08 March 2006
Women Play Key Role Shaping U.S. History, Society, Scholar Says
Historian answers questions on women's contributions to the United States
Washington -- American women have made and continue to make important contributions to society, a U.S. historian says, but more can be done for women worldwide to improve parity with men on such issues as salaries and access to social benefits.
Historian Susan Ware discussed women’s issue in a March 8 State Department webchat marking International Women’s Day.
“Areas of special importance are access to education, health care, employment, and full political engagement,” historian Susan Ware said in a March 8 State Department webchat marking International Women’s Day. “This forward momentum will need the input of both men and women,” Ware added.
Ware, a historian and former professor of history at New York University, is an expert on 20th century American women. She was a consultant to the Department of State's online publication Women of Influence and served as editor of the fifth volume of Notable American Women: A Biographical Dictionary at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University. Ware is also the author of several books on women and the New Deal, the popular name for the U.S. government response of 1933-1938 to the Great Depression.
Asked about which American women she believed most responsible for securing women’s voting rights in the United States, Ware said, “In the early years the key players were definitely Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony; in the last stages of the fight, Carrie Chapman Catt was a very important tactician and Alice Paul supplied the moral urgency.”
It took so many years to achieve the vote for women – 1848-1920 -- Ware said, because initially “it was a very radical idea to have women participate in politics. Even as late as 1920 when the 19th amendment was passed, there were many who believed women's place was in the home. Giving women the vote helped the challenge that presumption.”
She acknowledged that in the United States, despite legislation such as the Equal Pay Act of 1963 -- which says that women and men should be paid the same wages on the job – the average salary for a woman is lower than that for a man. Reasons “range from the social (women's work is often not valued as highly as men's) to the economic (the structure of jobs and industry tends to segregate women in lower-paying jobs and men in higher-paying ones),” Ware said. “While much progress has occurred in the last three decades, women still do face economic discrimination on the job.”
On the subject of women’s political representation in the United States and in other countries, notably Iraq, Ware cited the importance of having women not only in the halls of government but also influencing political decisions in their countries though voluntary organizations, religious groups and other nongovernmental bodies.
Ware reflected on the satisfaction she derives from her career as a women’s historian saying that she has “always believed that a picture of American history that excluded the role of women was an incomplete one, and I have dedicated my scholarship to trying to fill that gap.”
The transcript of the webchat is available on America.gov.
