History 159C Midterm

Cotton strike of 1933

- "Mexican Women on Strike in 1933" by Weber - read!!

Therapeutic abortion

- A loophole in anti-abortion legislation that says it's necessary to have an abortion to save the health or life of the mother - Doctors determine life or health situation - This is defined very widely in the 1930's because of the great economic collapse and the lack of people wanting children - Changes during WWII, when there's a very clear policing of abortion - There were doctors specialized in abortions, and they operated in a gray area of the law. Had clinics and patients were referred to them. - significant because it was a way for women to still get an abortion legally - Document - "When Abortion Was a Crime" by Reagan

School of Social Service Administration

- A research school based on theory at the University of Chicago - Created by Sophonisba Breckinridge and Edith Abbott - Represented a movement toward formal education for social work - Breckinridge and Abbott wanted social work to be seen as more professional, and wanted to separate social work from voluntary advocacy - also wanted more objective social work, not to get personally involved with each case - Opened opportunities for women to professionally grow - Significant because it helped create and define the social work profession and the social welfare field.

Shepard-Towner Act

- Act that provided funding for maternity and childcare, 1921 - WW1 helped spur this because so many young men were failing fitness tests and it was believed to be caused by a lack of care in infancy - First experiment with free public healthcare - The division was staffed primarily by women - Nurses came into women's homes and showed them how to care for children properly - keep kitchen clean, breast-feed babies, have a set schedule for babes - Significant because it set a standard of motherhood - white, middle-class women

Crystal Eastman, "Now we can begin"

- Article about women's involvement in politics after the ratification of the 19th amendment - The fight for women's equality is not over with the passing of the 19th amendment - Wants women to be able to gain employment in any job men can and wants domestic labor to be seen as real work - Cannot make women free just by changing their economic status - must have emotional freedom and healthy egotism as well - Teach boys and girls to be able to do both male/female tasks and chores - Voluntary motherhood - women should be able to have children when they want them - Motherhood endowment - mothers should be economically rewarded for raising children because it is a service to society

Mary McLeod Bethune

- Black woman who was a close friend of ER - Became part of Southern black reform efforts - founds a school, involved in social reform - an advisor to FDR while he was in office - Seen as representing black rights, not women - Significant because she shows how it was difficult to be a champion of black civil rights and women's rights at the same time because of a lack of intersectionality

National American Woman Suffrage Association

- Combination of Stanton/Anthony's and Stone's women's suffrage groups, emerges in 1890's - Coming together of two rival organizations, led by younger women who value unitedness - Stanton is the first president but is too radical (wants full emancipation) and steps down, Anthony succeeds her - serving as a mother figure for younger women and nurtures the next generation of leadership - Significant because it represents the united front of suffragettes and was vital in passing the 19th amendment

Children's Bureau

- Created by Florence Kelley and Lillian Wald, national government agency tasked with child welfare - Headed by Julia Lathrop - Uses tax money - Issues dealing with children, needy women, and poverty - women could work here without challenging the gender hierarchy because it was dealing with children - Distributed informational pamphlets, wrote letters to women, dealt with orphaned children, child labor laws - Significant because it was a women's organization that focused on knowledge and expertise, shaped professionalization of women's governmental careers

women in Japanese internment camps

- Doc: "Japanese American Women during WWII" by Matsumoto - young women in internment camps had more freedom and independence because of relaxed parental authority - young women believed they would marry for love, not just have arranged marriages like their parents expected - Women had more equity in work and had more work options in the camps - romance bloomed in the camps because of less restrictions

women and juvenile court

- Document - Article by Oden - Mothers used juvenile court during the early 20th century in order to get their daughters to obey them - Single mothers depended on their daughter's wages, so they wanted them to give up their money and stay home - Young women a this time got more independence by earning their own wages, which caused conflicts over social freedom - Reformers created the female juvenile court to correct sexual misconduct, but parents begin using it for their own purposes - Some daughters were sent to juvenile detention facilities, where they could earn no wages, so the parent's plan backfired - sons were allowed more independence and to keep a portion of their wages - some daughters used their wages to assert more dominance in their home

"Fasting Girls"

- Document by Brumberg - Women begin to diet to conform to high fashion clothes, and department stores begin to have standard sizes - Before, clothes were made to fit the women - but now the woman has to fit the clothes - New women's fashion was slim and straight, flappers wore slimming outfits - Industry put emphasis on personal body size, which created embarrassment and anxiety for women trying on clothes- did not make large sizes - First weight loss book came out, detailed how to track calories and limit food intake. Restricting calories was seen as good because of food shortages due to the war - Overweight was seen as a lack of control, failure of personal morality - New emphasis on fitness - article argues that these values led to the epidemic of anorexia we see today - in our society it is imperative to be beautiful and thin - women are evaluated on their bodies, not minds

Gender and the Elizabethan Strike

- Document: "Disorderly Women" by Hall - Strike in Elizabethan, Tennessee by young rural women because they had low wages, worked with toxic chemicals, and were escorted to bathrooms and treated like criminals - Challenges stereotypes about Southern women: docile, individualistic, hard to organize - Rural women had few opportunities, and saw work as a hopeful gamble at independence - Strikers had strong family and community networks that helped them strike because they could always fall back on their families - The National Guard was brought in but the girls knew the boys because they had grown up together - Women strikers used gender ideology and men's ego when on trial to say that they couldn't have threatened them that much because they were young women - Also challenged the stereotype that the middle of the country was backward and did not have labor strikes

Sex-segregation at work in WWII

- Document: "Gender at work: the sexual division of labor during WWII" by Milkman - During WWII, employers looked to untapped female employment supply for work - Majority of women who enter the job market become employed in traditional female work - admin/secretarial - Women and men still had segregated employment in WWII - Employers distinguished between heavy and light labor, wanting women to do light labor - Sex segregation in the workforce strengthened, but characterization of light/heavy work shifted so women were allowed to do more work - Employers hired women by saying that it was temporary and compared their work to chores at home to be more mainstream

Margaret Sanger

- Document: "I resolved that women should have knowledge of contraception" by Sanger - She believed sex should be separate from reproduction - Her mother was constantly pregnant, suffered ill health and died young, which affected her beliefs about contraception - She became a nurse and moved to NYC, became part of radical politics and socialism - As a nurse, she sees women suffer and die from self-induced at home abortions, so her goal is to legalize contraception information - She argues in the document that God would not want women to have so many children and go through so much pain - She makes a clear distinction about contraception and abortion - she believes that contraception will prevent abortion - She publishes articles and pamphlets and starts a clinic where she sells contraceptive devices - Challenges the Comstock Law - She tries to spread contraception throughout the US - Associated with 'eugenics' - the idea that people not fit should not have children (discriminatory against poor people and blacks). Although she endorses that incompetent people should not have children she doesn't say a specific groups should not

Anti-suffrage movement

- Document: "In Defense of Separate Spheres..." by Marshall - Conservative counter-culture movement that argued against the women's suffrage movement - Anti-suffragists argued that the vote would put more work on women because they would have to research political agendas as well as do housework - Women who opposed suffrage were threatened by status and class: would degrade women's status as mother and wife as well as destroy the family, would impose more work on women and threaten their material interests - Some women wanted separate sexual spheres; feared that blending male and female roles would remove a woman's special status; women would become corrupt from politics and lose their femininity, spiritual power, and motherhood. Also, men would no longer be chivalrous - Main argument was that women wold be taken out of the home and the family would be sacrificed

Rose Cohen

- Document: "My First Job" which talks about her experience as a young girl working in a small sweatshop - sweatshop worker and survivor of the Triangle Factory Fire - her story of working long hours, being paid minimal wages in a sweatshop symbolizes the experience of many working women during this time - she was employed by week by her employer because he could pay her less

Sexuality and international women's movement

- Document: "Sexuality and Politics in the Early 20th Century International Women's Movement" by Rupp - Generational change from women preferring women-only orgs and not trusting men, to younger women being less comfortable in women's only orgs - Sexuality became to be more defined- the term 'lesbian' becomes known and labeling it as deviant - Before, women could enter into relationships without any labels or judgment - Transnational women's groups formed to address women's rights, peace and work. Political alliances across national borders - Conflict over separation: to separate from men and let females have control, or merge with men to get extra help and support? - Conflict over sexuality and separation added to national, class, and generational conflicts within international orgs

Harriot Stanton Blatch

- Document: "The Next Generation of Suffragists" by Dubois - Very influential in the women's suffrage movement - Led the WPU (Women's Political Union) to win suffrage for the women of NY state - Greatly influenced by her mother, Elizabeth Cady Stanton - taught to be assertive and independent - well educated, went to Vassar - Focused on theatrical demonstrations and parades to get attention for the vote

Mexican American flappers

- Document: 'The Flapper and the Chaperone' by Ruiz - Mexican American women were torn between their immigrant parents and the new culture of the 1920's - Signifies the divide between immigrant generation and their children - Young women challenged chaperonage by going out by themselves with boys and wearing flapper outfits - 1920's consumer culture meant something different to Mexican American women - Caught between multiple worlds: religion, flappers, their parents, being attractive, etc.

Rosie the Riveter

- Figure in propaganda aimed at women to recruit women into the workforce to help the war effort - propaganda was used during WWII to make the army seem more respectable and glamorous - Portrayal of women as competent but still feminine - women in the ads were white, young and pretty

Frances Perkins

- First female cabinet member, appointed by FDR - Part of the female dominion of the Progressive Era - Linked the New Deal to the Progressive Era reforms - Part of reform effort to protect women and children, supportive of labor reform, watched the Triangle Fire occur

National Women's Party

- Founded by Alice Paul after she split from the NASWA - More focused on equal rights agenda, not just suffrage - Did not endorse WW1 - Had more radical tactics than the NAWSA such as protesting Wilson, holding parades, getting arrested, and staging hunger strikes - Willing to engage in dramatic and radical tactics - Significant because it made Catt and the NAWSA look more respectable and mainstream, and helps them win the suffrage amendment

Lugenia Burns Hope

- From Chicago, knew Jane Addams, was very interested in the settlement movement - Implemented the settlement idea in Atlanta for black women and called it the Neighborhood Union - Progressive black women didn't need to move to be a part of the settlement movement because their segregated neighborhoods were class-mixed - One of the best known women in Atlanta - She conducted surveys of poor women and asked the city for funding - called for black higher education - Significant because she helped make Atlanta a center of reform during this time, and helped the transition from voluntary settlement work to professional government jobs.

Florence Kelley

- From a wealthy family, influenced by her abolitionist family. She had younger siblings die, which exposed her to the perils of maternity - Highly educated - went to Cornell - Exposed to socialism in Switzerland - Joins Hull House and becomes one of its most influential members - Changes Hull House from a philanthropic organization to an engine of social reform - Joined the National Consumers League and advocated for laws protecting workers - Pressured the state of Illinois to pass a labor law that set a maximum work hours for women and children, and made it illegal for children to work younger than 16 - Helped create the Children's Bureau, convinced Roosevelt and Congress to create a national government agency tasked with child welfare - She is discussed in Muncy

Triangle Strike

- Known as the Shirtwaist Strike of 1909, was one of the largest female strikes in American history during this time - workers were striking for increased safety regulations and a safe work environment; women workers were more focused on safety than men - Female strikers were beaten by police and ridiculed by their employers, who hired prostitutes to go stand with them - WTUL partnered with the Local 25 to help working women but caused conflicts - Showed female unionist's determination to change their working conditions - Didn't achieve necessary safety regulations; just slightly higher wage and recognition of their union, but set the stage for future improvements - Two years later, a fire broke out, 146 young mostly immigrant women workers were killed

Gender and New Deal Legislation

- Legislation proposed by FDR in order to fix problems caused by the Depression - Social Security Act, Fair Labor Standards Act, workman comp, unemployment, federal minimum wage, maximum hours, and outlaws child labor - However; farm laborers and domestic laborers were excluded from these benefits - Why? mostly held by women and blacks - It was a way to create a compromise that was passed by Congress, even though it was discriminatory to women and black workers

Anti-ERA view

- Majority of women oppose the ERA, many working class women, because they were worried that protective legislation would be taken away that protected women workers and regulated their hours, wages, and working conditions - Document - "Equal Rights and Economic Roles" by Cott - Anti-ERA groups were more concerned with working class women's motherhood than economic justice; worried that working class women would have worse working limitations and their families would be sacrificed - Undoes all the work that labor activists had done to protect women workers - equal rights don't match women's needs - women need special treatment and need protection

Decline of the "female dominion"

- Male opponents of the Children's Bureau voted to repeal the Shepard-Towner act and not ratify the Child Labor Amendment, which constricted female dominance over child welfare policy - The New Deal became popular and mainstream, embodying many female progressive reforms, so women lost complete control over reform - Once women entered the reform sphere and was successful, men started entering and competing for influence, so the female dominion over reform ended but its agendas continued

Muller v. Oregon

- Muller was an employer who made a female employer work more than 10 hours a day, he was convicted and had to pay a fine. He appealed to the Supreme Court - Supreme Court ruled that women are more dependent on the state and their family, so limiting their hours is okay because they're not losing independence as men would - This limits women's citizenship because it assumes they're vulnerable - justified sex discrimination and usage of labor laws

Triangle Shirtwaist Fire

- Occurred in 1911, a fire broke out and the women workers on the 9th floor couldn't escape because the doors were locked. The fire department couldn't reach past the 7th floor. - One of the worst industrial disasters in American history, 146 young mostly immigrant women died - Factory owners were acquitted - Significant because the event sparked anger from female union members and highlighted the lack of work safety in American factories - Gives a push for the right to vote for women because women could vote for more safety precautions

Eleanor Roosevelt

- Part of the progressive women's organizing for 30 years before becoming first lady to FDR - Part of the settlement movement in NYC - FDR credited her for opening his eyes to urban poverty - When FDR contracts polio, she becomes the much more visible political figure - Part of the National Consumer's League and Democratic Party - Reformer, campaigned for political candidates, voted against the ERA because she wanted to protect female workers - Able to be much more outspoken about social issues than FDR - She connected to so many people because she reached out to them and campaigned vigorously - Document: "Storms on Every Front" by Cook, about ER campaigning for human rights for Jews during WWII and refusing to be segregated at a convention in the South - Spoke out against anti immigration laws - Significant because she was a very influential woman who was prevalent in the public sphere and in the Democratic Party because she said she was doing it on behalf of FDR, a man and her husband

Nineteenth Amendment

- Passed in 1920, national amendment that allowed women to vote - The NWP and the NAWSA immensely helped this occur - Woodrow Wilson was president and endorses it as a war measure

Industrial Feminism

- Phrase used to describe working women's militancy in unionizing and striking to achieve better working conditions - Captures the interaction between women workers and feminist activists and recognizes the profound influence that the shop floor had on shaping working women's political ideology - Described in the document by Orleck - used to raise up immigrant women, contrasts to mainstream feminism that helps native-born white women

Carrie Chapman Catt

- President of the NAWSA after Susan B. Anthony - educated, her husband died and she had to be self supporting - Involved in the WCTU as well - Strong organizer, and effective in gaining publicity - Was willing to focus on the vote and ignore other female issues such as sexual health and racial equality - Had arguments with Alice Paul and NWP because of their radical tactics in gaining publicity for the vote, such as arrests, demonstrations, and hunger strikes - Significant because she was very influential in getting women the right to vote

Sophinisba Breckenridge

- Progressive reformer who created a social science research school based on theory at the University of Chicago - There was tension in social work between those who wanted to help those in need and those who believed that there needed to be societal structural change - She wanted to be more objective and research problems - She wanted to seem more professional and wanted to separate social work from mere advocacy - She got involved with Hull House also

Julia Lathrop

- Progressive reformer, was involved with Hull House in Chicago - First director of the Children's Bureau, was appointed by President Taft - first woman to head a federal bureau - Helped open up professional opportunities for other women through the Children's Bureau by handpicking women to become employees - she promoted female hiring - Significant because she greatly increased the Children's Bureau's influence and dominion over child welfare, as well as helped professionalize women's careers who worked there

ERA

- Proposed soon after the 19th amendment - Would repeal any sex discrimination under the law and guarantee equal rights for women; wipe out distinctions based on sex in American law - Supported by Alice Paul and the NWP - Majority of women oppose the ERA, many working class women, because they were worried that protective legislation would be taken away that protected women workers and regulated their hours, wages, and working conditions - Document - "Equal Rights and Economic Roles" by Cott - Anti-ERA groups were more concerned with working class women's motherhood than economic justice; worried that working class women would have worse working limitations and their families would be sacrificed - Pro-ERA women argued that sex-segregation laws segregated women into low-paying and dead end jobs; also protecting women perpetuated stereotypes of women as vulnerable - Both sides saw themselves as helpers of suffrage, feminism, and defend women's economic interests - ERA failed to pass because of its opposition - Shows conflicts between groups of women

Prohibition (18th amendment)

- Ratified in 1919 - Had been a long battle for women - endorsed by the WCTU - Had an anti-immigrant sentiment - because alcohol and bars are symbols of immigrant culture and associated with ethnic slums, Catholicism, and Irish/German immigrants - There was a conservative, anti-immigrant Prohibitionist Party that helped it pass - Alcohol becomes very expensive and consumption goes down overall, but it's very difficult to police and regulate - Alcohol becomes associated with organized crimes and gangs - For young women in the 1920's, alcohol was a way to assert independence and freedom - Repealed in 1933 - most people supported it including FDR, but black women didn't because they feared that if the 18th amendment was repealed, then black civil and voting rights could be as well

Hull House

- Settlement house in Chicago created by Jane Addams - Offered childcare, lectures, communal kitchen use, cheap meals, healthcare, etc - Addams handpicked women to work there and established a hierarchy - had to be "self-sacrificing" women - Women got paid to work there, which was a major change - made social work more legitimate and professionalized - Here, women formed close relationships with other women - Was an opportunity for women to enter the public sphere and take on societal problems, and establish a female dominion in reform

Mackenzie v. Hare

- Supreme court case in which a woman married a British man and thus ceased to be a US citizen because women had to take the nationality of their husbands - Supreme court ruled against her and denied her case for citizenship and argues that "marital unity" is more important than citizenship - this decision hardened ideas about couverture - This greatly angered suffragists and convinced them that emphasizing women's gendered role in society might have a negative effect instead of gaining suffrage - So they began to demand equal rights

Female unemployment in the Depression

- The New Woman of the 1920's begins to look selfish careless and superficial during the Depression - Women were affected by mass unemployment rate - Particularly unmarried women were entering the workforce as factory workers, admin workers, and sales, but were the first to be laid off - Men's wages were seen as more important so women were fired first - Married women working were seen as selfish and taking jobs away from people who really needed it - Federal laws outlawed a couple working together in the same branch and made it okay to fire women first because they assumed that they were not breadwinners - Idea that marital women were supplemental wages, not that important. Also idea that women were taking jobs away from men - Separation of male/female work during this time - Women were seen as mothers and wives first, not workers - Unemployed women represented a contradiction: if they are not seen as workers, they cannot be unemployed - Unemployed women were invisible and not given much aid because people expected them to depend on their husbands or families - Married women threw themselves into housework to try to help their families and create meaning and stability - More married women enter the workforce in the Depression because they can find jobs their husbands can't due to sex-segregation - Domestic service jobs actually increase, and the jobs hurt are men's jobs at big industries and corporations - Document by Abelson

"women's duty" suffrage

- The idea that women should have suffrage in order to help the 'downtrodden' of society - Voting isn't a right, its a duty to the community - women need the right to vote because they can only be good wives and mothers if they have the right to protect society - Didn't view voting as a basic human right - ignores other women's issues such as sexual health and gender pay gap because it's focused on the vote - related to the idea of social housekeeping - the WCTU used this idea to endorse suffrage - More women responded to this message instead of Stanton's message that women should have equality and the right to vote because it's a basic right - Significant because it helped convince more women that they should have suffrage

"New Woman"

- The new persona of women in the 1920's - Young women began turning away from politics and progressive social reforms - The new woman indulged in pop culture, bobbed their hair, wore makeup, shorter skirts, and were known as flappers - Crossed class and ethnic boundaries - Defied their parents' generational social rules - Attended dance halls, carnivals, and drank in public - Flappers were more individualistic, more focused on fun; the older club/organization women seemed to be too serious and hardworking and old fashioned - More emphasis on romantic relationships, companionate marriage, sexuality viewed as positive, dating, and courtship - Real emphasis on beauty - female beauty is exploited by advertising companies, women seek self-fulfillment from purchasing products

Jane Addams

- Upper middle class educated woman who created Hull House, a settlement house in Chicago - Believed in 'social gospel' which said that in order to be truly religious, you have to improve society - Drawn to social work - Hand-picked women to work at Hull House and established a hierarchy of women who had to be self-sacrificing and have the 'settlement spirit' - Wanted Hull House workers to stay within social work - Discussed in Muncy's book

Alice Paul

- Very influential in the women's equal rights movement and women's suffrage movement - Educated in social, part of the female network, was involved with settlement houses in England - created the National Women's Party after splitting with the NAWSA - More focused on full equal rights, just just the vote - Campaigned for a national amendment for women's suffrage - Willing to engage in dramatic and radical tactics to get publicity for women's suffrage; getting arrested, holding demonstrations, hunger strikes, held a march the day of Wilson's inauguration - this makes Catt and the NAWSA look more respectable and mainstream

Women in social work

- Women in the progressive era entered the public sphere in an attempt to carve out professional opportunities for themselves - They used the cult of true womanhood and separate spheres to argue that because women were naturally nurturing and self-sacrificing, they needed to assert their influence in society to clean it up - Examples of social work: Hull House, Children's Bureau, Shepard-Towner nurses - Meets the needs of professional women and women in the industrial world

Women in the military in WWII

- Women were allowed in the army but did not serve on the front lines in combat - Women Army Corps, Navy, Coast Guard, Women Marines, Women Airfare Service Pilots - women divisions were segregated because Southern racial policies dominated the army - many were recruited using propaganda

Pauline Newman

- document by her in Women's America: "We fought we bled and we died", described her work at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory - She had to work overtime in awful conditions - Joined the Shirtwaist strike of 1909, was influential in unionization and fighting for labor reform in the International Ladies' Garmet Workers Union

"social housekeeping"

- extending women's housework to society and the public sphere, extending their sphere in order to clean up society

protective legislation

- laws that 'protected' women by regulating their hours, wages, and conditions of work - labor activists had worked hard to pass these laws in the past years - Significant because it was one of the major reasons that many women were against the ERA; worried that equal treatment would get rid of legislation protecting women's workers - Majority of women opposed the ERA for this reason; undoes the work protecting working class women - Alice Paul and the NWA argued that protective legislation kept women in low-paying jobs and hampered their job market

"equal rights" suffrage

- opposite of women's duty suffrage - The idea that women should have suffrage because they should be treated equally to men, and that voting is a basic human right - Includes other issues that have to do with inequality between men and women, not just the vote - Elizabeth Cady Stanton uses this idea a lot - Seen as more radical than women's duty suffrage

Alice Paul's "pure feminism"

- similar to equality feminism, wants complete emancipation and equal rights for women - made Paul radical

Women in the Klan

- white women joined the KKK to expand their social activism and political rights in the 1920's - Document: 'Women in the 1920's KKK' by Lee - Women in the Klan showed their faces, were not ashamed, held community events and tried to recruit people - Used 1920's language and advertising - Significant because it shows how some women saw voting as an opportunity to solidify white power - Many women who joined had jobs, volunteering, and violated accepted notions of gender to assert newfound political legitimacy - They did boycotts, demonstrations, helped recruit men, charities for Protestant causes, handed out bibles, pushed for racial segregation in schools, influenced electoral politics