“Human rights are women’s rights, and women’s rights are human rights.” - Hillary Clinton. In the 1800s, women did not have the same rights as men. They had a specific role that they were to follow. The men in their community had complete control over them, and the women were supposed to follow the characteristics of the “perfect” woman.
According to the Lavender article, the four characteristics of an ideal woman of the 1800s include piety, purity, submissiveness and domesticity. Piety allows a woman to have complete devotion to her faith. Religion was thought to be a good quality in women. Purity allows a woman to be free of all her sins. A woman's greatest treasure is her virginity. If she was not pure, she would be punished by God and not allowed to be associated with any other woman. Submissiveness was the most feminine virtue. It says that every woman, if they wanted to be perfect, should devote to God, her man, and their role in the society. The last characteristic of an ideal woman was domesticity. All women were expected to stay in their house and do things around the home for the well being of her family, most importantly, her husband.
Domesticity can relate to the private sphere and the public sphere. The private sphere is the world inside the home, mostly made for a woman. The public sphere was the world outside the home, mostly made for men. Women did everything in the house. In the outside world, a man did whatever he needed to do to be successful and support his family. The Cult of Domesticity took a closer look at this. They made sure that women of the middle class knew their role was in the home, and only in the home. They were not to get involved with the public sphere what so ever. A woman’s role was to care and comfort her children and husband, and to work around the home.
The Seneca Falls Convention took place in July of 1848, and it was the first women’s rights convention. It was organized by those who were involved in the temperance movement, specifically women but men were also involved. It was designed to point out the unfair treatment of women and give them more rights to they were almost equal to men. The document created at the Seneca Falls Convention in July was called the Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions. It was created by both men and women. Here, they bring up resolutions to the issue with women’s rights. The wording and format in both documents are extremely identical. The Declaration of Independence was presented in July of 1775, and 73 years later, the declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions was presented in July of 1848.
Women’s suffrage was also talked about in this convention. This topic dealt with woman and the right to vote and many people said it was controversial. Some people said that although women wanted the right to vote, it was not an essential right. The other rights, such as the right to own property, and freedom of speech, were considered to be more important that voting rights. The trail taken to get voting rights to a long time because of the disagreement of the importance of the right. If something happened last minute and they decided not to be in favor of it, the other rights would not be lost.
Men and women were at the convention, but some people were left out and their voices were unheard. People who were African American and Native American, (especially native women) include those who were left out. In our history class, we made resolutions for women of different ethnicity and economic class. As the groups presented, we found that most groups, even though the women were different, had the same goals, while there were goals that people had that were different from the rest. As an example, my group was the Cherokee women and we decided that a woman should be able to own land without it under her husbands name. They should be equal. In the Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions, this was one of the resolutions created. Since this resolution was made in class, and it appears in such an important part of history, it must be important.
Out of all the resolutions we discussed, I think the most important is men and women being equal. In our society today, women aren’t fully as equal as a man is. We certainly have made progress since 1848, but we still have a while to go. Men and women can both file for a divorce and vote, unlike it was in the 1800s. Sometimes in todays society, a woman may get a lower wage than a man does, and they may not be able to get certain jobs. Men believe that whatever they do, it is done better than a woman could do it. Some people say that since a man runs the country, that men are better than women. Religions possibly unconsciously, say that men are better than women. Only a man can be a catholic priest, women have no rights to become a leader of a catholic church.
It is good to know that the Seneca Falls Convention and the Women’s Rights Movement has changed 2015 so much from the 1800s. It is important that a woman can do just about anything a man can do, just ten times better.
No comments:
Post a Comment