Making Herstory

In honor of Women’s History Month, I’m gonna share some women’s history with you. I know, this isn’t school, but I bet you’ll learn something new. Women’s rights have come a long way over the past two centuries.

Women’s Voting Rights Origins

Women’s voting rights in the United States, known as Women’s Suffrage, were enshrined in the Constitution with passage  of the 19th Amendment in 1920. But the movement began way earlier. In fact, in the state of New Jersey, unmarried women who owned property were able to vote between 1776 and 1807. But then the New Jersey State Legislature, which was all male, took voting rights away from women, people of color, and new immigrants. Over the next few decades, women across the country gathered privately to talk together about women’s rights, and their numbers grew. One of the first women to publicly call for women’s rights was Maria Stewart in 1832, she was an African American who also advocated for abolishing slavery. But the women who publicly spoke up about women’s rights got a lot of heat for it. In 1840 Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott and other women weren’t allowed to participate in the World Antislavery Convention because they weren’t men, so Elizabeth decided to create their own women’s event.

Women’s Suffrage

The Seneca Falls Convention was held in 1848, and Elizabeth presented a “Declaration of Sentiments,” using similar language as the “Declaration of Independence” like, “We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men and women are created equal.” This Declaration described how women were being treated unfairly. The women at the convention who supported this Declaration, and even some men including Fredrick Douglass, signed their names on it. But a lot of people did not like these ideas, and they published the Declaration of Sentiments to make fun of it and the people who signed it. Some of the signers actually had their names removed because they were embarrassed. But as the saying goes, bad news is good news, and as word spread across the nation to ridicule the Declaration signers, the women’s rights movement actually gained even more support.

Over the next several decades, other suffragettes like Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, and Sojourner Truth traveled the country speaking to women and men who supported women’s rights. In 1869 the territory of Wyoming was the first since New Jersey to grant women the right to vote, and in the years that followed, several other territories and states did as well. 

“Bicycle Face”

Remember a few episodes ago I mentioned the history of the bicycle? So in the 1890’s a safer bicycle model started gaining popularity. Before the bicycle, the only modes of transportation for women were walking, riding a horse or a carriage/wagon (usually needing an escort); and women stayed home most of the time. But bicycles gave women freedom! In 1896 a magazine described, “To men, the bicycle in the beginning was merely a new toy, another machine added to the long list of devices they knew in their work and play. To women, it was a steed upon which they rode into a new world.” Bicycles made it easier for women to go out in public and socialize. Bicycles empowered women.

And soon after women started riding bicycles, doctors started talking about a strange condition on the rise. They said, “the unconscious effort to maintain one’s balance tends to produce a wearied and exhausted ‘bicycle face.'” I’m not kidding. Doctors described “bicycle face” symptoms as flushed cheeks, clenched jaw, bulging eyes. And doctors (who were all men) discouraged women from riding bicycles, not only was unsuitable for women, but also it could lead to insomnia, heart palpitations, headaches, depression, a deformed spine, or pregnancy complications. But “bicycle face” was completely made up, an effort to prevent women from gathering and organizing. Those who were against the women’s rights movement wanted to restrain women’s freedoms. But they were unsuccessful. Elizabeth Cady Stanton said, “The bicycle will inspire women with more courage, self-respect, and self-reliance.” And Susan B Anthony said, “I think [bicycling] has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world.” The bicycle became a critical tool for women’s suffrage.

Voting Rights Pass

Over the years, more women’s rights conventions were held and more organizations were formed, not just in the US but globally. Then in 1920, 72 years after the Seneca Falls Convention, the 19th Amendment was passed, giving women nationwide the right to vote. But the women’s rights movement had only just begun, as that Amendment did not include women of color. Forty-five years later, with the rise of the Civil Rights Movement, the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 finally gave ALL women the right to vote.

The United States was not the first country, though. New Zealand was, allowing women voting rights in 1893. In fact 19 other countries, across Europe and Asia, gave women the right to vote before the United States. But some countries also had exclusions for women with different racial or Indigenous backgrounds. Asian Canadians finally got voting rights in the 1940s, and Indigenous people in 1960. Australia’s Indigenous women got the right to vote in 1962, sixty years after non-Indigenous women. In South Africa, white women got voting rights in 1930, but Black women had to wait until 1993. In India in 1935, only women married to a male voter, or women who met literacy qualifications, were allowed to vote; in 1950 rights expanded to all. Iceland first gave women over the age of 40 voting rights in 1915, but five years later they lowered the age to 25, the same age for men. Afghanistan actually allowed women to vote a year before the United States, but much has changed since then.

More Women’s Rights

There were many other rights women in history had to fight for. Until the Equal Pay Act of 1963, US companies could pay male employees a different amount than a woman doing the same job. But even six decades later, unfortunately the gender pay gap still exists today, with women making 85 cents for every dollar their male counterparts earn. The gender pay gap for Black and Hispanic women is even wider–69 cents and 58 cents, respectively, for every dollar a white man makes. Certain jobs and industries have greater gender pay gaps than others, like STEM fields, finance, and insurance. This pay gap doesn’t just impact women’s paychecks, it affects their ability to buy groceries and gas and regular expenses; pay bills, student loans, and other debts; and save money for a house, car, or retirement.

With the Civil Rights Act of 1964, US companies could no longer discriminate against who they hired for jobs based on if they were women, on their race, color, religion, and national origin. And with the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978, pregnant women could no longer be fired, not hired, or discriminated against by companies.

The Fair Housing Act of 1968 made it so landlords couldn’t refuse to rent a home or apartment to a woman, nor could they discriminate against race, color, religion, national origin, family status, and disability.

Until Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, public or private schools/colleges/universities that received federal funding could refuse to allow women/girls to take certain classes (math, science, engineering, law), they could exclude women/girls from playing sports, they could make admissions harder for women/girls. So Title IX protected all students and staff from sex-based discrimination, ensured equal opportunities for all students and athletes, and required schools to prevent and address misconduct.

With the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974, women could finally get their own bank account or credit card without a man co-signing, which then made it easier for women to own a home.

In 1988–four years after I was born–the Women’s Business Ownership Act allowed women to get business loans in their own name without a man co-signing.

Recent Women’s Rights

It may seem wild to hear that these rights had to be granted to women, and also absurd how long they took to happen. And this isn’t ancient history–it’s recent. In 2018 Saudi Arabia granted women the right to drive a vehicle again, after a 30-year ban. In Russia, from 1974 until 2021, women were banned from 456 different jobs, including train or truck drivers, ship crew members, car mechanics, and serving in the Navy (now they’re only banned from 100 jobs). And since 2021 women’s and girls’ rights in Afghanistan have been all but eliminated–girls cannot attend school beyond the sixth grade, girls and women cannot play sports or go to parks or gyms, if a woman goes outside she must be fully covered from head to toe and be accompanied by a man, women cannot speak in public–they are forbidden from being heard, they cannot sing in their house loud enough that someone outside can hear, and they cannot be visible from a window.

Keep Working for Women’s Rights

I hope that helps you have some perspective, that you recognize and appreciate the rights you do have, and also all of the women (and some men too) who persevered for years to gain the rights that you enjoy today. We still have more work to do, so let’s remember Women’s History and be inspired to make our own history.

Resources

If you have a topic suggestion, I’d love to hear from you! Send an email (tweens get the OK from your parents) to hello@EmpowerfulGirls.com .

If you have social media already, follow me on Insta or tiktok @empowerfulgirls. I’m not encouraging or endorsing social media, but I’m on there to offer an unfiltered, uplifting alternative to what’s in your feed. Remember to get on the email list for the newsletter!

Also, if you enjoy listening to 10 for Teens + Tweens, I would truly appreciate you telling your friends about this podcast or leaving a review so others can find it and feel uplifted, too! Your support means the world to me!