Women Suffrage

Mr. Williams 10th Grade U.S. History

New Opportunities for Women• By 1900, more than one-third of

college students were women

• Started out engaging in reform movements: Example Jane Addams and the Settlement Houses

•Women worked as teachers and nurses, but also as bookkeepers, typists, secretaries, shop clerks, and journalists•Working class women worked

in the garment industry

•Educated women blocked from medicine, law, and the clergy• Fewer than 1500 women

practiced law in 1900, only 6% of women practiced medicine

“This is the women’s age. At last…women are coming into the labor and festival of life on equal terms with men.”

Why Organize?• Sense of Christian Mission• Fear of social upheaval because of

political tensions• Concern about power of wealthy

individuals and corporations • Wanting to Americanize immigrants

and fight for rights of others who needed help

Women’s Trade Union League (WTUL)

•Middle class women workers•Wanted to limit hours • Regulate working conditions• 1908 Muller v. Oregon : Limited

work day for women to 10 hours a day

Jane Addams• Opened the Hull House in Chicago

in 1889• Practiced Idea of Social Gospel-

advocates worked to better conditions of the city through philanthropy and social work

Social Gospel •Woman’s Christian Temperance

Union (WCTU)• Attacks on alcohol as part of push

for social purity • Drinking was linked to prostitution,

wife and child abuse, unemployment and work accidents

18th Amendment (Prohibition)

• Ratified in 1919, this banned the manufacturing, sale and distribution of alcohol

• Using state by state approach, suffragists had achieved success• 1869 Wyoming became first

territory to grant women the right to vote• In New York, suffragists waged

massive door-to-door referendum campaign but was defeated

NAWSA•National American Woman’s

Suffrage Association•Campaigned for a

constitutional amendment to give women the vote•Also supported organized

labor

Susan B. Anthony•Wrote pamphlets, gave speeches,

also testified before every Congress between 1869 and 1906• Registered to vote, and on Election

Day she voted in New York and was arrested fined $100• This is an example of Civil

Disobedience

NWP•National Woman’s Party•Militant Suffragist Movement

led by Alice Paul•Continuously picketed the

White House and went on hunger strikes in prison

• “Every day that the Government sends women to prison for holding harmless banners…makes the position of the Government more indefensible and therefore strengthens our position.”

-Alice Paul 1917

19th Amendment•Passed by Congress in 1919•Granted Women Right to Vote

(Suffrage)•Ratified by states in 1920

Anti-Suffrage Arguments • Voting would interfere with

women’s duties at home or destroy family •Women did not have education or

experience to be competent voters•Women did not want to vote