Sexism
...ood that the movement would be taken seriously on any issue (17:257). Without the right to vote, women only had a few means by which they could directly affect politicians and laws, such as sending petitions to Congress (French 152). Women felt that it was unjust that as American citizens they did not have the right to vote, have a say concerning laws that affected them and their families. If the United States really was founded on the ideals of equality and liberty, they argued, and then in all fairness women should not be forbidden to cast their ballots alongside men in free and open elections. As historian Marjorie Spruill Wheeler writes, the suffragists believed that “enfranchisement . . . was essential both as a symbol of women’s equality and individuality and a means of improving women’s legal and social condition (Jones). After many years of women fighting for voting rights, The Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which gave women the right to vote, officially became law on August 26, 1920 (Stalcup 117). The passage of this amendment marked the end of a seventy-two year struggle for women’s suffrage in the United States. Most historians date the beginning of the suffrage movement from the 1848 women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York, where for the first time a group of women publicly demanded the right to vote (21: 384). Of the sixty-eight women at Seneca Falls who signed the resolution calling for women’s suffrage, only one Charlotte Woodward, then nineteen years old-lived long enough to see the passage of the movement. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, and many others-devoted years of hard work to achieve a victory that would not be realized in the lifetime (21:385). The goal these suffragists worked for was a simple one, yet incredibly profound in its impact on society: They sought enfranchisement and political equality for the women of the United States. The seventy-year battle for women’s suffrage represented the first “wave” of the women’s movement (Jones). The current wave of women’s movements is to fight sexism. Women want to achieve higher power in their lives, challenge sex role stereotypes, limitations on women, and wants to end violence toward women in many forms. In the story “Ranch Girl” by Malie Meloy, the foreman’s daughter was stereotyped as just his daughter and a ranch girl - “you’re still the ranch girl, and you’ve been dealt a bad hand”. (102) Even when women do the same work as men, women are not considered workers in the same sense. Some men expect women to accept work at lower wages and without benefits. Women are not supposed to be independent; they are not supposed to have “any right to work” (Genovese 112). Thus, the role of women in the labor force undermines the struggles of male workers as well. The boss can break a union of men by threatening to hire lower paid women (French 135). Women are further exploited in their roles as homemakers and mothers. A woman is judged as a wife and mother -- the only role she is allowed -- according to her ability to maintain stability in her family and to help her family "adjust" to harsh realities (Evans 234). She therefore transmits the values of hard work and conformity to each generation of workers. It is she who forces her children to stay in school and "behave" or who urges her husband not to risk his job by standing up to the boss or going on strike (Evans 240). Women are also exploited as consumers (Jones). They are forced to buy products which are necessities, but which have waste built into them, like the soap powder the price of which includes fancy packaging and advertising (Jones). They also buy products, which are wasteful because they are told that a new car or TV will add to their families' status and satisfaction, or that cosmetics will increase their desirability as sex objects (Jones). Women are expected to sell theirselves -- not just their body but their entire life, talents, interests, and dreams -- to a man (Lerner 78). Women are expected to give up friendships, ambitions, pleasures, and moments of time to theirself in order to serve a man’s career or family. In return, a woman receives their livelihood but their identity, their very right of existence, unless she is the wife of someone or the mother of someone, a woman is nothing (Lerner 78). In part, women are more likely to be stay-at-home moms than men are to be stay-at-home dads because the women’s time in the workforce is undervalued. When a couple decides who should stay at home with the children, the worker with the lowest wages, which normally is the woman, is the chosen one. Language also plays a part in sexism, though it is widley disputed whether certain language causes sexism or sexism causes certain la...