Warm Up:

How do you think that upper and middle class white women reacted to the passage

of the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution?

Chapter 6

Section 2

Opportunities for Women

• Late 1800’s women began to have more opportunities for education & employment

• Increased activity on the community• Worked for reforms• Became a political force

Higher Education

• Oberlin College in Ohio was first to admit women in 1833

• By 1870, 1/5 of colleges admitted women• By 1900, 1/3 colleges admitted women

Higher Education

• Most women who attended college were middle or upper class

• Despite education, many professional careers were denied to them

• Many women put talents and skills instead to reform movements

• Became training for political activism

Employment Opportunities

• Opportunities for educated women expanded in late 1800’s

“Caring professions”• Teachers and nursesBusiness World• Bookkeepers, typists, secretaries, shop clerksJournalism• Artist and writers

Employment Opportunities

• Uneducated WomenGarment industry• Paid wages lower than men

Gaining Political ExperienceChildren’s Health and Welfare• Campaigns to end child labor• Improve children's health• Promote educationProhibition• Women’s Christian Temperance Union

(WCTU) led by Frances Willard• Carry Nation smashed up saloons in

Kansas and urged others to do the same• 18th Amendment (1917) prohibited

making, selling and distributing alcohol

Gaining Political Experience

Civil Rights• African American women fought for same

causes as white counterparts• Not allowed to join reform organizations• Formed their own• National Association of Colored Women

(NACW)• Campaigned against poverty, segregation,

lynching

Rise of Women’s Suffrage Movement

15th Amendment (1868)• Granted African American men the right to

vote• Women were still not allowed to vote• Women were told to wait

Rise of Women’s Suffrage Movement

National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA)• Founded by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan

B. Anthony in 1869• Campaigned for constitutional amendment

granting women the right to voteAmerican Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA)• Founded in 1869• Focused on winning the right to vote on a state

by state basis

States that granted Women’s Suffrage

- Wyoming 1890- Colorado 1893- Utah 1896- Idaho 1896- Washington 1910- Illinois 1913

What do these states have in common?

Why do you think Western States were the first to give women the right to vote?

Suffrage in the West

• Encourage women to move west• Labor shortages opened up more professions

to women• Women had property rights (Homesteading)

Susan B. Anthony

Susan B. Anthony Tests the Law

• Appeared before every Congress between 1869-1906 on behalf of women’s suffrage

• 1872, she registered to vote and voted on election day

• Arrested 2 weeks later

Speech Before Trial

“One-half of the people of this nation to-day are utterly powerless to blot from the statute books an unjust law, or to write there a new and a just one. The women, dissatisfied as they are with this form of government, that enforces taxation without representation,—that compels them to obey laws to which they have never given their consent,—that imprisons and hangs them without a trial by a jury of their peers, that robs them, in marriage, of the custody of their own persons, wages and children,—are this half of the people left wholly at the mercy of the other half, in direct violation of the spirit and letter of the declarations of the framers of this government, every one of which was based on the immutable principle of equal rights to all.”

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Trial and Punishment

• Judge refused to allow Anthony to testify• Ruled her guilty, fined her $100• Anthony refused to pay fine• Wanted judge to arrest her, force new trial• Judge refused, denied right to appeal

Susan B. Anthony Tests the Law

• 1875, Supreme Court ruled that even though women were citizens, citizenship did not grant the right to vote

• Up to states to determine voting rights

What would have to happen for this Supreme Court decision to be over-ruled?

Anti-Suffrage Arguments

• Voting would interfere with women’s duties at home• Voting would destroy families• Women did not have education or experience to be

competent voters• Most women did not want to vote• Liquor industry feared women would vote for prohibition• Business owners feared women would increase

regulation (safety, child labor)• Church groups argued men represented women, so

women did not need to vote

Two Organizations Merge

• NWSA and AWSA merged• National American Woman Suffrage

Association (NAWSA) 1890• Led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B.

Anthony • “Failure is impossible”- Anthony

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