Women and America During the 19th century, women in America were considered second class citizens. They were looked down upon by men, both physically and intellectually. Although they lived in a free country, women often were confined within their own homes. Women were stereotyped as being weak, delicate and frail and any type of “unconventional work” was deemed hazardous for them. A woman’s main responsibility in life was to be subordinate to her husband and maintain the duties of the home. Women’s rights, as one could imagine, were almost nonexistent. They could not own property, maintain their wages, sign contracts, hold political offices or vote. However through the turmoil of the Women’s Movement, new leaders began to emerge. After reading Ida B. Wells “The Southern Horrors" one sees the effect that her words had on shaping our country during the critical time of reconstruction. Slavery no longer existed in the south and African Americans were supposed to be equal citizens. However, they faced one of the cruelest practices any race has faced in America. Lynching and mob violence came into practice by white southerners after slavery had ended. Wells picked up her pen and began to show the world the true southern horrors that she and her people faced every day. The main justification for mob violence and lynching was to protect the white women's virtue. If they had any suspicion to believe that an African American man was with a white woman, they would not hesitate to lynch them or carry out violent mob action against them. “The miscegenation laws of the South only operate against the legitimate union of the races; they leave the white man free to seduce all the colored girls he can, but it is death to the colored man who yields to the force and advances of a similar attraction in white women. White men lynch the offending Afro-American, not because he is a despoiler of virtue, but because he succumbs to the smiles of white women.” [1] According to Wells, the three most common excuses used to victimize African Americans during and after Reconstruction were that the victim had participated in a riot, the victim was a threat to white domination in government, or the victim had raped a white female. Each of these reason were thoroughly disprove by Wells.
In American Indian Stories, Zitkala-Sa tells her story of how Native Americans reacted to the white man's ways of running the land and changing the life of Indians. The primary source serves as an account of the hardships that she and other Native Americans encountered when they were brought to missionary and manual labor schools designed to educate them. In parts of "School Days," for example, she vividly describes a little girl's nightmares of paleface devils and describes her bitterness when her classmate died with an open Bible on her bed. In another scene, she writes about the allegation of Indian religion as superstition seen by Christianity and how they tried to assimilate her. “Perhaps my Indian nature is the moaning wind which stirs them now for their present record. But, however tempestuous this is within me, it comes out as the low voice of a curiously colored seashell, which is only for those ears that are bent with compassion to hear it.” [2] Throughout the book she speaks about her boarding school and how learning English affected her throughout her adult life as an American Indian. Her writing addresses many issues for American Indians' dilemmas with assimilation and the book reflects her struggle of empowerment.
The Promised Land is an autobiography written by Mary Antin, which describes her adjusting to American culture. She speaks of the story of what she believes is her escape from bondage in Eastern Europe and her finding of freedom in America. Early in the book, she compares herself to a treadmill horse that can only go round and round in the same circle. She states “how empty the existence of the treadmill horse beside this. As empty and endless and dull as the life of almost any woman in Polotzk, had I had eyes to see the likeness.” [3] She sees herself in Polotzk, as someone who is imprisoned by her religion and her sex, because women were not permitted to receive any education beyond learning to read the Psalms in Hebrew. In America, she felt freer then she ever did in the Old World. She was able to get free secular education, free choice in marriage, and a “brimful womanhood” [4]. The public schools of Boston, she felt, opened new intellectual windows for her and she also had access to public libraries and settlement houses that provided her with cultural activities. The book focuses on her attempts to assimilate into the culture of the United States and it allowed Antin to begin speaking openly on the acceptance of immigration to the United States.
Margaret Sanger founded a movement in this country that would also institute such a change in the course of our history that continues to have an impact today. Described as a woman rebel, Sanger pioneered the birth control movement in the United States at a time when Victorian oppression through moral standards was at its highest. Working her way up from a nurse in New York's poor Lower East Side to the head of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Margaret Sanger was unwavering in her dedication to the movement that would eventually result in lower infant mortality rates and better living conditions for the impoverished. Margaret Sanger was a brave crusader who recognized freedom and choice in a woman's reproductive life as vital to the issue of the liberation of women as a gender. "A free race cannot be born and no woman can call herself free who does not own and control her body. No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother." [5]. During this time the rate of unwanted childbirths were very high. Women in poor neighborhoods lived their lives in an almost constant state of pregnancy. Margaret Sanger recognized the need for women to be able to control their childbearing. She states in the book that a “few men and women can channel their sexual impulses into a non-sexual direction, but that this will not work for most people, and that those people need sex and if celibate will be harm physically and mentally by their celibacy and therefore should be able to use birth control.” [6] Contraception meant that they do not have to live in constant fear that they cannot support their family. It offered them the freedom of choice. Sanger believed that birth control could provide women with personal freedom. They no longer needed to avoid sex out of fear of pregnancy. It gave them the ability to make conscious choices about their bodies.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s Solitude of Self speech addressed the equality and rights of women in the United States. She felt that women should have the right to choose whatever path they wanted no matter what the circumstances were. Stanton illustrated that, in order for women to be considered as participating citizens of our country, the boundaries of what women can do has to be omitted. Women are entitled to the same equalities as men because even through the darkest situations, gender has no effect on the feelings and emotional damage that an individual experiences. Stanton explained how there is no difference between men and women and how humans were created with the same natural rights. The fact that men have no restrictions and can pursue whatever they want puts women at a disadvantage. Men have the basic necessities to protect themselves in which women lack. Stanton illustrates this when she says, “In fitting out an army, we give each soldier his own knapsack, arms, powder, his blanket, cup, knife, fork and spoon. We provide alike for all their individual necessities; then each man bears his own burden.” [7] In this quote, Stanton was making reference to how a man in the army gets equipped with the basic necessities and skills to survive; however, unlike men, women do not get the basic necessities in life to survive on their own.
Over the years women have been pushing for the same equality as men. Women are typically looked down upon and are ignored when it comes to standing up for their rights. In the 1960s an organization called the National Organization for Women was established. This main focus of the organization is to eliminate discrimination in the workplace, secure abortion, birth control and reproductive rights for all women, and end all forms of violence towards women. Betty Friedan wrote NOWs official mission statement which says, “…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”. [8] She goes into detailed exploration of what she believes is the problem for these women. Friedan uses statistics, theories, and first-person accounts to show that the problem is the idealized image of women society has created, which she calls The Feminine Mystique. Women have been confined to the roles of a housewife and a mother, denied of education and career opportunities. Friedan successfully proves that the feminine mystique denies women the opportunity to develop their own ideas by discussing women's educational process, effective look at media, and first-hand accounts with other women. The first reason why NOW is such an important organization is because it focuses on the discrimination towards women in the work place. Women have been discriminated from many different jobs for years. It is common for some men to believe that women are not as capable as they are, therefore women are denied by many different industries and companies. Though women have come such a long way since the 1960s women are still not paid as much as men and are still dealing with discrimination in the work place.
America today is a lot different than centuries ago. One of the most aspects that changed the most in particular is women. Liberty, career, freedom to vote, and freedom of ones’ body are the main points of contrast. In today's society, women are far more liberated than they were hundreds of years ago, when compared to the concept of the conservative women in the 1800’s. Throughout history, the fate of women has been greatly centered on domestic work. Women remained indoors, producing clothing, preparing and preserving food, and doing other, what would be called today, “house work”. Society has generally figured that women should be responsible for work in the home over anything else. Such a strongly embedded mindset has affected the activities in which women have been able to participate. Education and work outside of the home have been areas that many women have been unable to access in society because social norms have dictated that women should focus on domestic work. However, these women have deviated outside the norms of society. Through their dedication and determination, they have changed the way women are perceived – making them all incredible and extraordinary women who shaped America.