Cult Of Womanhood

Many women fought tirelessly to gain equal rights with men and continued to do so today. In 1893, New Zealand was the world’s first country to grant women the right to vote. Only after World War I did other countries grant women’s suffrage. In 1918 in Britain, women over the age of thirty won the right to vote. In 1920, the United States granted women, both white and black, over the age of twenty-one the right to vote. Along with that, women also gained the rights and responsibilities of citizenship that men had through the 19th Amendment in the U.S constitution. In 1928, suffrage was extended to women in the United Kingdom over the age of twenty-one. In the 1940s, in France, Belgium, and Italy, women were granted full voting rights, …show more content…
During the 1820s and 1830s, most states granted all white men equal rights regardless of their income, and how much property they owned. At the same time, women played prominent roles in reform groups such as temperance clubs, religious movements, moral-reform societies, and the anti-slavery organizations. Meanwhile, historians believed in the “Cult of True Womanhood”. The “Cult of True Womanhood” was the idea of what they thought a “true” woman was, which was that a “true” woman was always a submissive, devoutly religious wife and mother, who was exclusively concerned with the household, and her family. All of these events made women contemplate about what it meant to be a woman and a citizen of the United …show more content…
Some groups were: the War Manpower Commission (which alerted women for jobs available because most men were at the war), the Women 's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC), the Women 's Army Corps (WAC), the women’s sector of the Coast Guard (SPARS), the women’s branch of the Navy called the “Women Appointed for Voluntary Emergency Service” (WAVES), the Women 's Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron (WAFS), the Marine Corps Women 's Reserve (MCWRS), the Women 's Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron (WAFS) , and the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPS). World War II’s influence on women’s status was dramatic. Over six million women worked actively in the workforce, filling positions in factories, and working on farms. Also, over three million women worked for the Red Cross, and over two hundred thousand women served in the military. These were jobs held exclusively for men before the war. But after the war was over, women were forced by society to become a housewife again. Despite this, women continued to fight for their rights in the Women’s Rights