Women Make Progress

Women Make Progress 17.2

Objectives • Analyze the impact of changes in women’s education on women’s roles in society. • Explain what women did to win workers’ right and improve family life. • Evaluate the tactics women used to win passage of the Nineteenth Amendment.

Key Parts • Progressive Women Expand Reforms • Women Fight for the Right to Vote

Introduction • Read section 17.2 • Answer critical thinking questions 4&6.

Progressive Women Expand Reforms • In the early 1900s many women were no longer content in having a limited role within society. • Women were ready to move beyond the role of raising children, cooking meals, and keeping the home. • Education was a major factor in helping women achieve their goals.

Cont. • A growing number of women colleges were preparing them for careers in nursing and teaching. • Working outside the home for women who didn’t have education often meant working long hours doing tough jobs similar to men. • A key goal for women reformers was to limit the number of work hours for women. They were successful in many states to limit the day to ten hours.

Cont.. • Florence Kelley believed that women were hurt by the unfair prices of goods they had to but to run their homes. • So in 1899 she helped found the National Consumers League, which is still active today. • The NCL gave special labels to goods that were produced under fair, safe, and healthy working conditions, and urged women to buy these products rather than the others.

Cont… • Florence Kelley also helped form the Women’s Trade Union League, another group that tried to improve conditions for female factory workers. • The WTUL pushed for federal laws that set a minimum wage and an eight-hour workday. • A main goal for progressive women was to improve family life as well.

Cont…. • The Women’s Christian Temperance Union promoted temperance, which is the practice of not drinking alcohol. • Members felt that alcohol led men to spend their money on liquor, neglected their family, and often abused their wives and children. • Their work led to the passing of the 18th amendment outlawing the production and sale of alcohol.

Women Fight for the Right to Vote • One of the boldest goals of Progressive women was suffrage-the right to vote. • In the 1890s the national suffrage effort was reenergized by Carrie Chapman Catt. (she was one of the first female superintendents) • Catt traveled around the country urging women to join the National Woman Suffrage Association. In 1900 Catt was the president of NAWSA.

Cont. • Catt recruited heavily for the NAWSA, she targeted wealthy, well-educated women. • At the same time another group formed called the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage. • They believed that suffrage and all of the women’s movements were taking women away from their families and duties as wives and mothers.

Cont.. • When the United States entered World War I in 1917, Carrie Catt and Florence Kelley led the NAWSA to support the war effort. • Their actions convinced the legislators to support the women’s suffrage. • Congress approved the 19th Amendment which stated that the right to vote “shall not be denied or abridge on account of sex.” • In the 1920 election women were allowed to vote

Women Make Progress