8-3 Women and reform

1. 8-3 Women and reform Pgs. 235-239

2. Women’s roles in the mid-1800s • Cult of domesticity – demanded that women restrict their activities after marriage to the home and family. • Housework and child care were the only proper activities for married women • Single women worked as servants, seamstress, or teacher. • If worked made half as much as men for working the same job • When married, woman’s property and money she earned became her husbands. • Lacked guardianship over their children.

3. Women abolitionists • Sara and Angelina Grimké – slaveowner’s daughters who wanted to end slavery. • Appeal to Christian Women of the South • Worked with William Lloyd Garrison • Worked for women’s rights

4. Working for Temperance • Temperance movement – effort to prohibit the drinking of alcohol. • Many men would spend all their wages at the bars and come home and beat their wives. • Alcohol was used for anesthetic and to buy votes • American Temperance Society was founded to help end the drinking of alcohol.

5. Education for women • No guidelines • Emma Willard (1821) opened Troy Female Seminary where all subjects were taught • Later Ohio Oberlin College admitted four women. • African American women still were segregated.

6. Women and health reform • Elizabeth Blackwell – first woman to graduated from medical school • Found that 3-1 women were sick • Didn’t bath and corsets constricted breathing • Came up with “bloomers” aka pants • Many women did not wear them – to risky!

7. Women’s Rights Movement Emerges • Seneca Falls Convention: Where Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott decided to hold meeting to discuss women’s rights. • Woman suffrage was a debated idea • Sojourner Truth (Isabella Baumfree) former escaped slave who was an abolitionist and active in women’s right • “Ain’t I a woman?” • Basically compared her job and other women’s jobs to those of the men and said that they did the same thing and were women.