Sunshine for Women WHM 2002, ToC | Home

      For a variety of reasons, including the limits on women’s time due to the lack of consumer goods make available by the industrial revolution, the difficulty of transportation and communication, and social strictures on women, at the beginning of the nineteenth – century, most American women were involved primarily with the people around them – their families, their friends and neighbors, and the people in their churches and towns. A few women wrote for public consumption about issues of concern primarily to women, but also about the events in the larger public sphere. Most women had little formal education: what education they acquired was taught to them informally by their mothers and fathers or by personal, paid tutors. As the century progressed, in the face of almost unbearable resistance both because they were reformers who challenged the rich and powerful as well as the status quo and because they were women, women began to speak out publicly on a variety of topics, especially temperance and slavery, breaking barriers for the following generations of women. Private primary schools, then secondary schools, and finally colleges and universities were created to educate women. Gradually, after public education became available to boys, public schools were expanded to include girls. By the end of the century, educated women wrote boldly on a variety of topics and took to the speaker’s platform as a matter of course. Organizations devoted to the improvement of the lives of women as women had been created and the up-coming generation of women, our grandmothers and great-grandmothers, lived a life that their grandmothers could only dream about.

      Female reformers were involved in a large number of causes: religious revivals, education, trade unionism and the rights of workers, temperance, slavery and civil rights, many aspects of woman’s rights, woman suffrage, “moral purity” (a euphemism for anti-organized prostitution and trafficking in women), to name a few, a list which embraces all aspects of the arts and humanities, science, and culture. Twentieth – and twenty first - century women followed in the footsteps of their foremothers creating and joining numerous organizations for a variety of social reform.

      Quite often female reformers had to settle for half (or less) of a loaf. But by settling for their half-loaf and leaving behind feeling of good-will for future reformers, during the course of a century female reformers greatly improved not only the lives of women as women, but the lives of all members of the community. Many people today get frustrated at having to settle for half-a-loaf, but I, for one, am glad that my foremothers settled for their half-a-loaf. By doing so, over the course of a century, they revolutionized women’s lives and created so many opportunities for women.

      As far as the new format I tried for 2002, I am only somewhat satisfied with it. I have a topic for 2003 picked out already and I have done much of the required research. So next year, I’ll be writing the biographies again.

      As always, I hope you have enjoyed this year’s Women’s History Month presentation. Again, my apologies for the delay in getting the files posted.

Sunny

Return to Women's History Month 2002 Table of Contents

e-mail sunshine@pinn.net