There have been many developments in women’s history from 1877 to the present. This essay will discuss four main events from the given period, which were initiated by women and have had a significant impact on their lives. These events include the Nineteenth Amendment’s adoption, Rosa Parks’s arrest, the case of Roe v. Wade, and the introduction of the Violence Against Women Act. The essay will argue that women’s fight for civil rights since the nineteenth century has allowed setting some rights in stone. In contrast, others still need to be protected continuously by women today.
The Events
Nineteenth Amendment
From the 1830s, women were advocates of the abolition movement. They collected petitions, orated in public, and participated in abolitionist meetings despite the dangerous ramifications of such actions (O’Dea, 2019). Despite fighting alongside African American men for fundamental democratic freedoms, women realized that they were inferior even in their allies’ eyes. For instance, at the 1840 World Anti-Slavery Convention, women, unlike men, were not allowed to sit down (O’Dea, 2019). After African American men obtained the right to vote by the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, the women of the movement split into two groups. Some chose to fight exclusively for women’s rights, while others prioritized advocating for the freed slaves (O’Dea, 2019). Generally, the women’s rights movement emerged on the foundation of the abolitionist movement.
When the black men received the right to vote, the Fourteenth Amendment’s text became central to women’s rights activists discourse. The reason for that was the introduction of the word ‘male’ in the Amendment (Women’s right to vote: The 19th Amendment (1920), 2018). It was the first time a Constitutional text employed gendered language. Arguably, it had not been necessary before because of the assumption that “all free people” protected by the Constitution were males. However, in the nineteenth century, women demanded to be seen as equals to men, who, in turn, attempted to conserve the status quo.
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, aggravated by the efforts to prevent women from attaining civil rights, suffragettes worked more sedulously than ever. They began to employ new tactics, organized marches that attracted up to 5000 people, and even had President Wilson at one of their conventions (Women’s right to vote: The 19th Amendment (1920), 2018). At the same time, several states were giving women the right to vote. Eventually, the Nineteenth Amendment granted all women the voting right in the year 1920. Despite the changing legislation, social attitudes towards women remained polarised. Empowered women began entering medical schools and other social life fields, which caused a backlash from men (Crocco, 1995). The Nineteenth Amendment’s introduction was a significant victory for the suffragettes at the time, but it was not the end of the women’s rights movement activity.
Rosa Parks Arrest
In 1955, in highly segregated Montgomery, Alabama, there were several arrests of black women refusing to abide by local segregation laws on public transportation. First, the police arrested a 15-year-old Claudette Colvin for not giving her seat to a white person (McGhee, 2015). Then, in October, an eighteen-year-old Mary Louise Smith refused to vacate a seat for a white passenger (McGhee, 2015). Even though this time, she was seated in the ‘colored’ section of the bus (McGhee, 2015). Nonetheless, in both cases, public reaction was weak, and the arrests of these young women did not lead to civil protests.
Later, on December 1, 1955, the Montgomery police arrested a well-respected 42-year-old black woman Rosa Parks for sitting in the ‘colored’ section of the bus instead of letting the white people sit. According to Mrs. Parks’s account, the public responded immediately and expressed a willingness to fight for their rights (“Rosa Parks Interview, Standing Up for Freedom — Academy of Achievement,” 1995). The next day after the arrest, Rosa Parks told her story to the people in Dr. Martin Luther King’s church (“Rosa Parks Interview, Standing Up for Freedom — Academy of Achievement,” 1995). Later the members of the African American community established the Montgomery Improvement Association and chose Dr. Martin Luther King as its spokesman and president. African Americans began a 381-day boycott of the Montgomery city buses. In 1956 the Supreme Court satisfied their demands by banning segregation on public transport. Methodical actions of black activists, including Rosa Parks, achieved a Supreme Court’s decision against segregation.
The arrests of Claudette Colin, Mary Louise Smith, and Rosa Parks are similar, but only one of them had significant political consequences. By reasonable assumption, that is because of two reasons listed below. First, Rosa Park was a respected figure within the civil rights movement (McGhee, 2015). Therefore, she had a political platform, and it was easier for her to unite allies. Second, after Collin’s arrest, the civil rights movement began developing the strategies for combating segregation, including preparing for a boycott (Blattman, 2017). Hence, the politically active part of the African American community, including Rosa Parks, was ready for action by December 1955 and used the opportunity to launch one of the first civil rights movements.
Roe v. Wade
During the twentieth century, female activists were becoming increasingly braver in their political action. Historically, many of its milestones the women’s rights movement achieved in collaboration with the African American community. However, the issue that women had to tackle by themselves was the right to abortion. They gained this right because of Jane Roe and her lawyers, who appeared before a District Court and then twice before the Supreme Court.
The open fight for abortion rights began in Dallas, Texas. In 1854 Texas passed an anti-abortion law, making abortion, unless performed by medical advice, a criminal offense (Wardle, 1985). In 1969 a young woman called ‘Jane Roe’ in Court for privacy protection filed a lawsuit against the district attorney Henry Wade (Roe v. Wade, n.d.). Roe was arguing that the anti-abortion law violated her rights protected by First, Fourth, Fifth, Ninth, and Fourteenth Amendments (Roe v. Wade, n.d.). Before her victory, Roe appeared in the District Court and the Supreme Court (Wardle, 1985). The struggle continued until the Court proclaimed that the right to privacy allowed women to undergo abortions during the first trimester of their pregnancy, when the medical risks are low (Roe v. Wade, n.d.). Undeniably, as a result of Roe v. Wade, women gained the right to make decisions regarding their bodies autonomously.
Nonetheless, even after the Court’s historic decision in 1973, women had to fight for their abortion rights. Since the legalization of abortion, anti-abortion fighters have committed violence against abortion providers (O’Donnell, 2017). As O’Donnell (2017) states, women engage in “continuous… struggle to preserve abortion rights” (p. 80). The state and the society had likely regulated women’s bodies for so long that the change in legislation was not enough to alter the attitudes of the people about women’s private right for abortion. Even though women achieved the legalization of abortion, they have to fight to maintain it.
Violence Against Women Act
Only recently, the US has produced a comprehensive Act regulating gender-based violence and protecting its victims. On September 13, 1994, the Government enacted the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) as part of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 (Boba & Lilley, 2009). The purpose of the Act was to criminalize violence against women, fund research covering the problem, and fund organizations and social services working with the victims of gender-based crimes (Boba & Lilley, 2009). The new legislation has helped reduce the crime against women due to the three following reasons. First, strict punishment for committing such crimes, second, incarcerating the criminals and preventing repeated offenses, and, finally, protecting the victims, thus encouraging the reporting of the crimes (Boba & Lilley, 2009). VAWA has proved to be a useful program against gender-based violence.
The enactment of VAWA was possible due to the advocacy of the second-wave feminists. In the 1960s and 1970s, they alerted the public and the legislators to the issues of violence against women. As a result, the federal and state legislators began introducing laws to protect domestic abuse victims (Holliday, 2019). It was novel because, previously, spousal violence had been a private issue. However, the laws at the time were not only scattered but narrow and limited. For instance, they did not generally recognize the need for domestic violence victims’ asylums (Holliday, 2019). Later a gradual development of both state and federal laws resulted in the adoption of VAWA. Overall, it took roughly four decades of women’s movement advocacy for the state to take responsibility in combating gender-based violence slowly.
Possibly, the slow change in legal and social norms and the broad scope of VAWA have ensured the steady change in the attitudes towards gender-based crimes. In contrast to Roe v. Wade and the rapid legalization of abortion, the criminalization of domestic violence developed over several decades. The US lawmakers gradually introduced new penalties for gender-based violence, while the feminist activists informed the public about the victims and the crimes behind closed doors. Moreover, one of the crucial achievements of VAWA is the input in education and research regarding violence against women, which proved to be effective in enabling social change. Besides that, VAWA combined the scattered legal anti-gender-based crime measures. Therefore, the step by step development of the legislation covering violence against women supported by feminist initiatives has produced a significant shift in social reality and peaked at the introduction of VAWA in 1994.
Conclusion
Since the end of the nineteenth century, through the constant struggle, the women’s movement has gained women several civil rights. These include the right to vote, to be exempt from segregation, to undergo an abortion, to be protected by the state against gender-based violence. Generally, the longer it took for women to receive certain rights, the more educational and social campaigns were involved, the lower is the social resistance to women having these rights today. Moreover, each of the steps in women’s empowerment allowed further development. For instance, the mass movement initiated after Rosa Parks’s arrest paved the way for the marches and advocacy of second-wave feminists in the 1960s and later. Despite all achievements, the struggle continues, since some of the fundamental civil rights women have, such as the legal abortions, are still under attack.
References
Blattman, E. (2017). The girl who acted before Rosa Parks. National Women’s History Museum. Web.
Boba, R. & Lilley, D. (2009). Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) funding: A nation wide assessment of effects on rape and assault. Violence Against Women, 15(2), 168-185.
Crocco, M. S. (1995). The road to the vote. Social Education, 59(5), 257-264.
Holliday, C. (2019). Making domestic violence private again: Referral authority and rights rollback in matter of A-B. Boston College Law Review, 60(7), 2145-2183.
McGhee, F. (2015). The Montgomery bus boycott and the fall of the Montgomery City Lines. Alabama Review, 68(3), 251-268. Web.
O’Dea, S. (2019). From suffrage to the Senate: America’s political women: An encyclopedia of leaders, causes & issues (4th ed.). Grey House Publishing.
O’Donnell, K. S. (2017). Reproducing Jane: Aabortion stories and women’s political histories. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 43(1), 77-96.
Roe v. Wade. (n.d.). Oyez. Web.
Rosa Parks interview, standing up for freedom. (1995). Academy of Achievement. Web.
Wardle, L. D. (1985). Rethinking Roe v. Wade. Brigham Young University Law Review, 231(2), 231-264.
Women’s Right to Vote: The 19th amendment (1920). (2018). In Grey House Publishing (Ed.), Opinions throughout history: Gender: Roles & rights. Grey House Publishing.