Women
throughout
American history
Women in the colonies
New England
Chesapeake

Large families

Very few women

Religious
theocracy

First women come in
1619

No rights!

Widowarchy

Long life
expectancy

Dame schools
Colonial Fashion: low necked, decorative
stomacher, large skirts, petticoats
Women in the Revolution and Early
America

Daughters of Liberty

Spinning bees

Boycotts

Republican
Motherhood

Abigail Adams “I beg of
you, remember the
ladies”
Women in Antebellum America

Cult of domesticity

Idea of separate spheres: Idea of the
“weaker sex”

Early female education: Oberlin
College, Mount Holyoke

Lowell Girls- New England

Second Great Awakening and reform:
Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady
Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Mary Lyon,
Angelina and Sarah Grimke

Women’s Christian Temperance
Union

Seneca Falls Convention: Declaration
of Sentiments
Antebellum Fashion: hoop skirts,
corset, bustle
Gilded Age Fashion: bustle, bodices,
straighter skirts
Lowell Girls

Oh! isn't it a pity,
such a pretty girl as
I-Should be sent to
the factory to pine
away and die?
Oh! I cannot be a
slave,
I will not be a slave,
For I'm so fond of
liberty
That I cannot be a
slave."
Women in the Progressive Era

Muckraking: Ida Tarbell and
Standard Oil

Social Gospel

Progressive Reformers: Jane
Addams, Florence Kelley, Carrie
Nation, Frances Willard, Ida B.
Wells

Suffrage is a HUGE issue!!:
NWSA: National Women’s
Suffrage Association (Carrie
Chapman Catt), American
Women’s Suffrage Association
(Lucy Stone), National Woman’s
Party (Alice Paul)

Margaret Sanger and Birth
Control

19th Amendment

Resolved, that the women of this nation in 1876,
have greater cause for discontent, rebellion and
revolution than the men of 1776. – Susan B.
Anthony
Women in the 1920s

Flappers

The car

Equal Rights Amendment is
introduced

Women compete for the first
time in the Olympics in 1928

Women work in positions such
as telephone operators, nurses
and teachers (Numbers of
working women raise 50.1%)
Fashion: dark makeup “vamp style”,
bobbed hair, shortened skirts
Women in WWII

WAVES

WACS

Women join the
workforce!
Fashion: short straight skirts (cloth limited
by War Production Board), “ready to wear”
Women in the 1950s

Cult of domesticity

Baby boom

Dr. Spock

Introduction of “the pill”

New technology gives
women more spare time
Fashion: pencil skirts, sweaters, Bermuda
shorts, focus on comfort, nylon and spandex
Women in the 1960 and 1970s
“Second Wave Feminism”

Betty Friedan and the
Feminine Mystique and the
“problem that has no name”

Title VII, Equal Pay Act of
1963, Equal Educational
Equity Act, Title IX, Title X, no
fault divorce

Roe v Wade, Reed v Reed,
Griswold v Connecticut

NOW: National Organization
of Women!

Gloria Steinem and Ms.
magazine

Fight for the Equal Rights
Amendment

Phyllis Schlafly-When
feminists talk about "women's
rights," they mean a radical
restructuring of society, with
government using its power to
force feminist goals on all the
rest of us.
Fashion: “fighting against society”, loose
shirts, androgynous clothes, peasant blouses