| Subject Areas |
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History and Social Studies
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U.S. History - Women's Rights/History |
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| Time Required |
| | One or two 45-minute classes (more if the class completes the optional fourth activity). |
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| Skills |
| | Note-taking
Research
Interpreting archival documents, including news articles and editorial cartoons
Collaboration
Understanding inferences
Debating
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| Additional Data |
| | Date Created: 10/31/02 |
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| Date Posted |
| | 10/31/2002 |
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Women’s Equality: Changing Attitudes and Beliefs
That motley mingling of abolitionists, socialists, and infidels,
of all sexes and colors, called the Woman's Rights Convention, assembled in this
city, to-day…
— From The
New York Herald, Friday, October 25, 1850, p. 1 on the EDSITEment resource
U.S. Women's History Workshop IntroductionEvery
time our society benefits from its recognition of the equality of women, thank
the Foremothers of the Women's Movement, pioneers such as Susan B. Anthony and
Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Stanton understood the difficulties women faced, clarifying
the extent and vehemence of the opposition to equality in her Declaration of Sentiments.
She detailed, in a series of grievances, the "absolute tyranny" society held over
women. The "injuries and usurpations" she described were enabled, in part, by
widely accepted stereotypes and beliefs about gender reflected in and perpetuated
by everything from children's stories to magazine humor. Analyzing archival materials
contemporaneous with the birth of the Women's Rights Movement, your students can
begin to appreciate the deeply entrenched opposition the early crusaders had to
overcome. Note: This lesson may be
taught either as a stand-alone lesson or as a companion to any or all of the complementary
EDSITEment lessons Who
Were the Foremothers of Women's Equality?, Voting Rights for Women: Pro- and Anti-Suffrage, and Women's
Suffrage: Why the West First?. Guiding QuestionsWhat
attitudes and beliefs obstructed the progress of the Women's Rights Movement in
its formative years? What primary sources can help reveal these attitudes and
beliefs? Learning Objectives After
completing the lessons in this unit, students will be able to - List some
of the attitudes and beliefs obstructing the progress of the Women's Rights Movement
in its formative years
- Cite and analyze examples of primary sources revealing
obstructive attitudes and beliefs
- Take a stand (and provide support for
it) as to whether or not such attitudes persist today.
Preparing
to Teach this Lesson - Review the lesson
plan. Locate and bookmark suggested materials and other useful websites. Download
and print out documents you will use and duplicate copies as necessary for student
viewing.
- Download the worksheet, Nineteenth-Century
Attitudes Toward Women: Inferences and Evidence, available here as a PDF file.
Print out and make an appropriate number of copies of any handouts you plan to
use in class.
- For general background information on the Women's Movement,
consult the following resources:
- As
the quotation at the top of this lesson suggests, the Foremothers of women's equality
were not always treated kindly in the press. The attitudes expressed reflected
entrenched assumptions about women and exploited the threat that women's equality
represented to some men. The brief section entitled "The Backlash Begins," on
the webpage A Short
History of the Movement, describes the immediate reaction of the mainstream
press (this resource is available through the National
Women's History Project, a link from the EDSITEment resource Women
and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000).
- The variety
of documents student groups can analyze in this lesson allows the teacher flexibility
in making appropriate assignments. One group may do better with text, another
with cartoons. Depending on the number of groups and the available time, students
can analyze more than one document.
- Consider making overhead transparencies
of the documents in Part 2, below, which will be shared
with the class in Part 3, below, enabling students to point
to specific phrases in the poems or parts of the cartoons.
- For further
reading, consult the Recommended
Reading List provided here as a PDF file.
Suggested
Activities
1. Foremothers:
Open to Ridicule 2. Analyze
This: Students View Documents Independently 3.
Assumptions and Fears 4. Attitudes
Today 1. Foremothers: Open
to Ridicule Share with students the
cartoon Halloo!
Turks in Gotham (a commentary on the fashion reform movement for women, which
advocated more comfortable clothing and of which bloomers had become a notorious
symbol), from the Marchand Collection
of the Area 3 History and Cultures
Project, a link from the EDSITEment resource History
Matters. In a whole-class setting, using the Cartoon
Analysis Worksheet offered by the EDSITEment resource Digital
Classroom as a guide, model the process of analyzing the cartoon. Marchand's
notes for this cartoon were, as follows: "Halloo!
Turks in Gotham," from "Bloomerism in Practice." "Mrs. Turkey, having attended
Mrs. Oakes-Smith's lecture on the Emancipation Dress, resolves at once to give
a start to the New Fashion and in order to do it with more Effect, she wants Mr.
Turkey to join her in this bold Attempt." Elizabeth Oakes-Smith was a feminist
and abolitionist. The husband wears bloomers; the sex roles are reversed. Mrs.
Turkey has a pair of daggers, and Mr. Turkey only a fork, spoon and cooking pot.
The cross is gone from the steeple, a fit sign of the "fact" that the reformers
want to abolish Christian customs and substitute the abominations of the East. What
assumptions/attitudes about women does "Halloo! Turks in Gotham" express? What
fears of some men does this cartoon exploit? 2.
Analyze This: Students View Documents Independently Divide
the class into groups and assign to each group one or more of the following archival
documents. Assign the documents to the groups according to your knowledge of their
work styles so that each group will take about the same amount of time to finish
the assignment below. It's fine for some documents to be analyzed by more than
one group. Note to students the variety of media among the documents. Groups
should conduct a general analysis of their documents using the Cartoon
Analysis Worksheet, the Written
Document Analysis Worksheet, or the Poster
Analysis Worksheet, all offered by the EDSITEment resource Digital
Classroom. Then students should use the handout "Nineteenth Century Attitudes
Toward Women: Inferences and Evidence," on pages 1-2 of the PDF
file (see Preparing to Teach This Lesson, above,
for download instructions), to focus on some specific attitudes toward women.
Remind students to think about the assumptions about women these various documents
express. What fears of (some) men do they exploit? 3.
Assumptions and Fears Reconvene in a whole-class
setting. Have student groups share their documents and the conclusions they derived
from them about attitudes toward women. Did students notice any other attitudes/assumptions
about women not included on the worksheet? Make a list of these attitudes. 4.
Attitudes Today What attitudes about women
are expressed in the media of today? Using the list of assumptions and attitudes
completed in Part 3, above, as a starting point, students
could create a form or forms for analyzing any or all of the following to gauge
attitudes about women today: - situation comedies on network television
- newspaper cartoons
- television, print, or online advertisements
- articles in women's and/or girls' magazines
- public opinion in
the local community
Each form would be a matrix listing, in the leftmost
column, the specific attitude(s) for which a student should be looking while allowing
spaces to the right for noting sources and evidence. Working individually or in
groups and focusing on one particular medium, students should cite specific examples
they believe either perpetuate or debunk the stereotypes, assumptions, and attitudes
on their list. Reconvene the class to share results orally or in written summaries
and analyses of the data collected. What attitudes toward women did student research
detect? Are the same attitudes expressed by all media? Do particular media express
particular attitudes? Which, if any, attitudes from the past persist?
Extending the Lesson
- Have students research the role of men in the Women's Rights Movement,
using the following documents, among others:
- Students can research Sojourner
Truth's speech to the 1850 Women's Rights Convention as described in The
Plain Truth, Plainly Told, an online activity from the EDSITEment resource
U.S. Women's History Workshop.
- The
Women's Rights Movement was quite active during the 1960s. Students interested
in studying that period and/or comparing it to the formative movement referenced
in these lessons can start by exploring the Women's
Studies Resources Home Page from the Duke
Special Collections Library, from which the EDSITEment resource African-American
Women is an extension.
- According to the essay Living
the Legacy: The Women's Rights Movement 1848 - 1998, available via a link
from the EDSITEment-reviewed website Women
and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000:
[Did
you know that] 25 years ago married women were not issued credit cards in their
own name? That most women could not get a bank loan without a male co-signer?
That women working full time earned fifty-nine cents to every dollar earned by
men?
Help-wanted ads in newspapers were segregated into "Help wanted—women"
and "Help wanted—men." Pages and pages of jobs were announced for which women
could not even apply.
— Bonnie Eisenberg and Mary Ruthsdotter, National
Women's History Project
Students can interview women with first-hand
knowledge of these and similar inequities.
- Students can look at recent controversies
regarding Title IX, which in its most basic statement says, "No person in the
United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be
denied the benefits of, or be subject to discrimination under any educational
programs or activity receiving federal financial assistance." (From the preamble
to Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972.) Title IX is variously praised
as the vehicle that has fostered the progress of women's athletics in the U.S.
(most notably demonstrated by the performance of American female athletes at recent
Olympic Games) and condemned as reverse discrimination and the death knell to
many collegiate athletic programs. Using the resources of the EDSITEment-reviewed
Oyez Project: A Supreme Court Multimedia Database,
students can explore the historical and legal contexts of the debate over Title
IX. A search of the archived cases for "Civil Rights: Sex Discrimination: Other"
yields the following instances in which the Supreme Court has tackled the issue
of Title IX:
- Try some of the suggestions from Collection
Connections on the EDSITEment-reviewed website American
Memory.
- Marriage laws were an important issue for the early suffragists.
American marriage law was based on the English concept of coverture, in which
a woman's legal status became subordinate to her husband. Interested students
can explore the concept of coverture and the following documents:
- EDSITEment
offers a lesson entitled Cultural
Change that concentrates on the 1848 Declaration of Sentiments.
Selected EDSITEment Websites- U.S. Women's History
Workshop
[http://www.assumption.edu/whw/] - Homely
Girls, Frank Leslie's Budget of Fun, January 1866
[http://www.assumption.edu/whw/old/Homely_Girls.html]
- Male Voices on
Women's Rights
[http://www.assumption.edu/whw/old/On-line Archive.html]
NOTE: Use the slider to move down the page until you find
the links
to articles for Male Voices. - Brother
Jonathan's Wife
[http://www.assumption.edu/whw/old/
brother_Jonathan%27s_wife]
- Diary
for October 26, 1850
[http://www.assumption.edu/whw/old/Adin_A_Ballou.html]
- "Woman's
Rights Convention And People Of Color."
[http://www.assumption.edu/whw/old/Pillsbury_letter.html]
- Sermon:
of the public function of woman
[http://www.assumption.edu/whw/old/
A_sermon_on_public_funct.html] - Women
and the Alphabet
[http://www.assumption.edu/whw/old/
Women_and_the_alphabet.html]
http://www.assumption.edu/whw/old/On-line Archive.html] - The
New York Herald, Friday, October 25, 1850, p. 1
[http://www.assumption.edu/whw/old/NY_HeraldI.html]
- Newspaper
Account of the Proceedings of the 1850 Convention
from the Boston Daily Mail,
Evening Edition,
Friday, October 25, 1850 (morning session only)
[http://www.assumption.edu/whw/old/Daily_Mail_III.html]
- Newspaper
Account of the Proceedings of the 1850 Convention
from the New York Herald,
Friday, October 25, 1850
[http://www.assumption.edu/whw/old/NY_HeraldI.html]
- The Plain
Truth, Plainly Told
[http://www.assumption.edu/whw/workshop/Truth.html]
- Poem:
Who's to Be President?
[http://www.assumption.edu/whw/
old/Who%27s_to_be_President_poem.html]
- Poem:
Woman's Mission, by Ebenezer Elliot.
The North Star, October 3, 1850
[http://www.assumption.edu/whw/old/
Woman%27s_Mission.html] - Poem:
Woman's Power, by Frank J. Walters.
Godey's Lady's Book, February 1850
[http://www.assumption.edu/whw/old/
woman%27s_power.html]
- Women
and Social Movements in the
United States, 1600-2000
[http://womhist.binghamton.edu/index.html]
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