History of US women's fight for equality -- is history repeating itself?

You can get these informative, sometimes amusing emails. A fellow who likes history has taken it upon himself to transcribe old newspaper articles, and also the occasional historic photo or button.

Several come to your email address twice a week. I've been getting them for several years, and it's great. Free, no selling or ads or pleas for money or anything.

If you're interested, write to the address at the bottom and try it. The early 1900s are especially interesting to me, but more recent stuff is included each time as well.

This one came today -- I found it especially interesting in light of worsening economic conditions now, and the many parallels between the early/mid 1930s and now, politically.

Alice Paul, of course, was a tireless feminist, and probably one of the first, if not the first, to campaign for an Equal Rights Amendment.

******************************
HELENA (MT) DAILY INDEPENDENT
JUNE 27, 1933 __ P 3 __ COL 6
******************************


ALICE PAUL WARNS WOMEN
FIGHT FOR RIGHTS IS COMING

By Bess Furman
Associated Press Staff Writer


Washington, June 26. - (AP) - That
super-feminist, Alice Paul, says women
are being forced by the economic situ-
ation back to the position where they
were before emancipation.

In the Wilson administration, it was
Miss Paul who led the marching militants
on the White House for suffrage, and now
she's rallying her cohorts for a White
House visit July 9 in behalf of "economic
equality."

"We are facing a situation where we
are in danger of having our gains taken
from us," said Miss Paul today. "In Europe,
as competition became keener and keener,
I've seen it happen before my eyes - women
dropping from political positions, then
from professional fields.

"The same thing is happening here. We
are being forced back to the position where
we were before emancipation. People won't
send their daughters to school if no posi-
tions are open to them. They will disappear
from the colleges and the professional
world."

What Miss Paul wants is enactment of
the equal rights amendment supported by
her feminist group, the National Woman's
Party. It would make legal discriminations
based on sex unconstitutional.

"One state, Delaware, has that amendment
written into its constitution," she said. "To
show what a safeguard it proved to woman-
kind, three measures against employment of
married women were brought up in that state
this year, and all had to retire immediately
because they were unconstitutional."

Miss Paul pronounced "endless" the
task of taking up cudgels in defense of
married women workers. But putting equal
rights into the constitution would "remove
all the little handicaps," she said.

A little more militancy, she said, was
one way of getting results on the feminine
economic front.


To try out getting these emails twice a week, write to:
Equality48@aol.com

on contraceptives, abortion, Title X. Title IX.....which will all be repealed.

When I see some of these women on the right, I sometimes don't care anymore. Those who voted for this administration and support their policies deserve to get what they get.

But Thank You for posting that, Sophie Z.
Worse than history repeating itself, is being ignored and bashed by all the younger women who have benefited so much from the life and death struggles of those that came and fought before them.
The ERA still has not passed, 82 YEARS LATER !
This is truly sad:
“In her remarks as she introduced the Equal Rights Amendment in Seneca Falls in 1923, Alice Paul sounded a call that has great poignancy and significance over 75 years later: "If we keep on this way they will be celebrating the 150th anniversary of the 1848 Convention without being much further advanced in equal rights than we are. . . . If we had not concentrated on the Federal Amendment we should be working today for suffrage. . . . We shall not be safe until the principle of equal rights is written into the framework of our government."

http://www.equalrightsamendment.org/

Yeah, I hear ya. I don't know of a website. He's just one of those people, like us, who like information, and like others to have it.

You could get a hotmail or yahoo account I guess.

You might like to try the (free) disposable email addresses available through the Spam Gourmet website. Works great for me.

on human rights, women's rights, environment, social issues, education, etc., etc. and ON PURPOSE.

Successes of the past were built on coalitions between different groups and different issues.

The Equal Rights Amendment has been reintroduced in Congress, announced by NOW recently. Haven't noticed discussion on DU or (of course) the press.
http://www.now.org

Your thread fell off the first page within an hour or so of posting.

So the answer is YES.

I am Woman Hear Me Roar...

Correction: I am ready to ROAR!

they want to go back to the days when a woman was property of her father or her husband.

:kick:

This has actually happened over and over and over again. Feminist Dale Spender wrote a 600 page book called Women of Ideas and What Men Have Done to Them: Aphra Behn to Adrienne Rich that is a chronicle of this fact. That women's accomplishments are buried, their great books aren't reprinted (while the mediocre ones are) and they're given far less attention than men's in general. The many methods she showed of ignoring women and discrediting women add up to people not knowing that women have always been capable beings. And that's the intention.

Societies have had to learn it over and over again. Every time women's rights comes up again, it's as if it's an issue that's never been fought before. Women can have equal or greater abilities than men! Who knew? Women are oppressed? How shocking!

Spender shows how this process has occurred in cycles throughout history, and it's damn depressing and *frustrating* to read. It's where I first read about Alice Paul, too, incidentally. It's terribly sad, and a shame that girls especially are brought up not knowing about all the great things women have done and have written throughout history. But we couldn't have that, or else women would be a lot more confident and would have come a lot further in changing society by now.

It was only about five years ago that I used to argue about women's rights all the time on another board, and the guys inevitably would say..."But women have all *kinds* of rights now that they didn't used to have. What the hell are you complaining about?" Well, I said (having read this book and more) that they could also be taken away at any time, and we'd have to start from scratch again. They didn't believe me, of course. But history repeats itself, indeed. And by the design of those who want to stay in power/preserve the status quo.

P.S. A good movie (HBO I think) was made last year starring Hilary Swank as Alice Paul, called Iron Jawed Angels. I was SO glad to see this, knowing how hard it is to get anything pro-feminist made. And it's in fairly wide release. I rented it at my local grocery store in Anchorage.

:kick:

Anchorage, eh? I've been wanting to see that film -- maybe I should take a look here at our video stores.

I really like Dale Spender's work. Thanks for reminding of her. She's excellent!

I've got copies of her Man Made Language and Writing or the Sex? Or Why You Don't Have to Read Women's Writing to Know it's No Good.

Women of Ideas is a little harder to find, but I'll get it too, eventually. It's a tremendous resource, if a bit overwhelming. She mentions toward the end herself, that she could have written much more on the subject but she felt that her point was made, and that it was too difficult to put herself through any more of such a depressing task. I can certainly understand that. It's hard enough to read.

A review for those who are interested, (and since there isn't one at amazon.com):

T H E C L A S S I C
Women of ideas
...being the book that should be on every
school history curriculum.

As a young woman studying physics in the early 1980s I was frequently incensed by the opinions of my male friends who insisted that, by nature, women were not as good at science as men. They considered themselves superior in every way and liked to point out that history supported them. Where, after all, were the talented women scientists, artists, writers, politicians? After listing Marie Curie, Jane Austen and Joan of Arc, I would run out of ammunition and retire.

Had I known of Dale Spender’s Women of ideas: and what men have done to them, I would have been in a much better position to re-educate my student ‘friends’. Not only does she provide dozens of brief biographies of women from Aphra Behn to Margaret Mead, but the book is also a damning critique of the ways in which men have used their power to silence women. Spender argues that because we live in a patriarchal society, men have the power to determine meanings. Men decide what is to be valued, even what is real. An important aspect of patriarchy is that men’s experiences and values should be seen as the only valid frame of reference. Men’s problems become human problems, and the very different concerns of women are either not seen at all or are dismissed as trivial.

Despite the many material difficulties placed in their way, women have been generating knowledge throughout human history. Aphra Behn wrote 13 novels 30 years before Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe – which is cited as the ‘first’ novel – as well as plays, poems and translations. Mary Somerville was a gifted mathematician, despite being denied a formal education. Harriet Martineau wrote on political economy and her books vastly outsold John Stuart Mill. And there are many more. However, because men control knowledge, these women’s ideas have not been passed on, their books have gone out of print and few biographies have been written.

Spender is not the first to have written a history of women of ideas. Margaret Fuller in 1845 and Matilda Joslyn Gage in 1893 wrote carefully researched histories of women and the ways in which men have silenced them. But ironically, despite the authors’ naming of the problem, these works too have been ‘lost’. Far from being a story of progress, of ideas gradually evolving and building on the work of those who have gone before, women’s history is a cycle of interruptions and enforced silences. Every 50 years or so a new generation of women comes along and starts again, often with no knowledge of their foremothers.

continued at (bottom of page):

http://www.newint.org/issue290/reviews.htm

every generation with no knowlege of her foremothers. so it takes each generation to kill off all the contributions of the women of that generation, and each generation has to start fresh.

I'm focusing right now more on women's hatred of women and how the women like Karen and Condi further themselves by working against other women. As someone who grew up in a fundie household I am really interested in what makes some women push their daughters to strive for achievement while other women train their daughters in oppression and keep them from developing as a person by agressive non-support. I once read somewhere that the real job of a mother in this culture is to "break her daughter's spirit" so that she won't aspire further than the role of baby maker and domestic servant. I had a mother like that, well intentioned as she was.

I cannot wait for the day when a female Freud type really breaks into the mainstream and analyzes the terrible envy that male children have of their female counterparts. (Hell, it might take a man studying this to be absorbed by mainstream culture). I think it must be terribly traumatic for male children when they begin to realize that the are not like their mother and won't be able to stay in that nurturing realm, that they will one day belong to the world of war and violence and remoteness; and the more remote and brutal a father they have the worse it must be for them AND since this culture covers that up with the facade of androcentrism they have absolutely no where to go with their grief and fear IF they are old enough to articulate it when it happens. It must be horrible realize you have to completely separate yourself from all the comfort you have ever known and never revisit it in anyway or admit it was ever a part of yourself. I think that is the root of all misogyny, this 'protesting too much' effort to overcome the loss of the mother's breast.

The Wimp Factor, by Stephen Ducat.

It's about the socialization of men and their continuing efforts to achieve the elusive thing we call "masculinity," which increasingly means one is dominating something or someone. He talks about their confusion and flailing about when they are ejected from the world of mothering and nurturing.

It's a fascinating book -- historic, anecdotal, psychological, and brings in tons of popular culture and lots of politics too.

There are quite a few copies listed.

http://dogbert.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?an=dale+spender&y=0&tn=women+of+ideas&x=0

Thanks for posting the review!