Women's Rights In The Late 1800s

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The social reform movement for women's rights was one fighting for equality which had begun around the 1840’s. Industrial work had a major impact on women and family life. Women which could not afford servants had always worked a myriad of household chores. In early years of industrialization, even with factory work being available, this was never the main occupation of working women. Most women who sought paid employment became domestic servants in spite of low pay, drudgery, and risk of sexual abuse by male employers. For those jobs that were available, on average, women earned one third to one-half as much as men. Times were tough; young unmarried women worked to support themselves, married women took factory jobs to support the family when their husbands were
Whether men thought women should remain in the home or not, by the end of the century women were unambiguously present in the economy. In the late nineteenth century society, came the Victorian Age which had rigid moral standards and differentiated roles for genders. When a woman got married she was expected to become pregnant right away and to stay at home. With this home life, no matter how busy, women were not satisfied and became volunteer nurses or social workers for little or no pay. Suffragists Emmeline Pankhurst, leading in Britain, and Elizabeth Cash Stanton and Susan B. Anthony in the U.S., demanded the right to vote. By 1914 the U.S. Women won the right to vote in twelve states and Britain women didn't vote until 1918. Pankhurst frequently called attention to her cause by breaking the law to protest discrimination against women. Even now, the continuing gender wage gap is a huge problem. On average for a woman’s 78 cents is a man’s dollar. According to CNN the wage gap is even bleaker for certain groups, “black women make 64 cents and Latinas make 56 cents for every dollar earned by a white

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