Exam 10: Sexism: Where the Personal Becomes Political

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Although they were accused of being unladylike before and during the Civil War, many women became involved in the anti-slavery movement. During the war women were hired to be office workers, government workers, factory workers, teachers, and nurses, yet they encountered a gauntlet of critics. After the war, women continued to work and to be active politically, lobbying for such diverse causes as women's suffrage, immigrant issues, and temperance. Afterwards people began to migrate west. Wyoming was the first state to give women voting rights in 1869 and laws were passed to guarantee married women's right to own property and to require equal pay for female teachers. Hoping to keep women busy and not politically active, Congress passed a bill outlawing contraception. Studies warned that college educated women would not marry and that man had more intelligence due to their larger brain size. By the 1920s when women cast their first votes, they were the majority of clerical workers, teachers, librarians, social workers, and nurses. Ten percent of married women worked outside the home. They lobbied the legislature for an Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). When the Great Depression of the 1930s arrived, men and women struggled simply to survive. Employers preferred to hire men until the start of World War II when women went back to work as men joined the military,