DIVERSITY | Offering a place for everyone
26 February 2007
Women's Rights in the United States
Improvement in women's status advances that of communities, nation
Washington - In the United States, women's rights have a long, constantly evolving history.
In recent decades, significant steps have been taken to improve education, health, family life, economic opportunities and political empowerment for women. The U.S. experience shows that, as the status of women advances, so does that of their families, their communities, their workplaces and their nation.
In many ways the birth of the women's rights movement in the United States is closely tied to the abolitionist movement, which was supported fervently by many American women. It was the exclusion of female abolitionist delegates from the 1840 World Anti-Slavery Convention held in London that inspired Elizabeth Cady Stanton and abolitionist Lucretia Mott to discuss the development of a women's rights movement in the United States.
In the first half of the 19th century, women were not allowed the freedoms men enjoyed in the eyes of the law, the church or the government. Women could not vote, hold elective office, attend college or earn a living. If married, they could not make legal contracts, divorce an abusive husband or gain custody of their children.
In July 1848, Stanton and Mott joined with other like-minded women for the first Women's Rights Convention held in Seneca Falls, New York. Their "Declaration of Sentiments," based on the U.S. Declaration of Independence, demanded equal rights for women, including the right to vote. Over 300 people attended the convention; the document was signed by 68 women and 32 men.
LEGAL, ECONOMIC PROGRESS
In 1920, with the ratification of the 19th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, American women finally gained the right to vote. Ultimately, it was economics, rather than politics, that changed women's roles in American society and created greater momentum for the women's rights movement.
As many families moved from farms to cities, the economic role of women diminished. But the Great Depression, which began with the October 1929 stock market crash, compelled more women to seek paid work outside the home in order to aid their families.
World War II catapulted up to 38 percent of American women into the workforce to fill the labor shortage left by men serving as soldiers. After the war, returning soldiers displaced many women, but women re-entered the workforce with the economic expansion of the late 1950s and the 1960s. As women's contributions to their family's economic well-being grew, they found that discrimination increasingly frustrated their efforts to advance in the workplace.
Equal opportunity was offered to women in the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibited sex discrimination in employment. To ensure that the act's provisions for women were enforced, activists joined together to create in 1966 the National Organization for Women (NOW). NOW is currently the largest organization for feminists in the United States, with some 500,000 members.
By the early 1970s, women serving in both chambers of the U.S. Congress helped focus more attention on the needs of women. Some of the significant pieces of legislation affecting women that were passed into law resulted in:
• Greater freedom in reproductive choice (1973);
• Minimum wage protection for domestic workers (1974);
• Prohibitions against discriminating in employment against pregnant women (1978);
• Tougher child support laws and protection of pension rights for widows and divorced women (1984);
• Provision of federal funds for child care (1990);
• Employment protection for workers needing extended time off to care for family members (1993);
• Protections against violence (1994).
REMAINING CHALLENGES
American women have made significant gains in the quest for equal opportunity in the nation's economic and political spheres of life, but there are still problems to be overcome.
For example, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that in 2005, women over the age of 16 comprise 59 percent of the workforce, yet, on average, they earned only 77 cents for every $1 their male counterparts earned. Part of the reason for this might be that women remain clustered in lower-paying occupations, according to the most recent data available from the U.S. Census Bureau.
Another challenge facing working women is how to balance the demands of home and family with that of the workplace. Many women with children and jobs face the conundrum of neglecting one or the other. Some high-achieving women find themselves forgoing families. Sylvia Ann Hewlett, economist and author of several books about professional women, found that 42 percent of corporate women are childless by age 40, but only 14 percent planned to be.
Despite the challenges they still face, American women can be proud of their accomplishments, and National Women’s History Month, established by Congress in 1987, is a good time to reflect upon women’s progress.
