Women's History Encyclopedia
Emily's List/ Susan B Anthony List
Seneca Falls Convention/ Declaration of Sentiments
Furnished Room District’s of Chicago
more to come...
Emily's List/ Susan B Anthony List
The election in 1992 resulted in more women being elected than in any previous decade, for a long time women politicians had been waiting for this “year of the woman”; a year when the gender gap would (hopefully) come closer to a close. This year marked the beginning of a powerful decade for women in congress. One of the more important aspects to look at is the fact that out of the women elected to congress only two of them were pro-life(against abortion).
In response to the over-whelming female support in congress
towards pro-choice a group of assorted women started a group dedicated to the
advancement of pro-life women in politics- The Susan B. Anthony List. This name
came from the early woman's activist Susan B. Anthony, who campaigned not only
for woman's suffrage, but
was also
strongly apposed to abortion. The group’s goal- to raise money to fund campaigns
of anti-choice women in politics, not just in
Another purpose of the Susan B. Anthony List was to counter the organization, Emily’s List. Emily’s List is the polar opposite of the SBA List, its goal to help pro-choice women into political positions. Emily is an acronym for “Early money is like yeast” (it helps the dough rise).2 In 1985, 25 politically active women gathered in a basement and started sending letters to their friends, trying to set up connections to help raise money for pro-choice candidates. The Emily’s List organization has helped elect 79 pro-choice Democratic women members of Congress, 15 senators, 9 governors, and hundreds of women to state and local office. 2
Over the years both of these organizations have raised a lot of money for their respective candidates, each group trying to counter the other and have their contender be the victor.
The Global Gag Rule (aka the Mexico City Policy) has had a controversial past- whether people are for it or against it; it has sparked debates from kitchen tables to the oval office. The announcement of the Global Gag Rule was at the 1984 United Nations International Conference on Population. President Ronald Regan had established specific guidelines for any non-government family planning organization that was [at the time] or would be working in foreign nations. The biggest part of these guidelines was that none of these organizations were aloud to support or offer abortion, if they did they would not receive any federal funding.3 The policy stated: “…that they would "neither perform nor actively promote abortion as a method of family planning in other nations."4
In 1993 President Bill Clinton revoked the Global Gag Rule,
then when President George W. Bush entered office in 2000 he reinstated it,
hundreds of health clinics that had been built during
Here is part of the press release from Planned Parenthood:
“With the stroke of a pen, President Obama has lifted the stranglehold on women’s health across the globe. His repeal of the global gag rule ends eight long years of policies that have blocked access to basic health care for women worldwide. No longer will health care providers be forced to choose between receiving family planning funding and restricting the health care services they provide to women.”6
With the constant up and down of the Global Gag Rule, being reinstated and repealed every other presidency, should we worry that the progress in this presidency will be diminished during the next presidents’ term?
At the start of the twentieth century women were filling up more and more factory jobs, particularly in the garment industry. These women faced incredibly harsh conditions, long work days and little pay. Rose Cohen, a sweatshop worker, describes her first day working at one of these factories:
“From this hour a hard life began for me. He refused to employ me except by the week. He paid me three dollars and for this he hurried me from early until late. He gave me only two coats at a time to do. When I took them over and as he handed me the new work he would say quickly and sharply, "Hurry!" And when he did not say it in words he looked at me and I seemed to hear even more plainly, "Hurry!" I hurried but he was never satisfied. By looks and manner he made me feel that I was not doing enough Late at night when the people would standup and begin to fold their work away and I too would rise, feeling stiff in every limb and thinking with dread of our cold empty little room and the uncooked rice, he would come over with still another coat.”7
Eventually these women (and some men) were tired of the conditions they were forced to work in, the Ladies Garment Workers Union started gathering workers to have a meeting over what to do about the way the factories were being run and how they were being treated. The Ladies Garment Workers Union was lead almost entirely by males, and like the men at the Seneca Falls Convention, none of them stepped forward to speak in front of the crowd. This gathering took place on November 22, 1909- more than fifteen thousand shirtwaist workers showed up, and they did not hear one of the male organizers or any male at all. Clara Lemlich, a seventeen year old shirtwaist maker, stood up in front of that crowd and convinced them to walk out of their jobs and strike. Their efforts resulted in many of the manufactures agreeing to a fifty-two hour work week, no more special charges or fines, and even paid holidays.8
Unfortunately a year after the workers big win, one of the most tragic
events since the beginning of the industrial revolution occurred. After the
unions came and organized the workers into a strike the Triangle Shirtwaist
Company started locking the doors after workers showed up for work-keeping them
in and keeping the unions out. On March 25, 1911, a fire broke out on the tenth
floor. Workers ran for the doors to try and escape, only to find the doors
locked and that they were trapped. Onlookers from the street gasped in horror as
they saw smoke and fire shoot out of the windows. Then they saw over one hundred
women, trying to flee the fire, jump or fall from ten stories up to their
deaths- More than a quarter of Triangle’s employees. “Most of the victims were
suffocated or burned to death within the building, but some who fought their way
to the windows and leaped met death as surely, but perhaps more quickly, on the
pavements below… Then they all began to drop. The crowd yelled "Don't jump!" but
it was jump or be burned.”9
As terrible as the Triangle Factory Fire was some good did come out of it. People stopped ignoring the problem, after the fire covered the front of every newspaper readers were faced with the fact that labor laws (or the lack there of) had to be changed. Shocking pictures of young female workers flinging themselves off the side of the building and piles of their bodies in the streets-Women had died before due to factory owners’ neglect, but there was never such a display before. “The people demanded restitution, justice, and action that would safeguard the vulnerable and the oppressed.”10
In 1840 there was a World Anti-Slavery Convention in
Furnished Room District’s of
Chicago
When the word ‘Flapper’ comes up everyone in the
Just like
These areas helped all sorts of women find their place and others like them- it was a melting pot where the bohemian ‘new woman’ and working class women could mingle along with sexual flappers and sex workers. Furnished room districts were home to many subcultures that, today, one would find in almost every district in every big city- ‘…the bohemian circle of artists, intellectuals, and political radicals.’ They all mixed together and created the basis for what would become today’s ‘sexual terrain’.16 These furnished room districts helped create safe atmosphere where people could openly discuss politics, life, love… Many social and political movements were formed and gained following in these areas.
Feminism has evolved and changed so much over the past century, each
wave representing a different generation of feminists with a different agenda.
Feminism really boomed in 1848, for many years activists for the abolition of
slavery were also woman suffrage activists, but at the Seneca Falls Convention
first wave feminism was born (the term feminism was not coined until much
later). In the mid to late nineteenth century Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan
B. Anthony were some of these first vocal feminists; however when African
Americans were given the vote over women, these women were more than scorned. In
1865-66 congress was discussing the creation of the fourteenth amendment, many
activists wanted woman suffrage and black suffrage to combine in a single
constitutional act. 17 Lucy Stone (woman suffrage/anti-slavery
activist) was quoted as saying “We resolved to make common cause with the
colored class-the only other disfranchised class, and strike for equal right for
all.” Women did not receive the vote. To solidify that there was a second
section added to the fourteenth amendment: This new section said that voting
rights only applied to “male inhabitants”. Then the fifteenth amendment was
passed and it stated that: “The right of citizens of the
In many woman suffragists minds these amendments were an insult to women, some believed that everyone should be able to vote-“All mankind will vote not because of intelligence, patriotism, property or white skin, but because it is male not female. All womanhood will be newly outraged and debased, not for ignorance, disloyalty, poverty or black skin, but because it is female not male.”19 Others thought it was unbelievable that black men were elevated above white women. Whatever their reasons these women were upset and in result created ‘women only’ organizations devoted to woman suffrage and woman equality. These first wavers worked hard until they finally saw the fruits of their labor, part of the progressive era involved the ratification of the nineteenth amendment in 1920-finally giving women the vote. They had succeeded, 1920 marked finale of first wave feminism. In the decades following second wave feminism brought the Woman’s Liberation Movement and then third wave feminism defined that there is no universal woman with a universal problem. These waves all started from one big splash, the Seneca Falls Convention and the push for the nineteenth amendment.
‘Leaving the house, getting an education and choosing to wait or not
get married or have children is Communism, women who engage in these activities
are destroying the moral fabric of
the
country.’ Slogans, propaganda,
all forms of media were giving these messages to women post World War II. During
the war ‘Rosie The Riveter’ was asking women to leave the kitchen and help her
country, it was her patriotic duty to work. When the war ended and the men came
back it was time for the women to head back to the kitchen and give their men
their jobs back. Understandably many resisted they were told they could work,
they were strong enough and then they were told to forget everything ‘Rosie”
stood for. The red scare came and with it come an easy way to keep people
(women) in their place. That is when advertizing about the joys and fulfillment
of being a housewife boomed. “…with visions of the happy modern housewife…I went
searching for a woman of ability and education who was fulfilled as a
housewife…”20These are the words of Betty Friedan, writer of
The Feminine Mystique.
In 1963 Betty Friedan wrote a book that brought attention to the problems concerning the ignored sex. The Feminine Mystique pointed out how women were being held back and not able to reach true fulfillment; these women had been feed images of being ecstatic to get a new dishwasher and told that a women’s path to happiness was to get married, have kids, and take care of them and the house. Friedan saw this as problematic and went on a mission to challenge the proposed norms of womanhood.
Friedan’s main goal was to reach the woman who had been put into these roles and help her see that she could have more; she didn’t have to find her life’s purpose washing and cleaning. Friedan also turned her pen to criticize the medical industry; “[psychologists] prescribing tranquilizers for “neurotic” women rather than examining the social basis of their unhappiness.”21 This idea that women did not have ‘real’ problems, they were just hysterical because they were women.
Betty Friedan received harsh criticism for not only disrupting family life but assuming that all women were unhappy as housewives. Also her writings and ideals were directed at middle-class white women- women who had more options for labor, lodging and education. Moreover Friedan herself was a college graduate who had never experienced domestic life- she was not one of the trapped women seeking freedom. Despite it all The Feminine Mystique was a revolutionary book that helped many women realize their full potential. It sold over 3 million copies confirming that Friedan hit on “…many women’s frustrations over domestic role they were expected to perform and the limitations imposed by the containment in the home”22 Her book lit a fire and helped the resurgence of feminism and pointed out the pressure the Cold War era put on women.22 Friedan’s work lives on today and is still a top seller and an assigned reading in many schools.
In a time when romanticized civil war stories filled the papers, a very strong willed and strong minded woman was writing the harsh truths about the way African Americans were being treated. Originally when she would hear/read about lynching’s in other towns, just like everyone else she believed that these attacks were just- these men must have done something to deserve it, the papers said that they attacked white women. She continued believing these stories until a close friend of hers was lynched for the crime of having a successful business.
“…They had committed
no crime against white women. This is what opened my eyes to what lynching
really was. An excuse to get rid of
This first hand experience inspired Wells to become an anti-lynching activist. In 1889 she became part owner of an African American newspaper, The Free Speech. She used this venue to write articles to uncover the truths about lynching so that all could read it and the truth would be known. Her writings were shocking, but they had to be. People knew about lynching’s, but like Wells they all read in the papers that theses lynching’s were deserved. Wells raised awareness about the brutal violence and the false charges behind them and sexual exploitation of black women (during slavery and after). She also lambasted the idea that any sexual relation between a black man and a white woman was rape, “Well’s analysis was her insistence that black and white people sometimes voluntarily chose to be each other’s sexual partners”.24 Her controversial and explicit writings would end up being the end of The Free Speech paper, but this ended up being a great thing for Friedan.
She moved to
Raised in poverty and working from the age of eleven29
Billie
Holiday longed for a different life. Listening and singing
along to Louie Armstrong and Count Basie,
“Who is served by the popular construction of the modernist
jazz hero as isolated, self-destructive, and childlike? Or by the quintessential
jazzwoman as a” girl singer,” so often constructed as bubblehead rather than a
knowledgeable professional? Or by the figure of the jazz/blues singer as the
embodiment of stereotypes about femininity, oversexed and underloved….”31
Despite the early reluctance of promoters Holiday started releasing more and more songs, but it was when she released the controversial song ‘Strange Fruit’ (Originally a poem about the lynching of an African American man) that her name became really know across the country. She was performing more and more at jazz clubs, being part of the jazz scene- which involved a lot of drugs. Many of the jazz stars of the day had abuse problems and Holliday was no different.
At the same time that Billie Holiday was falling into drug addiction,
Janis Joplin was born. Joplin -like Holiday- had a raspy, unconventional voice
and she too fought her way into a medium that was not particularly open to
women- 1960’s rock music. Growing up listening to powerful woman singers
(Holiday)
“All my life I just wanted to be a beatnik, meet all the heavies, get stoned, get laid, have a good time, that's all I ever wanted, except I knew I had a good voice and I could always get a couple of beers off of it. All of a sudden someone threw me into this rock band. They threw these musicians at me, man, and the sound was coming from behind, the bass was charging me, and I decided then and there that was it, I never wanted to do anything else. It was better than it had been with any man, you know. Maybe that's the trouble..." 32
After being in a couple bands and living in the bay area Joplin started
performing with the other big acts of the time, Jimi Hendrix, Grateful Dead, Jim
Morrison and the Doors…Though she was playing with these talented (male) bands
she was not welcomed in with open arms by all. She was talented, brash,
hyper-sexual and had drug addiction problems, just like all of her male
equivalents. She pushed the boundaries and that made many of her male
counterparts nervous. “
Both Holiday and
Here are excerpts from newspapers reporting their deaths.
Holliday: “Still procuring heroin while on her death bed, Billy Holiday was arrested for possession in her private room and died on July 17, her system completely unable to fight both withdrawal and heart disease at the same time.” 34