hi I'm John Green this is crash-course
US history and today we're going to talk
about women in the Progressive Era my
god that is a fantastic hat wait votes
for women
so between Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow
Wilson and all those dough boys headed
off to war women in this period have
sort of been footnoted shockingly mr.
green mr. green I'd never make a woman a
footnote she'd be the center of my world
my raison d'etre my joy de vivre ho ho
me from the past I'm reminded of why you
got a C+ in French 3 let me submit to
you me from the past that you're weird
worship of women is a kind of misogyny
because you're imagining women as these
beautiful fragile things that you can
possess it turns out that women are not
things they are people in precisely the
same way that you are a person and in
the Progressive Era they demanded to be
seen as full citizens of the United
States and short women don't exist to be
yours whadda vivre they get to have
their own Giada vivre
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so it's something to limit ourselves to
discussion of women getting the right to
vote with the passage of the 19th
amendment but if we focus too much on
the Constitutional History we're going
to miss a lot
some historians refer to the 30 years
between 1890 and 1920 as the women's era
because it was in that time that women
started to have greater economic and
political opportunities women were also
aided by legal changes like getting the
right to own property control their
wages and make contracts and wills
by 1900 almost 5 million women worked
for wages mainly in domestic service or
light manufacturing like the garment
industry women in America were always
vital contributors to the economy as
producers and consumers and they always
worked whether for wages are taking care
of children and the home and as someone
who has recently returned from paternity
leave let me tell you that ain't no joke
at American women were also active as
reformers since like America became a
thing and those reform movements brought
women into state and national politics
before the dawn of the Progressive Era
unfortunately their greatest achievement
prohibition was also our greatest
national shame yeah yeah all right ok
it's actually not in our top five
national shames but probably women's
greatest influence indeed came through
their membership and leadership in the
women's Christian Temperance Union the
WCTU was founded in 1874 and by 1890 it
had 150,000 members making it the
largest female organization in the
United States under the leadership of
Frances Willard the WCTU
embraced a broad reform agenda like it
included pushing for the right for women
to vote the feeling was that the best
way to stop people from drinking was to
pass local laws that made it harder to
drink and to do that it would be very
helpful if women could vote because
American men were a bunch of alcoholic
scoundrels who darn well weren't going
to vote to get rid of beer hoses in 1895
Willard boldly declared a wider freedom
is coming to the women of America too
long has it been held that woman has no
right to enter these movements politics
is the place for woman but the role of
women in politics did greatly expand
during the Progressive Era as in Prior
decades many reformers were middle and
upper-class women but the growing
economy and the expansion of what might
be called the upper middle class meant
that there were more educational
opportunities and this growing group of
college-educated women leaned in and
became the leaders of
movement sorry there was no way I was
going to get through this without one
lean in I love that book so as we talked
about before the 1890s saw the dawning
of the American mass consumer society
and many of the new products made in the
second wave of industrialization were
aimed at women especially labor saving
devices like washing machines if you've
ever had an infant you might notice that
they poop and barf on everything all the
time like I recently called a
pediatrician and I was like my 14 day
old daughter poops 15 times a day and he
was like if anything that seems low so
the washing machine is a real
gamechanger and many women realized that
being the primary consumers who did the
shopping for the home gave them powerful
leverage to bring about change chief
among these was Florence Kelly a
college-educated woman who after
participating in a number of progressive
reform causes came to head the National
Consumers League the league sponsored
boycotts and shaped consumption patterns
encouraging consumers to buy products
that were made without child or what we
would now call sweatshop labor which at
the time was often just known as labor
and there was also a subtle shift in
gender roles as more and more women
worked outside the home african-american
women continued to work primarily as
domestic servants or in agriculture and
immigrant women mostly did will paying
factory labor but for native-born white
women there were new opportunities
especially in office work and this
points to how technology created
opportunities for women like almost all
the telephone operators in the u.s. were
women by 1920 office workers and
telephone operators made up 25% of the
female workforce while domestic servants
were only 15% a union leader named
Abraham busines remarked that working
gave immigrant women a sense of
independence they acquired the right to
personality something alien to the
highly patriarchal family structures of
the old country of course this also
meant that young women were often in
conflict with their parents as a job
brought more freedom money and perhaps
if they were lucky a room of one's own
no it's time for the mystery document
please let it be Virginia will please
let it be Virginia Woolf the rules here
are simple I guess the author of the
mystery document I'm either right or I
get shocked all right let's see what we
got the spirit of personal independence
and the women of today is sure proof
that a change has come the radical
change in the economic position of women
is advancing upon us the growing
individualization of democratic life
brings inevitable changes to our
daughters as well as to our son
one of its most noticeable features is
the demand in women not only for their
own money but for their own work for the
sake of personal expression
few girls today failed to manifest some
signs of the desire for individual
expression now that's not Virginia Woolf
today I'm going to be honest I do not
know the answer to this one however it
has been Woodrow Wilson for the last two
weeks you wouldn't do that again to me
or would you I'm gonna guess Woodrow
Wilson final answer yeah yes Charlotte
Perkins Gilman in the book women and
economics what ah
the idea that having a job is valuable
just for the independence that it brings
and as a form of individual expression
was pretty radical as most women and
especially most men were not comfortable
with the idea that being a housewife was
similar to being a servant to one's
husband and children but of course that
changes when staying at home becomes one
of many choices rather than you're only
available option and then came birth
control Kazaa women who needed to work
wanted a way to limit the number of
pregnancies being pregnant and having a
baby can make it difficult to hold down
a job and also babies are diaper using
stuff breaking consumption machines they
basically eat money and we love them the
birth control advocates like Margaret
Sanger and Emma Goldman also argued that
women should be able to enjoy sex
without having children to which men
said women can enjoy sex believe it or
not that was seen as a pretty radical
idea and it led to changes in sexual
behavior including more overall
skoodilypooping Goldman was arrested
more than 40 times for sharing these
dangerous ideas about female sexuality
and birth control and she was eventually
deported Sanger who worked to educate
working-class women about birth control
was sentenced to prison in 1916 for
opening a clinic in Brooklyn that
distributed contraceptive devices to
poor immigrant women the fight over
birth control is important for at least
three reasons first it put women into
the forefront of debates about free
speech in America I mean some of the
most ardent advocates of birth control
were also associated with the IWW and
the Socialist Party secondly birth
control is also a public health issue
and many women during the Progressive
Era entered public life to bring about
changes related to public health leading
the crusade against tuberculosis the
so-called white plague and other
diseases certainly it cut across class
lines having or not having children is
an issue for all
women regardless of whether they went to
college and the birth control movement
brought upper middle and lower class
women together in ways that other social
movements never did another group of
progressive women took up the role of
addressing the problems of the poor and
spearheaded the settlement house
movement the key figure here was Jane
Addams my god they're still Addams is an
American history oh she spells an Addams
Family Addams not like founding fathers
Addams anyway she started the whole
house in Chicago in 1889 settlement
houses became the incubators of the new
field of Social Work a field in which
women played a huge part and Adams
became one of America's most important
spokespeople for progressive ideas and
yet in many places while all of this was
happening women could not technically
vote but their increasing involvement in
social movements at the turn of the 20th
century led them to electoral politics
it's true that women were voting before
the passage of the 19th amendment in
1920 voting is a state issue and in many
western states women were granted the
right to vote in the late 19th century
states could also grant women the right
to run for office which explains how the
first congresswoman Jeannette Rankin
could vote against America's entry into
World War one in 1917 that said the
passage and ratification of the 19th
amendment is a big deal in American
history it's also a recent deal like
when my grandmother's were born women
could not vote in much of the United
States the Amendment says that states
cannot deny people the right to vote
because they are women which isn't as
interesting as the political
organization and activity that led to
its passage alright let's go to the
thought-bubble the suffrage movement was
extremely fragmented there was a first
wave of suffrage exemplified by the
women at Seneca Falls and this
metamorphosed into the national american
women's suffrage association or NASA
most of the leadership of NASA was made
up of middle to upper-class women often
involved in other progressive causes who
unfortunately sometimes represented the
darker side of the suffrage movement
because these upper-class progressives
frequently used nativist arguments to
make their claims for the right to vote
they argued that if the vote could be
granted to ignorant immigrants some of
whom could barely speak English then it
should also be granted to native-born
women this isn't to say that the elitist
arguments won the day but they should be
acknowledged by the early 20th century a
new generation of college-educated
activists had arrived on the scene and
many of these women were more radical
than early suffrage supporter
they organized the national women's
party and under the leadership of Alice
Paul pushed for the vote using
aggressive tactics that many of the
early generation of women's rights
advocates found unseemly Paul had been
studying in Britain between 1907 and
1910 where she saw the more militant
women's rights activists at work she
adopted their tactics that included
protests leading to imprisonment and
loud denunciations of the patriarchy
that would make tumblr proud and during
World War one she compared Wilson to the
Kaiser and Paul and her followers
chained themselves to the White House
fence the activists then started a
hunger strike during their seven-month
prison sentence and had to be force-fed
Woodrow Wilson had half-heartedly
endorsed women's suffrage in 1916 but
the war split the movement further most
suffrage organizations believe that
wartime service would help women earn
respect and equal rights but other
activists like many progressives opposed
the war and regarded it as a potential
threat to social reform but in the end
the war did sort of end up helping the
cause patriotic support of the war by
women especially their service working
in wartime industries convinced many
that it was just wrong to deny them the
right to vote and the mistreatment of
Alice Paul and other women in prison for
their cause created outrage that further
pushed the Wilson administration to
support enfranchising women thanks
thought bubble so women's long fight to
gain the right to vote ended with a
ratification of the 19th amendment in
1920 but in some ways the final granting
of the franchise was a bit anticlimactic
for one thing it was overshadowed by the
18th amendment prohibition which
affected both women and men in large
numbers also Gatsby's you can say a lot
about things about prohibition and I
have but the crusade against alcohol did
galvanized and politicize many women in
organizations such as the WCTU and the
anti-saloon League introduced yet more
to political activism but while the
passage of the 19th amendment was a huge
victory Alice Paul and the National
Woman's Party were unable to muster the
same support for an Equal Rights
Amendment Paul believed that women
needed equal access to education and
employment opportunities and here they
came into contact with other women's
groups especially the League of Women
Voters and the women's trade union
League which opposed the e ra fearing
that equal rights would mean an
unraveling of hard-won benefits like
mothers pensions and laws limiting
women's hours of labor so the e ra
failed and then another proposed
amendment that would have given Congress
the power to limit child labor one
in only six states you go America
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so in many ways the period between 1890
and 1920 which roughly corresponds to
the Progressive Era was the high tide of
women's rights and political activism it
culminated in the ratification the 19th
amendment but the right to vote didn't
lead to significant legislation that
actually improved the lives of women at
least not for a while nor were there
immediate changes in the roles that
women were expected to play in the
social order as wives and mothers still
women were able to increase their
autonomy and freedom in the burgeoning
consumer marketplace but it's important
to note that like other oppressed
populations in American history women
weren't given these rights they had to
fight for the rights that were said to
be inalienable and we are all better off
for their fight and for their victory
women's liberation is to be sure a
complicated phrase and it will take a
new turn in the roaring 20s which we'll
talk about next week I'll see you then
crash course is produced and directed by
Stan Muller our script supervisor is
Meredith Danko the Associate Producer is
Danica Johnson the show was written by
my high school history teacher Raoul
Meyer rosianna rojas and myself and our
graphics team is thought cafe every week
there's a new caption to the libertas
you can suggest captions in comments
where you can also ask questions about
today's video that will be answered by
our team of historians thanks for
watching crash course and as we say in
my hometown don't forget to be awesome
I'm gonna go dis for Stan just kidding
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