This document summarizes the history of women's rights movements from the 18th century through the early 20th century. It discusses how the Enlightenment excluded women's rights, and how the Industrial Revolution pulled women into factories for long hours with little pay or protections. The suffrage movement gained momentum through the 19th century, with the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848 launching the organized fight for women's right to vote. World War I further expanded women's roles, and the 19th Amendment granted American women the right to vote in 1920.

1. Turning the TIDE:
The Two World Wars and Women in
the Twentieth Century
Women in the Humanities 8
11/17/2014 9 AM - CHEE
“Why not Everywoman?”
George Bernard Shaw

2. Eighteenth Century enlightenment &
revolutions purposely excluded women
Nineteenth century – women’s sphere in the
Christian home defined, despite women pulled
into factories during the industrial revolution
WWI
Women’s suffrage – essential part of the
women’s movement, often in conjunction with
the abolition movement
WWII and influences on women

3. Center of European Enlightenment:
Eighteenth Century France, philosophes
Voltaire – epitome of the enlightenment
philosophes - intellectuals, who apply reason
(scientific method) to improve society
Promotes the Secularization of Society
o“Ecrasez l'infâme." or "crush the damned,”
meaning the catholic church.
o"but let us cultivate our garden" – the
epitome of enlightenment thought
Voltaire (pen name of
François-Marie Arouet, 1694-
1778)

4. Women of the
French Salons
Sponsored dinners and
talks to discuss politics,
arts and other topics of
the day

5. Enlightenment Ideals
and Women
o Enlightenment thinkers remained
conservative regarding women’s
rights
o Rousseau argues women should
receive education to prepare for
lives as wives and mothers
o Mary Astell (England, 1666-1731)
argues that women were essentially
born into slavery
o Mary Wollstonecraft (England, 1759-
1797)
o A Vindication of the Rights of
Woman (1792)
Mary Wollstonecraft
(England, 1759-1797)
Mary Astell (England,
1666-1731)

6. Women and Revolution
o Women active in all phases of
French revolution
o Women storm Versailles in 1789,
demands for food
o Republican Revolutionary Women
patrol streets of Paris with firearms
o Yet hold few official positions of
authority
o Revolution grants equality in
education, property, legalized
divorce
o Yet women not allowed to vote,
major task of 19th century
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
(U.S., 1815-1902)
Susan B. Anthony
(U.S., 1820-1906)

7. The Declaration of Independence –
July 4, 1776
“…We hold these truths to be self-evident:
That all men are created equal; that they
are endowed by their Creator with certain
unalienable rights; that among these are
life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness…”
While beautifully written, all men were NOT
included, only propertied white men
Thomas Jefferson, one of the writers

8. Abigail Adams
Attempt to Include Women in the Revolution
“Remember the Ladies…”
Abigail Adams to husband John Adams, one of
the writers of the Constitution
“We know better…than to repeal our
masculine systems…”
John Adams responds, despite the fact that he
loved and adored his wife

9. The French Revolution - “liberty, equality, fraternity”
9
Declaration of Rights of Man & Citizen, 1789
• Equality of men
– Women not included: Olympe
de Gouges (Marie Gouze)
unsucessfully attempts to
redress in “Declaration of the
Rights of Woman and Citizen”
1791
• Sovereignty resides in the people
(Rousseau)

10. How did the Industrial Revolution change
European (and American society) economically,
socially and politically?
Especially for women?

11. 11
The Growth of Factories
o Massive machinery
o Division of labor with
organized job functions
o Labor became wage
earners

12. Women Pulled into the Factories
Spinning – the Progress of Cotton
Barfoot, 1840 lithograph
1733- John Kay
invented the flying
shuttle, weaving
1779 – Samuel
Crompton’s spinning
“mule” adapted for
steam power
1785 – water driven
power loomss

13. The Mechanization of
the Cotton Industry:
the Invention of the
Cotton Gin - 1793
Eli Whitney, U.S.

14. The Cotton Gin Spurred the Expansion of Slavery &
their Textile Manufacturing Industry

15. Factories Create Wage Workers
o Women made up the
majority of textile
workers
o Workplace violence
o Double burden: women
expected to maintain
home as well as work in
industry
o Young unmarried
women leave home

16. Factories & Work-Related Violence
Police Gazette focused on
legal and illegal sports,
violent crimes, accidents
and sex for the male
readership. This particular
picture portrays an
industrial accident in a
Connecticut cotton mill.
Women were often depicted
as perpetrators or victims of
violence, which was
considered fascinating.

17. Growth of Child Labor
o Easily exploited
o Low wages: 1/6 to 1/3 of
adult male wages
o High discipline
o Advantages of size
o Coal tunnels
o Gathering loose cotton
under machinery
o Cotton industry, 1838: children
29% of workforce
o Factory Act of 1833: 9 years
minimum working age

18. Invention of the sewing machine 1845 made the
work easier but women still worked 15-18
hours/day- employers decreased rates
Howe’s machine
Singer’s Machine
1840 – women held ½ of all American
manufacturing jobs, 2/3 of those in
New England

19. Outworkers – In
America’s 4 largest
cities, 12-13K women
worked at home
Occupations Characteristic of
New England Life

20. Wage Labor force – U.S.
1800 – 12%
1860 – 40%, majority in the north
U.S. President Jefferson - $25,000
Seamstress - $55

21. Teaching traditionally held by Men;
Profession opens for Women
o Teaching – offers economic
independence, but underpaid
o 1/3 of salary as those of men

22. Elizabeth Blackwell, first American female doctor
to graduate – Geneva Medical College, NY - 1849

23. Meanwhile Middle Class Women
Expected to Stay at Home
Practicing Core Christian Values -
Mother-supervised home
While working class women were
expected to work and be mothers
Emergence of a “Middling Class”
1869 - The American Woman’s Home

24. Emergence of a “Middling Class”
1869 - The American Woman’s Home
by Catherine E. Beecher & Harriet Beecher
Stowe
Guide to young women on their
proper role in the middle-class home

25. Emergence of a “Middling Class”
1869 - The American Woman’s Home
Mother-supervised home and
Christian values

26. 1850s Prostitutes: Mostly Immigrants
Serrell & Perkins, New York by Gas-Light.
Hooking a Victim, c.1850 lithograph.
o Profession average of 4 years
before dying of disease, violent
crimes, etc. Reformer talking to prostitutes

27. In the US: Quakers or Society of Friends Linked
the Women’s Movement with Abolition
Lucretia Mott of Philadelphia
Mary Ann McClintock of
Waterloo, NY
Amy Post of Rochester

28. And with Temperance – as Alcohol often attributed to
domestic violence or financial family neglect
Prohibition from
1920-1933
18th and the 21st
amendments

29. First women’s rights convention
July 1848 – Seneca Falls, NY
“All men and women are
created equal…”
Elizabeth Cady Stanton – 200-300
people attended

30. The Anti-Women’s Movement View :
1859 Harper’s Weekly Cartoon Entitled
“The Amazonian Convention”
with Hecklers Pictured in Masks?

31. AASS – American Anti-Slavery Society
o Sarah & Angelina Grime – wanted to link the
plight of slaves with the plight of women
o 1840 – bitter fight over a woman, Abby
Kelley’s election to the executive committee
o Moderate abolitionists walked out & started
the Liberty Party
o AASS became a tight knit group of Quaker
women and freed Blacks

32. AASS – American Anti-Slavery Society
Led by William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, & Abby Kelley

33. The Split in the Women’s & Abolitionist
Movement: One Issue At a Time
Elizabeth Cady Stanton & Frederick Douglass

34. “Am I not a man and a brother?”

35. “Am I Not a Woman and a Sister?” 1837 engraving
variation on the motto
on man and a brother

36. Women & Suffrage:
The American Woman Suffrage
Association led by Lucy Stone, regarded
Black male suffrage as a step in the right
direction
The National Woman Suffrage Association
led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton & Susan B.
Anthony opposed the male-only 15th
Amendment of 1870
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Susan B. Anthony (U.S., 1815-1902)
Lucy Stone (1818–1893) (U.S., 1820-1906)
1890 – the two organizations merged to become the National
American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA)

37. Effective Date of Woman’s Suffrage Before the U.S. Constitutional Amendment

38. Women Protesting – US is not a Democracy
because women do not have suffrage
o1718 Sweden
o1902 Australia
o1917 – Russia
o1918 - Germany
& Austria,
Britain (right
after the war)
o 1920 - US
o 1944 - France

39. 1911 Anti-suffrage Cartoon
Woman Suffrage Seen as a Threat to the Conventional Family
Heavy, Heavy, Hangs o’er Thy
Head
Laura Foster, LIFE, September 28, 1911
The movement became successful because of a
shift in tactics
o Mass movement, across classes
o Included a racial and ethnic diversity
o Massive momentum through open-air
meetings and massive parades

40. Fight to End Child Labor
Women of the settlement houses
(urban neighborhood and working
class women’s housing, especially
important for pioneering
progressivism & reform)
helped lead a successful drive
o to improve wages & working
conditions in factories
o And to end child labor, first in
Illinois and then elsewhere

41. Colored Women’s League of Washington DC c. 1894
On the steps of Freerick Douglass’s home in D.C., the League was dedicated to
racial uplift, organized nurseries and adult evening schools for members

42. Garment Industry and Working Women’s Activism:
1909 Uprising of the Twenty Thousand in NYC
immigrant shirtwaist works resisting strikebreaker violence & police intimidation

43. Women’s Trade Union League Seal:
mixed symbols of militancy and domesticity