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... rant workers habits, including drinking, saloons, and prostitution. With the settlement houses, which were mostly ran by women, were renovated, maintained, and lived in. They were located within ethnic neighborhoods to 'improve' the people who resided there and at the same time, 'Americanize' them.
Like Jane Adams, founder of Hull House in Chicago in 1889, most were women who had few alternatives other than marriage or teaching, here, native-born women wanted to acquaint their neighbors with the American culture and government. They taught immigrants everything from proper dancing forms (intentionally steering clear of the more popular and sexually suggestive daces such as the cakewalk) to proper housekeeping. The settlement houses also routinely offered day care and kindergarten for the working parents. Working in the Settlement Houses was an area that was considered 'women's work, however, American womens 'proper' place was still seen as being married and staying in the home. Also, it still was still looked down upon for women to have both a career and marriage, so an increasing number of educated women were remaining single. However, Between 1880 and 1910, the number of women employed in the United States increased from 2. 6 million to 7. 8 million.
There were over 100 of these Settlement Houses in American cities by 1900, 200 by 1910, and 400 by 1915. But how did these houses financially support themselves? Most drew from privates sources for financial support, some on organizations like the YWCA, and some on churches. About three quarters were founded by women. In about half, all of the residents were women. Settlements became sites of new suggestion and ideas, such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, which came from the Henry Street Settlement in 1909.
Many women who came out of the settlement house movement took on leadership roles. For instance, locally, Albion Fellows Bacon was a sanitation committee member of the Evansville Civic Improvement Society in Indiana. Bacon believed substandard housing to be the cause of many social problems, so she drafted a model state law and organized the Indiana Housing Association that resulted in the application of a statewide tenement law in 1913. Later, she became involved with the state Commission on Child Welfare and was head of the executive committee of the Indiana Child Welfare Association, where she worked to establish a juvenile probation system and school attendance laws. The Progressive Era wasnt limited to only white reformers, the African-American community also worked to better their living conditions as well, and, like white women, clubs were the way in which black women also became involved in social movement. Most women's clubs did not allow Black women to join.
Black women's clubs grew dramatically thanks to one particular woman, Ida B. Wells-Barnett. She also worked for woman suffrage, founding the first black women's suffrage association in Illinois and directly challenging white women's organizations to accept black women. Also, Wells-Barnett was very outspoken against sexual abuse of black women by white men and called to black women to defend their race from violence and abuse. This also led to the founding of the Women's Loyal Union in New York in 1892. In 1903, the several various women's unions came together to create the National Women's Trade Union League (NWTUL).
Initially, it was first organized in attempted to develop a good relationship between working and wealthy women. The NWTUL wanted several things, such as equal pay for equal work, the right of workers to organize, the 8 -hour work day, minimum wages, special legislation to protect women workers, and the rights of citizenship for women. However, NWTUL was never able to resolve conflict between laboring women and wealthy women. This becomes obvious when one find out that working-class women were just known as members and wealthy women were referred to simply as 'allies all the way through the Progressive Era.
However, the NWTUL was successful in training rank-and-file labor women who went on to help promote labor organizations and reforms. One woman even went on to federal office. Mary Anderson, a stitcher and only female member of the Board of International Boot and Shoe Workers, went on to become the first director of the Women's Bureau of the United States Department of Labor in 1920. One goal stood out above all others, as well as the people backing it up, American women wanted the right to vote. After the first World War came to an end, President Wilson pointed to women's loyalty during the war and urged Congress to pass the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution.
In 1919, Congress passed the Nineteenth Amendment and the states ratified it in 1920. After decades of struggle, American women had finally won the vote. Progressive reformers created many policies that we accept as a natural part of our national life today, and progressive reform was unimaginable without the participation of women. Its expected that women today wouldnt have a lot of their rights if it werent for these very women in the Progressive Era. Womens actions in the Progressive Era was just one step towards equality of the sexes which still had not yet been achieved. Women today need to reacquire the principles that the women of the Progressive Era all had and they must exercise the right to vote.
Its the responsibility of women today not to let what was worked so hard for a century ago diminish to nothing. It should be thought of as a duty to fulfill in the up coming 2004 election year. Bibliography 75 Suffragists. Womens Studies. < web > (29 October 2003).
Berkeley, Kathleen C. The Womens Liberation Movement in America. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1999. Frankel, Voralee and Nancy School Dye. Gender. Class, Race, and Reform in the Progressive Era.
Lexington, Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, 1991. Freeman, Julie. The Progressive Era. 11 February 2002. < web > (04 November 2003). Kernel, Linda K. , Alice Kessler-Hessler and Kathryn Kish Sklar.
US History as Womens History. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995. Living the Legacy: The Women's Rights Movement 1848 - 1998. " The National Women's History Project. 1997. < web > (30 October 2003). Muncy, Dr. Robyn. Women in the Progressive Era. 30 March 3002. < web > (04 November 2003).
Schneider, Dorothy. American Women in the Progressive Era 1900 - 1920. New York: Facts on File, 1993.
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Research essay sample on Women In The Progressive Era
