Women's Rights

Jump to a section:

Learning from abolition
How did Discrimination get to be an Issue?
How did Women in the Military get to be an Issue?
How did Welfare get to be an Issue?
How did Pay Equity get to be an Issue?
How did Maternity Leave and Family Leave Get to be an Issue?
How did Childcare get to be an Issue?
How did Violence Against Women get to be an Issue?

"Imagine living in a world where there is no domination, where females and males are not alike or even always equal, but where a vision of mutuality is the ethos shaping our interactions"
- bell hooks

Many historians mark the beginning of the Women's Rights movement with the first Women's Conference, which was held in Seneca Falls, New York in 1848. Lucretia Mott, Martha Wright, Jane Hunt, Mary Ann McClintock, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton organized the convention. Stanton was motivated by her frustration with being a housewife. She felt limited in her role as a caretaker and homemaker, in part because she had had an active intellectual and political life before marriage that did not continue after she wed and had children: "I suffered with mental hunger, which, like an empty stomach, is very depressing."

All five women hoped for increased political and legal rights for women, such as the right for married women to own property and women's right to vote. The 70 year battle for women's suffrage represents the first "wave" of the women's movement.

Learning from abolition

The women responsible for the conference in Seneca Falls learned how to organize a movement for social change through their participation in the abolitionist movement. They lobbied, wrote, and lectured in hopes of abolishing slavery. This was unusual because in the late 1800s, women were discouraged from public speaking and from participating in political life in general. Nevertheless, many women joined the abolitionist movement; some even formed women's groups dedicated to stopping slavery.

Men often resisted women's participation in the movement. Women abolitionists recognized the contradiction before them. How could abolitionists promote both the freedom of blacks and the oppression of women? Abolitionists would speak of freedom for all but would not allow women to vote in meetings or to sign resolutions. This hypocrisy encouraged many women to pursue their own right to freedom and full participation in society.

Frederick Douglass was pro-women's rights Frederick Douglass was one of the few male abolitionists that supported women's rights, including women's right to vote. At the time of the Seneca Falls convention, most men and women considered women's suffrage unimportant and even preposterous. In the late 19th century, dominant society felt that women were supposed to stay at home and be dependent upon fathers and then husbands. Women were considered fragile, intellectually inferior, and unworthy of political participation.

Douglass may have had a different view of women because he had been a slave. Slave women were considered equal workers; they were expected to labor alongside men, including when pregnant or caring for an infant. The nineteenth-century ideology of femininity (a conception of women as fragile and docile creatures who are fully dependent on men) did not apply to and therefore did not limit slave women. Thus, many slave women resisted their oppression; some organized slave escapes and revolts.

Black women often rebelled through action and speech

Two examples are Harriet Tubman, who was a main conductor of the underground railroad, and Sojourner Truth, a brilliant public speaker who lectured in favor of women's rights. In her famous speech "Ain't I a Woman," she pointed out that she herself disproved the presumption that women are weak and delicate. She pointed out that as a slave, she had labored in the fields; she had strong muscles and a strong will, and yet, she was a woman.

Women's liberation leaders follow black liberation leaders

In the 1950s and 60s, women took advantage of the revolutionary climate created by the civil rights movement to fight for their own civil rights. The women's liberation movement of the 60s and 70s marks the second "wave" of the movement. Women's libbers learned the power of the protest from civil rights activists. Sometimes, women who participated directly in the civil rights movement became frustrated with the sexism they found there, so they organized to fight male domination as well.

Despite its close ties to the civil rights movement, the early feminism of the 1960s and 70s often excluded minority women. In the 70s and 80s women of color began to demand that feminists consider race in their theories. Women of color often experience oppression two-fold, and many women's issues are issues of race and class as well as gender.

Race and gender came together in the civil rights act of 1964

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act made it illegal for employers to discriminate against someone because of his or her race or sex. It was a victory for people of color and for white women. The Equal Opportunity Employment Commission was created to enforce this law, and their failure to do so inspired the creation of the National Organization for Women (NOW).

Eight years later, Title IX was passed. It states that "No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subject to discrimination under any educational programs or activity receiving federal financial assistance." Title IX has resulted in more women participating in sports programs.

Women's rights and women's votes

Between the two "waves" of the women's movement, the Republican Party sponsored the Equal Rights Amendment in order to gain the support of more women voters. The Democratic Party was opposed to the ERA at this time, because it conflicted with the interests of labor unions, which were created, run, and made up of men laborers. Through the years the parties changed their positions on the ERA. Republicans rejected the amendment once they perceived an association between other contentious women's rights issues (such as pay equity and abortion) and the ERA. The Democrats adopted the ERA when they recognized women's rights as a civil rights issue, and once they began to consider women as an important voting block.

The need for women's votes was the reason that President Kennedy sponsored the Commission on the Status of Women, a committee composed of 13 women and 11 men and chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt. The committee supervised seven research groups and countless consultants whose work eventually resulted in a 60-page report. Most notably, the report warned the president and the American people of the wage gap and so encouraged the passage of the Equal Pay Act in 1963, which makes it illegal to pay women less because of their gender.

Women and the Constitution

Ten years after the Equal Pay Act, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of a woman's right to choose in the Roe v. Wade case. The court considers abortion a privacy issue, and in 1973, ruled that the state has no right to interfere with a woman's right to privacy.

In October 2003, Congress passed the Prohibit Partial-Birth Abortion Bill, which outlaws an abortion procedure known as dilation and evacuation. The Supreme Court is likely to rule this law unconstitutional since it struck down a similar Nebraska state law in 2000. In the Nebraska case, the majority of justices ruled that the law was unspecific and could have been interpreted as a ban on abortion procedures beyond the D&E method. Therefore, the law placed "an undue burden' on a woman's right to terminate her pregnancy before viability" (Supreme Court Opinion, Breyer, Stenberg v. Carhart, 2000).

In essence, this means that the law violated the rights granted by Roe V. Wade, which secures a woman's right to end a pregnancy before the fetus can live independently. As long as Roe V. Wade stands, the government cannot interfere with first-trimester abortions.

The women's movement is not over; women must continue to be politically active if they want to define and protect women's rights in the wide variety of ways they are needed.

Sources: The Ladies of Seneca Falls, Miriam Gurko, Women, Race and Class, Angela Davis, Women's Rights, Christine Lunardini, Feminism is for Everybody, bell hooks

return to top

How Did Discrimination get to be an Issue?

Women are treated differently than men, and maybe always have been. Today, we call unfair treatment "discrimination," and it is illegal. However, discrimination against women based on their gender has not been criminal for very long. Congress passed Title VII of the Civil Rights Act in 1964. Title VII made it illegal for employers to discriminate against someone because of his or her race or sex. The United States Supreme Court found sexually discriminatory laws to be illegal for the first time in the early 1970s. Before that time, discrimination against women was not only legal but also considered reasonable by many people.

How can people find discrimination to be reasonable? Many accept the idea that different people should be treated differently. They say that since men and women have very real differences, discrimination based on these differences is appropriate. Others argue that the idea of sex-based differences is constructed by society and is itself a discriminatory assumption. These diverse points of view lead us to various conclusions about when and whether laws should, if ever, discriminate on the basis of sex.

"The Weaker Sex"

For many years, most discrimination against women was considered reasonable because it was based on an idea of women as "the weaker sex." Many believed that women's primary purpose was to provide pleasure to men, to have children and to care for them. These attitudes have certainly not disappeared altogether, but have changed since the late 1950s and early 1960s. As people's attitudes towards women began to change, and more people began to view women as equal to men, blatant discrimination against women ceased to be reasonable. So, in the 1970s, the US Supreme Court found that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution bars discrimination on the basis of sex in most instances.

Separate but Equal?

However, in the 1976 case Craig v. Boren, the Supreme Court found discrimination based on gender to be permissible when there are substantial and reasonable grounds for different treatments. The question is, is it ever substantial and reasonable to treat men and women differently? Some say that discrimination based on gender is never ok and to effectively stop it we need the Equal Rights Amendment. However, the Equal Rights Amendment failed to pass in 1982 after almost 40 years of trying.

Those opposed to the ERA say that the Fourteenth Amendment already insures equal treatment for men and women under the law, and an additional amendment is unnecessary. People who support the ERA say that the amendment would help women to win legal battles against discrimination.

return to top

How did Women in the Military get to be an Issue?

The Gulf War renewed the familiar debate about women in the military because it obligated quite a few mothers, daughters, sisters, wives and girlfriends to leave their loved ones and join the fight against Saddam Hussein. Now that we are considering battling with him again, we've started thinking about the relationship between women and war once more.

In the US military, women are excluded from combat, technically. In actuality, they often engage in combat which is officially labeled "support." Almost 40,000 US women participated in the Gulf War. Twelve women died, five while in combat, or rather, "support." This problem of naming women's activity in war is not just a matter of words. Often, women do not receive the recognition that they deserve; they are not awarded combat medals even if they merit them. (In military culture, a combat medal is a mark of prestige and honor.)

Heroines Overlooked

In one example from the Gulf War, a helicopter on a rescue mission was shot down and the survivors were taken prisoner by Iraqi soldiers. One of these POWs was Rhonda Cornum. She survived the affair along with several male soldiers who, upon their return, were decorated with the Distinguished Flying Cross. Ms. Cornum did not receive a medal because she was not officially in combat.

Why don't some people want women in combat? Why should or shouldn't women participate fully in war?

Fairness vs. Effectiveness?

The basic political debate about women in combat centers around two arguments: fairness and effectiveness . People who are in favor of women in combat rely on the concept of fairness. They feel that women should be afforded any and all of the same job opportunities as men, and should not be discriminated against because of their gender. (Being a soldier is very much a job like any other.) Many of the high-ranking positions in the military require combat experience, so if women are barred from combat, they are barred from those positions.

Those opposed to women in combat typically employ the effectiveness debate. They claim that the military will be weakened if women participate in combat because they are not "naturally" equipped to be good soldiers. Many people who think this way also believe it necessary to protect women from the horror of combat.

Opponents of this claim feel that "protection" is a disguise for discrimination: Congresswoman Pat Schroeder is quoted as saying, "the only thing [combat exclusion laws] protect women from is promotion."

The debate over women in combat reveals people's beliefs about women's roles. Ask your co-workers and your friends what they think about women in combat.

return to top

How did Welfare get to be an issue?

Welfare is a significant issue right now because the Senate must vote on a welfare reform bill in 2003. This bill has already been approved by the House of Representatives and will become a law if the Senate passes it and President Bush signs it. For this reason, the November 2002 elections have had a clear and direct effect on women on welfare.

Our Vote Matters

By choosing a Republican Senate, it is likely that the welfare system will change. If we had chosen a Democratic Senate, it was likely that the welfare system would have remained the same or changed less drastically.

Welfare reform is an important reminder that our votes may affect women's lives. Women would be the ones to experience welfare reform - eighty to ninety percent of welfare recipients are women. To better understand the welfare reform proposal, let's examine how the current welfare system works:

The current welfare system was installed in 1996 when President Clinton signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) into law. This legislation introduced Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), a program that set limitations on welfare. Some people were disappointed in Clinton for signing PRWORA because they consider it punitive and believe it prevents the poor from truly improving their economic situation. Others applauded Congress and Clinton for setting boundaries for welfare recipients. Welfare rolls dropped by 50% after TANF went into effect.

Understanding Welfare: The Personal is Political

As a woman on welfare, you have five years (and five years only - it's a lifetime limit) to try to secure a job that will pay a living wage to support you and your children. During those five years, you may have to fulfill a 'universal work requirement' of thirty hours per week. For twenty of those hours, you must be engaged in 'work activity.' Often this means volunteer community service that may or may not improve your skills and marketability. You may use ten of the thirty hours for education, but only for twelve months. This means that you can't complete a post-secondary education program for the 'universal work requirement.'

So, if you planned on going back to school to get a degree in business, you must get a scholarship or student loans to pay for tuition; you have to attend school, study for school and complete your thirty hours of 'work activity.' You have to figure out where to put the kids while you are in school or studying. Oh, and don't forget housework and errands and PTA meetings and taking Aunt Rita to her bi-weekly doctors appointments.

Is it really possible to get a college degree while on welfare? Maybe if you are incredibly motivated, getting help with the kids, in good health (mentally and physically), and free from abuse. Clearly, the current system makes it very difficult for a welfare mom to get a degree.

Critics of the current welfare system criticize this aspect of TANF. Mary Carraher is the director of Project Self Sufficiency, a program in Loveland, Colorado that helps single parents become economically independent. She explains that "earning a degree is the most effective way for a low-income person to become self-sufficient."

Some states, such as Maine, Illinois, Kentucky, and California, have more flexible policies that do not prevent welfare recipients from going to school. However, most welfare programs focus on 'work first.' This system pushes women on welfare into low-paying jobs, resulting in more women and children living in poverty.

Most people think that the welfare system needs reform. Yet, citizens and politicians do not agree on how to reform it.

return to top

How did Pay Equity get to be an Issue?

According to economists Heather Joshi and Pierella Paci, women have always earned less than men. But we didn't need economists to tell us that. We've seen our fathers make more than our mothers, and our husbands or brothers make more than us, even though we work just as hard and have similar education and experience. The question is, why is men's time in the workplace valued more than women's?

Breadwinners and Caretakers

Historically, employers have preferred men workers because they believed them to be more devoted to work than women. Employers have thought of women as less reliable because they sometimes take leave to marry or to have children. Traditionally, men were thought of as the head of the household and therefore worthy of a larger wage. In this model, a woman's salary is supplementary income only, or, the icing on the cake.

Although today these ideas might seem outdated, they still play a part in many employers' hiring and business practices. Simply the possibility that a woman will take maternity or family leave places her at a disadvantage in the labor market. The traditional roles of "man as breadwinner" and "woman as caretaker" cause women's salaries to be considered less important. Of course, single mothers (of whom there are ten million in this country) are not even considered in this old-fashioned model.

A Vicious Cycle

In part, women are more likely to be stay-at-home moms than men are to be stay-at-home dads because women's time in the workforce is undervalued. When a heterosexual couple decides who, if anyone, should stay home with the kids, they usually choose the worker with the lower wage; most often, this is the woman. Thus, women's lower wages reinforce their role as caretakers, and in turn the caretaker role is partly responsible for her lower wages. How do we escape from this vicious circle? Or is it vicious at all? What if we like our mothering role and don't want to give it up?

Well, it is not necessary to completely give it up. We don't need to stop being mothers and caretakers in order to gain pay equality. But we cannot place the entire responsibility of raising children on women. It is important to see issues like maternity leave, family leave and childcare as women's and men's issues instead of just women's issues.

We have made progress with wage inequality. As recently as the early 1960's, the Want Ads advertised separately for women's jobs and men's jobs. Can you imagine such an ad today? "Help Wanted - Male Clerk. No Experience Necessary." Jobs that ran distinct ads for men and women were separate but not equal. In most cases, employers advertised the woman's salary as substantially lower than the man's salary. Between 1950 and 1960, women earned just over half of what men earned. This was not overlooked. John F. Kennedy's Commission on the Status of Women reported the wage gap to the president and to the public in the early 1960's. By 1963, Congress passed the Equal Pay Act, which makes it illegal to pay women less because of their gender.

In 1970, The U.S. Court of Appeals ruling for Schultz v. Wheaton Glass Co. stated that jobs need to be "substantially equal" but not "identical" to fall under the protection of the Equal Pay Act. This means that an employer cannot, for example, change the job titles of women workers in order to pay them less than men.

However, even with legislation that promotes pay equity, women are still earning less than men. In the year 2000, we earned 73 cents to a man's dollar-- equal pay is still an issue.

return to top

How did Maternity Leave and Family Leave Get to be an Issue?

Maternity leave has been necessary ever since women started working outside of the home. Poor women were working moms long before women's liberation, but lawmakers did not discuss a national maternity policy until large numbers of middle and upper class white women entered the workforce. In the 1970s, national legislators finally began to consider maternity policies to protect women who work and raise families.

But we didn't get the Family and Maternity Leave Act (FMLA) until 1993! The FMLA provides people who work in companies with 50 employees or more with twelve weeks of unpaid leave for family care. This may include caring for one's own illness, for an immediate family member who is sick, or for the birth or adoption of a child. Before the FMLA, the US was the only major industrial country that did not provide some sort of maternity leave for its mothers.

Do We Really Need the Government to Protect Women in the Workplace?

If you look at the past, the answer is "yes." In the 1940s-50s, many employers asked women to leave their jobs once they got married. Married women were expected to become mothers, and employers saw mothers as less productive workers. Employers often assumed that pregnant women were inferior workers whose presence was upsetting to male co-workers. Pregnant women were often put on mandatory leave and then lost accumulated seniority and benefits; often, women lost their jobs altogether. That is why we needed the Pregnancy Disability Amendment added to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.

Title VII states that it is unlawful for employers to discriminate on the basis of sex, yet pregnant women were discriminated against even after the Civil Rights Act because people were not sure if pregnancy discrimination was a form of sex discrimination. Due to the hard work of women's organizations, civil rights organizations, and labor unions, the Pregnancy Disability Amendment was added to Title VII in order to make it clear to employers that "discrimination on the basis of sex" can mean discrimination on the basis of pregnancy and childbirth too.

Pregnant and Equal

So, employers are required by law to treat pregnant workers just like any other workers. They cannot fire, demote, or force a mandatory leave on a pregnant worker, and her seniority and benefits are protected. Pregnant women are equal workers in the eyes of the law, but don't they have special needs? As a society, don't we have an interest in the physical and financial well being of new moms and newborns

return to top

How did Childcare get to be an Issue?

Childcare became a visible issue as more mothers entered the workforce. Today, 65% of mothers with children under the age of six and 78% of mothers with children from ages six to thirteen are working. Since there is a much higher rate of working moms and single parents now than there was 25 years ago, childcare is a more important issue today.

Unlike most industrialized nations, the United States does not have a comprehensive childcare system. Our government does offer some poor and low-income families childcare subsidies; there are also tax breaks for childcare expenses. But there is no universal childcare system in the United States and some people feel that there should be. A universal childcare system means that the government provides all children with free or low-cost childcare.

Even though most parents need someone to take care of their children when they are at work, quality childcare is expensive. Full-day childcare costs anywhere from $4,000-$10,000 per year. It can easily cost more than college tuition at a public university. And there are not enough government funds to help pay for all of the children who are eligible for subsidies. Only 12% of eligible children get government assistance for daycare.

Even if parents can afford childcare, finding high-quality care is difficult. A study done by the University of Colorado found 40% of infant rooms in childcare facilities to be poorly run and even hazardous to children's health and safety. Most states do not require that childcare workers have extensive, formal training. This may be part of the reason that childcare workers are undervalued in the marketplace. They receive low wages and do not usually get benefits.

Everyone agrees that the health and well being of children is important to children and parents and to society as a whole. However, people have very different opinions about how much the government should be involved in childcare.

return to top

How did Violence Against Women get to be an Issue?

Visibility and Invisibility

Until the late 1960s, violence against women was not considered an important issue. Since most violence against women takes place in the home, it was generally considered "a private matter." Many people thought that neighbors, friends, family and especially the government had no right to interfere. In most cases, the perpetrator is the husband, boyfriend or friend of the woman that he is beating, raping, harassing or emotionally abusing. Domestic violence was/is often seen as somehow different and less severe than violence that occurs outside of the home. Now, many people recognize domestic violence as a serious problem, and a public one. Now, the government does intervene and attempts to prevent abuse. Now, we have The Violence Against Women Act.

It is NEVER OK

Public perceptions of domestic violence have changed dramatically over the past 35 years. We no longer believe that a husband has the right to abuse or rape his wife, because now, we name those actions "abuse" and "rape." For a long time, it made sense to people that a husband would hit his wife "when upset or provoked" or that he would force her to have sex "because he desires her so much," and such actions were not named what they are -- abuse and rape.

Now, most people realize that no matter how upset he is, he shouldn't hit her. Now, we understand that she never provokes abuse, and that it is never her fault. Now, we have some resources for battered women, though not nearly enough. And now, we have thousands of stories from brave women who have chosen to break the silence.

In addition, we now recognize that domestic violence is not limited to husbands abusing wives. It can also refer to violence between unmarried partners, same-sex partners and adult violence against children.

We are Encouraged not to Tell

Now, domestic violence is somewhat visible, but most abuse is not reported. Victims are often encouraged to keep abuse a secret, not only by their perpetrator, but also by the court system and the media. For example, most rape cases that go to trial end in acquittal, and most media stories about abuse exploit the victim. Understandably, many do not come forward because they want to avoid further victimization.

Feminists have spent 20 years promoting an awareness of violence against women. They have educated the public, built shelters and changed legislation. But more needs to be done; The National Violence Against Women Survey estimates that more than 50 million women have been assaulted and 20 million have experienced attempted or completed rape in their lifetimes. These staggering numbers demonstrate how common violence against women is.

Why haven't we come up with a solution to this problem? There are many theories about violence against women, and some policies trying to prevent it. For more information on domestic violence, click here.

click here to go to next section

return to top