History of Women’s Rights until the 20th Century

Traditional Status

Some scholars argue that the discovery throughout the European continent and the Near East of thousands of stone figures of female goddesses dating from the Paleolithic period and on indicates that early societies were originally goddess-worshiping, matrifocal civilizations. Male dominance, however, was preeminent from the time of the earliest written historical records, probably as a result of men’s discovery of their role in conception as well as the development of hunting and warfare as prestige activities. The belief that women were naturally weaker and inferior to men also was sanctioned by god-centered religions. In the Bible, God placed Eve under Adam’s authority, and Saint Paul urged Christian wives to be obedient to their husbands. In Hinduism the reward of a virtuous woman is rebirth as a man.

Therefore, in most traditional societies, women generally were at a disadvantage. Their education was limited to learning domestic skills, and they had no access to positions of power. Marriage was almost a necessity as a means of support or protection. Pressure was constant to produce many children. A married woman usually took her husband’s status and lived with his family, with little recourse in case of ill treatment or nonsupport.

Under Roman law, which influenced later European and American law, husband and wife were one, with the woman the possession of the man. As such, a woman had no legal control over her person, her own land and money, or her children. According to a double standard of morality, respectable women had to be chaste but men did not. In the Middle Ages, feudal law, in which landholding carried military obligations, encouraged the subordination of women to men.

Some exceptions to women’s dependence on men did exist. In ancient Babylonia and Egypt women had property rights, and in medieval Europe they could join craft guilds. Some women had religious authority-for example, as Siberian shamans and Roman priestesses. Occasionally women had political authority, such as Egyptian and Byzantine queens, heads of medieval nunneries, and Iroquois women, who appointed men to clan and tribal councils. A few highly cultivated women flourished in ancient Rome, China, and Renaissance Europe.

Men of the lower classes also lacked rights, but they could console themselves by feeling superior to women. Struggling to preserve their dignity in a harsh world, such men were unlikely to sympathize with the plight of women. (1)

Beginnings of Change

The Age of Enlightenment, with its egalitarian political emphasis, and the Industrial Revolution, which caused economic and social changes, provided a favorable climate for the rise of feminism, along with other reform movements in the late 18th and the 19th centuries. In France during the French Revolution, women’s republican clubs pleaded that the goals of liberty, equality, and fraternity should apply to all, regardless of sex. But the subsequent adoption of the Code Napol on, based on Roman law, obliterated any immediate realization of such hopes on the Continent. In England, Mary Wollstonecraft wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), the first major modern feminist work. Its demands for equality and its revolutionary tone made it unacceptable at that time.

Of deeper significance for women was the Industrial Revolution. The transformation of handicrafts, which women had always carried on at home without pay, into machine-powered mass production meant that lower-class women could become wage earners in factories.

This was the beginning of their independence, although factory conditions were hazardous and their pay, lower than men’s, was legally controlled by their husbands. At the same time middle- and upper-class women were expected to stay at home as idle, decorative symbols of their husbands’ economic success. The only other option for respectable women of any class was work as governesses, clerks, shop assistants, and servants. Such conditions encouraged the feminist movement.

On the Continent, feminist groups appeared sporadically but lacked strength. The Roman Catholic church opposed feminism on the grounds that it would destroy the patriarchal family. Agrarian countries held to traditional ideas, and in industrial countries feminist demands tended to be absorbed by the socialist movement. In largely Protestant, rapidly industrializing Great Britain and the United States, feminism was more successful. The leaders were primarily educated, leisured, reform-minded women of the middle class.

In 1848 between 100 and 300 people attended the first women’s rights convention, at Seneca Falls, New York. Led by the abolitionist Lucretia Mott and the feminist Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the feminists demanded equal rights, including the vote and an end to the double standard. British feminists first convened in 1855 behind the limited goal of property rights.

The Subjection of Women (1869) by the British philosopher John Stuart Mill focused public attention on the British feminist cause. Colleges were founded for women, such as Mount Holyoke College (1837) in the United States and Girton (1869) in England, although the right to admission to male-dominated universities took longer. (2)

Women’s Legislation at the end of the Century

Married women’s property acts, passed in England in 1870 and at various times in the United States, gave women control over their property. Later, provisions were made for divorce, alimony, and child support. Labor legislation improved hours and wages for women. Suffrage, which came to be a primary goal of British and American feminists, encountered substantial resistance, despite massive and sometimes violent campaigns. The right to vote was only granted after World War I, when the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was approved by the Congress of the United States in 1919, partly in recognition of women’s war contributions as paid and volunteer workers. (3)

History of Women’s Rights in the 20th Century

The right to vote was only granted after World War I, when the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was approved by the Congress of the United States in 1919. See History of Women’s Rights in the 20th Century here.

History of Women’s Rights

History of Women’s Rights until the 20th Century

Traditional Status

Beginnings of Change

Women’s Legislation at the end of the Century

History of Women’s Rights in the 20th Century

Resources

See Also

Notes and References

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