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  • Episode 31: Feminism and Suffrage

  • Hi, I’m John Green, this is Crash Course U.S. history and today were going to talk

  • about women in the progressive era. My God, that is a fantastic hat. Wait, votes

  • for women?? So between Teddy Roosevelt, and Woodrow Wilson,

  • and all those doughboys headed off to war, women in this period have sort of been footnoted

  • shockingly.. Mr. Green, Mr. Green. I’d NEVER make a woman

  • a footnote. She’d be the center of my world, my raison d’etre, my joie de vivre.

  • Oh, Me from the Past. I’m reminded of why you got a C+ in French 3.

  • Let me submit to you, Me from the Past, that your weird worship of women is a kind of misogyny

  • because youre imagining women as these beautiful, fragile things that you can possess.

  • It turns out that women are not things. They are people in precisely the same way that

  • you are a person and in the progressive era, they demanded to be seen as full citizens

  • of the United States. In short, women don’t exist to be your joie

  • de vivre. They get to have their own joie de vivre.

  • intro So, it’s tempting to limit ourselves to

  • discussion of women getting the right to vote with the passage of the 19th amendment, but

  • if we focus too much on the constitutional history, were gonna miss a lot.

  • Some historians refer to the thirty years between 1890 and 1920 as thewomen’s

  • erabecause it was in that time that women started to have greater economic and political

  • opportunities. Women were also aided by legal changes, like getting the right to own property,

  • control their wages and make contracts and wills.

  • By 1900 almost 5 million women worked for wages, mainly in domestic service or light

  • manufacturing, like the garment industry. Women in America were always vital contributors

  • to the economy as producers and consumers and they always worked, whether for wages

  • or taking care of children and the home. And as someone who has recently returned from

  • paternity leave, let me tell you, that ain’t no joke.

  • And American women were also active as reformers since, like, America became a thing.

  • And those reform movements brought women into state and national politics before the dawn

  • of the progressive era. Unfortunately, their greatest achievement,

  • Prohibition, was also our greatest national shame. Oh, yeah, alright, okay. It’s actually

  • not in our top 5 national shames. But, probably women’s greatest influence

  • indeed came through membership AND leadership in the Women’s Christian Temperance Union.

  • The WCTU was founded in 1874 and by 1890 it had 150,000 members, making it the largest

  • female organization in the United States. Under the leadership of Frances Willard, the

  • WCTU embraced a broad reform agenda. Like it included pushing for the right for women

  • to vote. The feeling was that the best way to stop

  • people from drinking was to pass local laws that made it harder to drink, and to do that

  • it would be very helpful if women could vote. Because American men were a bunch of alcoholic

  • scoundrels who darn well weren’t going to vote to get rid of beer hoses.

  • In 1895 Willard boldly declared, “A wider freedom is coming to the women of America.

  • Too long has it been held that woman has no right to enter these movements (…) Politics

  • is the place for woman.” But the role of women in politics did greatly

  • expand during the Progressive era. As in prior decades, many reformers were middle and upper

  • class women, but the growing economy and the expansion of what might be called the upper-middle

  • class meant that there were more educational opportunities and this growing group of college-educated

  • women leaned in and became the leaders of new movements.

  • Sorry, there was no way I was gonna get through this without onelean in.” I love that

  • book. So as weve talked about before, the 1890s

  • saw the dawning of the American mass consumer society and many of the new products made

  • in the second wave of industrialization were aimed at women, especiallylabor-saving

  • devices like washing machines. If youve ever had an infant, you might

  • notice that they poop and barf on everything all the time. Like, I recently called the

  • pediatrician and I was like, “My 14-day-old daughter poops fifteen times a day.” And

  • he was like, “If anything, that seems low.” So the washing machine is a real game-changer.

  • And many women realized that being the primary consumers who did the shopping for the home

  • gave them powerful leverage to bring about change.

  • Chief among these was Florence Kelley, a college-educated woman who after participating in a number

  • of progressive reform causes came to head the National Consumers League.

  • The League sponsored boycotts and shaped consumption patterns encouraging consumers to buy products

  • that were made without child or what we now would call sweatshop labor.

  • Which at the time was often just known aslabor.”

  • And there was also a subtle shift in gender roles as more and more women worked outside

  • the home. African American women continued to work primarily as domestic servants or

  • in agriculture, and immigrant women mostly did low-paying factory labor, but for native-born

  • white women there were new opportunities, especially in office work.

  • And this points to how technology created opportunities for women. Like, almost all

  • the telephone operators in the U.S. were women. By 1920 office workers and telephone operators

  • made up 25% of the female workforce, while domestic servants were only 15%.

  • A union leader named Abraham Bisno remarked that working gave immigrant women a sense

  • of independence: “They acquired the right to personality, something alien to the highly

  • patriarchal family structures of the old country.” Of course this also meant that young women

  • were often in conflict with their parents, as a job brought more freedom, money, and

  • perhaps, if they were lucky, a room of one’s own.

  • Oh, it’s time for the Mystery Document? Please let it be Virginia Woolf, please let

  • it be Virginia Woolf. The rules here are simple. I guess the author of the Mystery Document.

  • I’m either right or I get shocked. Alright, let’s see what weve got.

  • The spirit of personal independence in the women of today is sure proof that a change

  • has comethe radical change in the economic position of women is advancing upon us

  • The growing individualization of democratic life brings inevitable changes to our daughters

  • as well as to our sonsOne of its most noticeable features is the demand in women

  • not only for their own money, but for their own work for the sake of personal expression.

  • Few girls today fail to manifest some signs of the desire for individual expression …”

  • Well, that’s not Virginia Woolf. Stan, I’m going to be honest, I do not know

  • the answer to this one. However, it has been Woodrow Wilson for the last two weeks. You

  • wouldn’t do that again to me, or would you? I’m gonna guess Woodrow Wilson. Final answer.

  • DANG IT. Charlotte Perkins Gilman in the book Women

  • and Economics? What? Aaaaaah! The idea that having a job is valuable just

  • for the independence that it brings and as a form ofindividual expressionwas

  • pretty radical, as most women, and especially most men, were not comfortable with the idea

  • that being a housewife was similar to being a servant to one’s husband and children.

  • But of course that changes when staying at home becomes one of many choices rather than

  • your only available option. And then came birth control. Huzzah!

  • Women who needed to work wanted a way to limit the number of pregnancies. Being pregnant

  • and having a baby can make it difficult to hold down a job and also babies are diaper-using,

  • stuff-breaking, consumptive machines. They basically eat money. And we love them.

  • But birth control advocates like Margaret Sanger and Emma Goldman also argued that women

  • should be able to enjoy sex without having children. To which men said, “Women can

  • enjoy sex?” Believe it or not, that was seen as a pretty

  • radical idea and it lead to changes in sexual behavior including more overall skoodilypooping.

  • Goldman was arrested more than 40 times for sharing these dangerous ideas about female

  • sexuality and birth control and she was eventually deported.

  • Sanger, who worked to educate working class women about birth control, was sentenced to

  • prison in 1916 for opening a clinic in Brooklyn that distributed contraceptive devices to

  • poor immigrant women. The fight over birth control is important

  • for at least three reasons. First, it put women into the forefront of debates about

  • free speech in America. I mean, some of the most ardent advocates of birth control were

  • also associated with the IWW and the Socialist Party. Secondly, birth control is also a public

  • health issue and many women during the progressive era entered public life to bring about changes

  • related to public health, leading the crusade against tuberculosis, the so-called White

  • Plague, and other diseases. Thirdly, it cut across class lines. Having

  • or not having children is an issue for all women, regardless of whether they went to

  • college, and the birth control movement brought upper, middle, and lower class women together

  • in ways that other social movements never did.

  • Another group of Progressive women took up the role of addressing the problems of the

  • poor and spearheaded the Settlement House movement.

  • The key figure here was Jane Addams. My God, there are still Adamses in American history?

  • Oh, she spells it Addams-family-Addams, not like founding-fathers-Adams. Anyway, she started

  • Hull House in Chicago in 1889. Settlement houses became the incubators of

  • the new field of social work, a field in which women played a huge part. And Addams became

  • one of America’s most important spokespeople for progressive ideas.

  • And yet in many places, while all of this was happening, women could not technically

  • vote. But their increasing involvement in social

  • movements at the turn of the 20th century led them to electoral politics. It’s true

  • that women were voting before the passage of the 19th amendment in 1920. Voting is a

  • state issue, and in many western states, women were granted the right to vote in the late

  • 19th century. States could also grant women the right to run for office, which explains

  • how the first Congresswoman, Jeannette Rankin, could vote against America’s entry into

  • World War I in 1917. That said, the passage and ratification of

  • the 19th Amendment is a big deal in American history. It’s also a recent deal. Like,

  • when my grandmothers were born, women could not vote in much of the United States.

  • The amendment says that states cannot deny people the right to vote because they are

  • women, which isn’t as interesting as the political organization and activity that led

  • to its passage. Alright, let’s go to the Thought Bubble.

  • The suffrage movement was extremely fragmented. There was a first wave of suffrage, exemplified

  • by the women at Seneca Falls, and this metamorphosed into the National American Women’s Suffrage

  • Association, or NAWSA. Most of the leadership of NAWSA was made up of middle to upper class

  • women, often involved in other progressive causes, who unfortunately sometimes represented

  • the darker side of the suffrage movement. Because these upper class progressives frequently

  • used nativist arguments to make their claims for the right to vote. They argued that if

  • the vote could be granted to ignorant immigrants, some of whom could barely speak English, then

  • it should also be granted to native born women. This isn’t to say that the elitist arguments

  • won the day, but they should be acknowledged. By the early 20th century a new generation

  • of college-educated activists had arrived on the scene. And many of these women were

  • more radical than early suffrage supporters. They organized the National Women’s Party

  • and, under the leadership of Alice Paul, pushed for the vote using aggressive tactics that

  • many of the early generation of women’s rights advocates found unseemly.

  • Paul had been studying in Britain between 1907 and 1910 where she saw the more militant

  • women’s rights activists at work. She adopted their tactics that included protests leading

  • to imprisonment and loud denunciations of the patriarchy that would make tumblr proud.

  • And during World War I she compared Wilson to the Kaiser and Paul and her followers chained

  • themselves to the White House fence. The activists then started a hunger strike during their

  • 7-month prison sentence and had to be force-fed. Woodrow Wilson had half-heartedly endorsed

  • women’s suffrage in 1916, but the war split the movement further. Most suffrage organizations

  • believed that wartime service would help women earn respect and equal rights. But other activists,

  • like many Progressives, opposed the war and regarded it as a potential threat to social

  • reform. But, in the end, the war did sort of end up

  • helping the cause. Patriotic support of the war by women, especially their service working

  • in wartime industries, convinced many that it was just wrong to deny them the right to

  • vote. And the mistreatment of Alice Paul and other women in prison for their cause created

  • outrage that further pushed the Wilson administration to support enfranchising women.

  • Thanks, Thought Bubble. So, women’s long fight to gain the right to vote ended with

  • the ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920. But, in some ways, the final granting

  • of the franchise was a bit anti-climactic. For one thing, it was overshadowed by the

  • 18th Amendment, Prohibition, which affected both women and men in large numbers. Also

  • Gatsbys. You could say a lot of bad things about Prohibition,

  • and I have, but the crusade against alcohol did galvanize and politicize many women, and

  • organizations such as the WCTU and the Anti-Saloon League introduced yet more to political activism.

  • But, while the passage of the 19th amendment was a huge victory, Alice Paul and the National

  • Women’s Party were unable to muster the same support for an Equal Rights Amendment.

  • Paul believed that women needed equal access to education and employment opportunities.

  • And here they came into contact with other women’s groups, especially the League of

  • Women Voters and the Women’s Trade Union League, which opposed the ERA fearing that

  • equal rights would mean an unraveling of hard-won benefits like mother’s pensions and laws

  • limiting women’s hours of labor. So, the ERA failed, and then another proposed

  • amendment that would have given Congress the power to limit child labor won ratification

  • in only 6 states. So in many ways the period between 1890 and

  • 1920, which roughly corresponds to the Progressive Era, was the high tide of women’s rights

  • and political activism. It culminated in the ratification of the 19th amendment, but the

  • right to vote didn’t lead to significant legislation that actually improved the lives

  • of women, at least not for a while. Nor were there immediate changes in the roles

  • that women were expected to play in the social order as wives and mothers.

  • Still, women were able to increase their autonomy and freedom in the burgeoning consumer marketplace.

  • But it’s important to note that like other oppressed populations in American history,

  • women weren’t given these rights, they had to fight for the rights that were said to

  • be inalienable. And we are all better off for their fight

  • and for their victory. Women’s liberation is to be sure a complicated phrase and it

  • will take a new turn in the Roaring 20s, which well talk about next week. I’ll see you

  • then. Crash Course is produced and directed by Stan

  • Muller. Our script supervisor is Meredith Danko. The associate producer is Danica Johnson.

  • The show is written by my high school history teacher, Raoul Meyer, Rosianna Rojas, and

  • myself. And our graphics team is Thought Café. Every week there’s a new caption to the

  • Libertage. You can suggest captions in comments where you can also ask questions about today’s

  • video that will be answered by our team of historians.

  • Thanks for watching Crash Course and as we say in my hometown, don’t forget to be awesome.

  • I’m gonna go this way, Stan, just kiiidding!

  • Suffrage -

Episode 31: Feminism and Suffrage

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婦女參政權。美國曆史速成班#31 (Women's Suffrage: Crash Course US History #31)

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