1. Women and Public Life
Women during the Progressive Era actively campaigned for reforms in education, children’s welfare, and suffrage.

2. I. Opportunities for Women
Higher Education
Limited opportunities at higher education
1833, Oberlin College began admitting women
By 1870, about 20% of all college students were women
By 1900, more than 1/3 were women
Middle or upper class
Many still denied professional opportunities
American Medical Association did not admit women
Put talent and skills to work in reform movements

3. Employment opportunities
Jobs for educated women expanded in the late 1800s
Teachers, nurses, bookkeepers, secretaries, typists, and shop clerks
Expanding roles in business, newspapers, and magazines
Working class women without a high school education
Found jobs in industry
They took jobs that paid less than the men’s job
Employers assumed women were single or being supported by their fathers
Employers used these reasons to pay them lower wages
By late 1800s, opportunities in public life began to change the way many middle-class women viewed their world.
Women began to see they had a role in their communities and in society beyond the home.

4. Questions
What new opportunities did women find outside the home in the late 1800s?
In terms of wages, what did employers assume about working women?
What opportunities did women have for education in the late 1800s?

5. II. Gaining Political Experience
Children’s Health and Welfare
Gained experience campaigning for children’s rights
Worked to end child labor, improve children’s health, and promote education
Lillian Wald
Founder of the Henry Street Settlement
Believed government had a responsibility to tend to the well being of children
Campaigned to achieve that goal
Federal’s Children’s Bureau opened in 1912

6. 18th Amendment Prohibition
Called for a ban on making, selling, and distributing alcoholic beverages
Progressive women gained experience in the prohibition movement
Reformers believed alcohol was often responsible for crime, poverty, and violence towards women
Two national organizations
Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU)
Anti-Saloon League
WCTU headed by Frances Willard
Became a force in the temperance movement
Billy Sunday
Former baseball player turned evangelist
Preached saloons were “the parents of crimes and the mother of sins.”
Carry Nation
Took a hatchet to saloons
Urged women across the U.S. to do the same
18th Amendment
Prohibited the manufacture, sale, and distribution of alcoholic beverages

7. Questions
How did women gain political experience through participation in reforms movements?
What areas did women address in their reform movements?

8. III. Rise of the Women’s Suffrage Movement
15th Amendment
Suffragist called for the right to vote for women and freed slave after the Civil War
Suffragist were not satisfied with the passage of the 15th Amendment
It gave the right to vote to African Americans, but not to women
It prohibited denying the right to vote “on account of race, color, or previous conditions of servitude.”

9. Women Organize
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony
Formed the National Women Suffrage Association (NWSA)
Campaigned for a constitutional amendment to give women the right to vote.
Supported Victoria Woodhull, the first woman presidential candidate, 1872
In 1869, Wyoming Territory granted women the right to vote
Utah Territory followed a year later
12 states granted women the right to vote before women won the right nationwide.

10. Susan B. Anthony test the law
1872, staged a dramatic protest
She registered to vote
On election day, she voted in Rochester, NY
2 weeks later she was arrested for “knowingly, wrongfully and unlawfully” voting in a congressional election
Tried for this crime
Judge refused to allow her to testify on her own behalf
Fined $100
She refused to pay
1875, Supreme Court ruled that even though women were citizens, citizenship did not give them the right to vote.
The court decided it was up to the states to grant or withhold that right

11. Two Organizations merge
1890, NWSA and American Women Suffrage Association merged
National American Women Suffrage Association (NAWSA)
Led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony
Women finally win the right to vote in 1920

12. Questions Why was Susan B. Anthony arrested?
Why do you think the Supreme Court ruled that the right to vote should be left to individual states?
Why was it beneficial to form the NAWSA?
What effect did the passage of the 15th Amendment have on suffragists?
Why did many women choose to join the temperance movement?