Womens Rights 1800s - Newslea

Women's Roles and Rights in the 1800s
By USHistory.org, adapted by Newsela staff on 05.16.17

Word Count 863
Level 1080L
Longtime women's rights activist Elizabeth Cady Stanton (front row, fourth from left) sits with executive committee members from the
International Council of Women during their first meeting in Washington, D.C. Photo by: Library of Congress/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images
Should men wear the pants in most American families, or should women? The social change
created by the Second Great Awakening, to some degree, shaped the answer to this question. The
Second Great Awakening was a series of religious revivals that swept the United States from the
1790s into the 1830s. The revivals, or upswings, forever changed the culture of the country, as
Evangelical Methodists and Baptists became the fastest growing religious groups in the United
States by 1800.
The social forces transforming the new nation had an especially strong effect on white women
who, of course, could be found in families of all classes. Before this period, the early Industrial
Revolution had begun in the United States by taking advantage of young farm girls' labor.
Meanwhile, the Second Great Awakening was largely driven forward by middle-class women.
Equality and independence for women
People focused on equality and independence as fundamental principles of the United States. This
challenged the traditional idea of family life, where the husband ruled commandingly over his wife
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and children. Instead, a new notion of more cooperative family life began to spread. It saw
husband and wife working as partners in raising a family through love and kindness rather than
harsh control. A change of this size occurred over a long period of time and with an uneven effect
throughout the country. Middle-class women in the northeast, however, were at the forefront of
this new understanding of family life and women's roles. The northeast was at the leading edge of
major social changes in the new nation.
Historians disagree over whether these changes were good or bad for white women. Most agree,
however, that the new developments of the early 1800s have remained strong up to the present
day. For example, it was only in the 1820s and 1830s that there began to be more women as
teachers than men. As a result, more women received advanced education. Teaching allowed
women to serve a public role in improving American society. The rise of female school teaching
also suggests the limited choices available even to middle-class women, though. They had almost
no other options for public employment. They were also more attractive to employers because they
could be paid less than men.
Ultimately, we need to recognize how the rapid changes of this period included both good and bad
qualities. White women gained a new social power as moral reformers. They were seen as more
honorable than men. On the other hand, this idealization limited what white middle-class women
could do. Meanwhile, working-class women and enslaved African-Americans were unable to
achieve this new standard of womanhood at all.
Women's quest for social reform
Although women had many duties in the home, church and community, they had few political and
legal rights. When Abigail Adams reminded her husband John during the Constitutional
Convention to "Remember The Ladies!" her warning went ignored. Women did not have the
power to make contracts, own property or vote. A woman was seen merely as a servant to her
husband. By the 1830s and 1840s, however, that began to change, as many bold, outspoken
women championed social reforms of prisons, war, alcohol and slavery.
Activists began to question a woman's role as man's servant. They rallied around the abolitionist,
or anti-slavery, movement as a way of calling attention to all human rights.
In 1859, Harriet Wilson became the first African-American to publish a novel about racism.
Around the same time, Lucretia Mott, an educated white Bostonian woman, became one of the
most powerful leaders for reform. She acted as a bridge between the feminist and the abolitionist
movements and endured fierce criticism wherever she spoke.
The women's rights movement
Elizabeth Cady Stanton organized the first convention for women's rights in Seneca Falls, New
York, in 1848. Under the leadership of Stanton, Mott and Susan B. Anthony, the convention
demanded improved laws regarding parenting, marriage and property rights. They argued that
women deserved equal wages and career opportunities in law, medicine, education and the
ministry. Their biggest demand was the right to vote. The women's rights movement in America
had begun. Amelia Bloomer began publishing an abolitionist newspaper called The Lily and
pushed women to wear pantaloons, which were more like pants than the Victorian costume most
women wore at the time. She argued the pantaloons would allow women to move more freely.

As with the Civil War, the seeds of the quest for women's rights were planted right in the
Declaration of Independence, claiming that "all men are created equal." In 1837, Sarah Grimke
wrote that "men and women were created equal ... whatever is right for men to do is right for
women." So, in this era of reform, women realized that if they were going to push for equality, they
needed to ignore criticism and what was considered acceptable social behavior. Citizens would
need to have "every path laid open" to them. However, the feminists discovered that many people
felt women neither should nor could be equal to men. The nation soon became distracted, and the
opportunity for reform went away. This important struggle would continue for many generations
to come.

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Women's Roles and Rights in the 1800s

By USHistory.org, adapted by Newsela staff on 05.16.17

Equality and independence for women

This article is available at 5 reading levels at https://newsela.com.

Women's quest for social reform

The women's rights movement

This article is available at 5 reading levels at https://newsela.com.

This article is available at 5 reading levels at https://newsela.com.

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