The list of clichés is long — Behind every great man is a great woman; Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but backwards and in high heels — and the list of pioneering women, even longer – Amelia Earhardt, Marie Curie, Eleanor Roosevelt, Margaret Thatcher, Benazir Bhutto…. But it’s easier to understand women’s progress by looking at broader trends and legislation. The Mother of all women’s rights legislation? The 19th Amendment, which gave women the vote in 1920.
Spearheaded by such pioneers as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, the long campaign for women’s suffrage got a boost early in the century from organized labor, which fought for and gained important rights for women and laborers in the bad old days of sweatshops. Women had long shown themselves as capable workers, and during WWI they filled mining, chemical manufacturing, mail delivery, and automobile and railway industry jobs typically performed by men. In 1917, before women even had the right to vote, Jeanette Rankin of Montana became the first woman elected to Congress. Meanwhile, in the decade leading up to the passage of the 19th Amendment, the number of female undergraduate students in the US doubled.
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A New York City suffrage march, circa 1912. (National Archives)
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With the vote secured, women fought to take control of their reproductive lives. In 1921 Margaret Sanger organized the American Birth Control League (it became the Federation of Planned Parenthood in 1942). But birth control information was classified as obscene until 1936 (and it wasn’t until 1965 that married couples could legally obtain birth control information in all states). The advent of birth control options gave women unprecedented control over when and how often they would bear children.
Again, war, that most male-dominated of pursuits, gave women the opportunity to show their stuff in WWII. As fighting raged in Europe and the Pacific, about seven million women took jobs, including two million "Rosie the Riveters" in industrial positions and 400,000 in the military. When the war ended, many women in industry lost their jobs, but surveys showed that most (80%) wanted to continue working. By 1950 about 30% of all women worked, including more than half of the single women and about a quarter of married women. With their own paychecks, women had more control over discretionary spending. The increase of women in the workforce also led to an explosion of services — nannies, childcare, housecleaning, shopping services, frozen dinners — aimed at the two-income family.
Women’s issues took on a new urgency in the 1960s alongside the Civil Rights movement. The birth control pill was approved for marketing in the US in 1961. Two years later, Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique marked the beginning of the modern feminist movement. In 1964 Title VII of the Civil Rights Act barred employment discrimination based on race or sex and established the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to investigate complaints and enforce penalties. In 1967 California became the first state to re-legalize abortion; two years later it adopted the US’s first "no-fault" divorce law.
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Rosie the riveter. (National Archives)
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By the 1970s, women had come a long way, baby, but 26% of the population still said that they would not vote for a woman for President. The Supreme Court’s landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision established a woman’s right to abortion, invalidating anti-abortion laws in 46 states. In 1976 Title IX of the Education Amendments, which forbid sex discrimination in education programs, went into effect and participation in athletics and professional schools jumped. Meanwhile, women continued enrolling in college in record numbers, and in 1978, for the first time ever, more women than men enrolled in college. Three years later, Sandra Day O’Connor became the first woman justice on the Supreme Court. In 1984 Geraldine Ferraro became the first woman vice-presidential candidate on a major political party ticket.
The first bill President Clinton signed upon taking office in 1993 was the Family Medical Leave Act, which protects families from job-loss during family emergencies and pregnancy. The 103rd Congress passed 63 women’s issues bills into law in its first two years. The previous record for a year: five. Meanwhile, the number who say they would not vote for a woman president had fallen to about 5% for women and 8% for men.
Today about half of all mothers have a full-time job outside the home and women continue to take advantage of educational opportunities. In the last 20 years, the number of women earning four-year degrees has climbed 44%, from 444,000 in 1979 to about 640,000 today. Women now account for 56% of the student population, and in today’s information-based economy, employers are desperately in need of degreed workers. Moreover, some of the fastest growing job fields are those which women already dominate, including teaching, health services, public relations, residential care, desktop publishing, and physical therapy. It should be noted, however, that women CEOs are still the exception to the rule: Only one FORTUNE 500 company is led by a woman (Carly Fiorina of Hewlett-Packard). However, progress and changes are tangible. When Gloria Steinem re-launched Ms. Magazine in 1999, she had no trouble finding eager women investors, and the magazine is owned, managed and controlled by women. When the magazine was originally founded in 1972, it was backed by male-controlled institutions.
While many of the fields dominated by women are relatively low-paying, the growth rate of higher education among women seems to promise rapid progress in the future, especially considering the growth of the economy away from manufacturing toward knowledge-based positions. It has been said that knowledge is power, and the history of women’s rights this century seems to bear out the premise.
Joe Simonetta is a writer for Hoover's Manufacturing and Industry team.
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