Women’s Rights

The Birth Control Movement Some reform women worked to censure pornography, abolish prostitution and “white slavery” (today called trafficking in women), and raise the age of sexual consent.

Many women sought “companionate marriages,” in which husbands and wives would treat each other as equals.

Margaret Sanger began publishing articles on birth control, and founded the National Birth Control League (NBCL). A predecessor of today’s Planned Parenthood

In 1916, Sanger opened a birth control clinic in New York.

Sanger and a few of her supporters were arrested and convicted for distribution of birth control information and devices.

She was sentenced to 30 days in a workhouse

Settlement House Women

In the late 19th century, middle-class women began to found “settlement houses” in poor and working-class neighborhoods in urban areas.

They offered childcare services, English-language classes, meeting spaces, and healthcare services for residents in their community.

The most well known settlement house was Hull House, founded in a Chicago neighborhood in 1889

By 1910, there were more than 400 settlement houses nation-wide.