Women's Rights In The 19th Century

The Women’s Rights Movement was a time period in American history where several women and men fought to secure various rights for women and children in America. This movement was caused by the severe abuses that women faced in 19th Century society, either from their husbands, workplaces, or government. These abuses include unfair wages, the lack of control over a majority of their lives, including finances, birth control, and children, and the lack of laws protecting them from these abuses by the government. From the need for social reform rose a group of women who made up the Women’s Rights Movement, called suffragists. These suffragists ranged from uneducated immigrant women looking for jobs with livable wages, to educated housewives of rich …show more content…
Because of them being viewed this way, the rights women held in the 19th Century were very limited. They did not have control over the finances such as bank accounts, property, and their own wages, they did not have the right to legally be the possessor of their children over their husbands, they did not have the right to vote in a federal election, and they were not allowed to be taught about pregnancy prevention methods such as contraception. In the American household the man was king, while the wife is his personal slave. If the husband wanted to have sex and the wife did not, he would just rape her and it would be completely legal and just for him to do so. If the wife got pregnant by her husband, it was up to him to decide whether or not she will abort or keep the baby. If he says no abortion, then she has to keep the child, even if it will kill her, like in many cases of women who gave birth to too many children in the 19th Century. The only way to help women prevent pregnancy was through providing them information on contraception. However, America’s views on sexuality in the 19th Century were extremely conservative, including the use of “sexually obscene and vulgar” content. The Comstock Laws, named after the 19th Century politician Anthony Comstock, was an act passed in 1873 that was used to suppress the use of obscene language and images. Consequently, discussion about contraceptives were deemed too obscene to discuss in public, and even giving information about them were grounds for arrest. This in turn caused a severe lack of information on contraceptives from ever reaching the large population of immigrant women and American women that knew nothing of them and needed them the most. These