Final Draft Annotated Bibliography

What steps were made for Women’s Suffrage? 

The reason as to why I ask this question is that women rights was clearly a problem for so long, and nothing really changed till decades later. It wasn’t like women as a whole stayed quiet. They rebelled, they did what they wanted to do and they started movements but still no change till long after. Why is that? Was the government too afraid to give women a voice? Those are some things that I want to find out through my research. Women gave their ideas as to how they want to feel equal to men but the men weren’t listening. Did they think that the women were jokes and should’ve stayed in the place that men had created for them. It was all unfair and they just wanted justice. I have a simple question but it can have millions and millions of answers. It is shown that women had a rough time in the past and why wasn’t anything done about it before. Why did it have to be a thing that “recently” occured. No matter what I read or what I was thinking this question stayed in my mind. Hopefully when I do the research my question is answered. 

Social Security. (n.d.). Retrieved November 21, 2020, from http://www.ssa.gov/

As the title states, this article talks about the Women’s Rights Movement from 1848- 1920. Throughout the article it talks about women suffrage as a whole. It talks about Jeannette Rankin’s entry into congress. All the gatherings are stated in this article even starting with the first one that took place at Seneca Falls, New York on July 19-20 1848. It even states the organizers of the event. Elizabeth Cady Stanton from upstate New York, and the Quaker abolitionist Lucretia Mott. About 100 people attended the convention and two-thirds were women. During this convention, they echoed “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal.”. That was from the preamble of the Declaration of Independence. It then proceeds to talk about the turning points from the late 1880’s – early 1890’s.  It states “when the nation experienced a surge of volunteerism among middle-class women—activists in progressive causes, members of women’s clubs and professional societies, temperance advocates, and participants in local civic and charity organizations.” It shows how determined the women were to go up and beyond to legitimize the suffrage to help the NWSA and AWSA. By 1890 they came together and united to make the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). It then talks about the next two decades about what the NAWSA did. The article shares the name of the important women who made anything possible such as Ruth Hanna McCormick, Alice Paul, a young Quaker activist who had experience in the English suffrage movement, formed the rival Congressional Union, Carrie Chapman Catt, a veteran suffragist since the mid-1880s and a former president of the NAWSA, etc. From what I read I think this is a really good reliable source. It gives a thorough explanation and summarizes the key points of events that happened long ago. It gave dates, names and details about all of them which is good for my research. I can see what things helped the movement and what didn’t. The purpose was really clear and it was a sub article on a bigger title. A bunch of articles was about women in congress and this is clearly to support that women wanted to be involved and got what they wanted. It was to inform the reader that women also have a voice in congress. The website with all these articles is also reliable due to the fact that it’s on the United States of Representatives History, Art, and Archives website. 

women’s rights movement | Overview, History, & Facts

This article basically has the same main points as the previous article but in a more “in general” way. The way that Elinor Burkett says that “Women’s rights movement, also called women’s liberation movement, diverse social movement, largely based in the United States, that in the 1960s and ’70s sought equal rights and opportunities and greater personal freedom for women. It coincided with and is recognized as part of the “second wave” of feminism. While the first-wave feminism of the 19th and early 20th centuries focused on women’s legal rights, especially the right to vote (see women’s suffrage), the second-wave feminism of the women’s rights movement touched on every area of women’s experience—including politics, work, the family, and sexuality.” She didn’t just leave it like that but then gave details about it. She started with the events that happened right after WW2 and how the women felt and they wanted to do. She gave details about the Reformers and Revolutionaries. She gave us a new public indication of the movement with  Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique. Friedan spoke of the problem that “lay buried, unspoken” in the mind of the housewife. Other points that came up were boredom and “lack of fulfillment”. She said “Women who had been told that they had it all—nice houses, lovely children, responsible husbands—were deadened by domesticity, she said, and they were too socially conditioned to recognize their own desperation.” Burkett compared the National Organization for Women (NOW) to National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) She then talked about the members and how they tried to get a Bill of Rights for women which involved “enforcement of laws banning employment discrimination; maternity leave rights; child-care centres that could enable mothers to work; tax deductions for child-care expenses; equal and unsegregated education; and equal job-training opportunities for poor women” to ensure women equality. Two other measures stirred enormous controversy were “one demanded immediate passage of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the U.S. Constitution (to ensure equality of rights, regardless of sex), and the other demanded greater access to contraception and abortion.” She then expands on that idea of sex and abortion. This is a new aspect of the movement being more expanded on and it is really descriptive. Everything comes with dates and names. Burkett is a Professor of Journalism at University of Alaska, Fairbanks. Which I found to be  a good source. Again it is to inform the reader of the problems that women went through just so that they can have more freedom and a voice. 

https://www.historynet.com/womens-rights#:~:text=The%20women%E2%80%99s%20rights%20movement%20summary%3A%20Women%E2%80%99s%20rights%20is,the%20right%20to%20work%20for%20for%20equal%20pay.

This article is way different from the other two. Although it shares the majority of the same details, this one gives the more precise dates of when the events occurred. This timeline starts from Pre-Settlement to 1920. And in between those two periods it gives major events and the year it happened. So all the other information that the other two shared, this gives more of a broken down timeline. This article will be useful to me because I can take the details that the articles gave me and then add more dates to it. This article also talks about some of the minor details which are still good. It provides more of a broader horizon when they format it like this because of how everything is by date. Instead of having it all over the place, it is in chronological order. This is better for my learning because everything is organized. Although some of the events are just the main idea and don’t give the full extent of the event. The website was on HISTORYNET. The article also provided their own little summary of the whole member. “Women’s rights is the fight for the idea that women should have equal rights with men. Over history, this has taken the form of gaining property rights, the women’s suffrage, or the right of women to vote, reproductive rights, and the right to work for equal pay.” In all, even though it was two sentences, it covered it all. 

In the start of the whole research I thought I had a good understanding of this whole movement. I knew that the people involved pushed for what they want but I didn’t know that they had all these things like the Bill of rights for women. Before this, I had no clue. ALl the articles that I found were really important because what one article lacked, the other article basically filled those holes that the others were missing. That made this research really easy to understand because there were questions that I had and some of it was answered. What was mind-blowing was how determined the women were. Even though they were put down they stood right back up. I knew that from the start but I didn’t know the extent that they went to, to get to the point that they achieved. I think the community that benefited was anybody doing a study on the topic. Perhaps any feminist groups may find it useful because they can see what strength women had to get their rights. Since basically the whole movement was on women getting power and that is what feminist strive for. It’s what makes feminist, feminist.