This writeup highlights some of the changes made in the
workplace during the Women's Rights movement.
“I do pray... for some terrific shock to startle the
women of this nation into a self-respect which will compel them
to see the abject degradation of their present position...”
Susan B. Anthony, a pioneer in the modern Women’s Rights
Movement made this statement in 1870. She was a strong
willed woman of her time who fought for the rights of women
during the Movement and is recognized today as the face on a
silver dollar. Not only should she be commended for her
great accomplishments related to the Women’s Rights
Movement, but so should all women who made the sacrifice of time
and criticism to make women of today the leaders of society that
they are.
There were many organizations formed and laws passed during
the early nineteenth century time period in history. It was a
time to show America that women are just as equal as men and
should have the right to vote along with many other rights.
No longer were women willing to sit out and not participate in
the fast paced jobs available only to men. Women wanted to be a
part of the growing opportunities that arose in the workplace
and many women of the early 1900s made an effort and were able to
see the changes which they brought forth to a nation that was
once a male dominated society. Not only did women accomplish
the passing of the Nineteenth Amendment, which gave women the
right to vote, but they also had many other goals and
achievements.
One main goal was to become more educated and have schools for
women only, which would allow them to speak out publicly and give
them the skills they would need to survive in the world of the
men’s workforce. There were also many organized reform
groups to promote temperance, labor reform, abolition and equal
rights. The first major convention of the Women’s
Rights Movement was in 1848 in Seneca Falls, New York.
This convention is known as the official beginning of the
Movement. In this convention, women reworded the original
text of Declaration of Independence to include the words that all
men and women are created equal. There were also other issues
that came about in the twentieth century such as child labor,
alcoholism, discriminatory work practices, and political
corruption. Women in the beginning of the twentieth century were
not allowed to have major jobs or hold major political offices.
They never earned as much money for the same job as men
did. Susan B. Anthony was paid two dollars and fifty cents
a week as a teacher and a man doing the same job earned ten
dollars a week. Anthony is only one of the many women who
dealt with such devastating and humiliating pay cuts. This
problem unfortunately, still occurs in today’s society and
is something women are still fighting to overcome. However,
if it was not for the women who began it all, women would still
be second class citizens and still be subject to men. The Women’s
Rights Movement brought forth many changes to the role of women
in the workplace, but there are still more advances that need to
be made.
On average, women make seventy-one cents for every dollar a
man earns and women’s labor is not nearly valued as highly
as a man’s. Women between the ages of 40-44 earn around
$22,000 a year for full time work. A man between the ages
of 25-29 earns around this much as he is just starting his
career. In the book, The Reference Shelf: Women’s
Issues, it states, “Such discrimination takes a toll on
women’s morale, productivity, opportunities to advance, and
quite painfully, on their paychecks. The fact that women
still earn far less than men can be largely attributed to the
long-term effects of unfair practices on the job” (Brown,
28). The women who started and continued the Women’s
Rights Movement became fed up with their place in society and
decided to make a change to it. However, women have put up
with pay cuts and unfair job amospheres for a number of years and
have still not accomplished a fair and equal rate of pay.
Inequities continue to exist.
In 1961, President John F. Kennedy created the first
President’s Commission on the Status of Women. The
group studied women and their social, legal, and political status
and recommended new laws for Congress to pass. Many commissions
found that the state laws discriminated against women in
education and employment. In 1966, a group of women formed
the National Organization for Women (NOW). This organization
would pressure Congress and other legislatures to improve women’s
rights. The National Organization for Women was one of the
many groups of women that came together to help accomplish many
of the goals from the original Senca Falls Convention and bring
forth a new way of seeing women involved in America. The National
Organization for Women exerted considerable influence and
initiated the modern women’s rights movement. Many of
its methods were considered extreme and distasteful to moderate
and conservative women. Nevertheless the end seemed to
justify the means and many improvements came about on behalf of
women. Nearly half of the entire workforce in the United States
is women and the percentage of women working has exceeded to over
sixty per cent. Terri Apter comments, “What is important
in these vast changes in women, education and work is not simply
a leap in the numbers of women employed; for what changed in this
generation, after so many generations of simply being on verge of
change, is women’s expectations." In the beginning of
the Women’s Rights Movement, women had many expectations and
goals to accomplish, but they were not as strong as today’s
expectations. The women who began the Movement gave future
generations of women the foundation of expectations to grow on
and help change the role of women in the workplace who had
been mistreated for so long.
Another important factor in women and working is the home and
family. More and more women are dependent upon their husbands to
help care for the children at home. If women are less
successful at work, however, then they tend to invest more in the
home. This gives them a reason to put less into their jobs.
This then gives men the idea that they need to invest more time
in work to earn money for the family and give them the
appropriate benefits a family needs. It has become an unbroken
cycle of women feeling they have to do both raising the children
and working when they cannot put forth their best effort at
either one, while men continue to think they have to put more and
more hours in work, leaving the women home tending for the
children alone. Some women want to be working all the time
and raising their children, but it is almost impossible to do
both with the best effort put forth on each side. Apter
also claims, “Decisions for women are made particularly
difficult by the series of clashes between norms and needs, both
at home and at work.”
Education and work experience have also changed dramatically
in the past thirty years, but economic discrimination has
actually increased. In the book, When Work Doesn’t
Work Anymore, a lady named “Ellie” tells her
story. She says,
But in the end the joke was on me. One day I
saw the bonus grid in my boss’s office. Right
on the other side of my box the guys above me were making
a fortune. I saw that they were only stringing along the
appropriate number of females to keep the field
diverse. It wasn’t that I was valuable or
important to the team.
The hard work and dedication “Ellie” had given to
her work was returned with not one thought of her effort or
stress she put forth. If a company’s only ambition to
hire women is because of the fact that it is not diverse, and
only hire the right number to do so, then this is unjust and
misguided. Too many women in today’s world deal with
this discrimination even though their education and their effort
is higher than a comparable man’s.
Even though women have made huge steps in the fight for
equality and justice in the work force, there is too much that
has not been done. It is not right for any man to earn more than
a women who has the same capabilities, experience, education
and work habits. No woman should have to suffer in her job
feeling like she is lower in the eyes of her coworkers and her
boss. If a woman has accomplished just as much as a man,
then it is relevant that she should be hired just as easily as
the man that has an interview after her. In the same case, a male
CEO of a company earns $65,000 dollars a year and then a woman
works her way up through the system and discrimination to become
the CEO of a company as well. She too, then should earn as
much, if not more than any man who would perform the same
duties. A woman who is dedicated to her job and willing to
put forth the effort as well as sacrifice time, money and her
family to be a good employee like Ellie, should have every right
to earn a bonus or a pay check as comparable to a male
coworkers.
The fact is, no matter how far the economy rises and falls,
the “glass ceiling” is still present and women cannot
reach to the top to break it. They can only progress so far and
then they bump into the “glass ceiling” with men
looking down from above. Though women are as strong willed
and loving as they are, they still unfortunatly get trampled by
the men who just want to make money. It does not matter to
them how the ladies in their company are treated even when they
know it is wrong. If men stood up for women because they
agree that they are not getting paid enough for their job, then
they too, will lose money. Far more women have education and
training equal to men, but this fact is not reflected in women's
careers and pay. While women have accomplished so much in
education and in training along with other important skills,
however, they still lack the amount of pay and credit they
deserve. All these changes throughout history which began in
1848, have brought forth equal opportunities in several ways, but
not enough. Susan B. Anthony was a great leader of the
Women’s Rights Movement who women today should remember and
be grateful to for the ambitious woman she was. In 1897,
she stated, “I do not believe woman’s utter dependence
on man wins for her his respect; it may cause him to love and pet
her as a child, but never to regard her as a peer.” One day America’s women will be
able to prove Anthony wrong.
Works Cited
Apter, Terri. Working Women Don’t Have Wives.
New York: St. Martin’s Press, Incorporated, 1993.
Brown, Robin, ed. The Reference Shelf: Women’s
Issues. New York: H.W. Wilson Company, 1993.
Gurko, Miriam. The Ladies of Senca Falls. New
York: Schocken, 1976.
Ireland, Patricia. “Women’s Rights.”
Social Policy. Spring 1998: 14. Master FILE
Online. EBSCO Publishing. (30 Nov. 2001)
McKenna, Elizabeth, Perle. When Work Doesn’t
Work Anymore: Women, Work and Identity. New York:
Delacorte Press, 1997.
Wagner, Shirley Ann. Equality Now: Safeguarding
Women’s Rights. Florida: Rourke Corporation,
Incorporated, 1992.