-fault divorce allow a family court to grant a divorce in response to a petition by either party of the marriage w ...
law, which was intended to promote equality between men and women. By 2010, all 50 states had legalized no-fault divorce, with New York being the last state to do so. In 1969, the case ''Weeks v Southern Bell'' was decided in favor of
Lorena Weeks Lorena W. Weeks (born 1929) was the plaintiff in an important sex discrimination case, ''Weeks v. Southern Bell'' (1969). She claimed that Southern Bell had violated her rights under the 1964 Civil Rights Act of 1964, Civil Rights Act when they deni ...
, who had applied for a better job as a switchperson, but had her application rejected because, her union boss said, "the man is the breadwinner in the family, and women just do not need this type of job." Weeks filed a complaint with the EEOC, but the phone company cited a Georgia law that prohibited women from lifting anything heavier than 30 pounds, although the 34-pound manual typewriter Weeks used as a clerk had to be lifted by hand onto her desk every morning and stored away every night. After the case was decided, she received $31,000 in back pay and got the job. In the 1971 Supreme Court case '' Reed v Reed'', the Supreme Court ruled that it is illegal for any state to prefer all men over all women as administrators of assets. This was the first time in history that the Supreme Court ruled that the
Equal Protection Clause The Equal Protection Clause is part of the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The clause, which took effect in 1868, provides "''nor shall any State ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal ...
of the
Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution The Fourteenth Amendment (Amendment XIV) to the United States Constitution was adopted on July 9, 1868, as one of the Reconstruction Amendments. Often considered as one of the most consequential amendments, it addresses citizenship rights and ...
applied to differential treatment based on legal sex. In addition to litigation, feminist activists also began to form their own institutions to propagate their ideals. In 1971, feminists including Rep.
Bella Abzug Bella Savitzky Abzug (July 24, 1920 – March 31, 1998), nicknamed "Battling Bella", was an American lawyer, politician, social activist, and a leader in the women's movement. In 1971, Abzug joined other leading feminists such as Gloria Steinem, ...
,
Betty Friedan Betty Friedan ( February 4, 1921 – February 4, 2006) was an American feminist writer and activist. A leading figure in the women's movement in the United States, her 1963 book ''The Feminine Mystique'' is often credited with sparking the se ...
, and
Gloria Steinem Gloria Marie Steinem (; born March 25, 1934) is an American journalist and social-political activist who emerged as a nationally recognized leader of second-wave feminism Second-wave feminism was a period of feminist activity that began in ...
founded the
National Women's Political Caucus The National Women's Political Caucus (NWPC), or the Caucus, describes itself as a multi-partisan grassroots organization in the United States dedicated to recruiting, training, and supporting women who seek elected and appointed offices at all ...
to advocate for more women and feminists in elective office. Also in 1971,
Gloria Steinem Gloria Marie Steinem (; born March 25, 1934) is an American journalist and social-political activist who emerged as a nationally recognized leader of second-wave feminism Second-wave feminism was a period of feminist activity that began in ...
and others began publishing ''
Ms. Ms. (American English) or Ms (British English; normally , but also , or when unstressed)''Oxford English Dictionary'' online, Ms, ''n.2''. Etymology: "An orthographic and phonetic blend of Mrs ''n.1'' and miss ''n.2'' Compare mizz ''n.'' The pr ...
'', the first national American feminist magazine. The first three hundred thousand copies of ''Ms.'' sold out in eight days; the magazine name comes from the fact that the title Ms. was originally popularized by feminists in the 1970s to replace Miss and Mrs. and provide a parallel term to Mr., in that both Ms. and Mr. designate gender without indicating marital status. In 1972, former NOW members Pat Goltz and
Cathy Callaghan Catherine "Cathy" Callaghan (October 31, 1931 – March 16, 2019) was Professor Emerita in the Department of Linguistics at the Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. She received a Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of California, Berkel ...
founded Feminists for Life, with the goal of eliminating the root causes that they felt drove women to abortion, contending that abortion violated core feminist principles of justice, non-discrimination and
nonviolence Nonviolence is the personal practice of not causing harm to others under any condition. It may come from the belief that hurting people, animals and/or the environment is unnecessary to achieve an outcome and it may refer to a general philosoph ...
. 1972 also saw the Supreme Court case ''
Eisenstadt v. Baird ''Eisenstadt v. Baird'', 405 U.S. 438 (1972), was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court that established the right of unmarried people to possess contraception on the same basis as married couples. The Court struck down a Massachusetts la ...
'', 405 U.S. 438 (1972), that established the right of unmarried people to possess contraception on the same basis as married couples and, by implication, the right of unmarried couples to engage in potentially nonprocreative sexual intercourse (though not the right of unmarried people to engage in any type of sexual intercourse). The Court struck down a Massachusetts law prohibiting the distribution of contraceptives to unmarried people, ruling that it violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution. One of the most important feminist successes of the early 1970s was when Nixon signed into law the
Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972 The Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972 is a United States federal law which amended Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (the "1964 Act") to address employment discrimination against African Americans and other minorities. Specifically ...
and
Title IX Title IX is the most commonly used name for the federal civil rights law in the United States that was enacted as part (Title IX) of the Education Amendments of 1972. It prohibits sex-based discrimination in any school or any other educat ...
of the
Education Amendments of 1972 The Education Amendments of 1972, also sometimes known as the Higher Education Amendments of 1972 (Public Law No. 92‑318, 86 Stat. 235), were U.S. legislation enacted on June 23, 1972. It is best known for its Title IX, which prohibited disc ...
. The
Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972 The Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972 is a United States federal law which amended Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (the "1964 Act") to address employment discrimination against African Americans and other minorities. Specifically ...
gives the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) authority to sue in federal courts when it finds reasonable cause to believe that there has been employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. In the case of public employment, the EEOC refers the matter to the United States Attorney General to bring the lawsuit.
Title IX Title IX is the most commonly used name for the federal civil rights law in the United States that was enacted as part (Title IX) of the Education Amendments of 1972. It prohibits sex-based discrimination in any school or any other educat ...
of the Education Amendments of 1972 requires gender equity in every educational program that receives federal funding including but not limited to sports. However, the feminist movement did have some notable setbacks around this time. In 1972, President Nixon vetoed the Comprehensive Child Development Bill of 1972, which many feminists advocated and which would have established both early-education programs and after-school care across the country, with tuition on a sliding scale based on a family's income bracket, and the program available to everyone but participation required of no one.


Defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment

Pro-ERA advocacy was led by the National Organization for Women (NOW) and ERAmerica, a coalition of nearly 80 other organizations. The
Equal Rights Amendment The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) is a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution designed to guarantee equal legal rights for all American citizens regardless of sex. Proponents assert it would end legal distinctions between men and ...
passed the Senate and then the House of Representatives in 1972, and on March 22, 1972, it was sent to the states for ratification. However, it was not ratified before the deadline for ratification passed, and therefore never became law. Some states'-rights advocates thought the ERA was a federal power grab. Some feminists claimed that the insurance industry opposed a measure they believed would cost them money. Opposition to the ERA was also organized by fundamentalist religious groups. The most influential ERA opponent was
Phyllis Schlafly Phyllis Stewart Schlafly (; born Phyllis McAlpin Stewart; August 15, 1924 – September 5, 2016) was an American attorney, conservative activist, author, and anti-feminist spokesperson for the national conservative movement. She held paleocons ...
, right-wing leader of the Eagle Forum/STOP ERA. She argues that the ERA would deny a woman's right to be supported by her husband, privacy rights would be overturned, women would be sent into combat, and abortion rights and same-sex marriages would be upheld. Experts agree that Schlafly's organization skills were decisive in causing the defeat. Political scientist
Jane Mansbridge Jane Jebb Mansbridge (born November 19, 1939) is an American political scientist. She is the Charles F. Adams Professor of Political Leadership and Democratic Values in the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Mansbridge has made co ...
in her history of the ERA concludes: :Many people who followed the struggle over the ERA believed—rightly in my view—that the Amendment would have been ratified by 1975 or 1976 had it not been for Phyllis Schlafly's early and effective effort to organize potential opponents. Joan C. Williams argues, "ERA was defeated when Schlafly turned it into a war among women over gender roles." Historian Judith Glazer-Raymo argues: :As moderates, we thought we represented the forces of reason and goodwill but failed to take seriously the power of the family values argument and the single-mindedness of Schlafly and her followers. The ERA's defeat seriously damaged the women's movement, destroying its momentum and its potential to foment social change....Eventually, this resulted in feminist dissatisfaction with the Republican Party, giving the Democrats a new source of strength that when combined with overwhelming minority support, helped elect Bill Clinton to the presidency in 1992 and again in 1996.


The radical feminist movement

Second-wave feminism Second-wave feminism was a period of feminist activity that began in the early 1960s and lasted roughly two decades. It took place throughout the Western world, and aimed to increase equality for women by building on previous feminist gains. Wh ...
was diverse in its causes and goals. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, parallel with the counterculture movements, women with more radical ideas about feminist goals began to organize. In her work, ''Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America, 1967–1975'', historian
Alice Echols Alice Echols is Professor of History, and the Barbra Streisand Chair of Contemporary Gender Studies at the University of Southern California. Retrieved March 17, 2013 Education Echols received her bachelor's degree from Macalester College, Minne ...
gives a thorough description of the short-lived movement. The radical feminists were after not only the end of female oppression by men but, as Echols notes, "They also fought for safe, effective, accessible contraception; the repeal of all abortion laws; the creation of high-quality, community-controlled child-care centers; and an end to the media’s objectification of women. " Small protests and signs of a larger support for radical feminism became more cohesive during the
Students for a Democratic Society Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was a national student activist organization in the United States during the 1960s, and was one of the principal representations of the New Left. Disdaining permanent leaders, hierarchical relationships ...
(SDS) June 1967 National Convention in Ann Arbor. The "Women’s Liberation Workshop" denounced sexual inequality and stated, "As we analyze the position of women in capitalist society and especially the United States we find that women are in a colonial relationship to men and we recognize ourselves as part of the Third World." Co-written by Jane Addams, one of the most prominent women in SDS, they argued that women's place within SDS was subordinate and revolution could not succeed without women's liberation. SDS women, including Susan Stern of the Weathermen, and women from the Old Left, including
Clara Fraser Clara Fraser (March 12, 1923 – February 24, 1998) was a socialist feminist political organizer, who co-founded and led the Freedom Socialist Party and Radical Women. Biography Early life and activism Clara Fraser was born in 1923 to Jewis ...
and Gloria Martin, came together to foun
Radical Women
in Seattle in November 1967.
Radical Women Radical Women (RW) is a socialist feminist grassroots activist organization affiliated with the Freedom Socialist Party. It has branches in Seattle, Washington, and Melbourne, Australia. History Radical Women emerged in Seattle from a "Free Uni ...
identified as socialist feminist and described its political views in "The Radical Women Manifesto." The group called for multi-issue struggle around issues of sex, race and class and defended lesbian/gay rights. Radical Women celebrated it
50th anniversary of activism in 2017.
(There is no relationship between Radical Women and the short-lived group known as New York Radical Women.) While radical feminists agreed that a separate movement for them was needed, how that movement looked and its ultimate goals caused much divide. They questioned whether they should include men within their movement, whether they should focus on issues of war, race and class, and who or what it was they were exactly rallying against. There were also issues concerning African American women within the movement; while the radical feminists felt gender to be the greatest issue, African American women were also very much concerned with racism and many found that to be where oppression was most domineering. Despite being inspired by the black power movement, radical feminists had difficulty figuring out a place for race within their gender-centric movement. They were also divided over the place of lesbianism in the movement. Notable radical feminist groups included
Redstockings Redstockings, also known as Redstockings of the Women's Liberation Movement, is a radical feminist nonprofit that was founded in January 1969 in New York City, whose goal is "To Defend and Advance the Women's Liberation Agenda". The group's name ...
, founded in 1969. The group focused on power dynamics in gender and promoted consciousness-raising and distributed movement literature for free. Cell 16, founded in 1968, was a much more militant group arguing that women were conditioned by their sex-roles.
The Feminists The Feminists (also known as Feminists—A Political Organization to Annihilate Sex Roles, formerly as October 17th Movement) Greer, Germaine (1970). '' The Female Eunuch''. New York: McGraw-Hill, p. 295. was a second-wave radical feminist gr ...
, founded by
Ti-Grace Atkinson Grace Atkinson (born November 9, 1938), better known as Ti-Grace Atkinson, is an American radical feminist activist, writer and philosopher. Life and career Atkinson was born into a prominent Louisiana family. Named after her grandmother, Gra ...
in 1968, claimed women were complicit in their oppression and needed to shed conventional gender roles.
New York Radical Feminists New York Radical Feminists (NYRF) was a radical feminist group founded by Shulamith Firestone and Anne Koedt in 1969, after they had left Redstockings and The Feminists, respectively. Firestone's and Koedt's desire to start this new group was a ...
, founded in 1969, also found maleness to be the greater issue than power roles. They were interested in building a larger movement through mass numbers in New York City. Echols describes the movement's end: "Radical feminism remained the hegemonic tendency within the women’s liberation movement until 1973 when cultural feminism began to cohere and challenge its dominance. After 1975, a year of internecine conflicts between radical and cultural feminists, cultural feminism eclipsed radical feminism as the dominant tendency within the women’s liberation movement, and, as a consequence, liberal feminism became the recognized voice of the women’s movement." The end of the counterculture movements and the government's observation of the movement also contributed to its end. The radical feminist movement demonstrated that Second-wave feminism was diverse in its goals, but also divided within itself. Echols notes, "To many women, liberal feminism’s considerably more modest goal of bringing women into the mainstream seemed more palatable, not to mention more realistic, than the radical feminist project of fundamentally reconstructing private and public life." She also states that despite the fact that younger generations does not often see this movement as relevant, it is because feminist movements during this time actually did make significant changes.


Abortion

One of the most controversial developments in American women's lives has been the legalization of abortion. In 1973, in the Supreme Court case ''
Roe v Wade ''Roe v. Wade'', 410 U.S. 113 (1973),. was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that the Constitution of the United States conferred the right to have an abortion. The decision struck down many federal and s ...
'', the Supreme Court ruled that it is an illegal violation of privacy to outlaw or regulate any aspect of abortion performed during the first trimester of pregnancy, and that government can only enact abortion regulations reasonably related to maternal health in the second and third trimesters, and can enact abortion laws protecting the life of the fetus only in the third trimester. Furthermore, even in the third trimester, an exception has to be made to protect the life of the mother. This ruling has been extremely controversial from the moment it was made.
Linda Coffee Linda Nellene Coffee (born December 25, 1942) : profile of Coffee is an American lawyer living in Dallas, Texas. Coffee is best known, along with Sarah Weddington, for arguing the precedent-setting United States Supreme Court case '' Roe v. Wade ...
and
Sarah Weddington Sarah Catherine Ragle Weddington (February 5, 1945 – December 26, 2021) was an American attorney, law professor, advocate for women's rights and reproductive health, and member of the Texas House of Representatives. She was best known for rep ...
had brought the lawsuit that led to ''Roe v Wade'' on behalf of a pregnant woman, Dallas area resident Norma L. McCorvey ("Jane Roe"), claiming a Texas law criminalizing most abortions violated Roe's constitutional rights. The Texas law banned all abortions except those necessary to save the life of the mother, and Roe claimed that while her life was not endangered, she could not afford to travel out of state and had a right to terminate her pregnancy in a safe medical environment.


Firsts

One of the most famous feminist media events, aside from the 1968 Miss America protest, was the tennis match known as the "Battle of the Sexes." In this match, on September 20, 1973, in Houston, Texas, women's tennis champion
Billie Jean King Billie Jean King (née Moffitt; born November 22, 1943) is an American former world No. 1 tennis player. King won 39 major titles: 12 in singles, 16 in women's doubles, and 11 in mixed doubles. King was a member of the victorious United States ...
defeated Bobby Riggs 6–4, 6–3, 6–3, before a worldwide television audience estimated at almost 50 million. 55-year-old former tennis champion
Bobby Riggs Robert Larimore Riggs (February 25, 1918 – October 25, 1995) was an American tennis champion who was the World No. 1 amateur in 1939 and World No. 1 professional in 1946 and 1947. He played his first professional tennis match on December ...
had defeated Australian tennis player
Margaret Court Margaret Court (''née'' Smith; born 16 July 1942), also known as Margaret Smith Court, is an Australian retired former world No. 1 tennis player and a Christian minister. Considered one of the greatest tennis players of all time, her 24 maj ...
earlier that year, and he was an outspoken opponent of feminism, saying for example, "If a woman wants to get in the headlines, she should have quintuplets," " and calling himself a "male chauvinist pig".


1970s

There were a few important legal gains for women in the mid-1970s. The
Equal Credit Opportunity Act The Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) is a United States law (codified at et seq.), enacted 28 October 1974, that makes it unlawful for any creditor to discriminate against any applicant, with respect to any aspect of a credit transaction, on ...
, enacted in 1974, illegalizes credit discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, marital status, age, or because someone receives public assistance. Due to this Act, creditors may ask you for most of this information in certain situations, but they may not use it when deciding whether to give you credit or when setting the terms of your credit. In the 1975 Supreme Court case '' Taylor v Louisiana'', the Supreme Court ruled that excluding women from the jury pool is illegal because it violates a person's
right to a fair trial A fair trial is a trial which is "conducted fairly, justly, and with procedural regularity by an impartial judge". Various rights associated with a fair trial are explicitly proclaimed in Article 10 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, th ...
by a representative segment of the community. In 1978, the
Pregnancy Discrimination Act The Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA) of 1978 () is a United States federal statute. It amended Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to "prohibit sex discrimination on the basis of pregnancy." The Act covers discrimination "on the basis of ...
was passed, making employment discrimination on the basis of pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions illegal. Another important event around this time was the
Vietnam War The Vietnam War (also known by #Names, other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vie ...
. Approximately 7,000 American military women served in Vietnam during the Vietnam War (1965–1975), the majority of them as nurses. An Army nurse, Sharon Ann Lane, was the only U.S. military woman to die from enemy fire in Vietnam. An Air Force flight nurse, Capt Mary Therese Klinker, died when the C-5A Galaxy transport evacuating Vietnamese orphans which she was aboard crashed on takeoff. Six other American military women also died in the line of duty. An important gain for military women occurred when in 1976, the five federal United States Service academies (West Point, Coast Guard Academy, Naval Academy, Air Force Academy, Merchant Marines Academy) were required to admit women as a result of Public Law 94-106 signed by President Gerald Ford on October 7, 1975. The law passed the House by a vote of 303 to 96 and the Senate by voice vote after divisive argument within Congress, resistance from the Department of Defense and legal action initiated by women to challenge their exclusion. More than 300 women enrolled in the academies in 1976.


Domestic violence and rape

During the 1970s, feminists also worked to bring greater attention and help to women suffering from domestic violence and rape. Before the 1970s, very little help was available to battered women. In the 1970s, some of the first battered women's shelters were created and states began adopting domestic violence laws providing for civil orders of protection and better police protection (the first
women's shelter A women's shelter, also known as a women's refuge and battered women's shelter, is a place of temporary protection and support for women escaping domestic violence and intimate partner violence of all forms. The term is also frequently used to ...
in the modern world was Haven House, which opened in 1964 in California). It is not true that either
Catharine MacKinnon Catharine Alice MacKinnon (born October 7, 1946) is an American radical feminist legal scholar, activist, and author. She is the Elizabeth A. Long Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School, where she has been tenured since 1990, a ...
or
Andrea Dworkin Andrea Rita Dworkin (September 26, 1946 – April 9, 2005) was an American radical feminist writer and activist best known for her analysis of pornography. Her feminist writings, beginning in 1974, span 30 years. They are found in a dozen solo ...
(both feminist activists) said "all sex is rape", or "all men are rapists," or "all sex is sexual harassment", as has been rumored; however, during the 1970s feminist activists worked to change laws stating that there had to be a witness other than the woman herself to charge a man with rape, and that a woman's sexual history could be brought up at trial, while the alleged rapist's could not. Also, due to feminist activism the first law against marital rape (raping one's spouse) was enacted by South Dakota in 1975. By 1993, marital rape had become a crime in all 50 states in America. The 1980s brought more firsts for American women. 1980 was the first year that a higher percentage of women than men voted in a Presidential election, and a higher percentage of women than men have voted in every Presidential election since. In 1981,
Sandra Day O'Connor Sandra Day O'Connor (born March 26, 1930) is an American retired attorney and politician who served as the first female associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1981 to 2006. She was both the first woman nominated and th ...
was confirmed unanimously by the Senate and became the first female Supreme Court Justice. In 1983,
Sally Ride Sally Kristen Ride (May 26, 1951 – July 23, 2012) was an American astronaut and physicist. Born in Los Angeles, she joined NASA in 1978, and in 1983 became the first American woman and the third woman to fly in space, after cosmonauts V ...
became the first female American astronaut. In 1984,
Geraldine Ferraro Geraldine Anne Ferraro (August 26, 1935 March 26, 2011) was an American politician, diplomat, and attorney. She served in the United States House of Representatives from 1979 to 1985, and was the Democratic Party's vice presidential nominee ...
became the first woman nominated for Vice President by a major party (the Democratic Party), although she was not elected. Also, in 1984 Kathryn D. Sullivan became the first American woman to walk in space. In 1987,
Wilma Mankiller Wilma Pearl Mankiller ( chr, ᎠᏥᎳᏍᎩ ᎠᏍᎦᏯᏗᎯ, Atsilasgi Asgayadihi; November 18, 1945April 6, 2010) was a Native American (Cherokee Nation) activist, social worker, community developer and the first woman elected to serve a ...
became the first woman to be elected chief of a major Native American tribe (Cherokee). In 1991, she was re-elected with 83% of the vote; during her tenure the Cherokee nation's membership more than doubled, to 170,000 from about 68,000. In 1987, Congress declared March as the first National
Women's History Month Women's History Month is an annual declared month that highlights the contributions of women to events in history and contemporary society. It is celebrated during March in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia, corresponding with ...
. A special Presidential Proclamation is issued every year since which honors the achievements of American women. Younger women now began to be more involved in feminism. In the early 1990s,
third wave feminism Third-wave feminism is an iteration of the feminist movement that began in the early 1990s, prominent in the decades prior to the fourth wave. Grounded in the civil-rights advances of the second wave, Gen X and early Gen Y generations third-wav ...
began as a response to the second wave's perceived inadequacies and shortcomings. Third wave feminism, which continues today, is most often associated with a younger generation of feminist activism, an interest in popular culture and sexual agency, and an acceptance of pluralism and contradiction. In 1991, in Olympia, Washington,
Riot grrrl Riot grrrl is an underground feminist punk movement that began during the early 1990s within the United States in Olympia, Washington and the greater Pacific Northwest and has expanded to at least 26 other countries. Riot grrrl is a subcultur ...
began in reaction to the domination of the punk rock scene of America's Pacific Northwest by all-male bands, and as an attempt to establish a female-friendly presence within this scene. Riot grrrl consisted of feminist punk bands such as
Bikini Kill Bikini Kill is an American punk rock band formed in Olympia, Washington, in October 1990. The group consisted of singer and songwriter Kathleen Hanna, guitarist Billy Karren, bassist Kathi Wilcox, and drummer Tobi Vail. The band pioneered the ...
and
Bratmobile Bratmobile was an American punk band from Olympia, Washington, active from 1991 to 2003, and known for being one of the first-generation "riot grrrl" bands. The band was influenced by several eclectic musical styles, including elements of pop, ...
, and their zines, meetings and songs. The concerns of military women again came to the fore as the Persian Gulf War (1990–1991) utilized an unprecedented proportion of women from the active forces (7%) as well as the Reserve and National Guard (17%). Over 40,000 US military women served in combat support positions throughout the war. Sixteen women died during the war and two were held prisoner. In 1991, the
Tailhook A tailhook, arresting hook, or arrester hook is a device attached to the empennage (rear) of some military fixed-wing aircraft. The hook is used to achieve rapid deceleration during routine landings aboard aircraft carrier flight decks at sea ...
Scandal occurred at the annual Tailhook Association convention held in Las Vegas, with more than 26 women (14 of them officers) being assaulted by scores of drunken naval and marine officers. Accusations that the Navy mishandled the subsequent investigation were deeply damaging to the Navy's reputation. Another famous sexual harassment case occurred when in 1991
Anita Hill Anita Faye Hill (born July 30, 1956) is an American lawyer, educator and author. She is a professor of social policy, law, and women's studies at Brandeis University and a faculty member of the university's Heller School for Social Policy and ...
, a law professor at the University of Oklahoma, came forward with accusations that
Clarence Thomas Clarence Thomas (born June 23, 1948) is an American jurist who serves as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. He was nominated by President George H. W. Bush to succeed Thurgood Marshall and has served since 199 ...
(who had just been nominated for the Supreme Court) had sexually harassed her. Hill had worked for Thomas years earlier when he was head of the
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is a federal agency that was established via the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to administer and enforce civil rights laws against workplace discrimination. The EEOC investigates discrimination ...
, and she charged that Thomas harassed her with inappropriate discussion of sexual acts and pornographic films after she rebuffed his invitations to date him. When Thomas testified against Hill's claims before the Senate Judiciary Committee, he called the hearings, "a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks," although Hill herself was black. In the end, the Senate voted 52–48 to confirm Clarence Thomas as an associate justice of the Supreme Court. The 1990s brought more firsts for women in politics and the military. 1992 was known as the "
Year of the Woman The Year of the Woman was a popular label attached to 1992 after the election of a number of female senators in the United States. The term has also been used with respect to the 2018 House elections, in which a record 103 women were elected, ...
" because more women than ever before were elected to political office that year (women gained 19 House and 3 Senate seats for a total of 47 seats in the House and seven seats in the Senate) including
Carol Moseley Braun Carol Elizabeth Moseley Braun, also sometimes Moseley-Braun (born August 16, 1947), is a former U.S. Senator, an American diplomat, politician, and lawyer who represented Illinois in the United States Senate from 1993 to 1999. Prior to her Senate ...
, the first black female senator. In 1993,
Ruth Bader Ginsburg Joan Ruth Bader Ginsburg ( ; ; March 15, 1933September 18, 2020) was an American lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1993 until her death in 2020. She was nominated by President ...
was confirmed by Congress as a Supreme Court Justice, becoming the second woman on the court. In 1994,
Shannon Faulkner Shannon Faulkner is an American teacher, best known for being the first female student to attend The Citadel in 1994, following a lawsuit. She currently teaches English in Greenville, South Carolina. Biography Faulkner was born in Powdersvill ...
applied to
The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina, commonly known simply as The Citadel, is a public senior military college in Charleston, South Carolina. Established in 1842, it is one of six senior military colleges in the United States. ...
and was accepted for admission. She had left her gender information off the application. When it was discovered that she was a woman, The Citadel revoked her offer, so Faulkner filed suit against The Citadel to gain admission. The court rejected The Citadel's arguments, clearing her way to attend the school under court order. Faulkner became the first female cadet in 1995, but resigned a few days into her first week. A similar case occurred about this time that forced the
Virginia Military Institute la, Consilio et Animis (on seal) , mottoeng = "In peace a glorious asset, In war a tower of strength""By courage and wisdom" (on seal) , established = , type = Public senior military college , accreditation = SACS , endowment = $696.8 mill ...
to open its doors to women. On June 28, 1996, two days after the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in ''
United States v Virginia ''United States v. Virginia'', 518 U.S. 515 (1996), is a landmark case in which the Supreme Court of the United States struck down the long-standing male-only admission policy of the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) in a 7–1 decision. Justice ...
,'' the Citadel's governing board voted unanimously to remove a person's gender as a requirement for admission. In 1999,
Nancy Mace Nancy Ruth Mace (born December 4, 1977) is an American politician serving as the U.S. representative for South Carolina's 1st congressional district since 2021. Her district includes much of the state's share of the East Coast, from Charleston t ...
became the first woman to graduate from the Citadel. The first women graduated from the Virginia Military Institute in 2001 (Melissa Graham of Burleson, Texas, and Chih-Yuan Ho of Taipei, Taiwan). Two important cases concerning women's rights were litigated in the late 1990s. The
Matter of Kasinga The Matter of Kasinga was a legal case decided in June 1996 involving Fauziya Kassindja (surname also spelled as Kasinga), a Togolese teenager seeking asylum in the United States in order to escape a tribal practice of female genital mutilation ( ...
was a legal case decided in June 1996 involving Fauziya Kassindja (surname also spelled as Kasinga), a
Togo Togo (), officially the Togolese Republic (french: République togolaise), is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by Ghana to the west, Benin to the east and Burkina Faso to the north. It extends south to the Gulf of Guinea, where its c ...
lese teenager seeking
asylum in the United States The United States recognizes the right of asylum for refugees as specified by international and federal law. A specified number of legally defined refugees who are granted ''refugee status'' outside the United States are annually admitted unde ...
in order to escape a tribal practice of
female genital mutilation Female genital mutilation (FGM), also known as female genital cutting, female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) and female circumcision, is the ritual cutting or removal of some or all of the external female genitalia. The practice is found ...
. The
Board of Immigration Appeals The Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) is an administrative appellate body within the Executive Office for Immigration Review of the United States Department of Justice responsible for reviewing decisions of the U.S. immigration courts and certa ...
granted her asylum in June 1996 after an earlier judge denied her claims. The case set a precedent in United States
immigration law Immigration law refers to the national statutes, regulations Regulation is the management of complex systems according to a set of rules and trends. In systems theory, these types of rules exist in various fields of biology and society, but the ...
as applicants could now seek asylum in the United States from gender-based persecution, whereas previously religious or political grounds were often used to grant asylum. In 1999,
Lilly Ledbetter Lilly McDaniel Ledbetter (born April 14, 1938) is an American activist who was the plaintiff in the United States Supreme Court case '' Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co.'' regarding employment discrimination. Two years after the Supreme C ...
, a supervisor at a Goodyear tire plant in Alabama, sued Goodyear because she was being paid at least 15% less than the men who held the same job. A jury sided with her and awarded her back pay of $224,000 and nearly $3.3 million in punitive damages, but the company appealed, arguing she filed her claim too late, and it won a reversal from a U.S. appeals court in Atlanta. In 2007, the Supreme Court agreed with the company (in '' Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co.'') and ruled that her suit should have been thrown out at the start because it relied on evidence of discrimination in the 1980s, not on unfair pay decisions in 1998 or 1999; the Supreme Court declared that employees wishing to file discrimination charges must do so no more than 180 days after they have received their first discriminatory paycheck, although Lilly Ledbetter did not know she had been discriminated against in pay until much more than 180 days had passed. However, in 2009 President Barack Obama signed the
Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 (, ) is a landmark federal statute in the United States that was the first bill signed into law by U.S. President Barack Obama on January 29, 2009. The act amends Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 ...
into law (the first bill signed into law during his presidency), which changed the law so that now workers can sue up to 180 days after receiving any discriminatory paycheck, not just the first discriminatory paycheck.


2000 – 2016

American women served in the
Iraq War {{Infobox military conflict , conflict = Iraq War {{Nobold, {{lang, ar, حرب العراق (Arabic) {{Nobold, {{lang, ku, شەڕی عێراق (Kurdish languages, Kurdish) , partof = the Iraq conflict (2003–present), I ...
from 2003 until 2011. This time included several firsts for women in the military. In 2008,
Ann Dunwoody Ann Elizabeth Dunwoody (born January 14, 1953) is a retired general of the United States Army. She was the first woman in United States military and uniformed service history to achieve a four-star officer rank, receiving her fourth star on Nov ...
became the first female four-star general in the United States military. In 2011, Sandra Stosz assumed command of the U.S. Coast Guard Academy, becoming the first woman superintendent of that institution, and the first woman to command any U.S. service academy. Also in 2011,
Patricia Horoho Patricia D. Horoho (née Dallas; born March 21, 1960) is a retired United States Army lieutenant general who served as the 43rd Surgeon General of the United States Army and Commanding General of the United States Army Medical Command. She was t ...
became the first female U.S. Army surgeon general. In 2004,
Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon Dorothy Louise Taliaferro "Del" Martin (May 5, 1921 – August 27, 2008) and Phyllis Ann Lyon (November 10, 1924 – April 9, 2020) were an American lesbian couple known as feminist and gay-rights activists. Martin and Lyon met in 1950 ...
became the first same-sex couple to be legally married in the United States, since San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom allowed city hall to grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples. However, all same-sex marriages done in 2004 in California were annulled. But after the California Supreme Court decision in 2008 that granted same-sex couples in California the right to marry, Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon remarried, and were again the first same-sex couple in the state to marry. Later in 2008 Prop 8 illegalized same-sex marriage in California until Prop 8 was overturned in 2013, but the marriages that occurred between the California Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage and the approval of Prop 8 illegalizing it are still considered valid, including the marriage of Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon. American women achieved many political firsts in the 2000s. In 2007,
Nancy Pelosi Nancy Patricia Pelosi (; ; born March 26, 1940) is an American politician who has served as Speaker of the United States House of Representatives since 2019 and previously from 2007 to 2011. She has represented in the United States House of ...
became the first female Speaker of the House of Representatives; she held the position for just under four years. In 2008, Democratic presidential candidate
Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton ( Rodham; born October 26, 1947) is an American politician, diplomat, and former lawyer who served as the 67th United States Secretary of State for President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2013, as a United States sen ...
became the first woman to win a presidential primary, winning the New Hampshire Democratic primary although polls had predicted she would lose. She eventually lost the Democratic nomination for President to Barack Obama, who went on to become President; however, Hillary Clinton did receive 18 million votes. In 2008, Alaska governor
Sarah Palin Sarah Louise Palin (; Heath; born February 11, 1964) is an American politician, commentator, author, and reality television personality who served as the ninth governor of Alaska from 2006 until her resignation in 2009. She was the 2008 R ...
became the first woman nominated for Vice President by the Republican Party, although she was not elected. In 2009, and 2010, respectively,
Sonia Sotomayor Sonia Maria Sotomayor (, ; born June 25, 1954) is an American lawyer and jurist who serves as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. She was nominated by President Barack Obama on May 26, 2009, and has served since ...
and
Elena Kagan Elena Kagan ( ; born April 28, 1960) is an American lawyer who serves as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. She was nominated by President Barack Obama on May 10, 2010, and has served since August 7, 2010. Kagan ...
were confirmed as Supreme Court Associate Justices, making them the third and fourth female justices, but because Justice O'Connor had previously retired, this made the first time three women have served together on the Supreme Court. Sen.
Barbara Mikulski Barbara Ann Mikulski ( ; born July 20, 1936) is an American politician and social worker who served as a United States senator from Maryland from 1987 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, she also served in the United States House of Repr ...
of Maryland was re-elected to a fifth term in 2010; when the 112th Congress was sworn in, she became the longest serving female senator ever, passing Sen.
Margaret Chase Smith Margaret Madeline Smith (née Chase; December 14, 1897 – May 29, 1995) was an American politician. A member of the Republican Party, she served as a U.S. representative (1940–1949) and a U.S. senator (1949–1973) from Maine. She was the firs ...
. During this term, she surpassed
Edith Nourse Rogers Edith Rogers (née Nourse; March 19, 1881 – September 10, 1960) was an American social welfare volunteer and politician who served in the United States Congress. She was the first woman elected to Congress from Massachusetts. Until 2012, ...
as the woman to serve the longest in the U.S. Congress. In 2009, due to the
Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act is a landmark United States federal law, passed on October 22, 2009, and signed into law by President Barack Obama on October 28, 2009, as a rider to the National Defense Auth ...
being signed into law, the definition of federal hate crime was expanded to include those violent crimes in which the victim is selected due to their actual or perceived gender and/or gender identity; previously federal hate crimes were defined as only those violent crimes where the victim is selected due to their race, color, religion, or national origin. Furthermore, the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act requires the Federal Bureau of Investigation to track statistics on hate crimes based on gender and gender identity (statistics for the other groups were already tracked). The
White House Council on Women and Girls The White House Council on Women and Girls was an advisory council within the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs of the Executive Office of the President of the United States. It was established by on March 11, 2009, with a broad mandate to advi ...
, a council which formed part of the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, was established by on March 11, 2009 with a broad mandate to advise the
United States President The president of the United States (POTUS) is the head of state and head of government of the United States of America. The president directs the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United State ...
on issues relating to the welfare of women and girls.''Executive Order 13506'', Washington, DC: President Barack Obama, The White House, March 11, 2009, Obama, B., Retrieved January 27, 2014. (The Council was not convened during the Trump administration and was disbanded in 2017.) In March 2011, the
Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the U ...
administration released a report, '' Women in America: Indicators of Social and Economic Well-Being'', showing women's status in the U.S. in 2011 and how it had changed over time. This report was the first comprehensive federal report on women since the report produced by the Commission on the Status of Women in 1963. In December 2015, Defense Secretary
Ash Carter Ashton Baldwin Carter (September 24, 1954 – October 24, 2022) was an American government official and academic who served as the 25th United States Secretary of Defense from February 2015 to January 2017. He later served as director of the Be ...
stated that starting in 2016 all combat jobs would open to women.


Trump era 2015–present

In July 2016
Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton ( Rodham; born October 26, 1947) is an American politician, diplomat, and former lawyer who served as the 67th United States Secretary of State for President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2013, as a United States sen ...
became the Democratic nominee for President of the US, making her the first woman on a major party ticket to receive the nomination for President of the United States. While she lost the electoral college vote to
Donald Trump Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021. Trump graduated from the Wharton School of the University of Pe ...
, she notably won the popular vote by millions of votes. According to Leandra Zarnow, Donald Trump made anti-feminism a central theme of his presidential campaign in 2016 against Democrat Hillary Clinton, the first woman candidate for president from a major party. Once in office, he emphasized themes of masculinity, and traditional gender roles, appealing especially to his religious base. He did appoint of few senior women, including
Nikki Haley Nimrata Nikki Haley (née Randhawa; born January 20, 1972) is an American diplomat and politician who served as the 116th and first female governor of South Carolina from 2011 to 2017, and as the 29th United States ambassador to the United Na ...
as ambassador to the United Nations from 2017 to 2018. The key appointment was his daughter
Ivanka Trump Ivana Marie "Ivanka" Trump (; born October 30, 1981) is an American businesswoman and the first daughter of Donald Trump, 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021. She was a senior advisor in his administration, and also was the ...
as a major advisor in numerous areas. Trump staffed his press office with talented conservative women. At every turn he rejected feminist issues, especially regarding abortion rights. The Trump coalition strongly opposed abortion, and made it part of foreign policy by reinstating the "global gag rule." It ended funding for overseas NGOs that promoted abortion as a form of family planning, or provided information, referrals or counselling to enable an abortion. In response feminists organized and rallied. The
Women's March Women's March may refer to: * Women's March on Versailles, a 1789 march in Paris * Women's Sunday, a 1908 suffragette march in London * Woman Suffrage Procession, a 1913 march and rally in Washington, D.C. * Women's March (South Africa), a 1956 mar ...
, the largest single-day demonstration in U.S. history, was a worldwide protest on January 21, 2017, to advocate legislation and policies regarding human rights and other issues, including
women's rights Women's rights are the rights and entitlements claimed for women and girls worldwide. They formed the basis for the women's rights movement in the 19th century and the feminist movements during the 20th and 21st centuries. In some countries, ...
, immigration reform, healthcare reform, the natural environment,
LGBTQ ' is an initialism that stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. In use since the 1990s, the initialism, as well as some of its common variants, functions as an umbrella term for sexuality and gender identity. The LGBT term is a ...
rights, racial equality, freedom of religion, and workers' rights. The rallies were aimed at
Donald Trump Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021. Trump graduated from the Wharton School of the University of Pe ...
, immediately following his inauguration as President of the United States, largely due to statements and positions attributed to him regarded by many as anti-women or otherwise offensive. Angry women marchers sometimes carried posters featuring offensive or obscene humor to ridule Trump's body, his misogyny and his pussy grabbing, with slogans such as, "Keep your tiny hands off my human rights!.". Social media became a force as the MeToo movement demonstrated. The hashtag #MeToo went viral in late 2017. Facebook reported that almost half of its American users were friends with someone who felt they had been sexually assaulted or harassed. Success came with major Democratic gains. In 2018 the largest number of women ever were elected to Congress, with Democrat
Nancy Pelosi Nancy Patricia Pelosi (; ; born March 26, 1940) is an American politician who has served as Speaker of the United States House of Representatives since 2019 and previously from 2007 to 2011. She has represented in the United States House of ...
as Speaker of the House. In 2020 Trump was defeated and Republicans lost the Senate. In
2020 2020 was heavily defined by the COVID-19 pandemic, which led to global Social impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, social and Economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, economic disruption, mass cancellations and postponements of events, COVID- ...
, U.S. Senator
Kamala Harris Kamala Devi Harris ( ; born October 20, 1964) is an American politician and attorney who is the 49th vice president of the United States. She is the first female vice president and the highest-ranking female official in U.S. history, as well ...
of
California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...
was selected as the vice presidential nominee for the Democratic ticket. Harris was the third woman and first
African American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...
as well as first
Asian American Asian Americans are Americans of Asian ancestry (including naturalized Americans who are immigrants from specific regions in Asia and descendants of such immigrants). Although this term had historically been used for all the indigenous people ...
to win a place on a major party presidential ticket. In November 2020, Joseph Biden and Harris were elected President and Vice President, securing victories in both the electoral college and the popular vote. They won the electoral college 306 to 232 and secured a popular vote victory with a more than 7 million vote lead over the Republican incumbent ticket. Thus Harris became the first woman, and first person of color, elected to the vice presidency in
American history The history of the lands that became the United States began with the arrival of the first people in the Americas around 15,000 BC. Numerous indigenous cultures formed, and many saw transformations in the 16th century away from more densely ...
. She was inaugurated on January 20, 2021 becoming the 49th
Vice President of the United States The vice president of the United States (VPOTUS) is the second-highest officer in the executive branch of the U.S. federal government, after the president of the United States, and ranks first in the presidential line of succession. The vice ...
and highest ranking female in the U.S. history. Harris would later become the first female to serve as Acting President of the United States.


Historiography


Popular history

Women's history has a long historiography of popular writing as non-academics in new women's societies succeeded in shaping public memory and history education in American school houses, albeit along racially segregated lines. The earliest histories of American women were authored during the 19th century non-academic women writers reaching out to popular audiences, or to document the history of women's civic and activist organizations. For example, abolitionists Sarah Grimke and Lydia Maria Child wrote brief histories of women in the 1830s, while Elizabeth Ellet wrote ''Women of the American Revolution'' (1848), ''A Domestic History of the American Revolution'' (1850), ''and Pioneer Women of the West'' (1852). Meanwhile, women's organizations like the
Women's Christian Temperance Union The Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) is an international temperance organization, originating among women in the United States Prohibition movement. It was among the first organizations of women devoted to social reform with a program th ...
,
National American Woman Suffrage Association The National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) was an organization formed on February 18, 1890, to advocate in favor of women's suffrage in the United States. It was created by the merger of two existing organizations, the National ...
, and
National Association of Colored Women The National Association of Colored Women's Clubs (NACWC) is an American organization that was formed in July 1896 at the First Annual Convention of the National Federation of Afro-American Women in Washington, D.C., United States, by a merger of ...
published their own institutional histories. New patriotic societies like the
Daughters of the American Revolution The Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) is a lineage-based membership service organization for women who are directly descended from a person involved in the United States' efforts towards independence. A non-profit group, they promote ...
and the
United Daughters of the Confederacy The United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) is an American neo-Confederate hereditary association for female descendants of Confederate Civil War soldiers engaging in the commemoration of these ancestors, the funding of monuments to them, ...
created "filiopietistic" publications on history and women in history, developed school curricula, and engaged in historic preservation work. Both black and white women in women's clubs actively participated in this work during the twentieth century in their efforts to shape the broader culture. In the early twentieth century, for example, the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) coordinated efforts across the South to tell the story of the Confederacy and its women on the Confederate home front, while male historians spent their time with battles and generals. The women emphasized female activism, initiative, and leadership. They reported that when all the men left for war, the women took command, found ersatz and substitute foods, rediscovered their old traditional skills with the spinning wheel when factory cloth became unavailable, and ran all the farm or plantation operations. They faced danger without having men in the traditional role of their protectors. Historian
Jacquelyn Dowd Hall Jacquelyn Dowd Hall (born 1943) is an American historian and Julia Cherry Spruill Professor Emerita at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her scholarship and teaching forwarded the emergence of U.S. women's history in the 1960s and ...
argues that the UDC was a powerful promoter of women's history:
UDC leaders were determined to assert women's cultural authority over virtually every representation of the region's past. This they did by lobbying for state archives and museums, national historic sites, and historic highways; compiling genealogies; interviewing former soldiers; writing history textbooks; and erecting monuments, which now moved triumphantly from cemeteries into town centers. More than half a century before women's history and public history emerged as fields of inquiry and action, the UDC, with other women's associations, strove to etch women's accomplishments into the historical record and to take history to the people, from the nursery and the fireside to the schoolhouse and the public square.


Academic historiography

The scholarly field of American women's history became a major field of academic inquiry in the 1970s. The subject of women was largely ignored within the historical discipline during the period in which the discipline emerged and professionalized from the 1880s to 1910. The overwhelmingly male new academic discipline saw its purview as relatively limited to the study of the evolution of politics, government, and the law, and emphasized research in official state documents, thus leaving little room for an examination of women's activities or lives. The most famous call to develop the history of American women came from distinguished Harvard historian
Arthur Schlesinger, Sr. Arthur Meier Schlesinger Sr. (; February 27, 1888 – October 30, 1965) was an American historian who taught at Harvard University, pioneering social history and urban history. He was a Progressive Era intellectual who stressed material cau ...
in the 1920s and 1930s. His graduate students and their graduate students were major contributors to the scholarly subfield of women's history. The Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America at Harvard, for example, was founded in 1943 as the Radcliffe Woman's Archives. Between 1957 and 1971, this library produced a seminal scholarly reference work on women in American history, ''Notable American Women: A Biographical Dictionary, 1607-1950'' (1971). It coordinated the work of hundreds of historians—men and women—and was published to widespread acclaim in 1971.   Academic historians, meanwhile, sporadically produced and reviewed scholarly monographs in American women's history from the 1930s through the 1950s as well. The work of Alma Lutz, Elisabeth Anthony Dexter, Julia Cherry Spruill, Antoinette Elizabeth Taylor, Mary Elizabeth Massey,
Caroline Ware Caroline Farrar Ware (1899–1990) was a professor of history and a New Deal activist. Her work focused on community development, consumer protection, industrial development, civil rights, and women's issues. Biography Family and early years ...
, and especially
Eleanor Flexner Eleanor Flexner (October 4, 1908 – March 25, 1995) was an American distinguished independent scholar and pioneer in what was to become the field of women's studies. Her much praised ''Century of Struggle: The Woman's Rights Movement in the Unite ...
and
Mary Ritter Beard Mary Ritter Beard (August 5, 1876 – August 14, 1958) was an American historian, author, women's suffrage activist, and women's history archivist who was also a lifelong advocate of social justice. As a Progressive Era reformer, Beard was ...
, all focused on the history of American women. They were relatively well-known during their time, even if some of these scholars did not enjoy insider status within the historical profession. In response to the new social history of the 1960s and the modern women's movement, increasing numbers of scholars, especially female graduate students training in universities across the country, began to focus on the history of women. They initially struggled to find mentors in male-dominated history departments. Students in the Columbia University History Department produced several early significant works in the 1960s. Gerda Lerner's dissertation, published as ''The Grimke Sisters of South Carolina'', in 1967, and Aileen Kraditor's ''The Ideas of the Woman Suffrage Movement'', published in 1965 are just two notable examples.  Ann Firor Scott, a graduate of Harvard, who studied under Oscar Handlin in the 1950s, wrote a dissertation on the Southern Progressive movement, discovering the existence of many female progressives in her research. By 1970, she had published ''The Southern Lady: From the Pedestal'' ''to Politics''. These new ventures into women's history were made within mainstream academic institutions. Lerner and Scott would become leading lights and organizers for the field's younger practitioners in the coming decades. Their contributions to American history were recognized by the Organization of American Historians and the Southern Historical Association when they were elected to the presidencies of those professional organizations in the early 1980s. The field of women's history exploded after 1969. New historians of women organized within the major national historical associations from 1969 forward to promote scholarship about women. This included the
American Historical Association The American Historical Association (AHA) is the oldest professional association of historians in the United States and the largest such organization in the world. Founded in 1884, the AHA works to protect academic freedom, develop professional s ...
, the
Organization of American Historians The Organization of American Historians (OAH), formerly known as the Mississippi Valley Historical Association, is the largest professional society dedicated to the teaching and study of American history. OAH's members in the U.S. and abroad inc ...
, and the
Southern Historical Association The Southern Historical Association is a professional academic organization of historians focusing on the history of the Southern United States. It was organized on November 2, 1934. Its objectives are the promotion of interest and research in Sou ...
. Each created status-of-women committees and made developing women's history a major goal. They started by gathering data and writing bibliographies in the field to identify areas in need of study. Then they completed the research and produced the monographs that vitalized this field. They also created around a dozen regional women's history organizations and conference groups of their own to support their scholarly work and build intellectual and professional networks. These included the Coordinating Committee on Women in the Historical Profession—Conference Group on Women's History (1969), the Berkshire Conference on the History of Women (1973), West Coast Association of Women Historians (1970), Women Historians of the Midwest(1973), Southern Association for Women Historians (1970), Upstate New York Women's History Organization (1975), New England Association of Women Historians (1972), Association of Black Women Historians (1979), and others. The scholarship this growing cohort of historians created was soon vast, diverse, and theoretically complex. Almost from its inception, the new women's history of the 1970s focused on the differential experiences of white women of diverse backgrounds, women of color, working class women, relations of power between men and women, women's social and political activism, and how to integrate women's history into mainstream American history narratives. There was a pervasive concern with understanding the impact of race, class, gender, and sexuality on the histories of women—despite later claims to the contrary. By the late 1970s and early 1980s, American women's historians like Elizabeth Fox-Genovese and Joan Kelly were considering sexual relations of power, sex roles; the problem of fitting women's history into traditional frameworks of periodization; and Joan Wallach Scott's call to apply gender as a "Useful Category of Historical Analysis." In the U.S., historians of women in Europe, America, and the rest of the world collaborated by working together in the discipline's professional institutions, and in the triennial Berkshire Conference on the History of Women. This "Big Berks Conference," which met for the first time at Douglass College (the women's coordinate college of Rutgers University), in 1973, for the second time at Radcliffe College in 1974, and then again in 1976 at Bryn Mawr College, quickly became a women's history institution in the United States. Here, historians of women presented their recent research, planned for the future of women's history, and shared one another's theoretical insights to strengthen the standing of women's history in academia broadly across the traditional boundaries of regional/geographic specialization. The Big Berks has been regularly attended by over a thousand scholars from around the world every three years up until 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic forced the conference organizers to cancel the planned meeting at Johns Hopkins University for the first time in 46 years. An important development of the 1980s was the fuller integration of women into the history of race and slavery and race into the history of women. This work was preceded by the work of black club women, historic preservationists, archivists, and educators in the early twentieth century. Black women's double marginalization from the historical profession, on the basis of race and sex, led credentialed black female historians of the mid-century to focus on rather traditional historical topics in their research prior to the Civil Rights Era. Gerda Lerner published a significant document reader, ''Black Women in White America'' in 1972 (Pantheon Publishers). The close historical ties between the history of the 19th-century women's movement and the 19th-century abolitionist movement and the involvement of female historians of the 1960s and 1970s in the movements of the New Left, including the civil rights movement, fostered considerable interest by white female historians in the history of black women as a corollary to their interest in social movement history generally. For example, Sara Evans and Jacquelyn Dowd Hall wrote important dissertations addressing the historical intersections between women's social justice activism and race during the 1960s that were published in the 1970s. These studies were however, only partly focused on black women. By the 1970s though, African-American female historians were completing dissertations and seeking presses to publish their research. Rosalyn Terborg-Penn completed her dissertation on African-American female suffragists in 1977. Shortly thereafter she and Sharon Harley published a collection of important essays in ''The Afro-American Woman: Struggles and Images'' in 1978.
Deborah Gray White Deborah Gray White is the Board of Governors Professor of History and Professor of Women's and Gender Studies at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey. In addition to teaching at Rutgers, she also directed, "The Black Atlantic: Race, Nati ...
's ''Ar'n't I a Woman? Female Slaves in the Plantation South'' (1985) helped to open up analysis of race, slavery, abolitionism and feminism, as well as resistance, power, activism, and themes of violence, sexualities, and the body. The professional service of Darlene Clark Hine, Rosalyn Terborg-Penn, and Nell Irvin Painter and their scholarship on African-American women continued to break important ground in the 1980s and 1990s. This included their active participation in mainstream history associations and the establishment of the Association of Black Women Historians in 1979. Native American, Latino and Asian-American scholars also strove to recover and incorporate the history of women in these subfields and found outlets for their work in women's history publications and conferences. By the late 1980s, women's history in the United States had matured and proliferated enough to support its own standalone scholarly journal to showcase scholarship in the field. The major women's history journal published in the U.S. is ''The Journal of Women's History,'' launched in 1989 by Joan Hoff and Christie Farnham Pope. It was first published out of Indiana University and continues to be published quarterly today, though its editorial headquarters rotates to different universities. Indeed, the field became so prolific and established by the turn of the 21st century in fact that it had become one of the most commonly claimed fields of specialization of all professional historians in the U.S., according to Robert Townsend of the American Historical Association. Major trends in the history of American women in recent years have emphasized the study of global and transnational histories of women and histories of conservative women. Women's history continues to be a robust and prolific field in the United States, and new scholarship is published regularly in the history discipline's mainstream, regional, and subfield-specific journals.


See also

*
20th century women's fitness culture The 20th century saw multiple trends and changes in women's fitness culture. 1900 to 1920 During the 19th century women participated in many forms of recreational fitness. Specific activities depended largely on the culture and social class, ...
*
American Association of University Women The American Association of University Women (AAUW), officially founded in 1881, is a non-profit organization that advances equity for women and girls through advocacy, education, and research. The organization has a nationwide network of 170,000 ...
(AAUW) *
Feminism in the United States Feminism in the United States refers to the collection of movements and ideologies aimed at defining, establishing, and defending a state of equal political, economic, cultural, and social rights for women in the United States. Feminism has ha ...
*
Gender inequality in the United States Gender inequality in the United States has been diminishing throughout its history and significant advancements towards equality have been made beginning mostly in the early 1900s. However, despite this progress, gender inequality in the United S ...
*
History of women's suffrage in the United States In the 1700's to early 1800's New Jersey did allow Women the right to vote before the passing of the 19th Amendment, but in 1807 the state restricted the right to vote to "...tax-paying, white male citizens..." Women's legal right to vote w ...
*
History of lesbianism in the United States This article addresses the history of lesbianism in the United States. Unless otherwise noted, the members of same-sex female couples discussed here are not known to be lesbian (rather than, for example, bisexual), but they are mentioned as part ...
* Married Women's Property Acts in the United States * Timeline of second-wave feminism *
Timeline of women's colleges in America The following is a timeline of women's colleges in the United States. These are institutions of higher education in the United States whose student population comprises exclusively, or almost exclusively, women. They are often Liberal arts col ...
*
Timeline of women hazzans in America This is a timeline of women hazzans (also called cantors) in America. * 1884: Julie Rosewald, called “Cantor Soprano” by her congregation, became America's first female cantor, serving San Francisco's Temple Emanu-El from 1884 until 1893, alt ...
*
Timeline of women in dentistry in America There is a long history of women in dentistry in the United States. Timeline 19th century *1855: Emeline Roberts Jones became the first woman to practice dentistry in the United States. She married the dentist Daniel Jones when she was a teenager ...
* Timeline of women in education in America *
Timeline of women in mathematics in America There is a long history of women in mathematics in the United States. All women mentioned here are American unless otherwise noted. Timeline 19th Century * 1829: The first public examination of an American girl in geometry was held. * 1886: Wini ...
*
Timeline of women in the history of America This is a timeline of women in the history of America, noting important events relevant in American women's history. For a detailed timeline of individual American women's firsts, see the List of American women's firsts. Timeline 1756: Lydia Ta ...
*
Timeline of women rabbis in America This is a timeline of women rabbis in the United States. * 1890s: Ray Frank, a young Jewish woman living on the American frontier, began delivering sermons in her small Jewish community in the American West. Frank was regarded at the time ...
*
Timeline of women suffrage in America This timeline highlights milestones in women's suffrage in the United States, particularly the right of women to vote in elections at federal and state levels. 1780s 180px, Susan B. Anthony, 1870 1789: The Constitution of the United S ...
*
Transgender rights in the United States In the United States, the rights of transgender people vary considerably by jurisdiction. By the end of 2021, at least 130 bills had been introduced in 33 states to restrict the rights of transgender people. In 2022, over 230 anti-transgender b ...
*
Woman's club movement in the United States The woman's club movement was a social movement that took place throughout the United States that established the idea that women had a moral duty and responsibility to transform public policy. While women's organizations had always been a par ...
*
Women's health movement in the United States The women's health movement (WHM, also feminist women's health movement) in the United States refers to the aspect of the American feminist movement that works to improve all aspects of women's healthcare. It began during the second wave of femin ...
* Women's History Sites (U.S. National Park Service) *
Women in education in the United States In the early colonial history of the United States, higher education was designed for men only. Since the 1800s, women's positions and opportunities in the educational sphere have increased. Since the late 1970s and early 1980s, women have surpass ...
*
Women's suffrage in the United States In the 1700's to early 1800's New Jersey did allow Women the right to vote before the passing of the 19th Amendment, but in 1807 the state restricted the right to vote to "...tax-paying, white male citizens..." Women's legal right to vote w ...
* The Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America ;Lists *
List of American women's firsts This is a list of American women's firsts, noting the first time that an American woman or women achieved a given historical feat. Inclusion on the list is reserved for achievements by American women that have significant historical impact. ...
*
List of Kentucky women in the civil rights era This is a historical list of women from Kentucky who were involved in civil rights activism from 1920 until the 1970s. This was a time period in the twentieth century when the civil rights movement impacted Kentucky's history of women and was enr ...


References


Further reading


Overviews

* ''Encyclopedia of Women in American History'' (3 vol, Sharpe, 2002); edited by Joyce Appleby, Eileen Chang, and Joanne Goodwin. Volume 1: ''Colonization, Revolution, and the New Nation 1585–1820,'' Volume 2: ''Civil War, Western Expansion, and Industrialization, 1820–1900''; Volume 3: ''Suffrage, World War, and Modern Times, 1900–Present''. Short essays by leading experts. * Cullen-Dupont, Kathryn. ''Encyclopedia of Women's History in America'' (2000
excerpt
* Evans, Sara M. ''Born for Liberty: A History of Women in America'' (1989
excerpt and text search
* Foster, Thomas A. '' Women in Early America'' (2015
online
* Hewitt, Nancy A. ''A Companion to American Women's History'' (2005
excerpt and text search
* Harper, Judith E. '' Women During the Civil War: An Encyclopedia'' (2003
online
* Howard, Angela and Frances M. Kavenik, eds. ''Handbook of American Women's History'' (2nd ed. 2000) 744pp; 922 short essays by scholars. * Mankiller, Wilma et al. eds. ''The reader's companion to US women's history'' (1999) 695pp; 400 short essays by 300 scholars * Riley, Glenda. ''Inventing the American Woman: An Inclusive History'' (2 vol. 2007) * Weatherford, Doris, ''Milestones: A Chronology of American Women's History'' (1997) * Weatherford, Doris, ed. ''A History of Women in the United States: State-By-State Reference'' (4 vol 2003) * Weatherford, Doris. ''American Women during World War II: An Encyclopedia'' (2010
online
* Woloch, Nancy. ''Women and The American Experience'' (5th ed. 2010), 640pp


Biographical reference

* Adamson, Lynda G. ''Notable Women in American History: A Guide to Recommended Biographies and Autobiographies'' (1999
search
covers 500 women in 100 fields * James, Edward, Janet Wilson James, Paul S. Boyer, and Barbara Sicherman, eds ''Notable American Women: A Biographical Dictionary''. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1971. hree volumes, scholalrly biographical sketches of 1,359 women who died before January 1, 1951; includes bibliographies for each entry.** Sicherman, Barbara, and Carol Hurd Green. ''Notable American Women: The Modern Period: A Biographical Dictionary''. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1980. ontuantion; biographical sketches of 442 women who died between 1951, and 1975.** Ware, Susan, and Stacy Lorraine Braukman. ''Notable American Women: A Biographical Dictionary Completing the Twentieth Century''. Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press, 2004. ontinuation volume; scholarly sketches of 483 women who died 1976–1999* ''American women; the official who's who among the women of the nation. 1935–36'' ed by Durward Howes, (1935
online
* Merriam-Webster, ''Webster's Dictionary of American Women'' (1996), 696pp; 1100 short popular biographies; includes living women


Economic and business history

* Kessler-Harris, Alice. ''Out to Work: A History of Wage-Earning Women in the United States'' (2003
excerpt and text search
* Oppedisano, Jeannette M. ''Historical encyclopedia of American women entrepreneurs: 1776 to the present'' (Greenwood, 2000)


Education

* Clifford, Geraldine J. ''Those Good Gertrudes: A social history of women teachers in America'' (2014) * Cohen, Sol, ed. ''Education in the United States: A Documentary History'' (5 vol, 1974). 3400 pages of primary sources * Parkerson, Donald and Jo Ann Pakerson. ''Transitions in American Education: A Social History of Teaching'' (2001)


Feminism and politics

* Basch, Norma. "Family Values and Nineteenth-Century American Politics." ''Reviews in American histor''y 26.4 (1998): 687–692
online
* Echols, Alice. ''Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America, 1967–1975'', University of Minnesota Press 1990, * Edwards, Rebecca. ''Angels in the Machinery: Gender in American Party Politics from the Civil War to the Progressive Era'' (Oxford UP, 1997). * Flexner, Eleanor. ''Century of Struggle: The Woman's Rights Movement in the United States'', (1996) * "The Radical Women Manifesto: Socialist Feminist Theory, Program and Organizational Structure," (Red Letter Press, 2001). * Rosen, Ruth. ''The World Split Open: How the Modern Women's Movement Changed America,'' (Penguin, 2006). * Schultz, Jeffrey D. ed. ''Encyclopedia of Women in American Politics'' (1999) * Shields, David S., and Fredrika J. Teute. "The Republican Court and the Historiography of a Women's Domain in the Public Sphere." ''Journal of the Early Republic'' 35#2 (2015): 169–183
online


Racial and ethnic

* Bataille, Gretchen and Laurie, Lisa. ''Native American Women: A Biographical Dictionary,'' Routledge 2001. * Collier-Thomas, Bettye. ''Jesus, Jobs, and Justice: African American Women and Religion'' (2010) *
Diner, Hasia R. file:Hasia Diner US historian (cropped).jpg, Hasia Diner Hasia R. Diner is an American historian. Diner is the Paul S. and Sylvia Steinberg Professor of History of the Jews in the United States, American Jewish History; Professor of Hebrew and Ju ...
et al. ''Her works praise her: a history of Jewish women in America from colonial times to the present'' (2002) * Hyman, Paula E., and
Deborah Dash Moore Deborah Dash Moore (born 1946, in New York City) is the former director of the Frankel Center for Judaic Studies and a Frederick G.L. Huetwell Professor of History and Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Early li ...
, eds. ''Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia,'' 2 vol. (2006)
complete text online
* Hine, Darlene Clark ed., ''Black Women in America'' (3 Vol. 2005). * Hine, Darlene and Thompson, Kathleen. ''A Shining Thread of Hope: The History of Black Women in America,'' Broadway Books 1998. * Ling, Huping. ''Surviving on the Gold Mountain: A History of Chinese American Women and Their Lives,'' State University of New York Press 1998. * Martinez, Elizabeth. ''500 Years of Chicana Women's History/500 anos de la mujer Chicana,'' Rutgers University Press (Bilingual Edition) 2008. * Millward, Jessica. "More history than myth: African American women's history since the publication of Ar'n't I a woman?." ''Journal of Women's History'' 19#2 (2007): 161–167
online
* Tang, Joyce and Smith, Earl. ''Women and Minorities in American Professions,'' SUNY Press, 1996''.'' * Weatherford, Doris. ''Foreign and Female: Immigrant Women in America'' (1996) covers 1840–1930


Religion

* Boyer, Paul S. ''Women in American Religion'' (1980) * Braude, Ann. ''Sisters and Saints: Women and American Religion'' (2007) * Brekus, Catherine A. ''The Religious History of American Women: Reimagining the Past'' (2007
excerpt and text search
* Keller, Rosemary Skinner,
Rosemary Radford Ruether Rosemary Radford Ruether (1936–2022) was an American feminist scholar and Roman Catholic theologian known for her significant contributions to the fields of feminist theology and ecofeminist theology. Her teaching and her writings helped est ...
, and Marie Cantlon, eds. ''Encyclopedia of Women and Religion in North America'' (3 vol 2006
excerpt and text search
* Lindley, Susan Hill, and Eleanor J. Stebner, eds. ''The Westminster Handbook to Women in American Religious History'' (2008
excerpt and text search
* Lindley, Susan Hill. ''You Have Stept out of Your Place: A History of Women and Religion in America'' (1996)


Primary sources

* Baxandall, Rosalyn, and Linda Perlman Gordon, eds. ''America's Working Women: A Documentary History, 1600 to the Present'' (1999) * Brownmiller, Susan, ''In Our Time: Memoir of a Revolution'', Dial Books 1999, * Crow, Barbara A., ''Radical Feminism: A Documentary Reader'', New York University Press 2000. * DuBois, Ellen Carol, and Lynn Dumenil, eds. ''Through Women's Eyes: An American History with Documents'' (4th ed 2015), 830pp * Frey, Sylvia R., and Marion J. Morton. ''New World, New Roles A Documentary History of Women in Pre-Industrial America'' (1986)
excerpt and text search
covers 1620–1815 * Langley, Winston E. and Vivian C. Fox, eds. ''Women's Rights in the United States: A Documentary History'' (1994
online
* Keetley, Dawn, editor, ''Public Women, Public Words: A Documentary History of American Feminism'', 3 vol.: Vol. 1: Beginnings to 1900, Madison House, 1997; Vol. 2: 1900 to 1960, Rowman & Littlefield, 2002; Vol. 3: 1960 to the present, Rowman & Littlefield, 2002 * Kerber, Linda et al. eds. ''Women's America: Refocusing the Past'' (8th ed. 2015), 848 pp; excerpts from primary sources and scholarly secondary sources * Lerner, Gerda, ed. ''Black Women in White America: A Documentary History'', 1988 * Lewis, Catherine M. and J. Richard Lewis, eds. '' Women and Slavery in America: A Documentary History'' (U. of Arkansas Press, 2011) 330 pp
online reviewexcerpt and text search
* Maclean, Nancy, ed. ''The American Women's Movement: A Brief History with Documents'' (2008) * Norton, Mary Beth et al. eds. ''Major Problems in American Women's History'' (5th ed. 2013) * Rosenbloom, Nancy J., ed. ''Women in American History Since 1880: A Documentary Reader'' (2010) * Sigerman, Harriet, ed. ''The Columbia Documentary History of American Women Since 1941'' (2007) * Woloch, Nancy, ed. ''Early American Women: A Documentary History, 1600–1900'' (3rd ed. 2013), 430pp


Historiography and memory

* Boris, Eileen, and Nupur Chaudhuri, eds. ''Voices of Women Historians: The personal, the Political, the Professional'' (1999), 20 autobiographical essays. * Buhle, Mari Jo. "Feminist Approaches to Social History," in ''Encyclopedia of American Social History,'' ed. Mary Cayton et al. (1993), 319-33. * Gabin, Nancy. "Fallow Yet Fertile: The Field of Indiana Women's History," ''Indiana Magazine of History'' (2000) 96#3 pp 213–249. * Gordon, Linda. "U. S. Women's History," in ''The New American History,'' ed. Eric Foner (1990), 185-210/ * Kerber, Linda et al. "Beyond Roles, Beyond Spheres: Thinking about Gender in the Early Republic," ''William and Mary Quarterly,'' 46 (July 1989), 565–8
in JSTOR
* Kleinberg, S. Jay et al., eds. ''The Practice of U.S. Women's History: Narratives, Intersections, and Dialogues'' (2007
online
17 essays by scholars on wide-ranging topics * Pleck, Elizabeth H. and
Nancy F. Cott Nancy Falik Cott (born November 8, 1945) is an American historian and professor who has taught at Yale and Harvard universities, specializing in gender topics in the United States in the 19th and 20th centuries. She has testified on same-sex ...
, eds. ''A Heritage of Her Own: Toward a New Social History of American Women'' (2008), essays by scholar
excerpt and text search
* Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher. "Of pens and needles: sources in early American women's history." ''Journal of American History'' 77.1 (1990): 200–207
in JSTOR


External links



* ttps://web.archive.org/web/20140527131109/http://www.northnet.org/stlawrenceaauw/timeline.htm A Timeline of Women in Sportsbr>Timeline Special: Women in the United States
at ''The New York Times Magazine''
''Booknotes'' interview with Gail Collins on ''America's Women: 400 Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates and Heroines'', December 14, 2003.The Elizabeth Murray Project: a Resource Site for Early American History
Explores the life of ordinary women in colonial and revolutionary era America.
National Women's History Museum
{{Authority control Women in North America History of the United States by topic