Womens Rights In The 1920's

Superior Essays
Women's Rights in the 1920’s and the history of the tremendous fight for equality The roaring twenties was a loud time for probation, gangs, jazz, but the the women’s rights movement roared louder. While researching the women’s rights I learned about the influential women who fought for equality and defined what it meant to be a woman in a free world. In this paper I have organized my topic in 5 categories. The first being the history of Women’s suffrage and then the rights and restrictions of women in the 1920s. Page three begins the discussion of the fight for full equality and the framers of the equal rights amendment. The fourth page introduces the women that lead the feminist movement in the 60s and 70s. Lastly, the fifth page describes …show more content…
Being a woman in the 20’s you would find it difficult or basically impossible to do any of the following: keep your citizenship if married to someone out of the United States, be apart of a jury, obtain a job while pregnant or married, file for divorce, and get access to birth control (Bustle). The list doesn’t end there, more restrictions were given to women merely, because of their sex. It took the courts until 1980 to decide if a woman could sue for sexual harassment (marieclaire 2/9). It was usually simple things that a women couldn’t acquire without a man like getting a credit card, where women must be married and have their husband co-sign for them (marieclaire 3/9). Discrimination was at an all time high in the 1920’s; women were paid less than men, no female could serve in the military, and the Ivy League colleges wouldn’t admit a single female until the late 60s (marieclaire 3/9). Women's suffrage groups weren't just trying to change the way the world viewed and treated women on a small scale. They fought the injustice that came from the courts. ( Muller v. Oregon) was a court case that ruled women could only work for a certain amount of time due to their “physical structure and maternal functions” (Sigler 46). Laws regarding women’s rights varied by state, some states regarded women more than others therefore women …show more content…
Women’s Suffrage movement needed an improvement, they weren’t fighting for the right to vote anymore; they were fighting for the right to live a life just as free as males have lived their entire life on earth. The new group of activists unveiled the life of women to the public and soon the patriarchy was being tackled by different angles (www.nwhp.org). To get the upper hand women needed a female who was close to the president and could influence their ideas upon him. Esther Peterson would be the woman to do just that; she took it upon herself to assist President Kennedy at the time, to convene a commision on the status of women in America (www.nwhp.org). The next step would be to publish a writing that related to all women in which they would pursue other roles other than a caretaker. Betty Friedan is the author of the Feminine Mystique ; a book that described the oppression of women, soon after being published it became a bestseller(ww.nwhp.org). The literary work of art inspired its readers to live a life in which they felt fit not the life that was picked for them (www.nwhp.org). These powerful women paved the way for the emerging feminist and opened up a new can of topics that needed to be discussed if women were ever going to have full equality. Topics like women’s reproductive rights, military involvement, leadership roles in religious worship, business

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