In 19th century German society, the family was the core institution through which all other aspects of life flourished— business, health, happiness—and at the core of the family was the woman, wife and mother. 19th century society dictated that a successful and happy family depended on the separate spheres and roles assigned to men and women. Men were assigned the duty of being the “breadwinners”, hardworking, ambitious and ‘public,’ while women were restricted to the ‘private’ sphere of the home and be domestic, keeping the home and children in order. Thus, throughout most of the 19th century, we can trace the increasing entrenchment of patriarchal ideals in family ideas, particularly those of the bourgeoisie class. While towards the latter
…show more content…
Seeing the pervasiveness of male opposition to attempts by women to infiltrate male spheres even the slightest bit, these women’s rights activists chose to avoid disrupting the system too much and work for small, incremental gains. Separate-spheres feminists were mainly from the middle class, and their goal was to emphasize the important contributions women made to social and familial life. They conceded that women’s natural place was in the home, but they sought to win greater protections for themselves before the law. Separate-spheres feminists, though perhaps viewed scornfully in the eyes of modern day feminists or feminists from countries like America and England, were at least somewhat effective at advancing their position. It was a major success of the movement that the German Civil Law Code, passed in 1899, included many new protections for women: acknowledgment of married women’s powers, via attorneys, of self-representation before the law, and of disposition over their own wages. However, separate-spheres feminists achieved little else. The same Civil Law Code that included new legal protections for women reaffirmed the idea that women were to be defined by their marital status and by their husbands in assigning men legal guardianship over their wives. It also formally made divorce more difficult, reducing the number of legitimate reasons for
Seeing the pervasiveness of male opposition to attempts by women to infiltrate male spheres even the slightest bit, these women’s rights activists chose to avoid disrupting the system too much and work for small, incremental gains. Separate-spheres feminists were mainly from the middle class, and their goal was to emphasize the important contributions women made to social and familial life. They conceded that women’s natural place was in the home, but they sought to win greater protections for themselves before the law. Separate-spheres feminists, though perhaps viewed scornfully in the eyes of modern day feminists or feminists from countries like America and England, were at least somewhat effective at advancing their position. It was a major success of the movement that the German Civil Law Code, passed in 1899, included many new protections for women: acknowledgment of married women’s powers, via attorneys, of self-representation before the law, and of disposition over their own wages. However, separate-spheres feminists achieved little else. The same Civil Law Code that included new legal protections for women reaffirmed the idea that women were to be defined by their marital status and by their husbands in assigning men legal guardianship over their wives. It also formally made divorce more difficult, reducing the number of legitimate reasons for