The Last 200 Years

As readers have seen throughout this series, the situation for women, even in the most advanced countries, can be pretty grim. Now I’d like to look at the positive side, at what we have achieved in the last couple of centuries.

Aside from a few small societies where women have, or had, equal power, most of our world has been patriarchal for millennia. However, during the last 200 years—a relatively short time in human history—women in the male-dominated nations have organized, and have racked up significant victories. I believe that this more successful activism has been made possible by the advent of mass communications, starting with the printing press.

The Vote and the Press

During the French Revolution (1789-1798), women wrote and published pamphlets and formed such groups as the Society of Revolutionary Republican Women to demand equal rights.  Alas, these groups were ruthlessly suppressed, and some even murdered, during the Reign of Terror. Feminism re-emerged in subsequent political upheavals in 1830, 1848, and1871. Real successes, though, were achieved only after World War II, when French women got the vote and (at least on paper) equal rights, via a statement in the preamble of the new constitution: “The Law guarantees to woman, in every domain, rights equal to those of man.”

British educator and writer Mary Wollstonecraft founded a school for girls in 1784. In 1792, incensed by the French diplomat Talleyrand, who stated that women should receive only a domestic education, she published A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.

Wollstonecraft’s book didn’t have any noticeable effect at the time, but half a century later it—and the writings of other early feminists—inspired American women to hold the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention. The most controversial resolution adopted by the convention was one demanding the right to vote. That passed only narrowly, while eleven others passed unanimously.

Public opposition to votes for women was strong. According to the National Women’s History Museum, “Religious leaders spoke out against women’s political activism from the pulpit. Articles attacked women who took part in public life.” Anti-suffragists began to organize in the 1860s—and not all of them were men. “In 1911, Josephine Dodge, who also led a movement to establish day care centers to help working mothers, founded the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage.”

In 1920, 72 years after the Seneca Falls Convention, American women won the right to vote.

Money

Another controversial demand at Seneca Falls was the right for married women to own property in their own names. At that time, when a woman married, anything she had, anything inherited, anything earned through her own labor, became the property of her husband.

This wasn’t the case throughout history. As a child, I was taught that ancient Egypt was a tyranny run by a terrible man, the pharaoh, while ancient Greece was the first democracy. But Egyptian women were actually better off than their Greek counterparts.

Scholar Janet Johnson writes that ancient Egyptian women “were able to acquire, to own, and to dispose of property (both real and personal) in their own name. They could enter into contracts in their own name; they could initiate civil court cases and could, likewise, be sued; they could serve as witnesses in court cases; they could serve on juries; and they could witness legal documents. Egyptian women were able to acquire, to own, and to dispose of property (both real and personal) in their own name. They could enter into contracts in their own name; they could initiate civil court cases and could, likewise, be sued; they could serve as witnesses in court cases; they could serve on juries; and they could witness legal documents.”

Ancient Greek women, on the other hand, had no political rights of any kind. The Guardian reports that they could trade and engage in industry, such as tavern-keeping, but they were not allowed to inherit property or take a case to court unless a male guardian was in charge.

The Guardian also lists other societies where women had far more rights than 19^th Century American women, including the Anglo-Saxon world up to 1100.

American women began to catch up with the ancient Egyptians in the early 20th Century. Interestingly enough, we were allowed to control our own money before being allowed to vote. According to the Annenberg Classroom, it wasn’t until 1900, 52 years after the Seneca Convention, that all states had laws giving married women the right to own property and keep their wages.

But what kind of wages? In 1963—151 years after Seneca Falls—Congress mandated equal pay for men and women performing the same job. Six years later, in 1969, an appeals court ruled that an employer cannot divide jobs into categories reserved for one sex or the other. Four years after that, in 1973, the Supreme Court said that sex-segregated want ads were illegal as well.

The gender wage gap has narrowed since the equal pay law. In 1963 women who worked full time earned 59 cents on average for every dollar earned by men. By 2022 they earned 84 cents to the male dollar, and for the younger set, those aged 25-34, it was 92 cents.

Our Bodies

As you all know, we’re still fighting for the right to control our own bodies.

The Center for Reproductive Rights lists 201 nations, of which 77 allow abortion on request, depending on gestational age. Twelve allow it “on broad social and economic grounds,” 47 when pregnancy risks the mother’s health, 44 when it risks the mother’s life, and 21 prohibit abortion altogether. The general trend, worldwide, is toward liberalization. According to the Center, over 60 countries have liberalized their abortion laws during the past 30 years. In contrast, four countries have tightened restrictions: the United States, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Poland.

Contraception is legal in every country, but all methods aren’t necessarily available, sometimes due to cost. In the United States, birth control devices were made illegal in 1873 via the Comstock Act. In 1965 the Supreme Court legalized it for married people, then for the unmarried in 1972. Now those forces responsible for restricting abortion also want to outlaw contraception.

The Indian TV channel News18 reports that marital rape is still legal in 32 countries. It was legal in the United States for much of our history. Per authors Mala Htun and Francesca R. Jensenius, we had “laws stating that sex was a marital obligation, that rapists could escape charges by marrying victims, that parents could marry off their girl children, or that men who murdered adulterous wives were merely ‘defending honor.’”

In 1976 Nebraska became the first state to make marital rape a crime. It took until 1993 for the rest of the states to follow, and those legal changes came about only as a result of the untiring efforts of feminist groups.

Yet ten states still allow exceptions, or treat marital rape as a lesser crime than rape by a stranger. For example, in Mississippi, Nevada, and Rhode Island, it’s not rape if the woman is incapacitated or otherwise unable to say no, even if her husband drugged her into unconsciousness. In South Carolina, it’s not rape unless the man used a weapon or threatened her with a weapon, or was extremely violent.

No Guarantees

Martin Luther King Jr. famously said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Perhaps that thought comforts people but, with all respect to Dr. King, I think it pious nonsense. From my reading of history, social justice comes about only when people fight for it. And the rights we obtain with our hard struggle can later be taken away, as has happened in many societies and in many periods in history.

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My next post will discuss the ways women have sabotaged our own fight for equality.