Women’s Rights Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Discussions of women’s rights center on three areas: civil, political, and social. Civil rights are necessary for individual freedom that includes personal liberty as opposed to slavery, debt enslavement, or serfdom; freedom of speech, thought, and religion; the right to own property and conclude valid contracts; and the right to justice. Political rights are part of being included in the decision-making process in a democracy, such as voting. Social rights are the rights to a decent standard of living, personal security, and health care, education, and welfare.

Promotion of women’s rights is a relatively recent phenomenon. Prior to the 1800s, society generally considered women as inferior to men. Men dominated the public sphere, which encompassed the political and economic fields. Women were relegated to the concerns of the private sphere of hearth and home and fulfilled the roles of wife and mother. However, due to expansion of economic progress and educational opportunities, women began to carry their private sphere skills and abilities into the public sphere. During the 1800s, women in Britain and the United States began to challenge laws that denied them the right to own their property once they married, launching the movement toward women’s rights.

First Wave Feminism

Scholars identify three waves of feminism. The beginning of the first wave is identified as the first women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848. The convention issued the Declaration of Rights and Sentiments, outlining grievances and setting the agenda for the women’s rights movement. Women reformers of that time were concerned about two issues: obtaining the right to vote (suffrage) and attaining equality for all citizens through the abolition of slavery. During this wave, women reformers initially concentrated on abolitionism and then worked toward women’s right to vote.

After the U.S. Civil War (1861–1865) concluded and slavery was abolished throughout the country, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton in 1869 formed the National Woman Suffrage Association. Its primary goal was an amendment to the Constitution. Lucy Stone, Henry Blackwell, and others would form the American Woman Suffrage Association focusing on amendments to individual state constitutions. By 1890 the two organizations merged to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), which waged state-by-state campaigns to obtain the right to vote. The Congressional Union, later renamed the National Women’s Party, worked for the passage of a federal amendment through picketing the White House and other forms of civil disobedience. In 1919 the federal woman suffrage amendment, originally written by Susan B. Anthony and introduced in Congress in 1878, passed the House of Representatives and the Senate and was sent to the states for ratification. By 1920 the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, granting women the right to vote, was signed into law.

Second Wave Feminism

The second wave of feminism, or women’s liberation, is considered to have begun in 1963 and lasted through 1980. By the 1960s, women practiced birth control, attended college, and joined the workforce in far greater numbers, but these gains were met by strong social stereotypes from the previous era. In 1963, Betty Friedan published her highly influential book The Feminine Mystique, which describes the dissatisfaction felt by middle-class American housewives about the role expected of them by society, especially the drudgery of housework and childbearing. The best-seller galvanized the modern women’s rights movement, leading to the founding in 1966 by a group of feminists including Friedan of the National Organization for Women (NOW).

Reformers wanted the same pay as men, equal rights in law, and the freedom to plan their families or not have children at all, but their efforts met with mixed results. On one hand, the U.S. Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade (1973) identified a constitutional right to safe and legal abortion within the general right to privacy, overriding the antiabortion laws of many states. On the other hand, the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), proposed to enshrine women’s rights explicitly in the Constitution, was not adopted. Originally drafted by Alice Paul in 1923, the ERA was passed by Congress in 1972, but it also required ratification by a minimum of 38 states, a process that closed without the necessary votes in 1982.

Third Wave Feminism

The third wave of feminism seems in part a backlash against the “radical” approaches of the 1960s and 1970s. Third wave feminists are more willing to accept differences in experience and even abilities between men and women so long as no one is considered inferior. Third wave feminism includes a growing recognition of the differentiation of women’s experience according to race, class, and sexual orientation. The third wave also recognizes the international dimension of feminism and acknowledges the role played by globalization in issues such as female genital mutilation, dowry deaths, and honor killings in certain parts of the world as important issues women face in other cultures.

Nevertheless, the concerns for equality have continued on issue areas such as reproductive rights, sexual harassment and violence, and equality in the workplace, led by NOW, which through the beginning of the twenty-first century was the largest women’s rights group in the country seeking to end sexual discrimination, especially in the workplace, through legislative lobbying, litigation, and public demonstrations.

Progress continued in education and professional opportunities. By the end of the twentieth century, women had overtaken men in U.S. college graduation rates. Fields such as medicine, law, and science opened to include more women. At the beginning of the twentieth century about 5 percent of the doctors in the United States were women. As of 2006, over 38 percent of all doctors in the United States were women, and women made up almost 50 percent of the medical student population. An increasing number of women also were elected to serve in government at the state and national levels, in large part due to EMILY’s List (Early Money Is LikeYeast), a financial network for prochoice Democratic women running for national political office founded in 1984. Women elected to positions of state and national power have allowed for more of the issues important to women—such as education, health care, and the environment—to be brought to the forefront of the political agenda.

Despite the progress that has been made in women’s rights, challenges continue into the twenty-first century. The concerns of women have focused on economic equality and justice, violence against them, as well as having the ability to make sound and educated sexual choices. Advocates for such issues need to be found in order to bring them to the forefront of the political agenda nationally and internationally.

Bibliography:

Grimshaw, Patricia, Katie Holmes, and Marilyn Lake. Women’s Rights and Human Rights. London: Palgrave, 2001.
Stalcup, Brenda. The Women’s Rights Movement. San Diego: Greenhaven, 1996.
Strom, Sharon Hartman. Women’s Rights. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 2003.
Walter, Lynn. Women’s Rights. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 2001.
Wolbrecht, Christina. The Politics of Women’s Rights. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000.

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