WOMEN'S RIGHTS

1777-Abigail Smith Adams (1744-1818) wrote to husband, John, in a letter: "In the new code of laws . . . I desire you would remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors . . . Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation."

1836-The Grimke sisters [Angelina Grimke (1805-1879) and Sarah Moore Grimke (1792-1873)] were to address the problems of women's rights at a house. About 300 people showed up, more than planned, and they had to move to a church nearby.

1837-A. Grimke spoke publicly in Philadelphia about women's rights. A mob of people stood outside, hurling stones through the windows in protest. When the speech was finished, the building was burned.

S. Grimke wrote a pamphlet, "The Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Women".

1840-Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902) married Henry Stanton and omitted "obey" from their wedding vows.

1840-Lucretia Coffin Mott (1793-1880) and Stanton decided to hold a women's rights convention in the United States after many women were treated poorly at a convention in England.

1847-The Married Women's Property Act was passed in New York. This act gave women some rights, especially those that belonged to wealthy families.

1847-Lucy Stone (1818-1893) became the first woman from New England to graduate from college.

July 19, 1848-Mott and Stanton organized the first women's rights convention in the United States. It was held at the Wesleyan Chapel in Seneca Falls, New York. About three hundred people attended, including forty men. Lucrecia Mott's husband, James, was the chairperson.

Here, at the convention, the Declaration of Sentiments was composed:

"When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one portion of the family of man to assume among the people of the earth a position different from that they have hitherto occupied . . . We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men and women are created equal . . . The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her. To move this, let facts be submitted to a candid world."

Following this, were eighteen grievances opposing King George's tyranny:

"He has never permitted her to exercise her inalienable right to the elective franchise.

He has compelled her to submit to laws, in the formation of which she had not voice . . .

He has made her, if married, in the eye of the law, civilly dead . . . she is compelled to promise obedience to her husband, he becoming, to all intent and purposes, her master-the law giving him power to deprive her of her liberty, and to administer chastisement . . . if single, and the owner property, he has taxed her to support a government which recognizes her only when her property can be made profitable to it.

He has taken from her all rights in property, even to the wages she earns.. .

He has monopolized all the profitable employments, and from those she is permitted to follow, she receives but a scanty remuneration.

He has denied her the facilities for obtaining a thorough education . . .

He allows her in Church, as well as State, but a subordinate position.

He closes against her all avenues to wealth and distinction which he considers most honorable to himself. As a leader of theology, medicine, or law, she is not known . . .

He has created a false, public sentiment by giving to the world a different code of morals for men and women, by which the moral delinquencies which exclude women form society are not only tolerated, but deem of little account in men . . .

He has endeavored in every way . . . to destroy her confidence in her own powers, to lesson her self-respect, and to make her willing to lead a dependant and abject life."

This was read by Stanton, even after Mott said it would make women seem "ridiculous", and her husband threatened to leave town.

1849-Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman to earn her Medical Degree.

1849-Amelia Jenks Bloomer (1818-1894) became the first woman, deputy postmaster in Seneca Falls, New York.

1851-Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906) and Stanton met and became good friends.

1851-Bloomer introduces a new style of women's clothing. It consisted of full-cut pants under a short skirt which she wore in public. There were even ballads written. One was called "I'll be a Bloomer."

"Married men may weep

and tumble in the ditches,

Since women are resolved

To wear the shirts and breeches."

Unfortunately, this style was not worn long because of all the ridicule it introduced.

1853-Anthony drafted the Code of Wages. This called for equal pay for equal work and most women's rights activists ignored this because they were more interested in working for abolition or suffrage.

1854-Anthony led a petition drive for a women's rights bill. Unfortunately, it was not enough to get any attention so she went out to get more names. Again, it failed in 1855.

1855-Stone got married to Henry Brown Blackwell. They re-wrote traditional marriage vows by omitting "obey" and vowing to be equals. Stone also kept her maiden name.

1859-Sojourner Truth (1797? -1883) started battling for women's rights. Truth carried on with her fighting until 1875.

1860's-Julia Ward Howe (1819-1910) became the first president of the New England Suffrage Association.

1860-A bill was passed to extend the Married Women's Property Act of 1847, giving women the right to keep the money they earned, to sue in court, and to inherit from her deceased husband.

1861-Truth made a speech strong enough to convince man that all are equal:

"Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted and gathered into barns . . . and ain't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man-when I could get it-and bear the lash as well! And ain't I a woman? I have born 13 children, and seen most of 'em sold into slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me-and ain't I a woman?"

May 14, 1863-Stone, A. Grimke, Stanton, and Anthony formed the National Women's Loyal League. They wanted to collect one million signatures for the thirteenth amendment (the abolishment of slavery). They got 400,000 by August of 1864.

After the Civil War-Howe found the New England Woman's Club and the Association for the Advancement of Women.

May 1869-The National Women's Suffrage Association was formed. Women's rights activists got angry towards the fourteenth and fifteenth amendment. The fourteenth stated that any male citizen under twenty-one could not be denied the right to vote and the fifteenth stated that no one could be denied the right to vote on account of race. Women's rights activists were angered by these because the fourteenth specified on "male" and the fifteenth did not include "sex." Women also fought for divorce rights, labor laws, and equal pay and job opportunities.

November 1869-The American Women's Suffrage Association was formed.

1872-Howe established the first Mother's Day.

1872-The Equal Rights Party nominates the first woman to run for U.S. presidency, Victoria Claflin Woodhull (1838-1927).

1872-Anthony and 15 other women vote for president in Rochester, New York. Several days later, a U.S. Marshall arrested them. They were later tried and the judge said they were "incompetent to testify" and were denied a jury trial. Anthony boasted her opinion and got fined. Of course, she refused to pay, went to prison, and was also denied the right to appeal.

July 4, 1876-The National Women's Suffrage Association rallied at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. Several women, including Anthony, handed out the Declaration of Rights for Women. Later, Anthony read it at Independence Square and had a meeting at a nearby church.

1878-The nineteenth amendment was shot down year after year until it faded away in 1896.

1879-Belva Ann Lockwood (1830-1917) became the first woman attorney to practice before the Supreme Court.

1884 and 1888-Lockwood was the presidential candidate for the Equal Rights Party.

1890's-Carrie Chapman Catt (1859-1947) was major organizer and lecturer for the woman suffrage movement.

1890-Stanton wrote The Women's Bible to fire against men who based the inequality of women in the Bible.

1890-The American and National Women's Suffrage Associations formed the National American Women's Suffrage Association. Along with fighting for suffrage, these women fought for employment and education rights. In 1900, 22,000 men and 5,000 women graduated college. This is after multiplying by five times between 1870 and 1890. Between 1890 and 1900, the number of women employed went from four million to five million. This increase is considered the biggest in the women's movement.

1890-Wyoming women received the right to vote.

1893-Women in Colorado get the right to vote.

1896-Idaho and Utah women get the right to vote through their state constitutions.

1898-Stanton published her autobiography, Eighty Years and More, along with a second edition to The Women's Bible.

1900's- Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935) opposed women's financial dependence of men and supported day-care programs so that women could have a chance to hold a job.

1910-First woman's suffrage parade.

1910-In Washington state, women get the right to vote.

1911-The right to vote is given to women in California.

1912-Oregon, Kansas, and Arizona women receive the right to vote.

1914-The women of Montana and Nevada are given the right to vote.

1915-Emma Goldman lectured on free speech and birth control for the rights of women.

1916-Jeannette Rankin (1880-1973) was the first woman in the House of Representatives.

1916-Paul found the National Woman's party (NWP) and began to work on a constitutional amendment to grant women equal rights to that of men.

1917-Woman obtain the right to vote in New York.

January 1917-Women began to picket the White House urging the president to pass the nineteenth amendment.

April 1917-People began to get hostile with the picketers by tearing down their signs. The police did nothing and later joined the violence.

June 22, 1917-Women began to be arrested for abstracting traffic. Two hundred eighteen women were arrested and ninety-seven were imprisoned. While in jail, most women went on hunger strikes and had to be force-fed.

Fall 1917-The nineteenth amendment was on the House's voting agenda.

January 10, 1918-The House passed the nineteenth and it then went to the Senate. It was defeated by only two votes to get the 2/3 majority.

1918-The women of South Dakota, Oklahoma, and Michigan get the right to vote.

August 26, 1920-The nineteenth amendment was finally ratified.

1922-Rebecca Latimer Felton became the first woman Senator when a governor from Georgia appointed her. She only served two days, though (November 21 and 22).

1923-Alice Paul (1885-1977) introduces the Equal Rights Amendment to Congress. Unfortunately, it did not receive the necessary two-thirds majority.

1925-Nellie Tayloe Ross (Wyoming) and Miriam A. Ferguson (Texas) become two of the first women governors in the United States.

1932-Hattie Caraway is the first woman to be elected to the United States Senate.

1933-Frances Perkins becomes the United States' first female cabinet member-Secretary of Labor.

1949-Georgia Neese Clark becomes the first woman treasurer for the U.S.

1960's-The National Organization for Women (NOW) centered their goals on getting the ERA ratified.

1960-Women held jobs that required little to no decision-making: typists, coffee makers, sex objects, and others.

1963-The Equal Pay Act was signed by Kennedy.

1966-Betty Naomi Friedan (1921-) found the National Organization for Woman.

1967-Women got tired of the lame jobs they held. The United Nations unanimously adopted a declaration for the end of discrimination against women.

1969-Shirley Chisholm (1924-) became the first black woman in congress. She held office in the House of Representatives until 1983. She fought for many women's rights including abortion, labor laws, and day care.

1970-Martha Griffiths of Michigan introduced the Equal Pay Amendment to the House of Representatives. It read:

"Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the U.S. or by any state on account of sex."

August 26, 1970-Friedan:

"We have learned that the enemy is us-our own lack of self-confidence . . . Man as a class is not the enemy. Man is a fellow victim of the kind of inequality between the sexes that is part of this country's current torment and that is perpetrating violence all over the world. There were men marching with us today, men who say, 'We don't have to be dominant and superior to everybody in the world to prove our manhood.' Men who can say, 'We can be gentle, we can be afraid, we can even cry-and we are men.'"

1971-Gloria Steinem (1934-) along with politicians Bella Abzug and Shirley Chrisholm found the National Women's Political Caucus.

1972-The Equal Rights Amendment was passed in the House 350 to 15.

1973-Roe v. Wade gave women the right to decide the fate of her unborn child.

1979-A law was passed allowing women to practice in front of the Supreme Court.

1982-Only 36 of the 38 states needed ratified Equal Rights Amendment, and therefore it was never issued to the Constitution.

I believe that, even in the society of today, women still do not have equal rights to that of men. Women are just as capable as any man to do work, and should receive the same amount of credit, pay, and glory that men do. It is coming upon the new millenium and now it is time to start changing our old habits and treating everyone with equality.