The Women's Suffrage Movement

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A primary force in influencing the changing roles of women, progressivism had significant political and social effects on the lives of American women. The Progressive Era, 1900-1920 was period of change; explosive growth in urbanisation, industrialisation saw social and political reform. By 1920 the American urban population was over 50%, millions worked in factories facing long hours, low pay and dangerous working conditions. Events such as the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Disaster, a factory fire in which 147 workers died as a result of locked doors and blocked fire exits, highlighted a need for improvement. Meanwhile the urban middle class expanded rapidly, posing opportunity for education and work for women. In 1920, 8 million women were working …show more content…
Women like Emma Goldman and Margaret Sanger campaigned for issues such as birth control, Florence Kelley lobbied for improved factory conditions for child workers. Organisations such as the Ladies Garment Workers Union and the National Consumers’ League organised strikes, boycotts and protests. The most significant of these was the Women’s Suffrage Movement. The success of the English suffrage movement had revitalised the US suffrage movement. The suffragettes, e.g. Alice Paul from the National Women’s Party picketed the White House for six months and held demonstrations as well as using militant tactics such as hunger strikes. Women were enfranchised in 1919 (ratified in 1920) with the passing of the 19th amendment because of their political activism and participation in the war effort. Thus, the influences of progressive politics and suffrage movement moved some women out of the domestic sphere, changing their role to become the ‘moral compasses’ of society, fighting for theirs’ and others …show more content…
Its primary contribution was the enfranchisement and politicising of women in the short and long-term. Women had political representation thus, political parties recognised women’s issues. The 19th Amendment encouraged women’s groups to continue advocating for further change at a federal level for e.g. the 1921 Sheppard Towner Act, which provided federal funding for maternity and child care. However, Historian Boyer points to the limitations of the political change, suggesting that the hopes of suffragists that politics would be transformed did not occur. They suggest that the women’s groups splintered and reforms were often short clear in the failed attempts to pass the child-labour laws (1922) and women’s protective laws (1923). Furthermore, the women’s rights movement has always been criticised as being predominantly middle class, white women. Despite being involved in the suffrage movement, the Jim Crow Laws persecuted black women who were denied their right to vote. Black women’s works was also limited to factory and domestic jobs where they were paid poor wages. However, historian Sara Evans takes a longer term view of the changes and effects of progressivist reform pointing out that it helped shape the politics of 1930s and beyond, providing a launching pad for the wider feminist movements of the latter half of the century.