The women’s suffrage movement in the United States was more than a decade fight intended to attain the right to vote for women. The activists for this movement took nearly a hundred years to win the fight. Various factors contributed to failures of the movement. For instance, during the civil war, the movement lost its momentum, 14th and 15th amendments defined citizens as males. Disagreement over strategy and men superiority threatened to suppress the movement for a long time. However, August 1920 ended the long struggle through the 19th amendment of the constitution ("Ratifying Woman Suffrage," 1919). During this amendment, all American women were declared for the first time in history, eligible to all rights and responsibilities of American citizenship. After the amendment suffrage movement seemed to diminish since its objectives had been met. However, it can be argued that although the women suffrage movement ended with this 19th amendment in 1920, it is the World War II that truly put women on the track to being viewed as equal to men.
The 19th amendment to the United States Constitution became law on 26th August 1920. The suffragist hard worked tirelessly for many decades to ensure that American women secured the right to vote and finally they won. After acquiring equal rights as men, women were expected to exercise their rights as mandated by the US constitution. However, a large percentage of women failed to vote first years after suffrage. It was argued that even after the suffrage there was less mobilization of women who had not realized the importance of democratic exercise such as voting. In some states such as Virginia, there were other significant barriers which prevented women from exercising their rights. In Massachusetts for instance, the voters were required to take a literacy test before voting. Owing to the fact that many women were illiterate, a significant number were locked out (Peterson, 2011). Virginia had also introduced a poll tax among other discriminatory strategies against women and other American minority groups. The law in these states outsized the impact of women thus contributing to dismal turnouts during elections.
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The attainment of universal women suffrage in the US represented an essential break from the past. The 19th amendment provided women with primary rights of democratic citizenship. However, after the 1920 amendment the statement that women were now “free and equal citizens” was questioned on various factors. Suffrage meant that women in the US would appear in the mainstream of political affairs such as voting, campaigning and running for offices. It was hence argued that political outcomes could take a new twist. The suffrage also challenged the view of male dominance over the female (Stevenson 2016). Ellen Carol DuBois argued that the lack of involvement of women in political power was due to their reliance on men. Therefore she and other suffragist challenged the monopoly of the masculine in the public sphere in a bid to give women responsibility in the public interests that could enable them to participate in community affairs unmediated by their husbands and children. Despite all these efforts by the suffragists, women’s citizenship was still defined and constrained by their private roles and functions before WW II. The threat that educated women posed to male dominance was dealt a blow and blunted by the emergence of the idea of “Republican Mother.” The Republican Mother’s purpose was to serve the civic responsibility of educating their sons. As a result, women were drawn away from political responsibilities and confined to domestic chores. Even as political forms changed after the 19th amendment, with the emergence of popular politics and increasing centrality of parties in solving political disputes, women citizenship was still confined in the ideology of domesticity. It was still defined and mediated by their husbands while males engaged on political forums directly.
Standing for the claim that the 19th amendment had little or no immediate impact in ensuring equality between men and women in the US, studies have reviewed the political decisions made after women’s enfranchisement. Most of these decisions were made and implemented using similar political strategies used before suffrage. Form the male political elites point of view; there were no significant changes experienced apart from the addition of millions of new voters. The decisions on who to vote for were majorly dependent on the male’s perspectives. Public policies enacted after 1920 would still have been enacted before women suffrage. Though they had the rights to change the policies, women seemed to be unconscious of their powers which contributed to their inability to implement change. The male political elites had realized that women were not voting in a bloc and therefore there was little possibility of women to punish politicians who were undermined them. Basically, women’s political standing was ineffective in the later period of the 1920s since the mass of female citizens were not able to act in a cohesive way which the suffragist had thought (Keremidchieva, 2013). In issues of voting, women voted based on their social and economic background and political orientations of the men around them. It is therefore sometimes assumed that equality between men and women could not have been achieved due to failures of most parts of the agenda of organized women’s groups in the 1920s. The failures were accelerated by women themselves since they had little political skills, lack of uniformity and insufficient feminism in their objectives.
After winning the vote in 1920, the majority of the Women’s Rights Movement suffragists dispersed in several directions. They seemed to be naïve to the fact that they would face equal challenges as those encountered before their success. There was only a minority group of women led by Alice Paul who understood that the quest for equality in the US was an ongoing struggle which could not be satisfied by a single amendment (Edwards 2009). Lack of cohesion in facilitating the implementation of the amendment contributed to the little realization of women rights until 1936. For instance, in 1920, the Women’s Bureau of the Department of Labor was meant to collect data concerning the condition of women at the workplace and suggest necessary remedies. Though many suffragists were actively participating in pressurizing for laws to protect women from abuse in the workplace, many of their grievances were either partially met or disbanded by the states governments. The leader of National Woman’s Party, Alice Paul in 1923 drafted an Equal Rights Amendment for the US constitution (McKenzie 2011). It was suggested that such legislation would guarantee equal privileges for both men and women across the United States. The implementation of this law was also not realized until the onset of WW II. Another blow dealt by the suffragists in their fight for women freedom was in the Seneca Falls “Declaration of sentiments.” A public health nurse, Margaret Sanger initiated the idea that a woman was supposed to have the right to manipulate her body mainly to control her reproduction and sexuality. This movement reiterated to sensitizing women about strategies for birth control and also spread the idea that essential freedom for women involved an independent decision on whether and when to become mothers. Sanger and her supporters were turned down as every time the law denied women this right. It was again not until 1936 when the US Supreme court decision declassified contraceptive information as obscene.
The 19th amendment of 1920 laid the foundation of gender equality in the US. However, women in the United States had to wait for more than a decade to realize the effectiveness of the amendment. The onset of WW II marked the beginning of the much-anticipated exercise of equality in gender roles among the US citizens and as often said, men and women were never so equal as during the WW II. This period brought up gender equality in the social, political and economic fields in a way that had not been experienced in the history of the United States. Before the onset of WW II, women were strictly confined to work as homemakers, secretaries, and receptionists despite the end of suffrage in 1920. However once the American military joined the war, a large number of men went off to war leaving behind their civilian jobs (Butler, 2017). The situation served as an awakening for women who had been underrated to take up such opportunities. Women were proud to serve their country in various sectors and their service during this time inspired them to fight for social change and equality in a great vigor than before.
For the first time, women were enrolled to work in the military, and they put off the propaganda about their inability to work in such an environment. Those who were scheduled to serve in the war front during WW II took the initiative to challenge the long-held social norm that viewed women as sex objects. The vast number of women and their success in the war made these changes to be seen in the more significant picture of society. The greatest impact that the war had on women was that they changed their perspectives creating an urge in them for making a name for themselves in the absence of the male dominance. The war acted as the most substantial turnaround for females who transformed the social norms in the US (Goldin & Olivetti 2013). In the war front, women served in the Navy Nurse Corps and the Army. Organizations involved in the war such as the Red Cross also had many female employees. Towards the end of the war, women had been involved in almost all noncombatant roles. The bold women who served in the military changed America’s view on women for the rest of the time.
Though their participation was faced with resentment initially, their perseverance enabled them to change the status quo towards the achievement of equality between the sexes. Manufactures valued the efforts of women in the industries. Without the combined efforts of men and women, the Allied powers may not have won the war. Women facilitated continuous production and supplies to the military in the war fronts ("Mobilizing Minerva: American Women in the First World War World War II Front Line Nurse," 2011). Though stay-at-home was still endorsed for American women, many of them volunteered to join the workforce outside their confinements. Nurses saved thousands of lives in the war fronts. The overall idea that was relayed by in the workforce and military service was a promotion inequality among men and women and a significant shift in gender roles after the war policies were successfully enacted to disband any form of discrimination on gender basis.
Amid their sacrifice and loss, a large number of American women stuck to the jobs extended to them during the war. Emerging feminist in 1944 urged that women had proved capable of working in any field and hence deserved equal pay for equal work, a right that was not quickly endorsed. Having worked in the Washington Navy Yard, an activist Anthony II, a great-niece of a women’s suffragist had certainty the war would bring a turning point in females’ urge to total equality. Out of crisis during the war, the most fabulous transformation emanated from the confidence that women developed and freedom they felt and exercised. However, many women feared that most of these freedoms would be denied after the war which was justified. After the war, many political voices urged women to return to their house chore to provide opportunities to members of the armed forces returning from war (McEuen, 2019). The effort to contain women during the late 1940s and to urge them to return to their domestic roles eventually backfired as many women were not willing to give up their roles in the industries. Their experiences in the war and the reinforced women activist movements acted as a foundation for equality crusades for women’s rights.
Though the end of the suffrage movement in 1920 could be attributed as the initial stages to gain gender equality in the US, it took more than policies and crusades to eliminate gender biases. Women had to prove through actions that they had equal capabilities as men when it came to offering service to the nation. Therefore, it was not until women were incorporated in the task force during WW II that the country saw it necessary to have equal privileges for both men and women in the United States.
References
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