1. Women in Public Life
Chapter 17
Section 2

2. Terms and Names
Maria Mitchell
NACW
suffrage
Susan B. Anthony
NAWSA

3. Women in the Work Force
Farmwomen
Domestic Workers
Women in Industry

4. Farmwomen Farms in the South and Midwest
Women & children were a critical part of the economic structure of the family
Besides cooking, cleaning and sewing, women also took their husbands’ place in the field if they were ill or absent

5. Domestic Workers Women without formal education or industrial skills
Poverty drove 2 million freed slaves into the work force
46% worked as domestic servants - laundresses, cooks, scrubwomen, maids
Unmarried immigrant women
By 1870, 70% of working women worked as servants

6. Women in Industry 25% of American women held jobs in manufacturing
Spent up to 12 hours per day sewing, folding, packing or bottling
In tobacco factories 40% of the workers were women
Half of all women industrial workers worked in the garment trade
Women worked the equal hours for ½ the pay

7. As business opportunities expanded, women began to fill new jobs:
Offices
Stores
Classrooms
Educated, native born and middle class women got white collar jobs:
Stenographers
Typists
Bookkeepers
Teachers

8. Women in Higher Education
Women’s colleges sought to grant women an excellent education
Vassar College (1865)
Smith & Wellesley Colleges (1875)
Barnard College (1889)
Randolph – Macon Women’s College (1891)
Pembroke College (1891)
Radcliffe (1894)
However women were still expected to fill traditional roles

9. Women and Reform
Educated women strengthened reform groups and provided leadership for new groups
Worked to improve conditions at work and home
“Social Housekeeping”
Targeted unsafe factories, labor abuses
Promoted housing reform, educational improvement & food and drug laws

10. The NACW
African – American women founded the National Association of Colored Women
Managed nurseries, reading rooms and kindergartens
Josephine Ruffin
Identified the mission of the NACW as “the moral education of the race with which we are identified”

11. The Fight for the Vote
Suffrage, women’s right to vote had been the focus of women reformers since 1848.
The 14th & 15th Amendments
Passed during Reconstruction
Granted the right to vote to African American men
Excluded the women’s right to vote.

12. National American Woman Suffrage Association
NAWSA
Prominent leaders
Susan B. Anthony
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Lucy Stone
Julia Ward Howe

13. A Three Part Strategy for Suffrage
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Actions
Convince legislators
Pursued court cases
(women are citizens, too!)
Pushed for an Amendment
Results
1869 Wyoming
1890s
Utah, Colorado, and Idaho
Courts agreed that women are citizens, but they can’t vote
Senators rejected it for the next 18 years