Ever since she was young, Patsy Takemoto Mink had valued equality and education. From becoming the first female president of her high school, to creating the Title IX Amendment of Higher Education Act, to serving congress until her death, Mink was continually making new ground for equal rights. Whether alone, or backed by a house, she fought for what she believed in.
Patsy Mink was born to the parents of Suematsu Takemoto and Mitama Tateyama. Brought up in the rural town of Paia, Maui, she had no choice but to attend the only high school in the area, Maui High. While there, she faced discrimination and prejudice for her race and gender. It was especially harder, during War World II, for those of Japanese heritage. Not allowing those things to get in her way, she became the first female student body president and earned the respect of her schoolmates. Mink graduated at the top of her class in 1944. From there, she moved on to college at University of Hawaii, Manoa to study medicine. When she was rejected from 20 colleges for being a woman, Mink realized that her aspirations laid el...
World War II impacted Hawaii greatly. From economics to sex to race relations, Hawaii would never be the same. Chinatown was filled a sea of white uniformed men filing into lines for tattoo parlors and brothels. A famed prostitute at this time was none other than Jean O’Hara. The publication of her book My Life as a Honolulu Prostitute, led to the immediate shutting down of the brothels in Honolulu. Through this spirited hot-tempered woman, we are able to see into the lives of the women in the brothels.
Beginning in March of 1942, in the midst of World War II, over 100,000 Japanese-Americans were forcefully removed from their homes and ordered to relocate to several of what the United States has euphemistically labeled “internment camps.” In Farewell to Manzanar, Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston describes in frightening detail her family’s experience of confinement for three and a half years during the war. In efforts to cope with the mortification and dehumanization and the boredom they were facing, the Wakatsukis and other Japanese-Americans participated in a wide range of activities. The children, before a structured school system was organized, generally played sports or made trouble; some adults worked for extremely meager wages, while others refused and had hobbies, and others involved themselves in more self-destructive activities.
A key figure in both the women’s rights and abolition movements, she brought them from lectures to full organizations. Stone died before women earned the right to vote, nevertheless, she was still a major influence. Nowadays, women have much more rights because of efforts put in by many reformers, including Lucy
Here it is seen that McClung is developing and proceeding in her fight to provide equality among the sexes, by allowing girls to participate in sporting games. She was providing her female students with the privileges they rightfully deserve. Furthermore, she again went against the norms of a woman in the nineteenth century by simply being a teacher. All of which making Nellie McClung an example of a strong, feminist activist for other women of her era to follow She successfully taught at Hazel school for seven years. It was also at Hazel school that Nellie met the woman who would make the largest impact on her life, Annie McClung.
Born in 1894, Hee Kyung Lee grew up in Taegu, Korea. Although the details of her early life are not given, the reader can assume that she came from a decent middle class family because her parents had servants (Pai 2, 10). In the early 1900’s, Japan exercised immense control over Korea, which by 1910 was completely annexed. Her twenty-year-old sister and eighteen-year-old Lee were introduced to the picture bride system, an opportunity to escape the Japanese oppression (Pai 4). Unlike her older sister, Lee made the decision to immigrate to Hawaii in 1912 as a pictu...
Susan B. Anthony believed that women should have the same rights as men. She fought for this right in many different ways, but she is most famous for showing civil disobedience by voting illegally. Unfortunately, Anthony fought all her life for women’s rights, but her dreams were not fulfilled until 14 years after she died (“Susan” Bio). Anthony attended a women’s rights convention before she started campaigning for women’s rights (“Susan” Encyclopedia par. 2). The adage of the adage.
Lucy Stone made it clear that she was going to be very different than most women of her time. She went to Oberlin College in Ohio, the only college accepting blacks and women at that time. While at Oberlin she started her lifelong career of fighting for blacks and women. It started when she worked at the college as a student teacher. It was the schools policy that women had to do double the work to be paid the same as men. Lucy abided by the policy until she grew tired. She tried to convince the college to give her the same pay as two male colleagues. After the college turned down her request, she quit her job as a student teacher. After months o...
The once male dominated, corporate, "white collar" America has seen a phenomenal influx of women within the last thirty years. Although a female lawyer, physician, or CEO is no longer considered a rarity in our times, women still face quite a deal of oppression in comparison to their male counterparts. In retrospect, some professions have always been controlled by women, and men have not made a noticeable advance in these fields. In 1970, finding a female lawyer to represent you would be a difficult task, since less than five percent of the profession were women. Today, that number has risen to almost thirty percent. The percentage of female doctors has almost tripled in the course of thirty years. African Americans have not made such a conspicuous progression within the last fifty years, while women have made a tremendous impact on the corporate world. One may wonder, how did women make these extraordinary advances? For the most part, it is due to the education they receive. At the present time young girls are encouraged to enroll in classes dealing with math and science, rather than home economics and typing. As pointed out by Nanette Asimov, in her essay "Fewer Teen Girls Enrolling in Technology Classes", school officials are advocating the necessity of advanced placement, and honor classes for teenage girls, in both the arts and sciences. This support and reassurance than carries over onto college, and finds a permanent fixture in a woman’s life. While women are continuing their success in once exclusively male oriented professions, they are still lacking the respect and equality from their peers, coworkers, and society. The average male lawyer, and doctor make twenty-five percent more money than their female equivalent. Women have always lived with the reputation of being intellectually inferior to, and physically submissive to men. This medieval, ignorant notion is far fetched from the truth. In 1999, high school men and women posted similar SAT scores, being separated by a only a few points. In addition to posting similar scores on the SAT, the average males score was a mere two-tenths of a point higher than an average females score on the ACT. Even though a woman maybe as qualified as a male for a certain occupation , women receive unwanted harassment, and are under strict scrutiny. A good illustration of this would be the women represented in "Two Women Cadets Leave the Citadel.
Jane Addams, Susan B. Anthony, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. These women lived at the turn of the century, and fought vehemently for a cause they believed in. They knew that they were being discriminated against because of their gender, and they refused to take it. These pioneers of feminism paved the road for further reform, and changed the very fabric of our society.
...ousness-raising" groups, which rapidly expanded in number. These women met to discuss the injustice of "sexism," an equivalent to racism; they began to start many feminist projects, such as health collectives, day care centers, rape crisis centers, abortion counseling services and women’s study programs. In the 1970’s they focused on three issues: equality in education/employment, access to legal abortions and the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). Congress also approved Title IX of the Higher Education Act. This Act prohibited bias on the basis of sex in any educational program that received federal resources. So, many universities and military academies that was once all-male were forced to accept women students. While great strides were made in women’s equality, the wage discrepancy between men and women for the same jobs remains prevalent today.
In the history of women’s rights, and their leaders, few can compare with the determination and success of Lucy Stone. While many remember Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony for being the most active fighters for women’s rights, perhaps Stone is even more important. The major goal for women in this time period was gaining women’s suffrage. That is what many remember or associate with the convention at Seneca Falls.
Jeanne Wakatuski is a young girl who had to endure a rough childhood. She thought herself American, with a Japanese descent. However, with WWII and the internment camps, Jeanne struggled to in understanding who she really was. It started with Manzanar, at first she knew herself as a Japanese American. Living in Manzanar gave her a new perspective, “It (Manzanar) gradually filled me with shame for being a person, guilty of something enormous enough to deserve that kind of treatment” (Houston and Houston 161). Jeanne faced the problem of being someone who was not wanted or liked in the American society. A good section that shows the discrimination at the time was when Jeanne tried to join the Girl Scouts, which is on page 144. She was turned
In addition, shortly thereafter, she and a small group of American business professionals left to Japan. The conflict between values became evident very early on when it was discovered that women in Japan were treated by locals as second-class citizens. The country values there were very different, and the women began almost immediately feeling alienated. The options ...
Even though Sarah Margaret Fuller has died, she will be remembered throughout the living of equality between genders. She was and still is an important part of America because she was passionate about woman’s education. For she believed that if woman had equality in learning, they would also have equality through political rights. One of her most famous quotes was, “When people keep telling you that you can’t do a thing, you kind of like to try,” shows the truth that doubts can push your hope
From the beginning of time, females have played a powerful role in the shaping of this world. They have stood by idly and watched as this country moved on without them, and yet they have demanded equal rights as the nation rolls along. Through the years the common belief has been that women could not perform as well as men in anything, but over the years that belief has been proven wrong time and time again. So as time marches on, women have clawed and fought their way up the ladder to gain much needed equal respect from the opposite sex. However, after many years of pain and suffering, the battle for equal rights has not yet been won. Since women have fought for a long time and proven their importance in society, they deserve the same rights as men.