Dbq Women's Rights

Throughout American history, women have gone through incredible troubles to earn the same rights as men. They were denied to have some of the enjoyed rights that men had. The expected duties of women were housework and mothering children; no politics could be involved. They could not legally claim any money they earned and they could not own any property. In 1800’s, women began to petition and organize to win the right to vote; after decades they accomplished their purpose when the amendment got introduced in 1878. After the many struggles women went through to get their deserved rights, the Nineteenth amendment of the United States Constitution gave women the right to vote. The nineteenth amendment was the high point of the women’s …show more content…
According to History.com Staff (2010), “Many American women were beginning to chafe against what historians have called the “Cult of True Womanhood”; that is, the idea that the only “true” woman was a pious, submissive wife and mother concerned exclusively with home and family. (para. 3)” A life of a women was already set, to stay home, clean, cook and take care of the kids, while men got to experience having a job, owning property, voting and doing anything else they would want to please to do. Between 1878 and 1920 (the period the amendment was first introduced to the period it got ratified), there were many different strategies that women used to achieve their goal such as, suffrage acts in different states, parades, silent vigils and hunger strikes. Unfortunately, these women had many opponents that physically abused and jailed them. In 1848, things began to get more serious, women had to fight harder. The women’s rights movement began to organize at national level. In July, reformers such as Elizabeth Stanton and Lucretia Mott, organized the first women’s rights convention which was held in Seneca Falls, New York. Over 300 people showed up; of course, most were women. History.com staff mentioned, “Groups of delegates that Elizabeth Stanton led produced a document called “Declaration of Sentiments” which was a model after the Declaration of Independence. This document stated, “We hold these truths to be …show more content…
The amendment states, “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” (U.S. Const., amend. XIX) This meant that the United States government could not stop any US citizen from voting and the state or federal government can prevent the right to vote based on sex. Congress is empowered to pass laws to protect the right of women to vote in the United States. (“19th Amendment”, n.d.) The fifteenth amendment made it illegal for the state or federal government to deny any US citizen the right to vote but, for some reason, women were not considered a US citizen. They weren’t allowed to vote until the nineteenth amendment, which was also considered as the suffrage movement. The suffrage movement existed throughout the civil war, but the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenths amendments did not mention anything about giving women the right to vote. Before the nineteenth amendment, New York and and most Western states were the only places where women had full suffrage. Other states had limited suffrage meaning they could only vote in certain elections. Wisconsin became the first state to approve the amendment and final approval was needed from Tennessee. On August 18th, 2015 is when 36 states ratified the amendment, the other 11 states (not included Alaska & Hawaii) slowly but surely began to ratify the amendment as