Women's Rights Movement

Essay by PaperNerd ContributorCollege, Undergraduate October 2001

download word file, 7 pages 4.3

Downloaded 150 times

Today in the 21st century women have achieved a lot in their lives. We can see women as doctor, lawyers, teachers, astronomers, astronaut's etc. Women have the right to hold property, right of freedom, right to vote, etc. some state have equal right amendment, which would state some thing like "no person shall be discriminated on the basis of sex."� {Moss 31} women of generation before us had to face a lot of difficulties to achieve the independence and equal rights as men that we just take for granted. In this paper I will be discussing the historical women's right movement. I will be discussing the history of women before the movement, the reasons and who was responsible for starting the movement and what happened and last but not least what they had to deal with.

Since early times women have been considered as property. In the 1800's the women have been considered naturally weaker than men.

The women had to stay at home and take care of the children doing tasks like milking cows and washing clothes. They thought doing all these workers was not "heavy"� labor, their idea of "heavy"� labor was going hunting which only men could do.

Since women were considered inferior to men they held fewer legal right. Often women were treated like slaves. There were severe beatings for women if they disobeyed their husbands or family. There were no laws to protect women from their husband's abuse. In these days there were only three jobs that were assigned to women, bear children, do household chores, and fieldwork. Women were considered "feme covert"� {Berkins, pg. 14}. Once married she was stripped of all property "the clothes on her back, her personal possession- whether valuable, mutable or merely sentimental and even her body became here husband's...