Feminism – Final Project
Beginning in 1850 Abby Price, one of the forerunners of the Women’s Rights Movement, was a spokesperson for women and their freedom. One of the rights she lobbied for was economic independence. She felt that without it women would never have personal, legal or physical freedom. “She demanded equal pay for equal work, and she demanded what we now call comparable worth.” (Ceniza 63).
Over one hundred years later women still had to stand up for their rights for equal pay for equal work. Click on the first link below to see a Public Service Ad from the 1960’s. Use the back arrow to return to blog.
Price “did not feel that the home rewarded women with the high sense of morality and spirituality that her society kept telling her it did. She saw such claims as bogus, as ways to flatter women in order to keep them in their place.” (63).
Although Walt Whitman valued motherhood, he valued women as equal to men and able to do whatever they wanted. He believed that if women pursued interests outside the home they would be more satisfied and happier with their domestic responsibilities. And he felt women should have the right to choose how they wanted to spend their time.
Once again, over one hundred years later, women are facing the same challenges. In the next ad we hear a male voice telling working women that they need to be themselves once in a while and that is done through baking. Again, use the back arrow to return to post.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACUxDhVxcP4
Both Whitman and the members of the feminist movement wanted women out in the real world. In Democratic Vistas Whitman wrote, ” – but great, at any rate, as man, in all departments; or, rather, capable of being so, soon as they realize it, and can bring themselves to give up toys and fictions, and launch forth, as men do, amid real, independent, stormy life.” He wanted women to become “robust equals and workers.” (222).
Women like Abby Price, Paulina Davis and Ernestine Rose devoted their lives to the liberation of women. These women, along with Whitman, spoke and wrote for the freedom that women were entitled to. Men of the 19th century did not take them seriously, reporting in newspapers about the fashions worn at the women’s conventions instead of the content of the speeches. And, once again, over one hundred years later women are still being mocked. The next link shows yet another ad that makes it clear that women can become working girls, but they are expected to fulfill their domestic duties at all times. Once again, use the back arrow to return to post.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4X4MwbVf5OA#
Tags: finalproject, WW20