The research topic on the history and chronology of movements arising from Women’s pursuits of their rights in the early 1900s is indeed relevant to the class. This is because, apart from laying out the history of how women rose to power, the subject matter of research also provides a comprehensive analogy of how a social political group, in this case the Women’s Rights Movement, struggled for fairness, equity, objectivity, and impartiality (Holton & Sandra). As such, this essay primarily brings out the formation, development, and evolution of movements in support of rights for women as per a timeline of 1848 to 1920. In addition, the paper also majors on the array of women’s parties and activist groups and associations formed as well as adjustment of previous laws made throughout the said period in a bid to obtain equal opportunities and rights. Stanton et al. (n.p) claim that these movements include the National American Woman Suffrage Association, the popular convention held in New York’s Seneca Falls on women’s rights, and the promulgation of the Nineteenth Amendment allowing women to vote.
In the same way, the research question, ‘Has the Women’s Rights Movement been rewarding and of assistance to women over the years?”, also revolves around the said faction whereby it inquires, explores, and examines the benefits acquired from the Women’s Rights Movement in the 1900’s. Additionally, the research question also seeks to find out whether the movement has over the decades harmed or supported women in their quest for justice. As a result, the question is prescriptively fundamental since apart from generating a mental picture of the repressive era, it also aids in providing an overview of all the hassles, strains, and troubles encountered by women during their relentless search for fair play (Marilley and Suzanne). Besides, the fact-finding question also probes the effectiveness of the said movement and thus satiates the need to know whether all the struggles that women underwent eventually paid off.
Essentially, the United States’ women’s rights movement goes back to the year 1848 resulting from a conference convened at the falls of Seneca in New York (Marilley and Suzanne). Furthermore, Marilley and Suzanne posit that this convention consisted of an extensive range of bureaucratic extremists seeking to discuss and apprehend various issues concerning the well-being of a woman socially, civically, and religiously. Besides, the gathered group of activists also represented a broad and diverse scope of other governmental issues such as campaigns against slavery, spokespeople, and campaigners of a temperamental society, upholders of the party of the Free- Soil and ultimately, the believers’ allies. Here, a woman by the name Lucretia Mott who became the sole recognized female speaker attained popularity as the force behind the assembly in New York. More so, another woman known as Elizabeth Stanton created the original preliminary version of a legal instrument termed as the “Declaration of Sentiments” which was duly scanned, reviewed, and amended in the course of the meeting’s activities.
The said exposition not only advocated for the declaration and publication of the rights of women to vote but as well called for an immediate instigation and endorsement of women’s access to every prerogative and dispensation entitled to them as legal members and citizens of America (Childress and Diana). However, this movement neither materialized nor originated from one specific location nor did it base its chief point of focus on the right for women to vote. Instead, the entire process involved the mobilization of many reformists, feminists, and activists in various states in America such as Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Massachusetts among others that were most of the times aggressively led by a woman named Paulina Davis (Stanton et al.). In the said meetings, the members used all means of communication available such as the use of figurative and allegorical general seminars where they planned and sketched proposals and motions, made monologues and presentations as well as addressed their members via organized supplication crusades to relay their trivial message on the need for implementing and inaugurating women’s rights. All through these tedious operations and undertakings, the women’s rights extremists created a reasonable and articulate review and exposition on the roles and statuses of women in the society.
In support of their critique, the activists based their arguments using the conditions and terms used in natural human rights as well as the up-to-date comprehensions of other entitlements in the United States. These prerogatives include the right to individual freedom, preservation and conservation and satisfactory care (Childress and Diana). Moreover, the said reformists also created a knowledgeable and cosmopolitan hypothetical and speculative outlook on several aspects related to their relentless need of the recognition of women. Some of these aspects include equity, approval, delegation, and federal nationalism. Additionally, individuals in support of the women’s rights movement also configured and structured their perspective of republican governments functioning based on democracy via their earlier participation and collaboration of protest campaigns, committees, crusades, and seminars seeking the eradication of various rampant societal vices during that period (Childress and Diana). Some of the vices perpetrated during the said era included prostitution and sex commercialization, oppressive laws on slaves, wars like those in Mexico and corporal manhandling of wrong doers and other convicts.
Furthermore, alternative reformists based their arguments on the grounds that social reforms that would eventually lead to the growth and development of families and the communities’ at large if only women acquired their rights. Here, the activists held on to their ideologies that there was immense need for women to have a right to take part in elections in order to assist in obtaining genuine and respectable leaders who would not only look out for their general well-being but also attend and address their needs exhaustively (Kysilka and Marcella). Besides, the extremists also had a strong argument for creating and supporting the women’s rights movement since most women possessed high educational and intelligence levels even than some of the men. In other words, this means that activists had a concrete case since the case scenario whereby the least educated, idle and men of low morals, standards, and principles had a right to vote as opposed to inordinately well- learned and responsible women was not only hilarious but also unreasonable.
Moreover, apart from the right to vote, activists in the women’s right movement also appealed and struggled for the property rights for married women (Holton and Sandra). In essence, this was accentuated by the fact that the family and marital statuses of women amalgamated with their stands in their national and constitutional stands. Therefore, the reformists had concrete foundations of laying out and conducting their campaigns and as a result, they generated other motions still in support of women. Besides, Kysilka, and Marcella have postulated that these motions and appeals included equivalent parental custodial rights to their children, the legal right of all married women to withhold their salaries and wages from their spouses and later on, they even advocate for the right of women to divorce in cases where they could prove reasonable doubt.
Works Cited
Childress, Diana. Equal Rights Is Our Minimum Demand: The Women’s Rights Movement in
Iran, 2005. Minneapolis: Twenty-First Century Books, 2011. Internet resource.
Holton, Sandra S. Feminism and Democracy: Women’s Suffrage and Reform Politics in Britain,
1900-1918. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Print.
Kysilka, Marcella L. Critical Times in Curriculum Thought: People, Politics, and Perspectives.
Charlotte, N.C: Information Age Pub, 2011. Print.
Marilley, Suzanne M. Woman Suffrage and the Origins of Liberal Feminism in the United
States, 1820-1920. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1996. Print.
Stanton, Elizabeth C, Susan B. Anthony, Matilda J. Gage, and Ida H. Harper. History of Woman
Suffrage. Rochester, N.Y: Susan B. Anthony, 1887. Print.
