Working-Class Women In The 1920s

As progressive era reforms advanced from the 1880s to t 1920s, women took on a significant role in political change with specific regard to the ratification of the 19th amendment and social conditions with emphasis on women’s reproductive rights and restraint from alcohol.

By the early 19th century, American society had fully embraced an ideology that claimed women were best suited in the home, serving as the family’s moral guide. This protected-class status was intended to shield women from being sullied by the nefarious influences of work, politics and making war. In reality, the custom paved the way for laws banning women from attending colleges, entering professional work, voting, serving on juries and testifying in court. Many states outlawed

women from owning property or entering into contracts. From an early age, women were placed on the path of marriage and motherhood. For single women, options were limited to teaching or nursing, with the social label of being an “old maid.” Women had worked hard over the past 20 years for black freedom and enfranchisement and expected they would be included in this goal. While many abolitionists were initially supportive of suffrage for both African Americans and women, leaders felt that it was now “the Negro’s hour” and to ask for more would jeopardize the cause. Frederick Douglass made an impassioned plea at the American Equal Rights Association convention to let the black man go first, turning the effort away from enfranchising women. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony saw this as a betrayal and campaigned against any amendment that denied women the right to vote. This caused a breach in the women’s movement and led to Stanton and Anthony forming the National Women’s Suffrage Association (NWSA), while Lucy Stone, her husband Henry Blackwell, and Julia Ward Howe founded the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA), which supported the 15th Amendment. In 1919, both the U.S. House of Representative and the Senate finally voted to approve the 19th Amendment. However, the battle for women’s equality didn’t end there. Within a decade, state laws disenfranchised most African American women—and men—under the custom of Jim Crow. It would take another movement in the 1960s before all blacks in the South would be enfranchised. The struggle for gender equality continues today for equal pay and opportunity and equal justice in cases of rape and assault.
During the Progressive Era, the birth control movement was an important cause, in regards to women’s sexual freedoms. For women, birth control meant being able to make the conscious decision to have or not have children on their own terms. Progressive women sought out equality and protection for themselves and for their children, and “demanded greater liberty, free sexual expression, and reproductive choices.” [1] During the Progressive Era birth control clinics were being established and more and more women began to seek out knowledge about their bodies. Progressive activists fought to overturn anti birth control laws, legalize contraceptives, and information pertaining to sexual education. It “Forbade the dissemination of pornography, abortion devices, and any other drug, medicine, article, or thing designed, adapted, or intended for preventing contraception.”[3] At the time, many Americans were opposed of birth control because they believed that it promoted promiscuity, lust, and gave the approval to men to pursue greater sexual urges outside of their marriages. By denying birth control, women were forced into the filthy hands of midwives and quack abortionists. For those who lived in poverty, contraceptives were a necessity. The more children they had the more likely they lived in poverty and would
remain there.

All social classes of women suffered from the ban on birth control devices and information. Though, the working class suffered the most. Working class women were poorly educated and had little to no access to health care and their cultural and religious beliefs taught them to be obedient and to not deny sex to their husbands.[6] Though, they were “Denied information from the medical establishment on birth control and fearing contraception as well, made working-class women resort to crude and often deadly methods of abortion to end their unwanted pregnancies.” [6] Dangerous self-induced abortions led to death, permanent damage and/or comas. Without Progressive activists like Sanger and Goldman, women would not have the sexual freedoms that they have today. The birth control movement forced Americans to open their eyes and see the need for contraceptive devices and educational information pertaining to their bodies. Birth control meant freedom for women. The freedom to decide when was the right time for them to have children and to decide how many children they wanted to have. Birth control clinics educated women about their bodies and gave them choices in the matter of pregnancies. Clinics gathered extensive research and information, which led to greater advances and knowledge in the medical

field.
Temperance was a popular issue for late nineteenth-century reform women.

Temperance reformers sought to limit the consumption of alcohol by Americans. This issue resonated with many women because alcohol consumption often increased the frequency and severity of domestic violence and abuse. In addition, men would sometimes squander limited household finances on alcohol. Supporters of the Temperance Movement, mostly Protestant and known as "teetotalers," worked for many decades to end the sale of alcohol across the United States at the local, state and national level. Groups like the Woman's Christian Temperance Union and Anti-Saloon League argued alcohol was the root of numerous social problems plaguing the nation at the time, especially in rapidly-expanding urban areas flush with new, predominantly Catholic, immigrant groups. These problems included unemployment, neglect of children, and domestic violence – a serious issue in an era when it was socially unacceptable for women to divorce or separate from their husbands if they were alcoholic and

abusive.