Women's Rights & Roles Throughout History

Until the mid-nineteenth century, writers assumed that a patriarchal order was a natural order that had existed^[3] as John Stuart Mill wrote, since "the very earliest twilight of human society".^[4] This was not seriously challenged until the eighteenth century when Jesuit missionaries found matrilineality in native North American peoples.^[5]
In the Middle Ages, an early effort to improve the status of women occurred during the early reforms under Islam, when women were given greater rights in marriage, divorce and inheritance.^[6] Women were not accorded with such legal status in other cultures, including the West, until centuries later.^[7] The Oxford Dictionary of Islam states that the general improvement of the status of Arab women included prohibition of female infanticide and recognizing women's full personhood.^[8] "The dowry, previously regarded as a bride-price paid to the father, became a nuptial gift retained by the wife as part of her personal property."^[9][6] Under Islamic law, marriage was no longer viewed as a "status" but rather as a "contract", in which the woman's consent was imperative.^[9][6][8] "Women were given inheritance rights in a patriarchal society that had previously restricted inheritance to male relatives."^[6] Annemarie Schimmel states that "compared to the pre-Islamic position of women, Islamic legislation meant an enormous progress; the woman has the right, at least according to the letter of the law, to administer the wealth she has brought into the family or has earned by her own work."^[10] Some have claimed that women generally had more legal rights under Islamic law than they did under Western legal systems until more recent times.^[11] English Common Law transferred property held by a wife at the time of a marriage to her husband, which contrasted with the Sura: "Unto men (of the family) belongs a share of that which Parents and near kindred leave, and unto women a share of that which parents and near kindred leave, whether it be a little or much - a determinate share" (Quran 4:7), albeit maintaining that husbands were solely responsible for the maintenance and leadership of his wife and family.^[11] "French married women, unlike their Muslim sisters, suffered from restrictions on their legal capacity which were removed only in 1965."^[12]
In the 16th century, the Reformation in Europe allowed more women to add their voices, including the English writers Jane Anger, Aemilia Lanyer, and the prophetess Anna Trapnell. However, it has been claimed that the Dissolution and resulting closure of convents had deprived many such women of one path to education.^[13][14][15] Giving voice in the secular context became more difficult when deprived of the rationale and protection of divine inspiration. Queen Elizabeth I demonstrated leadership amongst women, even if she was unsupportive of their causes, and subsequently became a role model for the education of women.^[16]

The Enlightenment and A Vindication of the Rights of Woman


First edition print of Vindication of the Rights of Woman




Main article: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

For more details on this topic, see History of feminism#Eighteenth Century:The Age of Enlightenment.

The Age of Enlightenment was characterized by secular intellectual reasoning, and a flowering of philosophical writing. The most important feminist writer of the time was Mary Wollstonecraft, often described as the first feminist philosopher. In A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) Wollstonecraft argued that it was the education and upbringing of women that created limited expectations. Despite some inconsistencies (Brody refers to the "Two Wollestoncrafts"^[17] ) reflective of problems that had no easy answers, this book remains a foundation stone of feminist thought.^[18]
In other parts of Europe, Hedvig Charlotta Nordenflycht was writing in Sweden, and what is thought to be the first scientific society for women was founded in Middelburg, in the south of Holland in 1785. This was the Natuurkundig Genootschap der Dames (Women's Society for Natural Knowledge).^[19][20] which met regularly until 1881, finally dissolving in 1887. However Deborah Crocker and Sethanne Howard point out that women have been scientists for 4,000 years.^[21] Journals for women which focused on science became popular during this period as well.^[22]

Suffrage, the right to vote


Inez Boissevain at a NAWS parade, Washington 1913




For more details on this topic, see Women's suffrage.

The ideas that were planted in the late 1700s took root during the 1800s. Women began to agitate for the right to vote and participate in government and law making.^[23] The ideals of Women's suffrage developed alongside that of universal suffrage, and women's movements took lessons from those in other countries.

See also: Timeline of women's suffrage

United States



Main article: History of women's suffrage in the United States

American women advocated women's right to vote from the 1820s onward. One colonial forerunner, Lydia Chapin Taft was granted the right to vote in 1756 by the town of Uxbridge, Massachusetts colony. In the United States, this was first achieved in the relatively sparsely-populated territories of Wyoming (1869) and briefly in Utah (1870), although Utah women were disenfranchised by the U.S. Congress in 1887.^[24] The push to grant women's suffrage in Utah was at least partially fueled by outsiders' belief that, given the right to vote, Utah women would dispose of polygamy. After Utah women exercised their suffrage rights in favor of polygamy the U.S. Congress disenfranchised Utah women.^[25] Other territories and states granted women the right to vote in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but national women's suffrage did not come until the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified in 1920.^[26][27][24]



United Kingdom


Mrs. Emmeline Pankhurst arrested, 1914



Throughout the 19th century British women reformers developed their own dialogue through many various reforming groups until, by 1903, they had formed into two distinct organisations; the democratic National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies, and the militant Women's Social and Political Union. Leaders in the struggle were the peaceful Millicent Fawcett and radical Emmeline Pankhurst with her daughter Christabel. Their fight also proved slow and frustrating. In 1918 the British Parliament finally passed a bill allowing women over the age of 30 to vote. In 1928 the age limit was lowered to 21.^[28]

See also: Women in the Victorian Era

Other examples


Women first won the right to vote in New Zealand in 1893, in Australia in 1902, and in Finland in 1906, preceding the United States and Britain in affirming full voting rights. However, in some of these countries only women in the ruling population were able to vote at first. For example, Aboriginal women in Australia were not allowed to vote until they became citizens in 1967.^[29][30][31] Many other nations have proved much slower to change. For example, women in France were not given voting rights until 1944.




Argue it out here.

*mutters* Created to be servants *mutters*...


I mean I understand women should have the rights to do a job if they want to, but they tend to have a slightly heavier amount of testosterone. We should also be allowed to serve.

I think how some men treated women throught the victorian times is disgusting i mean being able to beat their wives and it would be legal! and the whole seperate sphere thing! how low can they get!

I offer no opinion on men being able to beat their wives.

I mainly disagree with the whole men and women have to be equal. Because testosterene makes you want to be the best therefore men try harder (and masculine women) And Oestrogen makes you feel more likely to compromise, so more femenin people will be happy staying at home doing the housework, serving their spouse. These days most people aren't as simple and being masculine or femenin, most people have traits from both, the best relationships tend to be with peope who balence eachother out. Which is why my parents confuse me, 'cos they're both masculine so it doesn't work properly.

uh... Was I babbling on a bit?

Hm...

Well, I believe in women's rights, but I also believe that men and women have so many differences, it is ridiculous to argue that there are strengths most women have that most men don't and vice verse. Women are not men. Men are not women.

One reason my bf and I work well together is I am pretty masculine (for being a girl) , and he is pretty feminine (for being a guy). We kind of meet up in the middle.

ah Emmeline Pankhurst a name i don't think i shall ever forget

Wasn't she the one who set post boxes of fire? Or was she the one that walked into a horse?

I know that she got arressted for spitting on a policeman and the one that got run over by the king's horse at the darby was Emily Davison.

Ah yes the Cat-And-Mouse-Act. The women in prison used to starve themselves so that the prison guards would let them out because they didn't want them to die in prison. So an act was passed so that if prisoners went on hunger strike they would be freed until healthy then taken back into prison.

yeah and they had to put tubes down their noses to actually get them to eat something

The suffragettes were just terrorists. And they got what they wanted so encouraged other terrorists

Yeah they were seen as the first terrorists