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Women's Rights Movement

The Nineteenth Century

During the Colonial era and the first decades of the Republic, there were always women who strove to secure equal rights for themselves. Some assumed the business interests of a husband after his death. A few women challenged male domination of religious life, though they met with criticism from their communities—or banishment, as in the case of Anne Hutchinson. Women were also active in the fight against the Crown and organized boycotts of British goods. During the struggle for independence, prominent females such as Abigail Adams wrote and spoke privately about the need for male leaders to rectify the inferior position of women, promising rebellion if their words were not heeded. But only later, over the course of the nineteenth century, did women's demands for equal rights change from a series of isolated incidents to an organized movement. This movement was far from unified, however; strife and division often arose as activists faced the difficulties of meeting the diverse needs and priorities of the women of America.

Enormous changes swept through the United States in the nineteenth century, altering the lives of women at all levels of society. The country moved away from an agrarian, home-based economy and became increasingly industrialized. Beginning in the 1820s, many white single women found work in the mills that opened across the Northeast, where they often lived in boarding houses owned by their employers. As working-class women and men of all classes began to work outside the home, middle-class women were increasingly associated with, and confined to, the domestic sphere. Prescriptive literature defined the ideal middle-class wife as pious, pure, and submissive. Her main responsibilities consisted of creating a haven away from the harsh workplace in which her husband toiled and raising virtuous, productive citizens of the Republic.

The new century saw changes in the lives of female slaves as well, when on 1 January 1808 the importation of slaves into the United States was outlawed. In response, slaveowners placed increased pressure on enslaved women to produce children. They also subjected these women to sexual advances against which they had little defense.

The changing nature of women's lives helped create the circumstances that allowed them to begin to act politically, on their own behalf and for others. "Mill girls" often worked long hours under dangerous conditions. By the 1830s female workers were organizing protests in an attempt to improve their work environment and wages. Middle-class women's role in the home, on the other hand, led them to develop a sense of themselves as members of a cohesive group; this consciousness would later translate, for some, into the idea that they could collectively demand rights. Concern about the urban poor, moreover, allowed middle-class women to engage in charity work and temperance campaigns, in which they saw themselves as working toward the "moral uplift" of society in the same way that they cared for the moral wellbeing of their families at home. While coded as domestic and benevolent, these campaigns gave women a public voice and significant social power.

Women's work in the abolitionist movement played a particularly important role in the creation of an organized women's rights movement. Early organizers for women's rights began by working with black women who had escaped slavery and wanted to learn how to read and write. The women who first spoke in public about slavery and female abuse were viciously attacked, and those who organized schools in the early 1800s met with incessant harassment. Black women, such as Sojourner Truth and Harriet Jacobs, fought for the rights of both their race and their sex, while also fighting the often condescending attitudes of white activists who saw themselves as the sole liberators of passive, childlike slaves.

For white women like Lydia Maria Child and Sarah Grimké, campaigning for abolition made them aware of their own lack of rights, and the sexism they found within the abolitionist movement sharpened this awareness. In 1840 the organizers of the World Antislavery Convention in London refused to seat female delegates, including the American activist Lucretia Mott. Before leaving England, she and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, whose husband was a delegate at the convention, decided to launch a campaign for woman's rights on their return to the United States. On 19 and 20 July 1848 Mott and Stanton's plan reached fruition, as they staged the country's first formal women's rights convention (see Seneca Falls Convention). Three hundred people gathered in Wesleyan Chapel in Seneca Falls, New York, where they ratified the Declaration of Sentiments. Based on the Declaration of Independence, the document proclaimed that men and women were "created equal," and that women should therefore have legal and social parity with men, including the right to vote. The declaration was greeted with a storm of criticism in newspapers and from religious leaders. By 1850, however, activists had organized similar gatherings in Ohio and Massachusetts and established an annual Woman's Rights Convention.

The campaign for dress reform became closely associated with the women's rights movement, as advocates such as Amelia Bloomer argued that the tight clothing women wore—especially whalebone corsets—was unhealthy and restrictive (see Bloomers). Many early women's rights advocates also became involved in spiritualism, a belief system based on direct communication with God and the dead, which offered women a greater voice in their religious life than did the male hierarchies of the Christian churches.

The events of the Civil War and Reconstruction dramatically affected the women's rights movement. As tensions between North and South intensified in the late 1850s, many women activists decided to devote themselves purely to abolition, until slavery had ended in the United States. After the Civil War, many women returned to the fight for women's rights, but new tensions soon split the movement. Radical Republicans lobbying for black male suffrage attacked women's rights advocates, believing that to demand the vote for women hurt their cause. Some women's rights activists, including Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, turned to the Democratic Party, portions of which supported white woman suffrage in order to stop black men from securing the vote. In 1869 Stanton and Anthony formed the National Woman Suffrage Association, which focused on enfranchising white women; they insisted on female control of the organization and focused their energies on action at the federal level. Soon thereafter, the American Woman Suffrage Association formed as a rival group, turning to

Republican and abolitionist men for leadership and agreeing to place black male suffrage ahead of votes for women, white or black, and to work at the state level. Both groups chose suffrage as their main issue, stepping back from an earlier, broader based agenda.

The women's rights movement continued to transform itself and to weather divisive tensions. In 1890 the two rival suffrage associations merged, forming the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). Both constituent groups, despite their differences, had originally based their case for woman suffrage on the argument that men and women were naturally equal. Even as the two groups consolidated their strength, this view lost political ground, and older advocates found themselves replaced by younger, more conservative suffragists. The Woman's Christian Temperance Union, the Young Women's Christian Association, and hundreds of other women's clubs began to focus on winning the vote, as they came to believe they could not accomplish their goals without official political power. The National Association of Colored Women, formed in part due to the exclusion of black women's clubs from the General Federation of Women's Clubs (formed in 1890), became a central player in fostering the black woman suffrage movement. While these clubs had different agendas, many of their members believed that the vote would allow women to bring their moralizing influence to bear on the problems of society; in other words, women should have the right to vote not because they were the same as men, but because they were different.

Despite the new interest from clubwomen, the last decade of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth proved disappointing for advocates of woman's suffrage. Although there were some victories early in this period—by 1896, women in Colorado, Idaho, Wyoming, and Utah could vote and a few Midwestern states had enfranchised women in school and municipal elections—the suffrage movement would not enjoy another major victory until 1910. Racial and ethnic prejudice continued to haunt and divide the movement. As Southern women became more involved in the suffrage issue, many white suffragists began to court Southern politicians by portraying woman's suffrage as a method to secure white supremacy. African American women, in response, formed their own suffrage organizations. Some advocates also argued that female enfranchisement would allow educated native-born women—and their middle-class concerns—to overrule the growing immigrant vote.

As suffragists fought amongst themselves, they also fought an active anti-suffrage campaign. Because many feminists were also socialists, and because women workers often earned minimal wages, business interests solidly opposed the women's movement. The liquor industry, alarmed by the coalition between temperance advocates and the suffrage movement, campaigned particularly vigorously against the vote for women. Many females joined the anti-suffrage forces as well, arguing that women did not desire the vote.

In early decades of the twentieth century several suffragists introduced new approaches that both reinvigorated and once again divided the movement. Elizabeth Cady Stanton's daughter, Harriot Stanton Blatch, founded the Equality League of Self-Supporting Women in 1907, bringing females from all classes and backgrounds together to work for suffrage. The League organized large, lavish suffrage parades that brought publicity and respect to the cause. Carrie Chapman Catt, who served as the president of NAWSA between 1900 and 1904, recruited both college-educated professionals and socially prominent women to the campaign. In 1912, Alice Paul and Lucy Burns took over NAWSA's Congressional Committee. The movement had employed a state-by-state strategy since the 1890s, hoping eventually to secure woman suffrage nationwide, but Paul and Burns believed only a push for a federal constitutional amendment would bring about victory. The two women also believed in more aggressive tactics than those employed by their parent organization, including picketing the White House and hunger strikes. Eventually Paul and Burns broke with the NAWSA, forming the Congressional Union (later the National Woman's Party) in 1914.

Despite the split, the woman's suffrage movement had become a vital force. When Catt returned to the NAWSA presidency in 1915, she emphasized the importance of both state and national activity. Women in Arizona, California, Kansas, Oregon, and Washington had secured the vote by 1912; by 1913, Illinois women could vote in presidential elections. In January 1918 the House of Representatives passed the Nineteenth Amendment, sometimes known as the Anthony Amendment; a year and a half later, the Senate passed it as well. Suffragists worked tirelessly for the next year to obtain ratification by the required 36 states. On 26 August 1920 American women finally had the right to vote.

While the women's rights movement focused its energies mainly on suffrage after 1869, it both fostered and was fed by other changes in women's lives. Women's access to higher education expanded, as both single-sex and coeducational institutions opened their doors (see Education, Higher: Women's Colleges). As a result, females could begin to enter, at least in small numbers, traditionally male professions, becoming authors, doctors, lawyers, and ministers. Women also became involved in other political causes, especially labor issues, and opened settlement houses to aid the poor. Although American women had not achieved equality, by 1920 they had traveled far.

Article Credit : http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Womens_rights.aspx

Sudan

Sudan: Mass Rape by Army in Darfur

 (New York) – Sudanese army forces raped more than 200 women and girls in an organized attack on the north Darfur town of Tabit in October 2014, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. The United Nations (UN) and African Union (AU) should take urgent steps to protect civilians in the town from further abuses.

The 48-page report, “Mass Rape in Darfur: Sudanese Army Attacks Against Civilians in Tabit,” documents Sudanese army attacks in which at least 221 women and girls were raped in Tabit over 36 hours beginning on October 30, 2014. The mass rapes would amount to crimes against humanity if found to be part of a widespread or systematic attack on the civilian population.

“The deliberate attack on Tabit and the mass rape of the town’s women and girls is a new low in the catalog of atrocities in Darfur,” said Daniel Bekele, Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “The Sudanese government should stop the denials and immediately give peacekeepers and international investigators access to Tabit.”

Allegations of mass rape first surfaced in a November 2 report by Radio Dabanga, a Netherlands-based station. Sudan denied the report and refused peacekeepers access to the town. On November 9, it gave the peacekeepers brief access, but security forces prevented them from carrying out a credible investigation, Human Rights Watch said.

In November and December 2014, Human Rights Watch spoke to over 50 residents and former residents of Tabit by telephone due to access restrictions. Others interviewed included local human rights monitors, government officials, and staff of the AU-UN Hybrid Mission in Darfur (UNAMID). Despite the lack of access, Human Rights Watch was able to cross-reference and verify many individual cases and allegations.

Sudanese army forces carried out three distinct military operations during which soldiers went house-to-house and looted property, arrested men, beat residents, and raped women and girls inside their homes. Human Rights Watch documented 27 separate incidents of rape, and obtained credible information about an additional 194 cases. Two army defectors separately told Human Rights Watch that their superior officers had ordered them to “rape women.”

Tabit is largely ethnic Fur and has been under the control of rebel armed groups in recent years. Human Rights Watch found no evidence that rebel fighters were in or near Tabit at the time of the attacks.

A woman in her 40s described the attack on her and her three daughters, two of whom were under the age of 11. “Immediately after they entered the room they said: ‘You killed our man. We are going to show you true hell,’” she said. “Then they started beating us. They raped my three daughters and me. Some of them were holding the girl down while another one was raping her. They did it one by one.”

Another woman said that soldiers beat her severely and dragged her out of her house. When she returned, she found that they had raped three of her daughters, all under 15. The soldiers “beat the young children and they raped my older daughters.… They put clothes in [my daughters’] mouths so that you could not hear the screaming,” she said.

On two nights, witnesses said, soldiers forced large groups of men to the outskirts of Tabit, leaving the women and children vulnerable to attacks in their homes. The soldiers threatened and beat the men throughout the night.

Since the attacks, the Sudanese government has blocked UN investigators from entering the town to try to prevent victims and witnesses from sharing information about the crimes. Multiple victims and witnesses reported that government officials threatened to imprison or kill anyone who spoke out about the attacks.

Authorities have also detained and tortured residents of Tabit for speaking about what took place. One man, who was overheard talking to a relative and taken to a military intelligence prison, told Human Rights Watch: “They said if I talked about Tabit again that I was going to be finished.… They kicked me. Tied me and hanged me up. They beat me with whips and electric wires.”

Authorities have also prevented free movement in and out of the town. One Tabit resident told Human Rights Watch that since the attacks, people have been “living in an open prison.”

The attacks on Tabit occurred in a wider context of a rise in government attacks on civilians, Human Rights Watch said. A newly created government force, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), consisting largely of former militias, led a spate of attacks on villages in 2014. In January 2015, the UN Panel of Experts on Sudan reported that over 3,000 villages were burned in Darfur in 2014, predominantly in government-led attacks. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported that almost half-a-million people were displaced by attacks in 2014, and 70,000 in the first three weeks of 2015.

Sexual violence has featured prominently in recent attacks on civilians by Sudanese forces not only in Tabit but elsewhere in Sudan, Human Rights Watch said. In November 2014, Human Rights Watch documented widespread sexual violence, often by the RSF, against communities with perceived links to rebels in Blue Nile state. Human Rights Watch has also learned of many other accounts of sexual violence by the same forces in Darfur in 2014.

The UN and AU should both press Sudan to allow peacekeepers unfettered access to Tabit and to ensure that medical services are available to all those in need. The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights should create a team with expertise in sexual and gender-based violence to conduct an investigation into alleged abuses in Tabit, and the AU should support this effort by providing investigators with expertise in sexual and gender-based crimes.

Human Rights Watch also urged the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate the incident to the extent possible. The ICC has charges pending against five people, including President Omar al-Bashir, for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide in connection with atrocities in Darfur, but Sudan has refused to cooperate with the ICC and has obstructed its work. The ICC prosecutor told the UN Security Council in December 2014 that she needed substantially more support from the council to address Sudan’s lack of cooperation with the court. The council referred Darfur to the ICC in 2005.

“Sudan has done everything possible to cover up the horrific crimes committed by its soldiers in Tabit, but the survivors have fearlessly chosen to speak out,” Bekele said. “The UN Security Council and the AU should demand that Sudan stop these attacks, urgently act to protect Tabit’s residents, and conduct a credible investigation.”

Article credit : http://www.hrw.org/news/2015/02/11/sudan-mass-rape-army-darfur