Militancy To The Women's Movement

In 1910, Alice Paul introduced the idea of militancy to the women’s movement. She was exasperated by the conservative methods being used and decided to take matters into her own hands. Paul organized a march of 5,000 women on Pennsylvania Avenue the day before Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration in 1913. The crowds were outraged by the women’s public display of defiance and showered the marchers with burning cigarette butts and harsh comments. This upset the NAWSA, National American Women Suffrage Association, but the result only encouraged Alice Paul. She continued with militancy tactic through protests against the Wilson Association. Months after she began protesting, she was thrown in jail. Her rough treatment behind bars strengthened her and made it clear that women needed the right to vote to ever receive proper treatment in society. When Susan B. Anthony passed her leadership on to Carrie Catt at the age of eighty, Catt changed the approach of the movement from Paul’s militancy tactics to passive aggressive protests in order to conserve resources and be more …show more content…
Kennedy who had won his election with numerous votes from the female electorate. When Kennedy only appointed 9 women candidates to his 240-seated presidential appointments, Eleanor Roosevelt, former first lady, decided it was time to step in. Roosevelt sent the White house a list of women capable of holding high administrative positions and Esther Peterson, head of the Women’s Bureau, approached Kennedy about creating a commission to address women’s issues. In response, Kennedy created the President’s commission on the status of women in 1961. The commission issued a sixty-page report in 1963 titled American Women. It called for equal pay, better educational opportunities and social services for women. It sparked the fire of the Women’s suffrage movement that had been left mainly dormant for the 20 years