School and Education for Women During 1870s and The 1920s

School and Education for Women Between the timeframe of the 1870s and the 1920s, educational rights within America’s school systems changed dramatically, especially for the countries women. However, the road to get this new found freedom proved more than difficult, and was full of countless hiccups along the way. ​In ability to achieve the rights desired at the time and for future generations, females had to prove to the world that they were capable of multitasking alongside their stereotypical ‘familial’ duties, and fight a government ruled by men.

Education has, and always will be an important part of who America is as a country. In today’s society, from the time children are born, they are taught that being an educated adult is practically required to be successful in life. Unfortunately, in the 1870s, education was only respectable when it came to men. A big part of the Women's Suffrage Movement was the fight for equality in the school system, and the right to be able to learn in a normal environment that was co-educational, and non discriminatory. Lucy Stone, an abolitionist, and a primary founder of the Women’s Journal back in 1870 was more than successful when it came to standing up for her rights. She was known for her role throughout the Women's Suffrage Movement, and her plea for educational rights, eventually gaining herself a Bachelor's Degree in the Arts.

In her pamphlet; ​Social Evils, Jennings​ 2 their causes and their cure: being a brief discussion of the social status, with reference to reform, ​Stone claims; “The masses of the women of the country are not yet educated up to the idea that they need more rights than they have, to confer upon them the dignity which attaches to them by nature; not particularly the right to vote, to hold office, to act as judge or jurors, and kindred privileges, which some women are claiming to belong to the sex equally with man; but the right to compete with man in whatever employments are fitted to the nature and intellect of woman, and which her peculiar functions and duties as woman do not forbid her to fill; to work for fair wages, and to have equal privileges of education with man” (Stone 36-37). By making this claim, she is inferring that due to the fact women are undereducated, and well behind their fellow male colleagues, women do not understand the importance of their education, or see how they are being treated by the school systems of America, and throughout the workforce was unfair. Not only was she fighting for her educational rights, but for the rights of today's generation, where women and men coincide peacefully within schools and businesses. With both genders working together in today's society, ideas and organizations are stronger and less biased with each sex represented on one platform.

Although, some things are still strictly based off of previous and old school gender roles, because of the Women's Suffrage Movement, America’s culture has come a long way. Even after the government changed its way of thinking after the Women’s suffrage act, and Women across the nation gained the ability to vote, and to attend schools of higher education, majority of the countries men were still rejecting the idea of sharing their educational Jennings​ 3 platform with their female peers. Elizabeth Smith Miller, an advocate for the Women's Suffrage movement, described the discrimination in “​Class Outline of Work​”; “Women are not yet taken into full political partnership, nevertheless, they have just as much at stake in the Government as men. They share equally the advantages of a good government and suffer as much from the disadvantages of a bad one. Women should take an active part in all matters pertaining to the sanitation of cities, condition of streets, schools, labor, child-labor, wages, pure foods, home economies, charities, reforms in restraining monopolies from adding unduly to the cost of general living. Women should be a power in every line of improvement and progress” (Miller 4).

Before the main bulk of the Women's suffrage movement took effect, many women were uneducated, or stuck in schools that were strictly designed for women, and didn't offer select fields of study. Also, higher education was not an option until the government decided to give in, and make the change that was very much needed. One of the main reasons behind the Women's suffrage movement when taking a step back to look at the big picture, is the general fact that men in early American history had been taught biblically that they were the superior sex.

Now, with these new rules of acceptance in place, the overall ego of man was put in danger, which left many to be upset. An author from the Women’s Political Union explained in their newspaper article; “There has been a general belief, which we as suffragists have helped to spread, that women are classed politically with idiots and criminals. That is an error” (Votes for Women Broadside. Women’s Political Union ). Just because women were considered a minority, the men of The United States believed them to be socially evil, or that by giving them their rights to learn in a free environment, they would Jennings​ 4 somehow trigger a nationwide crime spree, when all women wanted at the time, was to enhance their own intelligence. After all the petitioning, and rallying throughout the country, their fight did not go unnoticed. Women were finally granted their right to higher education, giving them plenty of reasons to celebrate. John Stuart Mill, an author during the suffrage movement showed this excitement by recalling; “But neither birth, nor merit, nor exertion, nor intellect, not fortune, nor even that great disposer of human affairs-accident, can enable any woman to have her voice counted in those common concerns which touch her and hers as nearly as any other person in the Nation” (Stuart 1-2).

Women had managed to find a place in society, and no longer in any case would they give up on fighting for the things they believed in. By the 1920s, America’s women felt a sense of normalcy throughout society. As if they were no longer looked down upon, or inequal. They were smart, and free to learn as they pleased. Their gender roles in everyday life, and the way they evolved has done nothing but strengthen the roots of the United States. In the beginning they had nothing, but by the 1920s they had access to nearly anything their hearts desired, and if they didn't have access, they would find a way to achieve getting whatever it was that they wanted, be it educational rights, voting rights, or workforce rights. Because of their struggle, today females are allowed to go to school wherever they please, and have access to do any job in their field of choice. Lucy Stone, in another famous work of hers titled ​“​The first convention ever called to discuss the civil and political rights of women” ​wrote; “When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one portion of the family of man to assume among the people of the earth a position different from that which they Jennings​ 5 have hitherto occupied, but one to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them. We hold these truths to be self-evident : that all men and women are created equal ; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness…” (Stone 2). Women are just as important as men, and are capable of practically anything they set their minds too. It was only a matter of time before the world realized their strength, and determination.