Womens Rights free essay sample

Women were not allowed to vote. They usually could not get higher education. Often, they could not get jobs, and when they did, they get paid less than men for for the same work. They could not own property, in many countries, including England. In some places, if they had money and got married, the money became the property of their husbands. The Womens Rights Movement started because they were sick of the unfairness. Womens rights are the rights and elements and entitlement claimed for a woman and girls of many societies. Women(and some men) have asserted womens equality and the rights of women since ancient times, but without much success until the 19th and 20th century Womens Rights Movement. In the 19th Century, during the Colonial era and the first decades of the Republic, there were always women who strove to secure equal rights for themselves. We will write a custom essay sample on Womens Rights or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Some assumed the business interests of a husband after his death. A few women challenged male domination of religious life, though they met with criticism from their communities or banishment, as in the case of Anne Hutchinson. Women were also active in the fight against the Crown and organized boycotts of British goods. During the struggle for independence, prominent females such as Abigail Adams wrote and spoke privately about the need for male leaders to rectify the inferior position of women, promising rebellion if their words were not heeded. But only later, over the course of the nineteenth century, did womens demands for equal rights change from a series of isolated incidents to an organized movement. Enormous changes swept through the United States in the nineteenth century, altering the lives of women at all levels of society. The country moved away from an home-based economy and became increasingly industrialized. Beginning in the 1820s, many white single women found work in the mills that opened across the Northeast, where they often lived in boarding houses owned by their employers. The new century saw changes in the lives of female slaves as well, when on 1 January 1808 the importation of slaves into the United States was outlawed. In response, slave owners placed increased pressure on enslaved women to produce children. They also subjected these women to sexual advances against which they had little defense. The changing nature of womens lives helped create the circumstances that allowed them to begin to act politically, on their own behalf and for others. Mill girls often worked long hours under dangerous conditions. By the 1830s female workers were organizing protests in an attempt to improve their work environment and wages. Middle-class womens role in the home, on the other hand, led them to develop a sense of themselves as members of a cohesive group. While coded as domestic these campaigns gave women a public voice and significant social power. Womens work in the abolitionist movement played a particularly important role in the creation of an organized womens rights movement. Early organizers for womens rights began by working with black women who had escaped slavery and wanted to learn how to read and write. The women who first spoke in public about slavery and female abuse were viciously attacked, and those who organized schools in the early 1800s with harassment. Black women, such as Sojourner Truth and Harriet Jacobs, fought for the rights of both their race and their sex, while also fighting the often attitudes of sole liberators. In 1840 the organizers of the World Antislavery Convention in London refused to seat female delegates, including the American activist Lucretia Mott. Before leaving England, she and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, whose husband was a delegate at the convention, decided to launch a campaign for womans rights on their return to the United States. On 19 and 20 July 1848 Mott and Stantons plan reached as they staged the countrys first formal womens rights convention in Seneca Falls. Based on the Declaration of Independence, the document proclaimed that men and women were created equal, and that women should therefore have legal and social with men, including the right to vote. The declaration was greeted with a storm of criticism in newspapers and from religious leaders. By 1850, however, activists had organized similar gatherings in Ohio and Massachusetts and established an annual Womans Rights Convention. The campaign for dress reform became closely associated with the womens rights movement, as advocates such as Amelia Bloomer argued that the tight clothing women wore was unhealthy and restrictive, such as Bloomers. Many early womens rights advocates also became involved in Spiritualism, a belief system based on direct communication with God and the dead, which offered women a greater voice in their religious life than did the male hierarchies of the Christian churches. In the 20th Century, The reemergence of the womens movement in the United States in the late 1960s is commonly referred to as the modern womens rights movement, the feminist movement, or the womens liberation movement. It is also known as second wave feminism, which serves to distinguish it from the period a century earlier when women in the United States first organized around demands for full citizenship. That earlier campaign, known as first wave, culminated with the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, which legally (if not actually) barred discrimination in voting on the basis of sex. Feminists in the 1960s, like their predecessors, sought to alter their unequal political, social, and economic status. Although still vital in a variety of forms, the modern womens movement reached a high point in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The early 1960s saw two important events that perhaps signaled the beginning of the second wave. In December 1961, President John F. Kennedy established the Presidents Commission on the Status of Women. Chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt and comprised of female political, business, and education leaders, the commission was asked to report on the progress women had made in six areas, including federal civil service employment and labor legislation. Its final report, although certainly not viewed as radical by modern feminists, did call for greater equality in the workplace while at the same time trying to protect women. Some policy successes of the modern womens rights movement have included the 1963 Equal Pay Act, the 1964 Civil Rights Act, laws prohibiting discrimination in educational and credit opportunities, and Supreme Court decisions expanding the civil liberties of women. In 1972 Congress sent the Equal Rights Amendment to the states for ratification; despite approval from more than half the states it failed to obtain the necessary two-thirds needed by 1982. In 1973, the Supreme Court affirmed a womens right to privacy in Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion. Subsequent gains included the Civil Rights Restoration Act of 1987, the Civil Rights Act of 1991, the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993, and the Violence Against Women Act of 1994. Victories in state legislatures included laws establishing greater protection for battered omen and victims of violent crime, reform of rape statutes, and laws providing for more marital property following divorce, made necessary by the negative impact of no-fault divorce laws on women. At the same time, many states placed restrictions on womens constitutional right to obtain abortions and often interpreted no-fault divorce laws in ways that harmed womens economic status. The womens movement remained a forum for de bate, with issues, strategies, and tactics subject to controversy. While such diversity may have confused a public looking for simple definitions who wanted to know, What do women want? . The womens movement had room for everyone who agreed that sexism has no place in a society dedicated to social justice. The most important contribution of the womens movement of the late twentieth century was to improve womens lives by reducing obstacles to the full expression of their desires and choices. Feminists contributed to the wider society as well, because their activism was an important element in the continuing struggle for a more equitable and just society for all. On Election Day in 1920, millions of American women exercised their right to vote for the first time. It took activists and reformers nearly 100 years to win that right, and the campaign was not easy: Disagreements over strategy threatened to cripple the movement more than once. But on August 26, 1920, the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was finally ratified, enfranchising all American women and declaring for the first time that they, like men, deserve all the rights and responsibilities of citizenship. Starting in 1910, some states in the West began to extend the vote to women for the first time in almost 20 years. (Idaho and Utah had given women the right to vote at the end of the 19th century. ) Still, the more established Southern and Eastern states resisted. In 1916, NAWSA president Carrie Chapman Catt unveiled what she called a Winning Plan to get the vote at last: a blitz campaign that mobilized state and local suffrage organizations all over the country, with special focus on those recalcitrant regions. Womens rights free essay sample The International Herald Tribune reported that â€Å"In Egypt, and across the Arab world, respectable sex requires marriage, particularly for a woman and especially for the first time† (MacFarquhar). Naguib’s unnamed protagonist is raped, victimized, against her will and not a virgin any more; therefore a social misfit. She has been pushed against a wall into the corner of loneliness and solitude, â€Å"day by day she becomes older. She avoids love, fears it† (Mahfouz 635). Ultimately her position as a woman is compromised by the nature of her culture and she is â€Å"struggling helplessly in a well sprung trap† (Mahfouz 635). According to the grapevine, â€Å"Rape is a crime of sexual violence that causes long term emotional devastation to its victims† (Repp 16). Nevertheless, she is a strong and independent woman who will not lie down in self-pity; she will not reminisce about her misfortune, but rather walk elegantly and stand by her principles. We will write a custom essay sample on Womens rights or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page This woman’s options are minimized and her choices are limited because of the effect of rape. The act of rape is a strategic weapon of psycho-socialspiritual destruction designed to undermine the well-being of a woman. Theoretically, â€Å"Young women suffer a great long time distress after an act of rape and experience the symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder, fear, excessive vigilance, shame and often encounter difficulties with intimate relationships† (Burby 96). Society gives her another option however, to marry Badrani the man she now hates and disrespects for the reason that he abused her against her will. Therefore she says to him, â€Å"For me any outcome is preferable to being married to you† (Mahfouz 635). As a teacher, she has the opportunity to teach young women of Abbasiyya knowledge of their rights and to empower themselves with education as a weapon toward their liberation and emancipation. Manifestly, her culture has ignored, and failed to address such catastrophes that befall the every day woman. Apparently, â€Å"Like other women in African societies, Egyptian women have made great strides in gaining their legal rights but they remain well behind men in both socioeconomic and cultural rights† (Asante 101). Meanwhile, this woman is an educated, â€Å"rich, beautiful girl, a by word in Abbasiyya for her nobility of character† (Mahfouz 635); a role model therefore – 2 future change will begin with women like her because to save a woman, is to save her children and her children’s children. In his forward-thinking work, Egyptian writer and pre-revolution civil rights activist Qasim Amin saw the importance of education for women as the key to the success of any political and cultural freedom. Amin argues; â€Å"How could we advance the move toward independence and representation without taking the women along. The liberation of women was a prerequisite for the liberation of the society. Since women are the nucleus of the family, and the family is the basic unit of society, then to liberate women was to liberate society† (Asante 100). Naguib’s protagonist here clearly comes from the same school of thought. Perhaps many women in the culture are similarly frustrated, but some like her mother, are forward thinkers. They refuse to be subject to, and be enslaved by the culture that is apparently inattentive to their concerns. Both mother and daughter may not have the freedom of choice, or the freedom to vote but they sure have their freedom of thought. Her mother had said to her, â€Å"I know your attachment to your independence so I leave the decision to you† (Mahfouz 635). She has now decided not to marry and â€Å"never has she regretted her firm decision† (Mahfouz 636). It is important to note however, that the continuing urban drift and a steady rise in tourism means that modern economic values and western cultural ideas filter back even into all of Egypt, and it cannot be long before they are affected by the change sweeping the north African region. Suffice-to-say that almost all customs in Egypt are related to the Islamic religion or its influence; on the contrary to these popular beliefs about Egypt, numerous African intellectuals and writers have continued to come out as defenders and advocates of women’s rights since Qasim Amin. It is also noted that â€Å"Naguib Mahfouz’s keen awareness of social injustices, and his realistic account of Egypt’s social and political history have earned him both international acclaim and condemnation, as have his more experimental and fantastic works† (Contemporary Authors Online). Naguib Mahfouz does not reveal his protagonist’s identity, partly because she represents every woman in every society, every day. Published in 1991, the story could have been told a decade before, but it speaks of, and to our generation today. Badrani Badawi could have gotten away with rape then, but currently in Egypt, rape is, technically speaking, punishable by life imprisonment. Egyptian president; Hosni Mubarak issued a decree, six years ago nullifying a law that allowed rapists who marry their victims to walk free. Amnesty International and International Human Rights Organizations are in support of the new law which denies rapists any legal liabilities. This is a clear road to women’s emancipation despite the countless rape cases that go unreported. Evidently, â€Å"The Answer is No† is not confined to conflict rape in Rwanda, Sudan nor Bosnia; this story is about culture, worldwide that allows violence against women to operate with impunity.