What right does one man have over another, let me rephrase the question, what right does one person have over another? This is the question that women have been asking for over the last one hundred years or longer. America was a very different place 100 years ago, from the way that people interacted with each other to the rights and perception that some individuals had on other persons place in society. In the early 20th century women were to be seen and not heard, they were unable to vote, work, or even own land in many parts of the country. Many of the different movements for women came from the abolitionism, the early fight for social justice. For social movements, human rights are simultaneously a system of law, a set of values, and a vision of good governance. Each of these dimensions of human rights offers resources for grassroots social movements, but in quite different ways. (Merry, Levitt, Rosen, & Yoon, 2010) Understanding that rights for everyone is ethically and morally right was even hard for some of the most prominent men of history.
It was a very hard tradition to break to give women the same rights and privileges as men, especially when leading political and cultural figures had pressing opinions. Despite the rise in women’s importance on the economic, social, and political scene, many men still did not see them as strong, productive, or politically active members of society. A leading politician of these two decades, Theodore Roosevelt, on more than one occasion belittled the woman’s standing in society. Many men who might have believed that a woman’s only role was within the family, it can be assumed, shared Roosevelt’s view. Roosevelt is quoted as saying “I am more and more convinced that the great field, the indispensable field for usefulness of woman is as mother of the family. It is her work in the household, in the home, her work in bearing