tag:theconversation.com,2011:/au/topics/19th-amendment-50444/articles
19th Amendment – The Conversation
2021-03-11T13:29:54Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/156734
2021-03-11T13:29:54Z
2021-03-11T13:29:54Z
Deaf women fought for the right to vote
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/388912/original/file-20210310-21-pgesd1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=4%2C8%2C2830%2C1789&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Women protested outside the White House in 1917, seeking the right to vote.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/resource/mnwp.160022/">Harris & Ewing via Library of Congress</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>If Susan B. Anthony had a deaf sister, everyone would know that deaf suffragists fought tirelessly for expanding women’s right to vote, right alongside Anthony herself. Everyone would know deaf suffragists contributed to women’s emancipation in the United States and Britain and that they lived bold lives. </p>
<p>As a <a href="https://infoguides.rit.edu/prf.php?account_id=43304">researcher of deaf history</a>, including deaf women’s history, <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=hEvp7NIAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">I</a> work to illuminate the often hidden history of deaf people and their unique contributions to the world. I have unearthed historical information about deaf women suffragists and assembled it into an <a href="https://infoguides.rit.edu/deafsuffragists">online collection</a> chronicling what is known – so far – about these women and their lives.</p>
<p>Despite harsh, discriminatory conditions, low pay and lack of recognition, countless deaf women have fought with brilliance and dedication for personal and professional recognition, including for the right to vote.</p>
<h2>Underpaid and discriminated against</h2>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/388847/original/file-20210310-18-1get4g4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman in profile" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/388847/original/file-20210310-18-1get4g4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/388847/original/file-20210310-18-1get4g4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=843&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388847/original/file-20210310-18-1get4g4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=843&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388847/original/file-20210310-18-1get4g4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=843&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388847/original/file-20210310-18-1get4g4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1060&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388847/original/file-20210310-18-1get4g4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1060&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388847/original/file-20210310-18-1get4g4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1060&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Annie Jump Cannon, deaf woman, astronomer and suffragist.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Annie_Jump_Cannon_1922_Portrait.jpg">New York World-Telegram and the Sun Newspaper via Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
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<p>Annie Jump Cannon was a pioneering astronomer. Born in 1863, she experienced progressive hearing loss starting at a young age. <a href="https://www.encyclopedia.com/people/science-and-technology/astronomy-biographies/annie-jump-cannon">One of the first women</a> from Delaware to attend college, she was her class valedictorian when she graduated from Wellesley College, where she excelled in the sciences and mathematics.</p>
<p>In 1896, she was hired as a “woman computer” at the Harvard College Observatory, along with another prominent deaf astronomer, <a href="https://www.aavso.org/henrietta-leavitt-%E2%80%93-celebrating-forgotten-astronomer">Henrietta Swan Leavitt</a>.</p>
<p>The work involved looking at photos of stars and calculating their brightness, position and color. The two were paid between 25 and 50 cents an hour – half the rate paid to men doing similar work. </p>
<p>Nevertheless, Cannon is credited with cataloging 350,000 stars. Building on others’ work, Cannon revolutionized and refined a <a href="https://astronomy.swin.edu.au/cosmos/H/Harvard+Spectral+Classification">system to rank stars from hottest to coolest</a> that is still used today by the International Astronomical Union, though it is named for Harvard, not for her.</p>
<p>Cannon was a member of the <a href="https://www.nationalwomansparty.org/our-story">National Woman’s Party</a>, formed in 1916 to advocate for passage of the <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxix">19th Amendment</a> to the U.S. Constitution, <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/womens-history/19th-amendment-1">allowing women to vote</a>. Cannon’s suffragist efforts used her profession as a launchpad, as when she declared that “if women can organize the sky, we can organize the vote.” </p>
<p>She used her prominence to pave the way for women in the sciences, becoming the first woman to receive an honorary degree from Oxford University in 1925, and facing down eugenicists who <a href="https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Cannon/">blocked her from joining</a> the National Academy of Sciences because she was deaf. </p>
<p>In 1938, after 40 years of service, her role as “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-30400-7_235">the dean of women astronomers</a>” finally earned her a permanent faculty position at Harvard, where she worked until her death three years later. A lunar crater, Cannon, and an asteroid, Cannonia, are named for her.</p>
<h2>Two British women faced prison</h2>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/388861/original/file-20210310-15-q1c1h7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A black-and-white portrait of a woman" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/388861/original/file-20210310-15-q1c1h7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/388861/original/file-20210310-15-q1c1h7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388861/original/file-20210310-15-q1c1h7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388861/original/file-20210310-15-q1c1h7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388861/original/file-20210310-15-q1c1h7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388861/original/file-20210310-15-q1c1h7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388861/original/file-20210310-15-q1c1h7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Helen Kirkpatrick Watts, a deaf suffragist.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.nottinghampost.com/news/history/nottingham-suffragette-helen-watts-honoured-2246730">Nottingham Post</a></span>
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<p>British deaf suffragist Helen K. Watts, born in 1881, was a militant member of the radical Women’s Social and Political Union who demonstrated at Parliament in 1909 <a href="https://www.lentontimes.co.uk/back_issues/issue_7/issue_7_19.htm">for the women’s vote</a>. After one protest that year, she was arrested and imprisoned – but began a 90-hour hunger strike that resulted in her release. As she left, she declared:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“The Suffragettes have come out of the drawing-room, the study and the debating hall, and the committee rooms of Members of Parliament, to appeal to the real sovereign power of the country – the people.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>In 1913, she left the more violent group and joined the nonviolent Women’s Freedom League, also <a href="https://spartacus-educational.com/WwattsH.htm">seeking women’s right to vote</a>.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/388909/original/file-20210310-22-k2dqgw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman sitting with a book on her lap" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/388909/original/file-20210310-22-k2dqgw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/388909/original/file-20210310-22-k2dqgw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=824&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388909/original/file-20210310-22-k2dqgw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=824&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388909/original/file-20210310-22-k2dqgw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=824&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388909/original/file-20210310-22-k2dqgw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1035&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388909/original/file-20210310-22-k2dqgw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1035&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388909/original/file-20210310-22-k2dqgw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1035&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">British suffragist Kate Harvey did not want to pay taxes unless she was allowed to vote.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://irp-cdn.multiscreensite.com/54afefd4/files/uploaded/Kate%20Harvey1862%20-%201946%20%282018_03_19%2016_01_39%20UTC%29.pdf">Ann Donnelly</a></span>
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<p>One of her sister leaders in the Women’s Freedom League was British deaf suffragist Kate Harvey. Harvey believed in <a href="https://www.newspapers.com/clip/14118761/womens-tax-resistance-movement-the/">not paying taxes</a> until <a href="https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/library-rnid/2018/03/16/a-deaf-suffragist-kate-harvey-1862-1946/the-globe-1911/">women were granted the vote</a> – which resulted in authorities breaking into her home to arrest and imprison her in 1913.</p>
<h2>A silent voice in print</h2>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/388853/original/file-20210310-14-15e7i7g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman in profile" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/388853/original/file-20210310-14-15e7i7g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/388853/original/file-20210310-14-15e7i7g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=743&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388853/original/file-20210310-14-15e7i7g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=743&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388853/original/file-20210310-14-15e7i7g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=743&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388853/original/file-20210310-14-15e7i7g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=934&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388853/original/file-20210310-14-15e7i7g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=934&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388853/original/file-20210310-14-15e7i7g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=934&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Laura Redden Searing, deaf journalist and feminist activist.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Searing.JPG">C.W. Moulton, The Magazine For Poetry via Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
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<p>Laura Redden Searing, born in 1840, was a gifted American poet, newspaper reporter and writer – often using the male pseudonym Howard Glyndon so her work would be taken more seriously. Deafened by illness as a child, she entered the Missouri School for the Deaf when she was 15 years old and learned sign language, graduating in 1858, writing an address and “farewell poem” that was published in the <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/mighty-change-an-anthology-of-deaf-american-writing-1816-1864/oclc/1060941147">American Annals of the Deaf</a>. </p>
<p>When communicating with nonsigners, she wrote with a pencil and pad – with which she conducted countless interviews over many years as a reporter and writer.</p>
<p>In 1860, Searing became the earliest deaf woman journalist, writing for the St. Louis Republican, whose editors sent her to Washington in September 1861. There, she cultivated friendships with prominent leaders and interviewed Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, soldiers on the battlefield, and President Abraham Lincoln. She also met future Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth, and taught him fingerspelling, a manual alphabet that is used in sign language.</p>
<p>When the Civil War ended in 1865, she traveled to Europe and picked up reading and writing in French, German, Spanish and Italian. She continued writing news stories for the St. Louis Republican and The New York Times. Returning to the United States in 1870, Searing <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/gallaudet-encyclopedia-of-deaf-people-and-deafness/oclc/442722727">wrote on a wide variety of topics</a> for the New York Evening Mail and other newspapers and magazines. Searing had a literary circle of admiring friends who supported her work. She also contributed articles and poems to the popular national <a href="https://gaislandora.wrlc.org/islandora/object/gaislandora%3A90">Silent Worker newspaper</a>, published by the New Jersey School for the Deaf. </p>
<p>[<em>More than 150,000 readers get one of The Conversation’s informative newsletters.</em> <a href="https://memberservices.theconversation.com/newsletters/?source=inline-150K">Join the list today</a>.]</p>
<p>She was a feminist who wrote about women’s issues such as unequal pay and <a href="https://wordgathering.com/past_issues/issue49/essays/christie.html">women’s sexuality</a>. She also <a href="https://archive.org/details/JulAug95/page/n9/mode/2up">explained her support</a> for an 1872 campaign for women’s right to vote with an analogy to the freeing of the slaves after the Civil War:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“<a href="https://archive.org/stream/JulAug95/Jul-Aug95_djvu.txt">I believe I am called upon</a> to sign this petition in conformation with that clause of our constitution which recognizes the equal rights of all human beings of lawful age and sound mind without regard to sex, color, or social condition. Having decided that black people do not belong to white ones, why not go a step farther and decide that women do not belong to men unless the proprietorship be recognized as mutual?”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In 1981, Searing was dubbed “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogrVm2tXWks">the first deaf women’s libber</a>” by <a href="https://store.usps.com/store/product/buy-stamps/robert-panara-S_114004">Robert F. Panara</a>, the first deaf professor of Deaf Studies at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf, because of her pioneering work in the journalism field and her fierce independence as a woman who did not accept restrictions, nor follow expected traditions.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/156734/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joan Marie Naturale does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Despite harsh, discriminatory conditions, low pay and lack of appreciation, deaf women have fought with brilliance and dedication for personal and professional recognition, including the right to vote.
Joan Marie Naturale, Reference Librarian, National Technical Institute for the Deaf, Rochester Institute of Technology Libraries, Rochester Institute of Technology
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/144323
2020-08-19T12:18:43Z
2020-08-19T12:18:43Z
Suffragists used hunger strikes as a powerful tool of resistance – a tactic still employed by protesters 100 years on
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353454/original/file-20200818-16-jx3009.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=50%2C33%2C2741%2C2004&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Suffragists march from New York to Washington D.C. in 1913.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Associated-Press-Domestic-News-United-States-WO-/9ee531bb9ae5da11af9f0014c2589dfb/48/0">AP Photo</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Asylum seekers held in detention by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in California have launched a series of <a href="https://www.democracynow.org/2020/8/4/ice_jails_hunger_strikes">hunger strikes</a> to demand <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/using-ppe.html">personal protective equipment</a>, medical care and provisional release as COVID-19 cases surge among incarcerated populations. </p>
<p>In Kentucky, four activists went on a 25-day <a href="https://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/local/breonna-taylor/2020/08/14/breonna-taylor-hunger-strikers-end-protest-after-25-days/5585009002/">hunger strike</a> <a href="https://www.facebook.com/hungerstrikersforbreonna">seeking justice for Breonna Taylor</a>, the African American woman police officers killed in her home in March 2020. </p>
<p>As Americans celebrate the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, which granted women the right to vote in <a href="https://museum.archives.gov/rightfully-hers">August 1920</a>, these protesters and many others owe a debt of gratitude to the militant suffragists who elevated the hunger strike as a powerful form of protest.</p>
<h2>The hunger strike</h2>
<p>The prison system, as it developed in the second half of the <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/55026/discipline-and-punish-by-michel-foucault-and-alan-sheridan/">19th century</a>, rendered prisoners largely invisible to the outside world. </p>
<p>Imprisoned hunger strikers and their supporters outside the prison gates made visible what was invisible. As a <a href="https://arts-sciences.buffalo.edu/history/faculty/faculty-directory.host.html/content/shared/arts-sciences/history/profiles/wolcott-victoria.html">historian</a> of American social movements, I have studied the origins of this tactic.</p>
<p>Although there were earlier examples of hunger strikes in early modern Europe and Russia, Marion Dunlop, a British suffragist, carried out the first modern-day hunger strike in 1909 in London’s <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-militant-suffrage-movement-9780197531037?cc=us&lang=en&">Holloway Prison</a>.</p>
<p>In both Great Britain and North America, the immediate motivation for suffragists to embark on hunger strikes was the demand to be considered a political prisoner. Political prisoners had more rights than other prisoners and were not considered <a href="https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9780312218539">merely criminals</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
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<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An illustration showing prison wardens force-feeding a hunger striking suffragette in Holloway Prison.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/an-illustration-showing-prison-wardens-force-feeding-a-news-photo/613455944?adppopup=true">Photo by © Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Dunlop and other suffragists sought public sympathy when they refused to eat, playing on popular ideas that white female bodies were vulnerable and passive. Hunger strikers made their starving bodies a form of speech that could breach <a href="https://broadviewpress.com/product/literature-of-the-womens-suffrage-campaign-in-england/">prison walls</a> through testimonials, picketing and protests.</p>
<p>That sympathy increased when suffragists like Dunlop were routinely subjected to brutal force-feedings. Initially devised to feed patients in asylums, force-feeding often damaged suffragists’ teeth, gums and throat. In some cases, when food went into lungs, it even <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09612020701627977">resulted in pneumonia</a>. </p>
<p>One suffragist, <a href="https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783319311128">Mary Leigh</a>, who was forcibly fed in 1909 after her arrest protesting for women’s suffrage, recalled the horror of the experience. She <a href="https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783319311128">wrote</a>: “The sensation is most painful – the drums of the ear seem to be bursting, a horrible pain in the throat and the breast. The tube is pushed down 20 inches … I resist and am overcome.”</p>
<p>Suffragists argued that their rough handling and force-feeding revealed the brutality of the government. After their release, Dunlop, Leigh and others wrote prison narratives and spoke at rallies to encourage other women to follow their <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Spectacular_Confessions.html?id=rLEdBAeINvEC">example</a> and join the movement. </p>
<h2>American suffragists</h2>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353458/original/file-20200818-22-1vzyoaq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353458/original/file-20200818-22-1vzyoaq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353458/original/file-20200818-22-1vzyoaq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353458/original/file-20200818-22-1vzyoaq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353458/original/file-20200818-22-1vzyoaq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353458/original/file-20200818-22-1vzyoaq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=614&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353458/original/file-20200818-22-1vzyoaq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=614&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353458/original/file-20200818-22-1vzyoaq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=614&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Suffragist Alice Paul.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://cdn.loc.gov/service/pnp/npcc/01200/01205r.jpg">Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These narratives soon reached American ears, and by the 1910s some American suffragists adopted the more militant <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300042283/grounding-modern-feminism">British tactics</a>, rather than the lobbying and polite protests of earlier decades. They were led by <a href="https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/alice-paul">Alice Paul</a>, the author of the Equal Rights Amendment, who had spent time in England learning from her <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Alice_Paul.html?id=Xit8AwAAQBAJ">British counterparts</a>. </p>
<p>When arrested for offenses such as obstructing traffic during demonstrations or chaining themselves to the White House fence, suffragists began their own hunger strikes. They too were <a href="https://www.blackdogandleventhal.com/titles/doris-stevens/jailed-for-freedom/9780762496938/">forcibly fed</a>. </p>
<p>Perhaps the most spectacular attempt to bring publicity to the hunger strikers was undertaken by American journalist <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Djuna-Barnes">Djuna Barnes</a>. In 1914 Barnes staged a forcible feeding to demonstrate the brutality of the process. The staged event was covered by New York World Magazine and both horrified and fascinated readers. </p>
<p>Photographs of her experience appeared beside <a href="https://digital.lib.umd.edu/image?pid=umd:91977">her article</a> in which she stated that she “shared the greatest experience of the bravest of my sex.”</p>
<p>This form of performative journalism brought the spectacle of physical punishment outside the prison walls to the American public. </p>
<h2>International repercussions</h2>
<p>Suffragists directly influenced the use of the hunger strike by British colonial subjects in Ireland and India. When Marion Dunlop was released from prison after her hunger strike in 1909, she gave a <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9780203714638">public speech</a> attended by a visiting Indian lawyer, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. </p>
<p>Male Irish Republicans employed hunger strikes after the <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/british-history/easter-rising">1916 Easter Rising</a> against British rule – some four years after female suffragists in the country employed the same tactic. The Republican men, however, did not acknowledge the <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674331082">precedent set by women</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353460/original/file-20200818-20-s67hia.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353460/original/file-20200818-20-s67hia.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353460/original/file-20200818-20-s67hia.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353460/original/file-20200818-20-s67hia.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353460/original/file-20200818-20-s67hia.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=549&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353460/original/file-20200818-20-s67hia.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=549&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353460/original/file-20200818-20-s67hia.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=549&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Gandhi on hunger strike in 1933.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/the-mahatma-gandhi-in-india-on-march-24-1933-during-his-news-photo/104418419?adppopup=true">Photo by Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the West, Gandhi’s emaciated and frail body came to symbolize the spectacle of a colonized India seeking its freedom through <a href="https://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/13359.html">nonviolence</a>. In the United States, civil rights activists like <a href="https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/rustin-bayard">Bayard Rustin</a> began using Gandhi’s tactic of nonviolent direct action by the early 1940s. </p>
<p>During World War II, Rustin and other male pacifists served in Civilian Public Service camps, which offered an alternative to military service, or, in some cases, in prison. Imprisoned pacifists launched <a href="https://www.kentstateuniversitypress.com/2010/a-few-small-candles/">hunger strikes</a> to protest racial segregation and mistreatment. Many of the pacifists suffered painful force-feeding by <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Pacifism_in_the_Twentieth_Century.html?id=C20WAQAAIAAJ">prison authorities</a>. </p>
<h2>Pacifism and hunger strike</h2>
<p>While during the war years male pacifists took center stage, at the war’s end Black and white women began to actively engage in nonviolent direct action. Radical pacifist women routinely used <a href="https://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/14288.html">hunger strikes</a> as a form of protest.</p>
<p>An African American women, Eroseanna Robinson, exemplifies this trend. She was a member of the Peacemakers, a radical pacifist organization that practiced civil disobedience and tax refusal and took to hunger strikes when in <a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9780807859384/kingdom-to-commune/">jail</a>.</p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>In 1960, when Robinson was arrested for not paying her taxes, she practiced total noncompliance and refused to submit to what she perceived as undemocratic and coercive power. During her year of imprisonment, Robinson refused all nourishment and suffered <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Cold_War_and_The_Income_Tax.html?id=H04ll_yq7NgC">painful force-feedings</a>. </p>
<p>Robinson’s ability to control her own body through self-discipline gave her the strength she needed to endure months of fasting and force-feeding. And as in the case of the suffragists, Robinson’s defiance revealed the brutality of the <a href="https://www.swarthmore.edu/library/peace/CDGA.M-R/Peacemakers.html">state</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353461/original/file-20200818-20-1q308i7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353461/original/file-20200818-20-1q308i7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353461/original/file-20200818-20-1q308i7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353461/original/file-20200818-20-1q308i7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353461/original/file-20200818-20-1q308i7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353461/original/file-20200818-20-1q308i7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353461/original/file-20200818-20-1q308i7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A memorial to Breonna Taylor in Portland, Oregon. In Kentucky, four activists went on a hunger strike.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/memorial-to-breonna-taylor-is-seen-here-during-a-black-news-photo/1227888691?adppopup=true">Photo by Nathan Howard/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Pacifists and civil rights activists who engaged in hunger strikes were directly indebted to the suffragists who had preceded them. These activists used their bodies to subvert the prison system. </p>
<p>Today, prisoners and those fighting for racial justice are attempting much the same to bring attention and a measure of justice to the suffering world.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/144323/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Victoria W. Wolcott does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
As Americans celebrate the legacy of the 19th Amendment, which granted women the right to vote, it is also a moment to acknowledge how suffragists first used hunger strike as a form of protest.
Victoria W. Wolcott, Professor of History, University at Buffalo
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/139453
2020-06-29T12:10:21Z
2020-06-29T12:10:21Z
As professional sports come back, members of the US women’s soccer team are still paid less than the men’s
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/343077/original/file-20200621-43214-bwdauh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Fans rally for the U.S. women's soccer team.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/fans-with-an-equal-play-equal-pay-banner-supporting-the-news-photo/520040916?adppopup=true">Tim Clayton/Corbis via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The U.S. women’s soccer team reported being “<a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/05/02/849492863/federal-judge-dismisses-u-s-womens-soccer-team-s-equal-pay-claim">shocked and disappointed</a>” by a federal judge’s dismissal in May of the team’s lawsuit against the U.S. Soccer Federation.</p>
<p>The lawsuit alleged discriminatory pay practices by the federation between its men’s and women’s team, which seemed especially unfair because the women’s team was so successful compared to the men’s team. The U.S. women’s soccer team dominated the <a href="https://time.com/5620124/team-usa-womens-world-cup-final/">2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup</a> tournament last summer, taking a record fourth World Cup title.</p>
<p>The U.S. <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/2017/10/10/usmnt-world-cup-qualification-trinidad-tobago/752568001/">men’s soccer team</a>, on the other hand, failed to qualify for the World Cup in 2018. </p>
<p>On June 24, the federal judge denied the women’s team request to <a href="https://www.si.com/soccer/2020/06/24/uswnt-equal-pay-case-judgment-appeal-delay-us-soccer">immediately appeal</a> their equal pay claim. Members of the U.S. women’s soccer team are the first professional athletes in the United States to return to sports when the National Women’s Soccer League began its <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2020/06/25/nwsl-challenge-cup-opens-this-weekend-making-womens-soccer-first-us-team-sport-back/">Challenge Cup</a> on June 27.</p>
<p><a href="https://kelley.iu.edu/faculty-research/faculty-directory/profile.cshtml?id=JMAGID">I study</a> employment <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ablj.12082">discrimination and inclusion</a> – and I wasn’t as surprised as the members of the women’s team. That’s because their claims were made under the <a href="https://www.eeoc.gov/statutes/equal-pay-act-1963">Equal Pay Act</a> and <a href="https://www.eeoc.gov/statutes/title-vii-civil-rights-act-1964#:%7E:text=L.%2088%2D352">Title VII</a> of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.</p>
<p>Despite the purpose of the laws – protecting employees from discrimination in the workplace based on specific characteristics – both are particularly hard to use to prove pay discrimination.</p>
<p>The EPA rejects deviations in responsibilities – for example, the deviation in the women playing more games – and Title VII requires a “similarly situated” individual, or someone who has the same situation as the women soccer team but are paid better. These evidentiary requirements often work to undermine gender pay discrimination claims.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/343079/original/file-20200621-43229-q20tzk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/343079/original/file-20200621-43229-q20tzk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=320&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/343079/original/file-20200621-43229-q20tzk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=320&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/343079/original/file-20200621-43229-q20tzk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=320&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/343079/original/file-20200621-43229-q20tzk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/343079/original/file-20200621-43229-q20tzk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/343079/original/file-20200621-43229-q20tzk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">John F. Kennedy signs the Equal Pay Act into law.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_Pay_Act_of_1963#/media/File:American_Association_of_University_Women_members_with_President_John_F._Kennedy_as_he_signs_the_Equal_Pay_Act_into_law.jpg">Abbie Rowe/JFK Presidential Library and Museum</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The history of women’s rights</h2>
<p>Both the Equal Pay Act and Title VII evolved out of a conflict between women’s role in the workplace and women’s role in the family.</p>
<p>This year marks <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/15/arts/design/womens-suffrage-movement.html">100 years</a> since the ratification of the 19th Amendment gave women the right to vote. The suffrage movement is early evidence of the conflict between those who supported a role for women outside the home and the <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/npr-history-dept/2015/10/22/450221328/american-women-who-were-anti-suffragettes">anti-suffragists</a> who were concerned about the loss of privilege for women and elevated status of motherhood if they became embroiled in politics. </p>
<p>Similar concerns were expressed in the 1908 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1900-1940/208us412">Muller v. Oregon</a>. The court endorsed limiting the role of women in the workplace, emphasizing the protection of women for the larger purpose of preserving the “well‐being of the race.” As a result, states were permitted to enact a range of laws that restricted women’s ability to work outside the home in a way that men were not restricted.</p>
<p>Women did not voluntarily enter the workforce in large numbers until during World War II. When this happened, the prevailing policy of protective legislation drew more detractors. </p>
<p>[<em>Get the best of The Conversation, every weekend.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/weekly-highlights-61?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=weeklybest">Sign up for our weekly newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>The idea of equal rights began to receive more attention as the language of the Equal Rights Amendment, originally drafted in 1923, gained additional support. The notion of equality for women in the workplace advanced in public policy discussions when President John F. Kennedy established the <a href="https://www.nacw.org/history.html">Commission on the Status of Woman</a> in 1961, appointing Eleanor Roosevelt as the chairwoman. </p>
<p>The final report of the commission, often referred to as the <a href="https://guides.library.harvard.edu/schlesinger_presidents_commission_on_the_status_of_women">Peterson Report</a> after <a href="https://www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/documents/report_of_the_presidents_commission_on_the_status_of_women_background_content_significance.pdf">Esther Peterson</a>, assistant secretary of labor and director of the U.S. Women’s Bureau, was published in 1963. Although the Peterson Report avoided the most controversial issue of the day, the Equal Rights Amendment, it nonetheless chose the path of moving away from protecting women’s position in the home as mothers and toward equality.</p>
<p>After documenting discrimination against women’s full participation in the workplace, the Peterson Report made several key recommendations, including equal employment opportunity, paid maternity leave and affordable childcare.</p>
<h2>Equal pay for equal work</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://www.eeoc.gov/statutes/equal-pay-act-1963">Equal Pay Act</a>, enacted in 1963, is the first federal legislation reflecting the equal employment opportunities advocated by the commission.</p>
<p>The EPA prohibits discrimination based on gender in wages paid for the same job. Determining when jobs are the same is often when it becomes difficult, as was the case in the U.S. women’s soccer team case.</p>
<p>As described in the law, “equal work” means “the performance of which requires equal skill, effort, and responsibility, and which are performed under similar working conditions.” For the soccer teams, collective bargaining agreements negotiated between the players’ associations and U.S. Soccer created significantly different pay structures with significantly different job requirements, such as number of games played.</p>
<p>Even absent the soccer teams’ collective bargaining agreements, the EPA has a number of exceptions to its equal pay mandate.</p>
<p>Exceptions to equal pay include, “a seniority system; a merit system; a system which measures earnings by quantity or quality of production; or a differential based on any other factor other than sex.” This final “<a href="https://www.nwlc.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/FactorOtherThanSex.pdf">any factor other than sex</a>” is often used by courts to determine that the pay disparity between jobs is nondiscriminatory.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/343078/original/file-20200621-43209-2qfo0q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/343078/original/file-20200621-43209-2qfo0q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/343078/original/file-20200621-43209-2qfo0q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/343078/original/file-20200621-43209-2qfo0q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/343078/original/file-20200621-43209-2qfo0q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/343078/original/file-20200621-43209-2qfo0q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/343078/original/file-20200621-43209-2qfo0q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The U.S. women’s soccer team plays Mexico.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/crystal-dunn-of-united-states-tries-to-break-free-from-news-photo/1232168378?adppopup=true">Ira L. Black/Corbis via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Unequal pay as wage discrimination</h2>
<p>Congress enacted Title VII in 1964 to address employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex and national origin. Title VII continued the concept of equality to mean that of “sameness.”</p>
<p>To prove their claim of wage discrimination, the women’s soccer team had to identify men who were <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/ericbachman/2019/04/01/who-is-a-similarly-situated-employee-in-an-employment-discrimination-case/#79f1b2633d6e">“similarly situated”</a> to them but paid better, a “comparator” to show that their pay was discriminatory.</p>
<p>Since the men’s soccer team was determined by the court to not be “similarly situated” to the women’s soccer team in pay based on collective bargaining agreements and different requirements for games and friendlies – such as exhibition matches – the pay claim failed.</p>
<p>The judge allowed two claims of discrimination made by the women’s soccer team against their employer, the U.S. Soccer Federation, to continue to trial. The women’s team identified different treatment than the men’s team in travel conditions – specifically charter flights and hotel accommodations – and medical and training support.</p>
<h2>What about now?</h2>
<p>Though Congress adopted a path of equality in both the EPA and Title VII,
in the decades that followed, “any factor other than sex” meant nonperformance-based factors such as differences in academic degrees led to dismissal of EPA claims and an inability to find the same or <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/ericbachman/2019/04/01/who-is-a-similarly-situated-employee-in-an-employment-discrimination-case/#7fb60c983d6e">“similarly situated”</a> individual – because of differences in supervisors, job evaluations or discipline records – became a barrier to equal pay under Title VII. This has allowed the <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/03/22/gender-pay-gap-facts/">gender pay gap</a> to remain almost 60 years after the EPA and Title VII became law.</p>
<p>The gap is more pronounced for women who have children, often referred to as the “<a href="https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/compensation/pages/wage-gap-is-wider-for-working-mothers.aspx">motherhood penalty.</a>”</p>
<p>I would argue that the focus on “sameness” in equality has failed to offer progress in building diversity and inclusion in organizations, including addressing the wage gap. A normative workplace is one that does not recognize differences in how someone can be successful.</p>
<p>All people are not the same and organizations that <a href="https://sproutsocial.com/adapt/diversity-equality-inclusion/">level the playing field</a> offer different people different tools or support to succeed. A stand-up desk for one and a left handed workstation for another, for example. </p>
<p>Leveling the playing field generates equity. Given the evidentiary requirements of the EPA and Title VII, a level playing field has not happened through federal legislation but many organizations now promote a culture of <a href="https://www.siliconrepublic.com/careers/equity-equality-diverse-workforce-hubspot">equity</a>. </p>
<p>The four-time World Cup champions U.S. women’s soccer team created renewed awareness about the intransigence of gender pay discrimination and the dismissal of its pay claim in the federal court highlights the limits of current legislation but should further the discussion of equity. This would mean avoiding one-size-fits-all workplaces and rewarding those who respond with dominating performances.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/139453/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julie Manning Magid does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
A scholar explains why the players are having so much trouble with their equal pay claim.
Julie Manning Magid, Professor of Business Law, IUPUI
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/134517
2020-06-08T12:25:34Z
2020-06-08T12:25:34Z
19 facts about the 19th Amendment on its 100th anniversary
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/337968/original/file-20200527-20219-pzyofi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=185%2C1149%2C7971%2C4165&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Women portraying suffragettes walk with the Pasadena Celebrates 2020 float at the 131st Rose Parade in Pasadena, California, Wednesday, Jan. 1, 2020. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Rose-Parade/9e774400ab8f45be85d0a17bb0df94c8/13/0">AP Photo/Michael Owen Baker</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>One hundred years ago, the 19th Amendment enfranchised millions of women across the United States following a seven-decade campaign. The struggle to expand voting rights to women resonates today as the country continues to debate who should vote and how. </p>
<p>As <a href="https://cattcenter.iastate.edu/directory/karen-m-kedrowski/">scholars</a> <a href="https://cattcenter.iastate.edu/directory/dianne-bystrom/">of</a> <a href="https://cattcenter.iastate.edu/2019/01/14/introduction-from-director-karen-kedrowski/">civic engagement</a> and <a href="https://products.abc-clio.com/abc-cliocorporate/product.aspx?pc=A4580C">women’s suffrage</a>, we have compiled “19 Things to Know” about this landmark amendment. Together they reveal the strength and determination of the suffrage movement as it battled for this fundamental right of citizenship.</p>
<p><strong>1.</strong>
Many early <a href="https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/not-for-ourselves-alone/abolition-suffrage">suffragists were also abolitionists</a>. They include <a href="https://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/14850.html">Lucretia Mott</a>, <a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/44gqy8bm9780252071737.html">Elizabeth Cady Stanton</a>, <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/20439/20439-h/20439-h.htm">Susan B. Anthony</a>, <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/lucy-stone-9780199778393?cc=us&lang=en&">Lucy Stone</a>, <a href="https://products.abc-clio.com/abc-cliocorporate/product.aspx?pc=B6198C">Sojourner Truth</a>, <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00064246.1973.11760855">Frederick Douglass</a> and <a href="https://products.abc-clio.com/abc-cliocorporate/product.aspx?pc=B4127C">Harriet Tubman</a>. </p>
<p><strong>2.</strong>
The first women’s rights convention took place in <a href="https://www.nps.gov/articles/flexing-feminine-muscles-strategies-and-conflicts.htm">Seneca Falls, New York</a>, on July 19-20, 1848. Of the 11 resolutions demanding equality – in the workplace, family and education, for example – only women’s right to vote drew opposition before it was approved. Although abolitionists had called for women’s voting rights before 1848, suffragists later viewed the convention as launching the U.S. women’s suffrage movement. </p>
<p><strong>3.</strong>
In 1869 the movement <a href="https://www.nps.gov/articles/comrades-in-conflict.htm">split</a> over disagreements about the <a href="https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/amendment/amendment-xv">15th Amendment</a>, which granted voting rights to African American men but not women.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/national-woman-suffrage-association-3530492">National Woman Suffrage Association</a> lobbied for a federal amendment, while the <a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/american-woman-suffrage-association-3530477">American Woman Suffrage Association</a> pursued a state-by-state strategy. Recognizing that a divided movement was hurting their success, the groups merged in 1890 as the <a href="https://www.crusadeforthevote.org/nawsa-united">National American Woman Suffrage Association</a>, or NAWSA. </p>
<p><strong>4.</strong>
Suffrage was a mass movement with diverse voices. They included the <a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/national-association-of-colored-women-45392">National Association of Colored Women</a>, the <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/womens-history/womans-christian-temperance-union">Woman’s Christian Temperance Union</a>, <a href="https://ir.uiowa.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=9670&context=annals-of-iowa">farmers’ organizations</a> and the <a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/womens-trade-union-league-wtul-3530838">Women’s Trade Union League</a>. Most of these organizations became active in suffrage after the creation of NAWSA. </p>
<p><strong>5.</strong>
Women’s suffrage depended on male supporters, among them state legislators and members of Congress. Only men could vote in state referenda to extend the vote to women. Men did so in <a href="https://nyupress.org/9780814757222/how-the-vote-was-won/">Colorado</a>, <a href="https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501705557/women-will-vote/#bookTabs=1">New York</a> and <a href="https://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry.php?entry=SU002">Oklahoma</a>. Meanwhile, <a href="https://uwpress.wisc.edu/books/0399.htm">thousands of women</a> opposed suffrage. They thought it would undermine women’s influence in the home and family. </p>
<p><strong>6.</strong>
Several political and social movements during the <a href="http://www.crusadeforthevote.org/progressive-era-reformers">Progressive Era</a>, 1890-1920, prioritized suffrage. Women realized they needed voting rights to reform child labor laws, promote public health, and prohibit alcohol and prostitution. These suffragists framed their roles, as wives and mothers, as political virtues to advance a more moral government. </p>
<p><strong>7.</strong>
Besides the leadership provided by the national women’s suffrage associations, hundreds of local and state organizations engaged thousands of volunteers as well. Some of the earliest state associations were organized in <a href="https://www.kshs.org/kansapedia/women-s-suffrage/14524">Kansas</a> in 1867, <a href="http://sdrc.lib.uiowa.edu/exhibits/suffrage/IAWomenSuffrage.pdf">Iowa</a> in 1870 and <a href="https://www.sos.wa.gov/elections/timeline/suffrage.htm">Washington state</a> in 1871. </p>
<p><strong>8.</strong>
African American women reformers saw suffrage as an important goal. They began forming their own clubs in the 1880s and founded the <a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/national-association-of-colored-women-45392">National Association of Colored Women</a> in 1896. Unlike predominantly white suffrage organizations, the NACW called for other reforms to address the economic, educational and social welfare of African American women and children, such as job training programs, fair wages and child care. </p>
<p><strong>9.</strong>
Millions of women enjoyed the right to vote before the 19th Amendment was ratified. Women had full voting rights in 15 states and the Alaska territory, and limited suffrage, including voting in presidential elections, in another 12 states <a href="https://constitutioncenter.org/timeline/html/cw08_12159.html">before 1920</a>. Their influence helped build momentum for the 19th Amendment. </p>
<p><strong>10.</strong>
In 1913 <a href="https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/alice-paul">Alice Paul</a> organized NAWSA’s first women’s suffrage <a href="https://www.nps.gov/articles/woman-suffrage-procession1913.htm">parade</a> in Washington, D.C. The police failed to provide the suffragists with adequate protection, and spectators attacked the marchers. Paul formed a rival suffrage organization, the <a href="https://www.loc.gov/collections/women-of-protest/articles-and-essays/historical-overview-of-the-national-womans-party/">National Woman’s Party</a>, in 1916.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/339319/original/file-20200602-133919-bi2js0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/339319/original/file-20200602-133919-bi2js0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/339319/original/file-20200602-133919-bi2js0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=456&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339319/original/file-20200602-133919-bi2js0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=456&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339319/original/file-20200602-133919-bi2js0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=456&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339319/original/file-20200602-133919-bi2js0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=573&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339319/original/file-20200602-133919-bi2js0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=573&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339319/original/file-20200602-133919-bi2js0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=573&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Alice Paul, 1920, celebrating the passage of the 19th Amendment.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/alice-paul-1920-celebrating-the-passage-of-the-19th-news-photo/646458988?adppopup=true">Photo12/Universal Images Group via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>11.</strong>
In a speech titled “<a href="https://awpc.cattcenter.iastate.edu/2017/03/21/the-crisis-sept-7-1916/">The Crisis</a>” at NAWSA’s 1916 convention, president <a href="https://awpc.cattcenter.iastate.edu/directory/carrie-chapman-catt/">Carrie Chapman Catt</a> outlined her “Winning Plan” to focus efforts on a federal amendment while encouraging women to work in their states for the level of suffrage that could be achieved. </p>
<p><strong>12.</strong>
In 1916 <a href="https://upcolorado.com/university-press-of-colorado/item/1790-jeannette-rankin">Jeannette Rankin</a>, a Republican from Montana, became the first woman elected to the U.S. Congress. Lawmakers greeted her with a <a href="https://history.house.gov/People/Listing/R/RANKIN,-Jeannette-(R000055)/">standing ovation</a> when she was introduced in the House of Representatives. A committed suffragist, Rankin voted for the 19th Amendment in 1918. </p>
<p><strong>13.</strong>
In 1917 the National Woman’s Party organized <a href="https://www.si.edu/newsdesk/snapshot/alice-paul-and-suffragists-were-first-picket-white-house">protests</a> outside the White House to pressure President Woodrow Wilson to support women’s suffrage. For several months, suffragists protested in silence six days a week. Wilson initially <a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/president-woodrow-wilson-picketed-by-women-suffragists">tolerated</a> the demonstrations but later became embarrassed by them. </p>
<p><strong>14.</strong>
<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2017/11/10/night-of-terror-the-suffragists-who-were-beaten-and-tortured-for-seeking-the-vote/">Thirty-three suffragists</a> picketing outside the White House on Nov. 10, 1917, were arrested and jailed. They were fed maggot-infested food, beaten and tortured. The suffragists protested with a hunger strike and were <a href="https://depts.washington.edu/moves/NWP_project_ch3.shtml">brutally force-fed</a>. They were released after the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2017/11/10/night-of-terror-the-suffragists-who-were-beaten-and-tortured-for-seeking-the-vote/">Washington, D.C. Court of Appeals</a> declared their arrests unconstitutional. </p>
<p><strong>15.</strong>
The <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2015/09/15/carly-fiorinas-claim-that-the-gop-is-the-party-of-womens-suffrage/">Republican Party</a> was viewed as more supportive of women’s suffrage than Democrats until 1916, when both parties publicly supported state suffrage.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/People/Women/Part3_TheLastTrench.htm">Congress approved the 19th Amendment</a> in 1919 with bipartisan support: 83% percent of Republicans in the House and 82% in the Senate, and 53% of Democrats in the House and 54% in the Senate. Some Democrats from the South opposed voting rights for African American women.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/339586/original/file-20200603-130929-9p4n0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/339586/original/file-20200603-130929-9p4n0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/339586/original/file-20200603-130929-9p4n0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=846&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339586/original/file-20200603-130929-9p4n0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=846&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339586/original/file-20200603-130929-9p4n0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=846&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339586/original/file-20200603-130929-9p4n0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1063&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339586/original/file-20200603-130929-9p4n0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1063&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339586/original/file-20200603-130929-9p4n0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1063&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Carrie Chapman Catt, women’s suffrage leader and advocate for world peace, in the mid 1910s.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/mrs-carrie-chapman-catt-womens-suffrage-leader-and-advocate-news-photo/538789089?adppopup=true">PhotoQuest/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>16.</strong>
Carrie Chapman Catt founded the <a href="https://awpc.cattcenter.iastate.edu/2018/02/26/political-parties-and-women-voters-feb-14-1920/">League of Women Voters</a> on Feb. 14, 1920, at the NAWSA convention. <a href="https://www.nps.gov/articles/tennessee-women-s-history.htm">Tennessee</a> became the final state needed to ratify the 19th Amendment six months later.</p>
<p><strong>17.</strong>
Some 500,000 African American women could vote in states where their male counterparts were enfranchised, according to the <a href="https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/decennial-census/decade.1920.html">1920 U.S. Census</a>. But in the South, African American men and women remained disenfranchised through state-imposed literacy tests, poll taxes and violence. </p>
<p>African American women continued the fight for voting rights. In 1920 <a href="https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/mary-mcleod-bethune">Mary McLeod Bethune</a> of Florida led voter registration drives while risking racist attacks. <a href="https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/fannie-lou-hamer">Fannie Lou Hamer</a> of Mississippi organized African American voter registration efforts in the South in the early 1960s. The <a href="https://www.archives.gov/legislative/features/voting-rights-1965">Voting Rights Act</a> of 1965 outlawed discriminatory voting barriers adopted in many Southern states after the Civil War. </p>
<p><strong>18.</strong>
Some 10 million women <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/century-of-votes-for-women/773D75DD40FA858F0412D8F2EE322B5C">voted in 1920</a>, a turnout rate of 36%, compared to 68% for men. Women voter turnout rates have gradually increased and exceeded male turnout rates since 1980, when 61.9% of women voted compared to 61.5% of men. <a href="https://cawp.rutgers.edu/sites/default/files/resources/genderdiff.pdf">In 2016</a>, 63.3% of women voted compared to 59.3% of men. </p>
<p><strong>19.</strong>
In January <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/15/us/era-virginia-vote.html">Virginia</a> became the 38th state to ratify the <a href="https://www.equalrightsamendment.org/">Equal Rights Amendment</a>, following Nevada, in 2017; and Illinois, in 2018. The ERA was first introduced to Congress in 1923, approved in 1972 and ratified by 35 out of constitutionally required 38 states by 1974. </p>
<p>The recent resurgence of women’s activism has refocused attention on gender equality issues, including the ERA, <a href="https://www.equalrightsamendment.org/why">which supporters argue is needed</a> to protect women’s rights. Although the <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/02/13/805647054/house-votes-to-revive-equal-rights-amendment-removing-ratification-deadline">U.S. House voted</a> in February to remove the original deadline set by Congress and pave the way for its final approval, <a href="https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/equal-rights-amendment-explained">no action is expected in the Senate this year</a>.</p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/134517/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dianne Bystrom is affiliated with the League of Women Voters, a non-partisan, non-profit, political organization. She currently serves as the co-president of the League of Women Voters of Nebraska (2019-2021). </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Karen M. Kedrowski received funding from Humanities Iowa and the National Endowment for the Humanities. She is also a member of the League of Women Voters. </span></em></p>
On the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, women’s historic struggles to vote continue to resonate as the country debates who should vote and how.
Dianne Bystrom, Former Director of the Carrie Chapman Catt Center for Women and Politics, Iowa State University
Karen M. Kedrowski, Director of the Carrie Chapman Catt Center, Iowa State University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/129867
2020-01-24T13:37:52Z
2020-01-24T13:37:52Z
When lesbians led the women’s suffrage movement
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311449/original/file-20200122-117962-1tr1v3h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A suffrage parade.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2014700130/">Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In 1911, a team of three women with <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3704629">“lesbian-like” relationships</a> – Jane Addams, Sophonisba Breckinridge and Anna Howard Shaw – took control of the suffrage movement, leading the nation’s largest feminist organization. They promoted a diverse and inclusive women’s rights movement.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/82kcs3yk9780252042676.html">My research</a> suggests that the personal lives of these suffrage leaders shaped their political agendas. Rather than emphasizing differences of gender, race, ethnicity and class, they advanced equal rights for all Americans.</p>
<p><a href="https://academic.oup.com/jah/article-abstract/52/4/855/764984">Suffrage scholarship</a> has long acknowledged a shift “from justice to expediency” – from an emphasis on natural rights to an emphasis on gender distinctions – in the movement at the turn of the century. </p>
<p>The 1848 <a href="https://www.nps.gov/wori/learn/historyculture/declaration-of-sentiments.htm">Declaration of Sentiments</a>, a founding document of the suffrage struggle, proudly insisted that “all men and women are created equal.” </p>
<p>However, by the early 20th century, many of the movement’s new adherents emphasized women’s differences from men. To gain support, they argued that female voters would engage in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_housekeeping">“social housekeeping”</a> and “clean up” corrupt politics. </p>
<p>Some suffragists, including women’s rights pioneer <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/28/opinion/sunday/suffrage-movement-racism-black-women.html?action=click&module=RelatedLinks&pgtype=Article">Elizabeth Cady Stanton</a>, also increasingly emphasized racial, class and ethnic differences. After the Civil War, when the <a href="https://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:osobl/9780199772636.001.0001/acprof-9780199772636">15th Amendment</a> enfranchised Black men but ignored all women, white suffrage leaders <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/02/opinion/sunday/women-voting-19th-amendment-white-supremacy.html">excluded African American women</a> from the movement. </p>
<p>By the 1890s, some had begun to advocate <a href="https://www.loc.gov/resource/mss41210.mss41210-002_00551_00562/?st=gallery">“educated suffrage,”</a> code for literacy requirements that would extend voting rights to educated, white, middle-class women, but prevent many African Americans, immigrants and working-class citizens from casting ballots.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311203/original/file-20200121-117943-1xbhx6p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311203/original/file-20200121-117943-1xbhx6p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311203/original/file-20200121-117943-1xbhx6p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=443&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311203/original/file-20200121-117943-1xbhx6p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=443&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311203/original/file-20200121-117943-1xbhx6p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=443&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311203/original/file-20200121-117943-1xbhx6p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=556&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311203/original/file-20200121-117943-1xbhx6p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=556&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311203/original/file-20200121-117943-1xbhx6p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=556&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Jane Addams.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2014687739/">Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A new leadership team</h2>
<p>At the 1911 meeting of the <a href="http://www.crusadeforthevote.org/nawsa-united">National American Woman Suffrage Association</a> (NAWSA), the membership elected <a href="https://www.louisewknight.com/spirit-in-action.html">Jane Addams</a> as first vice president and <a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/82kcs3yk9780252042676.html">Sophonisba Breckinridge</a> as second vice president. </p>
<p>The new officers joined a leadership team headed by <a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/34men9yt9780252038150.html">Anna Howard Shaw</a>, an ordained minister who served as NAWSA’s president from 1904 to 1915. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311205/original/file-20200121-117943-vs9hvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311205/original/file-20200121-117943-vs9hvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311205/original/file-20200121-117943-vs9hvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=828&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311205/original/file-20200121-117943-vs9hvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=828&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311205/original/file-20200121-117943-vs9hvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=828&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311205/original/file-20200121-117943-vs9hvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1040&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311205/original/file-20200121-117943-vs9hvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1040&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311205/original/file-20200121-117943-vs9hvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1040&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Anna Shaw.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2016820860/">Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For the next year, women who loved other women held the top three positions in the nation’s largest feminist organization. </p>
<p>None of these women publicly claimed a lesbian identity. Nonetheless, like other leaders in <a href="https://www.hmhbooks.com/shop/books/To-Believe-in-Women/9780618056972">women’s rights, higher education and social reform</a>, all three women had significant same-sex relationships. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/34men9yt9780252038150.html">Shaw</a> relied on her companion and secretary, Lucy E. Anthony – suffrage pioneer Susan B. Anthony’s niece – to assist her in guiding the woman suffrage movement. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Education-Addams-Politics-Culture-America/dp/0812237471">Addams</a>, head of the Chicago settlement house <a href="https://www.history.com/news/the-humble-chicago-house-that-started-a-movement">Hull House</a>, enjoyed a long and loving relationship with philanthropist Mary Rozet Smith, who supported her both emotionally and financially. As Addams’ nephew <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=SXM_zMK3u4YC&q=making+life+easier#v=snippet&q=making%20life%20easier&f=false">explained</a>, Smith dedicated herself to “making life easier for Jane Addams. That was her career.” </p>
<p>And, as <a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/82kcs3yk9780252042676.html">my biography of Breckinridge</a> demonstrates, her intimate relationship with Edith Abbott, dean of the <a href="https://ssa.uchicago.edu/history">University of Chicago’s School of Social Service Administration</a>, helped her <a href="https://livestream.com/UC-SSA/20191017-SSA-PHD-Jabour">pioneer the social work profession</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/same-sex-couples-have-been-in-american-politics-way-longer-than-the-buttigiegs-have-been-married-116568">promote social welfare policy</a>.</p>
<h2>Promoting conventional femininity</h2>
<p>Opponents of woman suffrage used <a href="https://aha.confex.com/aha/2020/webprogram/Paper27349.html">images of suffragists as unattractive man-haters</a> to discredit the movement. </p>
<p>To counter such stereotypes, suffrage leaders promoted a public image of conventional femininity. Shaw, who previously sported short hair, grew her hair long and wore it in a conservative chignon. </p>
<p>“I learned that no woman in public life can afford to make herself conspicuous by any eccentricity of dress or appearance,” <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/354/354-h/354-h.htm">she noted</a>, because negative attention “injures the cause she represents.” </p>
<p>Suffrage leaders also emphasized women’s roles as wives and mothers. Addams and Breckinridge were founding members of the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2163477?seq=1">Woman’s City Club of Chicago</a>, which produced a popular <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=3XsEAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA2144#v=onepage&q&f=false">pro-suffrage graphic</a> that illustrated the connections between domestic life and local government. NAWSA adopted the image as its own, featuring it on <a href="https://images.socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/items/show/78">suffrage posters</a>. </p>
<p>To avoid criticism and gain support, NAWSA’s leaders upheld conventional femininity. But this was not the whole story.</p>
<h2>Demanding equality for all</h2>
<p>In a <a href="https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85066387/1910-06-23/ed-1/seq-6/">1910 speech</a>, Breckinridge predicted that the time was coming “when man and woman would stand on the same industrial plane and their wages would be equalized by an equal social condition.”</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311232/original/file-20200121-117927-16xgi79.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311232/original/file-20200121-117927-16xgi79.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311232/original/file-20200121-117927-16xgi79.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=824&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311232/original/file-20200121-117927-16xgi79.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=824&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311232/original/file-20200121-117927-16xgi79.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=824&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311232/original/file-20200121-117927-16xgi79.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1036&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311232/original/file-20200121-117927-16xgi79.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1036&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311232/original/file-20200121-117927-16xgi79.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1036&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sophonisba Breckinridge.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2014687516/">Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Breckinridge’s lesbian-like lifestyle helps explain her stance on gender equality. As a single, self-supporting woman, she understood that many women, like herself, could not rely on men for financial security. </p>
<p>Thus, at the same time that she promoted equal voting rights, she also championed <a href="https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/G/bo3624520.html">financial support for single mothers</a> and <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691176161/a-class-by-herself">maximum hour and minimum wage legislation for women workers</a>.</p>
<p>As members of the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/20173756?seq=1">Immigrants’ Protective League</a> and the <a href="https://www.naacp.org/nations-premier-civil-rights-organization/">National Association for the Advancement of Colored People</a>, both Breckinridge and Addams rejected exclusionary strategies. </p>
<p>Addams protested <a href="http://digital.janeaddams.ramapo.edu/items/show/3958">proposed literacy tests</a> for immigrants. Breckinridge coauthored a <a href="https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/011926613">report advocating education</a>, rather than employment, for working class youth.</p>
<p>The new lesbian leadership team also welcomed African American participation in the movement. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/phylon1960.53.2.3?seq=1">W. E. B. Du Bois</a>, editor of the NAACP publication The <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/25079051?seq=1">Crisis</a>, had publicly <a href="https://library.brown.edu/pdfs/1308149903968629.pdf">criticized NAWSA’s racism</a>, warning that the movement’s mission was becoming “Votes for White Women Only.” He also published numerous <a href="http://suffrageandthemedia.org/source/race-gender-fight-vote-web-du-bois-suffrage/">editorials and articles</a> in <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2645943?seq=1">support of woman suffrage</a>. </p>
<p>Breckinridge advocated <a href="https://iiif.lib.harvard.edu/manifests/view/drs:460406564$1i">inviting Du Bois to speak</a> at the suffrage organization’s 1912 meeting. <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.rslfe1&view=1up&seq=5">His participation</a> signaled NAWSA’s growing commitment to racial equality.</p>
<p>In 1911, NAWSA had <a href="https://library.brown.edu/pdfs/1307980563609254.pdf">refused to allow a resolution</a> linking woman suffrage with African American rights to be presented at its annual meeting. In 1912, however, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/24494512?seq=1">NAWSA published</a> Du Bois’s speech, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/W-B-Bois-Speaks-1890-1919/dp/0873481259">“Disfranchisement,”</a> which did just that, advocating a <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.rslfe1&view=1up&seq=15">“Democracy of Sex and Color.”</a> </p>
<p>This lesbian leadership team lasted for only a year. But while it operated, these leaders made the suffrage movement more diverse and inclusive.</p>
<p><em>This is an updated version of an article originally published on January 24, 2020.</em></p>
<p>[ <em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/129867/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anya Jabour receives funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities.</span></em></p>
In 1911, lesbians led the nation’s largest feminist organization. They promoted a diverse and inclusive women’s rights movement.
Anya Jabour, Regents Professor of History, University of Montana
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/118243
2019-09-09T11:33:42Z
2019-09-09T11:33:42Z
The hidden story of two African-American women looking out from the pages of a 19th-century book
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/291159/original/file-20190905-175673-2jthxl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Mary E. Harper (left) and Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (right), whose two photos in 'Atlanta Offering' are unusual. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://rose.library.emory.edu/">Unidentified Artist, 1895, Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, & Rare Book Library, Emory University</a>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>We are <a href="https://npg.si.edu/staff/kate-lemay">two</a> <a href="https://history.jhu.edu/directory/martha-jones/">historians</a> whose work focuses on American art and on how African Americans have shaped the story of American democracy.</p>
<p>Our two subject areas converged recently when one of us had a question, and the other helped her research the answer. </p>
<p>Kate was in the midst of organizing the National Portrait Gallery’s exhibition, “<a href="https://npg.si.edu/exhibition/votes-for-women">Votes for Women: A Portrait of Persistence</a>,” commemorating the more than 80-year movement for women to obtain the right to vote. This exhibition is part of the Smithsonian American Women’s History Initiative, <a href="https://womenshistory.si.edu/">Because of Her Story</a>. </p>
<p>While doing her research, Kate encountered a character in history whose story she didn’t know, but who she anticipated would be important to the history the museum wanted to tell. </p>
<p>Who was Mary E. Harper? That’s the question Kate set out to answer. </p>
<h2>Kate’s story</h2>
<p>In curating the exhibit on the history of women’s voting, it became clear to me that the task at hand was not only to celebrate voting, its history and the ratification of <a href="https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/amendments/amendment-xix">the 19th Amendment</a>, but to expand the ways in which women are written into American history as major players, not as footnotes.</p>
<p>But how could we show that history? </p>
<p>Objects. That’s what we use in museums to shed light on people’s lives.</p>
<p>Photographic portraits, and genre paintings depicting scenes of everyday life, as well as items from history like posters, drawings and maps, help us learn about and understand the stories of the countless women who lobbied to include women’s voting rights in their state constitutions. </p>
<p>These women, along with those who organized and led the lobbying of states to <a href="https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=false&doc=63">ratify the 19th Amendment</a>, which established women’s right to vote, have been <a href="https://www.neh.gov/article/forgotten-suffragists">left largely outside of American historical accounts</a>. </p>
<p>So I worked to make sure “Votes for Women” included portraits of women whose biographies are less well known. </p>
<p>And in my search for objects that would represent their lives, I came across a few surprises. </p>
<p>I was looking for portraits that were made from life – so a product of a personal meeting – and from the specific period of the suffragist’s life. </p>
<p>I very much wanted to feature the African American lecturer, novelist and poet <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/how-daughters-and-granddaughters-former-slaves-secured-voting-rights-all-180971660/">Frances Ellen Watkins Harper</a> (1825-1911), because of her activism in the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/American-Equal-Rights-Association">American Equal Rights Association</a>, the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Womans-Christian-Temperance-Union">Woman’s Christian Temperance Union</a> and other women’s groups affiliated with churches. </p>
<p>One <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/how-daughters-and-granddaughters-former-slaves-secured-voting-rights-all-180971660/">quote of hers</a> provides a glimpse of her ideals: “We are all bound up in one great bundle of humanity, and society cannot trample on the weakest and feeblest of its members without receiving the curse of its own soul.”</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/291165/original/file-20190905-175714-c0vub4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/291165/original/file-20190905-175714-c0vub4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/291165/original/file-20190905-175714-c0vub4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=160&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/291165/original/file-20190905-175714-c0vub4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=160&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/291165/original/file-20190905-175714-c0vub4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=160&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/291165/original/file-20190905-175714-c0vub4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=201&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/291165/original/file-20190905-175714-c0vub4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=201&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/291165/original/file-20190905-175714-c0vub4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=201&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Newspaper clippings from 1871 praising Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s public speaking. Click to enlarge.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.newspapers.com/clip/6625113/frances_ellen_watkins_harper/">Newspapers.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I found the perfect object to represent her in the collections of Emory University. It was a first edition of <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=emu.010002585925">“Atlanta Offering</a>,” a book of Harper’s poetry published in 1895 in Philadelphia. An Emory archivist forwarded me a digital version of it, demonstrating its pristine condition. </p>
<p>Books like these often have a frontispiece, a picture or portrait of the author or the book’s subject in the opening pages, usually facing the title page of the book. </p>
<p>This book featured <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=emu.010002585925;view=1up;seq=9">a frontispiece of Harper</a> wearing a suit – a floor-length skirt and a sleeveless bodice with covered buttons down its front. Underneath the bodice, her velvet shirtwaist ends in cuffs with ruffles around her wrists, and at her neck is tied a ribbon. A bit of white ruffle at her neck suggests a shirtwaist worn under the velvet. </p>
<p>These details in costume signify a refined woman, while Harper’s gaze looking directly at the camera suggests great confidence. </p>
<p>When the book arrived and I opened it pages to display Harper, I saw something unusual. There was not just one portrait at the front of the volume – there were two. </p>
<p>I was surprised to see this second frontispiece because I had been looking at a digital version of the book and hadn’t been able to see both pages at once. The second portrait was a woman named <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=emu.010002585925;view=1up;seq=8">Mary E. Harper</a>. Who was this second woman?</p>
<p>I could see by examining the details of her costume that Mary was as dignified as Frances. But why would her portrait be featured so prominently in this work of poetry, and what meaning can we take away from this publication choice?</p>
<p>To answer my questions, I consulted with <a href="https://history.jhu.edu/directory/martha-jones/">Martha S. Jones</a>, an expert on Frances Ellen Watkins Harper.</p>
<p><iframe id="tc-infographic-433" class="tc-infographic" height="400px" src="https://cdn.theconversation.com/infographics/433/c719a72d4622da95557504f1ac768ec71c282845/site/index.html" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<h2>Martha’s story</h2>
<p>I was as intrigued as curator Kate Clarke Lemay when I saw that the Frances Ellen Watkins Harper volume, “Atlanta Offering,” included not one but two portraits. </p>
<p>My intrigue ran deep because I am familiar with this particular portrait of Frances; it circulates widely and even illustrates my first book, <a href="https://www.uncpress.org/book/9780807858455/all-bound-up-together/">“All Bound Up Together: The Woman Question in African American Public Culture</a>,” the title of which borrows from one of her speeches.</p>
<p>Increasingly, researchers like me are using materials that have been digitized – including books like “Atlanta Offering.” Clicking through images on a laptop risks missing interesting and important details. This was certainly true for me and helps explain how I had managed to overlook Mary E. Harper.</p>
<p>Overlooking Mary E. Harper’s portrait is an apt metaphor for how she has been overlooked in historical studies. </p>
<p>What I found when I went searching in archival material was that Mary is Frances’ daughter. She is largely absent from an extensive body of scholarship on her mother, who was <a href="http://jtoaa.common-place.org/welcome-to-just-teach-one-african-american/frances-ellen-watkins-harpers-forest-leaves-introduction/">a talented public speaker and prolific writer</a>. Still, there is one thing that scholars agree on: Frances was devoted to Mary. </p>
<p>Mary was just an infant when her father, Fenton Harper, died, leaving their Ohio household destitute. The widowed Frances left Fenton’s three children from a prior marriage in the custody of relatives, but she kept Mary with her and headed back east to rebuilt her life and her career. </p>
<p>We know little about Mary’s early education. It is likely she attended schools in Baltimore and Philadelphia. By the 1880s, in her teens, Mary followed in her mother’s path and enrolled in Philadelphia’s <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=lJJkAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA66&lpg=PA66&dq=Philadelphia+National+School+of+Elocution+and+Oratory.&source=bl&ots=9z5nb12dJl&sig=ACfU3U2Jq8pUNHE2ze70H52ar5Fh-b7qzg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjV9NqumrXkAhXsct8KHYXsDww4ChDoATABegQICBAB#v=onepage&q=Philadelphia%20National%20School%20of%20Elocution%20and%20Oratory.&f=false">National School of Elocution and Oratory</a>. </p>
<p>Graduating in 1884, Mary was poised to begin a career that turned on her capacity to deliver eloquent, polished and entertaining readings. Her first performances were in Philadelphia’s private parlors and a home for the elderly. But Mary was ambitious, and she set out to build a reputation that would win her audiences across the country. </p>
<p>Mary’s career did not merely mirror that of her mother, Frances, who had built her style and reputation on the demanding and unorthodox terrain of the <a href="http://common-place.org/book/the-other-frances-ellen-watkins-harper/">anti-slavery lecture circuit</a>. Mary’s presentations featured poetry and literature, and to a lesser degree temperance, not politics. Sometimes she <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=IwSiDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT108&lpg=PT108&dq=%22mary+e.+harper%22+african+american+musical+troupes&source=bl&ots=zEgZwaM4G_&sig=ACfU3U0awn6DsHyreCc1tiOjU-XRpXO7Jg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiFgNzom7XkAhWFmuAKHWz_A6QQ6AEwAHoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=%22mary%20e.%20harper%22%20african%20american%20musical%20troupes&f=false">performed with musical troupes</a>. </p>
<p>Throughout, she carefully built a repertoire that maintained her appeal to respectable, middle-class and Christian audiences. By the late 1880s, <a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/de/Women_of_distinction.djvu/page400-2469px-Women_of_distinction.djvu.jpg">she had broken through</a>. Newspapers report her traversing the country on tours that took her west to Ohio, Missouri and Wisconsin, north to Massachusetts, and south to Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia. </p>
<p>The precise end of Mary’s life has eluded me. We know that she died in 1908, three years before her mother. <a href="https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/54552876/mary-frances-harper">The two are buried</a> side by side in a Delaware County, Pennsylvania cemetery. </p>
<p>I’d like to think that in 1895 Frances Ellen Watkins Harper made the extra effort to include Mary’s portrait alongside her own just so that curator Kate Clarke Lemay would find it. Frances would be pleased, I am certain, to know that her small tribute to a beloved and gifted daughter has inspired us to recover some of Mary’s remarkable life.</p>
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<header>Kate Clarke Lemay is the author of:</header>
<p><a href="https://press.princeton.edu/titles/17233.html">Votes for Women:
A Portrait of Persistence</a></p>
<footer>Princeton University Press provides funding as a member of The Conversation US.</footer>
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</section>
</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/118243/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kate Clarke Lemay works for the Smithsonian Institution. She receives funding from the Smithsonian Institution.
Princeton University Press provides funding as a member of The Conversation.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Martha S. Jones does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
A 19th-century volume contained a mystery for two historians who combined their knowledge to tell the story of the women and their contributions to American democracy.
Kate Clarke Lemay, Historian, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
Martha S. Jones, Society of Black Alumni Presidential Professor and Professor of History, Johns Hopkins University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/91045
2018-03-01T11:40:44Z
2018-03-01T11:40:44Z
How the devastating 1918 flu pandemic helped advance US women’s rights
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/208319/original/file-20180228-36671-jjv25p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=26%2C50%2C961%2C702&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">More women than men were left standing after the war and pandemic.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://lccn.loc.gov/2011661525">Library of Congress</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When disaster strikes, it can change the fabric of a society – often through the sheer loss of human life. The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/jan/05/tsunami2004.internationalaidanddevelopment3">left 35,000 children</a> without one or both parents in Indonesia alone. The Black Death <a href="https://www.livescience.com/2497-black-death-changed-world.html">killed more than 75 million people</a> worldwide and <a href="http://www.history.com/topics/black-death">more than a third of Europe’s population</a> between 1347 and 1351. </p>
<p>While disasters are by definition devastating, sometimes they can lead to changes that are a small silver lining. The 2004 tsunami <a href="http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2012/12/26/indonesia-reconstruction-chapter-ends-eight-years-after-the-tsunami">ended a civil conflict in Indonesia</a> that had left 15,000 dead. The 14th century’s plague, <a href="https://www.rwjf.org/en/culture-of-health/2013/12/the_five_deadliesto.html">probably the most deadly disaster in human history</a>, set free many serfs in Europe, forced wages for laborers to rise, and caused a fundamental shift in the economy along with an increased standard of living for survivors.</p>
<p>One hundred years ago, a powerful strain of the flu swept the globe, infecting one third of the world’s population. The aftermath of this disaster, too, led to unexpected social changes, opening up new opportunities for women and in the process irreversibly transforming life in the United States.</p>
<p>The virus disproportionately affected young men, which in combination with World War I, created a shortage of labor. This gap enabled women to play a new and indispensible role in the workforce during the crucial period just before the ratification of the 19th Amendment, which <a href="https://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/ourdocs/19thamendment.html">granted women suffrage in the United States</a> two years later.</p>
<h2>Why did the flu affect men more than women?</h2>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/the-greatest-pandemic-in-history-was-100-years-ago-but-many-of-us-still-get-the-basic-facts-wrong-89841">Known as the Spanish flu</a>, the 1918 “great influenza” left <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2018/01/29/health/1918-flu-history-partner/index.html">more than 50 million people dead</a>, including around <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/journal-plague-year-180965222/">670,000</a> in the United States.</p>
<p>To put that in perspective, World War I, which concluded just as the flu was at its worst in November 1918, killed around 17 million people – <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-25776836">a mere third of the fatalities caused by the flu</a>. <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/k/kolata-flu.html">More American soldiers died from the flu</a> than were killed in battle, and many of the deaths attributed to World War I were caused by a combination of the war and the flu.</p>
<p>The war provided near perfect conditions for the spread of flu virus via the respiratory droplets exhaled by infected individuals. Military personnel – predominantly young males – spent months at a time in close quarters with thousands of other troops. This proximity, combined with <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1361287/">the stress</a> of war and the malnutrition that sometimes accompanied it, created weakened immune systems in soldiers and allowed the virus spread like wildfire.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/208320/original/file-20180228-36703-1k4dxiw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/208320/original/file-20180228-36703-1k4dxiw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/208320/original/file-20180228-36703-1k4dxiw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=760&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208320/original/file-20180228-36703-1k4dxiw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=760&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208320/original/file-20180228-36703-1k4dxiw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=760&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208320/original/file-20180228-36703-1k4dxiw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=955&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208320/original/file-20180228-36703-1k4dxiw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=955&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208320/original/file-20180228-36703-1k4dxiw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=955&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">When soldiers shipped out, influenza virus could be stowing away onboard.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Eawatchf-AP-I-APHSL-USA-WWI-American-Troops/276539db593a4899b405f9ca175e85fb/1/0">AP Photo</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>Overcrowding in training camps, trenches and hospitals <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/grrlscientist/2014/jul/30/influenza-pandemic-1918-viruses-biology-medicine-history">created an ideal environment</a> for the 1918 influenza strain to infect high numbers of people. In fact, the conditions of war helped the virus perfect itself <a href="https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/12/1/05-0979_article">through several waves of infection</a>, each more deadly than the last.</p>
<p>Many troops were doomed before they even reached Europe, contracting the flu on the packed troop ships where a single infected soldier could spread the virus throughout. When soldiers returned to the U.S., they scattered to every state, bringing the flu along with them. </p>
<p>It was more than just male conscription in war, however, that led to a greater number of men who were infected and died from the flu. Even at home, among those that were never involved in the war effort, the <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2740912/">death rate for men exceeded that of women</a>. Demographic studies show that nearly <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2740912/">175,000 more men died than women in 1918</a>.</p>
<p>In general, epidemics tend to <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2740912/">kill more men than women</a>. In disease outbreaks throughout history, as well as almost all of the world’s major famines, women have a longer life expectancy than men and often <a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/01/03/1701535115">have greater survival rates</a>.</p>
<p>The exact reason why men tend to be more vulnerable to the flu than women continues to elude researchers. The scoffing modern term “man flu” refers to the perception that men are overly dramatic when they fall ill; But recent research suggests that there <a href="https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.j5560">may be more to it</a> than just exaggerated symptoms.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/208321/original/file-20180228-36674-1uzoi6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/208321/original/file-20180228-36674-1uzoi6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/208321/original/file-20180228-36674-1uzoi6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=426&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208321/original/file-20180228-36674-1uzoi6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=426&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208321/original/file-20180228-36674-1uzoi6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=426&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208321/original/file-20180228-36674-1uzoi6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=535&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208321/original/file-20180228-36674-1uzoi6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=535&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208321/original/file-20180228-36674-1uzoi6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=535&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The flu’s aftermath furthered a trend started by the war effort.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Associated-Press-Domestic-News-Pennsylvania-Uni-/a8dcff1102e5da11af9f0014c2589dfb/2/0">AP Photo</a></span>
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</figure>
<h2>Flu brought more women into the workforce</h2>
<p>The severity of the epidemic in the U.S. was enough to temporarily shut down parts of the economy in 1918. In New England, <a href="http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/sites/default/files/public/downloads/cidrap_coal_report.pdf">coal deliveries were so severely affected</a> that people, unable to keep their homes heated, froze to death at the height of winter. During the 1918 flu outbreak, researchers estimate businesses in Little Rock, Arkansas, saw <a href="https://www.stlouisfed.org/%7E/media/Files/PDFs/Community-Development/Research-Reports/pandemic_flu_report.pdf?la=en">a decline of 40 to 70 percent</a>. </p>
<p>The worker shortage caused by the flu and World War I opened access to the labor market for women, and in unprecedented numbers they took jobs outside the home. Following the conclusion of the war, the number of women in the workforce was <a href="http://www.american-historama.org/1913-1928-ww1-prohibition-era/women-in-the-1920s.htm">25 percent higher than it had been</a> previously and by 1920 <a href="https://www.dol.gov/wb/info_about_wb/interwb.htm">women made up 21 percent</a> of all gainfully employed individuals in the country. While this gender boost is often ascribed to World War I alone, women’s increased presence in the workforce would have been far less pronounced without the 1918 flu.</p>
<p>Women began to move into employment roles that were previously <a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/women-in-world-war-1-1222109">held exclusively by men</a>, many of which were in manufacturing. They were even able to enter fields from which they had been banned, such as the textile industry. As women filled what had been typically male workplace roles, they also began to <a href="http://time.com/3774661/equal-pay-history/">demand equal pay</a> for their work. Gaining greater economic power, women began more actively advocating for various women’s rights issues – including, <a href="http://history.house.gov/Exhibitions-and-Publications/WIC/Historical-Essays/No-Lady/Womens-Rights/">but not limited to, the right to vote</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/208322/original/file-20180228-36703-txw39t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/208322/original/file-20180228-36703-txw39t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/208322/original/file-20180228-36703-txw39t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=341&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208322/original/file-20180228-36703-txw39t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=341&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208322/original/file-20180228-36703-txw39t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=341&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208322/original/file-20180228-36703-txw39t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208322/original/file-20180228-36703-txw39t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208322/original/file-20180228-36703-txw39t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Once a woman’s the boss, how can you deny her the vote?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Watchf-AP-A-DC-USA-APHS350732-Women-s-Suffrage/3dd9b4d05c8647d1aeb2e4610cdeae7a/3/0">AP Photo</a></span>
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<h2>How the flu helped change people’s minds</h2>
<p>Increased participation in the workforce allowed many women to obtain <a href="https://www.warandgender.com/wgwomwwi.htm">social and financial independence</a>. Leadership positions within the workforce could now be occupied by women, especially in the garment industry, but also <a href="http://teachersinstitute.yale.edu/curriculum/units/2002/3/02.03.09.x.html">in the military and police forces</a>. The U.S. even got its <a href="https://www.afscme.org/for-members/womens-leadership-training/leadership-tools/body/Women_in_Labor_History_Timeline.pdf">first woman governor</a>, when Nellie Taylor Ross took her oath of office, in 1923, in Wyoming. An increased ability to make decisions in their personal and professional lives empowered many women and started to elevate their standing.</p>
<p>With the war over and increased female participation in the labor force, politicians could not ignore the critical role that women played in American society. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/30/world/europe/1918-flu-war-centennial.html">Even President Woodrow Wilson</a> began to argue in 1918 that women were part of the American war effort and economy more broadly, and as such, should be afforded the right to vote. </p>
<p>Outside of work, women also became more involved in community decision-making. Women’s changing social role <a href="http://time.com/3774661/equal-pay-history/">increased support</a> for women’s rights. In 1919, the National Federation of Business and Professional Women’s Clubs was founded. The organization <a href="https://www.afscme.org/for-members/womens-leadership-training/leadership-tools/body/Women_in_Labor_History_Timeline.pdf">focused on</a> eliminating sex discrimination in the workforce, making sure women got equal pay and creating a comprehensive equal rights amendment.</p>
<p>The 1918 influenza pandemic was devastating. But the massive human tragedy had one silver lining: It helped elevate women in American society socially and financially, providing them more freedom, independence and a louder voice in the political arena.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/91045/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
With many men ‘missing’ from the population in the aftermath of the 1918 flu, women stepped into public roles that hadn’t previously been open to them.
Christine Crudo Blackburn, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Scowcroft Institute of International Affairs, Bush School of Government and Public Service, Texas A&M University
Gerald W Parker, Associate Dean For Global One Health, College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences; and Director, Pandemic and Biosecurity Policy Program, Scowcroft Institute for International Affairs, Bush School of Government and Public Service, Texas A&M University
Morten Wendelbo, Research Fellow, American University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.