Module 5

Women during the Progressive Era up to the 1920s

  1. Look at women by race as well as in gender relations because ethnicity had a direct impact on their position in society and each group faced different challenges while sharing others
    1. subject to sex domination and seen as a “being of sexuality” to be controlled
    2. low wages and gender specified jobs except during exigency (such as war or mass illness)
    3. education on the rise, especially higher education but many still in gender-specific “feminine” curricula/programs. For example:
      1. home economics/domestic services
      2. social work
      3. teaching
      4. nursing (thought these were often certified training programs through hospitals rather than degree programs at colleges)
      5. clerical training (secretaries, bookkeepers)
    4. Politics and woman suffrage—a new age for women to move into the public sphere, start to entered local and state politics in huge numbers, some bid for national level but little success
    5. Many women, especially late teens and early 20s, began to consider sexual freedom/liberation
      1. Questioned constraints on personal behavior but still strong fears over reputation and risks of contraception
      2. It was considered illegal in most states to educate women about birth control so primary means was abstinence—only marginally successful—or abortion, which was very dangerous though common—some estimates put pregnancy termination rates at 1 in 4 (25%) during this period
      3. Religious and moral issues also presented powerful opposition to reevaluation of sexuality and women as sexually independent rather than helpless victims of their own depravity
  2. Role of the Numerically and Socially dominant white female of the Progressive Age
    1. Greatest access to progress and new advances such as education (more higher education such as high schools and college from 1890s onward, later gave access to clerical work and skilled jobs); middle class wealth and status (promoted development of home gadgetry, women’s clubs and organizations, representation in labor unions, influence over popular entertainment, etc)
    2. Reformer classes in religion, politics, work, and sex: no area off limits; Margaret Sanger and other birth control crusaders make birth control a national issue for women. Got the country TALKING!
    3. Protective legislation forms level or barrier of safety for women at work: one of the reasons that the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) was seen as a threat after 19th Amendment passed and women could vote, felt it would remove women’s working protections prematurely
    4. Woman suffrage almost anticlimax in 1919/1920: most states had already passed local ordinances to allow female property owners and local voting rights for women in the preceding 2 decadesNote: Interestingly Orlando, FL gave its women property holders (regardless of race, although no black women registered to vote as they were not likely property owners) the right to participate a year before national ratification. However, as a state, FL did not officially ratify the nineteenth amendment until 1969 as a sap to the Florida League of Women Voters (organized in 1919 so the official adoption of the amendment was in honor of FLWV’s 50th year anniversary)
    5. Sexual revolution a common threat throughout all women, regardless of race but often more intense for racial ethnic women
      1. seen as loss of social and parental control
      2. reflection of economic hardships and acculturation to white values
    6. Family structure:
      1. women still primarily in home after marriage
      2. daughters most important as laborers until marriage, change after WWI as more single and married women stayed in the workforce albeit in “women’s jobs”
      3. independence and job necessity see more women exploring employment and marrying later
      4. parents feared insidious “Flapper” who seemed to represent all the challenges to traditional womanhood and “her place”NOTE: The following materials represent examples of various female ethnic groups and their experience/response to the Progressive period (1890s to 1920s) but cannot cover the experience of all individuals nor all races and certainly exceptions occurred.
  3. Native American women: white acculturation called for the abandonment of traditional cultural values and activities, subordination and economic dependence on husbands, and loss of meaningful authority over their children
    1. Whites felt that to “emancipate” Native American women they must curtail women’s traditional powers within the tribes
      1. Enforced monogamy and different sexual customs, which created conflicting gender roles and marriage practices such as formal ‘legal’ marriages (civil ceremonies)
      2. reallotment of land ownership to men only–had fewer property rights than white women
      3. end result relegated Native American women to a non-traditional (in terms of normal tribal relations) subservient role
    2. enforced education of native children in white schools further separated from traditional values and customs and undermined parental authority more.
      1. Because there was not enough money for schools, the students, girls in particular, were sent out to labor for room and board. Their work environment led to problems with sexual abuse and exposure to gender changes.
      2. By the end of the 1920s, native parents began losing control over sexual and marital decisions for their daughters.
    3. Women’s increasing participation in white society was a threat in education, politics, employment, and ‘cheap amusements’–urban city life challenge to man’s authority and domestic/public life of the reservation and tribal norms
  4. Mexicanas: maternity and pregnancy highly prized as a way to persist in ideal of virginity and chastity before and after marriage, reflection of machismo (male egoism and ideas of manhood, power in home and over self/family)
    1. material and marital subordination was the norm for Mexicans–had to marry to get land and to follow cultural mores, cultural ideas and fears of sexual harassment of women kept most women out of domestic work, family labor and wage most common (in-home, agricultural wages–very migratory also). Family was the all important institution.
    2. Americanization diminished women’s parental power and caused conflicts with gender relations, husb/wife conflict; most Mexican migration occurred after 1900; dealing with simultaneous two cultures on borderlands.
    3. 1920s flapper appeal was a great scandal and horrified traditional moral and family values, as this liberal view encouraged sexuality which was totally opposed to Mexican belief and family system.
  5. Asian women: almost all Chinese women before 1900 came as prostitutes, it was common and accepted for daughters (who were seen as family burdens, especially in absence of sons) to be sold as prostitutes in a form of sexual indenture while in China and then again to buyers in the US for profit to the family, for survival usually. Generally not opposed by daughters who saw as their duty to obey and help family; generally sold into a 4-6 year contract at auction but, once purchased, most worked as prostitutes for 15-30 years before choosing another profession like cooks, servants, laborers, industrial workers (that is, if she didn’t succumb to disease, plus pregnancy added years to contract)
    1. Also often required to work in sweatshops during the day and then as prostitutes at night, worked as laundresses and in canneries, marriage after prostitution not uncommon and these women were not viewed as bad or undesirable unlike a similar situation in white society
    2. In part this flexibility was due to male/female ratios among Chinese Americans: 150 men to 1 woman, later 20-50 men to 1 woman). Up to the 1880s, 64% of Chinese women in America were active prostitutes but start to marry in lieu of sexual service by the early 1900s, not all of these women victims in the sense that they had no other choices but many were and suffered harsh lives.
    3. By Progressive era and 1920s, white society tried to root out Chinese prostitution as an evil institution and forced the brothels into redlight districts and began to take punitive action against these women. In general, individual prostitutes endured more unfair treatment and fines than did brothel owners or madams, who often were part of or on the fringes of “respectable” society.
    4. Situation for Japanese and Korean women was different: most came as brides, through arranged marriages or came with spouses; also immigration of these groups started at a later date after Goldrush and boom in California development so a different age and circumstances. On the other hand, the pre-existing concubine (sex slave/mistress) market also did not dominate Japanese or Korean culture during this period as it did in China.
  6. African-American women
    1. Disagreement over women’s work roles, conflict within black family structure as legacy of slave life; unequal balance of power in relationships.
      1. White culture kept black male from dominating marital roles
      2. Some resorted to violence in backlash to ineffectual role in the family but mostly desertion where separation/marital break occurred c.uncertainty of economic and social roles led to flexible kin networks and vital role of grandmother as coping mechanism
    2. Married African American women 7 times more likely to be forced to choose labor than married white women.
    3. Early marriage, widowhood, and desertion occurred in much higher rates in black families due to insurmountable tensions and social/economic stress, more female heads of households who likely to depend on own labor and kin networks to sustain family life
    4. Sexual harassment a major problem—to counter this, most black women by 1920s able to live-out as domestics, boost family life and keep distance from white male predators, lessen stress on marriages when possible
    5. Little participation in civil rights movement, male dominated as was woman suffrage until late 1910sNote of interest: FL resident Mary Bethune Cookman (one of the Bethune-Cookman College founders) was an active voice for woman suffrage in FL though she was not widely accepted by the larger white movement–in fact, many feared her voice would threaten their achievements (white middle class suffragists) by scaring off white male legislators.
  7. Conclusions
    1. All women during this period faced challenges of rapidly changing social and economic roles, especially sexual definition and liberties regardless of race, ethnicity played large role in how effects were felt or dealt with by the cultural community
    2. When it came in 1920, woman suffrage was guaranteed to all without regard to ethnicity, though racial bias, cultural bias (often from within the specific cultural group) and lack of opportunity for education (thus illiteracy) often barred various female ethnic groups form active participation in politics
    3. Birth control measures and methods were aimed specifically at female groups associated with poverty and “loose sexuality” misnomers or differences from dominant white society; yet, birth control helps all women across racial lines where acceptable in those cultures
    4. 1920s’ sexual revolution for women posed great threat to parental and marital authority and behaviors, daughters especially were a concern as all racial groups felt a loss of control within own cultural customs and the American society as a whole—influenced by WWI, jazz, education, new job opportunities, alcoholism and prohibition
    5. ERA and movement of women’s civil rights stymied by fears of losing protective legislation and job security at all levels, mostly Caucasian women benefited from changes in WWI on maintained basis (primarily with domination of clerical work) but African American women achieved short term access to higher paying and different types of jobs while Mexicanas, Asian American, and Native American women were still largely confined to agricultural and domestic work
    6. Of all groups, Caucasian and African American women had best access to progress, essentially about 20-50 yrs ahead of other groups in acclimation and access to male dominated social and economic constructs.
    7. So, overall, greatest change during the first quarter or so of the nineteenth century for American women seemed to be socially and over their sexuality, yet after the 1920s a gender role reversal and attempts to restrict women began anew which reached a culmination in the 1950s.
      1. Pitted fears of radicalism and disintegrating family structures (as the cohesion in American society) against all other ills.
      2. The resurrection of the domestic woman as the ideal was a reaction to these fears and considered the “trade off” for suffrage and economic access—gains in one area were marked by retreat in others to preserve the appearance of a status quo. Essentially, “you can have these rights but you have to prove that nothing will really change in the fundamental structure of society and gender roles.”
      3. The achievements of these earlier decades set up the preconditions for female emancipation/liberation, even across racial identity, in the 1960s and 1970s.

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