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Crash Course 31 on Women's Sufferage

Added Feb 16, 2017 •

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the movement for passage of the 19th Amendment

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hi I'm John Green this is Crash Course u.s. history and today we're going to talk about women in the Progressive Era Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson and all those of Doughboys headed off to war women in this period of sort of been footnoted shockingly can't be the center of my world my raison d'etre my joy de vivre you're weird worship of women is a kind of misogyny because you're imagining women is these beautiful fragile things that you can possess or not they are people in precisely the same way that you are a person and in the Progressive Era they demanded to be seen as full citizens of the United States women don't exist why do bees they get to have their own Jawad Aviv took something to limit ourselves to discussion of women getting the right to vote with the passage of the 19th Amendment but if we focus too much on the Constitutional history we're going to miss some historians refer to the 30 years between 1890 and 1920 as the women's era because it was in that time that women started to have greater economic and political opportunities women were no aided by legal changes like getting the right to own property control their wages and make contracts and will by 1900 almost five million women worked for wages mainly in domestic nervous or light manufacturing like the Garment industry we're always vital contributors to the economy as producers and consumers and they always worked weather for wages or taken care of children and the home and as someone who is recently returned from paternity leave let me tell you that ain't no joke and American women were also active is reformers since like America became a canoes reform movements brought women into State and National politics before the dawn of the Progressive Era unfortunately their greatest achievement prohibition was also our greatest National shame yeah yeah probably came through their membership and leadership in the women's Christian Temperance Union the wctu was founded in 1874 and by 1890 it had a hundred fifty thousand members making it the largest female organization in the when did States pushing for the right for women to vote pass local law that made it harder to drink and to do that it would be very helpful if women could vote because American men were bunch of alcoholic Scoundrels who darn well weren't going to vote to get rid of air hoses 1895 Woodward boldly declared a wider freedom is coming to the women of America too long has it been held that woman has no right to enter these movements politics is the place for women in politics during the Progressive Era tell me in the expansion of what might be called the upper middle-class meant that they were more educational opportunities and this growing group of college-educated women leaned in and the leaders of new movements products made in the second wave of industrialization were aimed at women especially labor-saving devices like washing machines if you ever had an infant you might notice that they poop and on everything all the time like I recently called the pediatrician and I was like my 14-day old daughter poops 15 times a day and he was like if anything that seems low so the washing is a real game-changer in the primary consumers who did the shopping for the home gave them powerful leverage to bring about change was Florence Kelley A college-educated woman who after participating in a number of progressive reform causes came to head the national consumers League the week sponsored boycotts and shaped can ocean patterns in Courage and consumers to buy products that were made without child or what we would Now call Sweatshop labor which of them was off and just known as labor gender roles as more and more women worked outside the home African American women continue to work primarily as domestic servants or an Agriculture and immigrant women mostly did will paying Factory look for native-born white women there were New Opportunities especially in office work this points to how technology created opportunities for women like almost all the telephone in the u.s. women by 1920 office workers and telephone operators made up 25% of the female Workforce will domestic servants were only 15% onion turn aim Abraham bisno remark that working gave immigrant women to sense of Independence they acquired the right to personality something alien to the highly patriarchal family structures of the old of course this also meant that young women were often in conflict with their parents as a job brought more freedom money and perhaps if they were lucky A Room of One's Own now it's time for the please let it be Virginia Woolf please let it be Virginia Woolf the rules here are simple turn it up personal Independence in the women of today is sure proof that a change has come the radical change in the economic position of women is advancing upon us they're growing individual creation of democratic life brings inevitable changes to our daughters as well as to our son's one of its most noticeable features is to demand in women not only for their own money but for I want to work for the sake of personal expression few girls today failed to manifest some signs of the desire for individual expression tell us I do not know the answer to this one however it has been Woodrow Wilson for the last 2 weeks you wouldn't do that again to me or would you I'm going to guess Woodrow Wilson will answer Perkins Gilman in the book women and economics what end Institute brings and does a form of individual expression was pretty radical as most women and especially most men we're not comfortable with the idea that being a housewife with similar to be observe into one's husband and children staying at home becomes one of many choices rather than your only available option and then came birth control women who needed to work one of the way to limit the number of pregnancies being pregnant and having a baby can make it difficult to hold down a job and also babies are diaper using stuff skin consumption machine they basically eat money and we love them the birth control Advocates like Margaret Sanger and Emma Goldman also argued that women should be able to enjoy sex without having chill to which men said women can enjoy sex leave it or not that was seen as a pretty radical idea and it led to changes in sexual behavior including more overalls play pooping more than 40 times for sharing these dangerous ideas about female sexuality and birth control birth control was sentenced to prison in 1916 for opening a clinic in Brooklyn that distributed contraceptive devices to poor immigrant women the birth control is important for at least three reasons first aid put women into the Forefront of debates about free speech in America I mean someone most Ardent Advocates of birth control were also associated with the iww and the Socialist secondly birth control is also a public health issue and many women during the Progressive Era entered public life to bring about changes related to Public Health leading the Crusade against super closest the so-called white play again other diseases certainly it cut across class lines having or not having children is an issue for all women regardless of whether they went to pause and the birth control movement brought upper middle and lower class women together in ways that other social movements never did that other group of progressive women took up the role of addressing the homes of the poor and spearheaded the settlement house movement to keep figure here with Jane Addams my God they're still Adams is an American history Adams not like hunting fathers out of Social Work what is became one of America's most important spokespeople for Progressive ideas who invented the turn of the 20th century LED them to electoral politics it's true that women were voting before the passage of the 19th amendment in 1920 voting is a state issue and in many West States women were granted the right to vote in the late 19th century Saints could also grant women the right to run for office which explains how the first congresswoman Jeannette Rankin could vote against them is entry into World War 1 in 1917 is a big deal in American history it's also a recent deal like when my grandmothers were born women could not vote in much of the United States amendment says that states cannot deny people the right to vote because they are women which isn't as is the political organization in activity that led to its Passage Falls in this metamorphosed into the National American women suffrage association or NASA most of the leadership of NASA was made up of middle to upper-class women turn involved in other Progressive causes who unfortunately sometimes represented the darker side of the suffrage movement their claim is for the right to vote could be granted to ignorant immigrants some of whom could barely speak English then it should also be granted to native women listen to say that the elitist arguments won the day but they should be acknowledged by the early 20th century a new generation of college-educated activists arrived on the scene and many of these women more radical than early suffrage supporters they organized the national woman's party and under the leadership of Alice Paul pushed for the boat using aggressive tactic that many of the early generation of women's said the kids found unseemly in Britain between 1907 and 1910 where she saw the more militant women's rights activists at work she adopted their tactics today who did protest leading to imprisonment in loud enunciations of the patriarchy that would make Tumblr proud and during World War 1 she compared Wilson to the Kaiser and Paul and her horse chain themselves to the White House fence the activist been started a hunger strike during their seven-month prison sentence and had to be force-fed Woodrow Wilson had half-heartedly indoor swimming average in 1916 but the war split the movement further most suffrage organizations believe that more time service would help women earn respect and equal rights but other active it's like many progressed opposed the war and regarded it as a Potential Threat to social reform but in the end of war did sort of end up helping the cause patriotic support of the war by women especially their service working wartime Industries convinced many that it was just wrong to deny them the right to vote and the mistreatment of Alice Paul and other women in prison for their cause created outrage that further push the wolf play ministration to support in franchising women final granting of the franchise was a bit anticlimactic by the 18th Amendment prohibition which affected both women and men in large numbers also gets what about things about Prohibition and I have but the Crusade against alcohol did galvanized and politicize many women in organizations such as the wctu and the anti-saloon league get more to political activist amendment was a huge Victory Alice Paul and the national woman's party were unable to muster the same support for an equal rights amendment Paul believe women needed equal access to education and employment opportunities and here they came into contact with other women's groups especially the League of Women Voters women's Trade Union League which opposed era fearing that equal rights would need an unraveling of hard-won benefits like mothers pensions and laws limiting women's hours of Labor you are a failed and then another proposed amendment that would have given Congress the power to limit child labor one ratification in only six states you go America so we many ways the period between 1890 and 1920 which roughly corresponds to the progressive era was the high tie women's rights in political activism it culminated in the ratification 19th Amendment but the right to vote didn't lead to significant legislation that actually improve the lives of women at it's not for a while mediate changes in the roles that women were expected to play in the social order as wives and mothers still women were able to increase their autonomy and freedom in the burgeoning can Marketplace what it's important to note that populations in American history women weren't given these right they had to fight for the rights that were said to be inalienable we are all better off for their fight and for their Victory women's Liberation is to be sure a complicated phrase and it will take a new turn in the Roaring Twenties which we'll talk about next week produced and directed by Stan Miller our script supervisor question myself and our Graphics team Mystic Cafe every week There's new captain to deliver X you can suggest Captain's Inn, till you can also have questions about today's to do with it will be answered by our team of historians do I can crash course in if we stay in my own town don't forget to be awesome I'm going to go this weekend just kidding

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Crash Course 31 on Women's Sufferage

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