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Категория: Английский язык
In a formal sense, the American feminist movement was born m upstate New York, in a town called Seneca Falls, in the summer of 1848. On July 19, the first women's rights convention began, attended by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, and other
pioneers in the struggle for women's rights. This first wave of feminists, as they are currently known, battled ridicule and scorn as they fought for legal and political equality for women.
Historically, the United States and the United Kingdom provide characteristic examples of the struggle for woman suffrage in the 19th and 20th centuries. From the founding of the United States, women were almost universally excluded from voting. The movement for woman suffrage started in the early 19th century during the agitation against slavery. Such women as Lucretia Mott showed a keen interest in the antislavery movement and proved to be admirable public speakers. When Elizabeth Cady Stanton joined the antislav-ery forces, she and Mott decided that the rights of women, as well as those of black slaves, needed redress. In July 1848 they issued a call for a convention to discuss the issue of women's rights; this convention met in Stanton's hometown, Seneca Falls, N.Y., on July 19—20, 1848, and issued a declaration that called for woman suffrage and for the right of women to educational and employment opportunities. It was followed in 1850 by the first national convention of the women's movement, held in Worcester, Mass., by Lucy Stone and a group of prominent Eastern suffragists. Another convention, this one held in Syracuse, N.Y., in 1852, was the occasion of the first Joint venture between Stanton and the dynamic suffragist leader Susan B. Anthony; together these two figures led the American suffragist movement for the next 50 years.
Other woman suffrage conventions were held as the movement gained its first mass strength, but at first no way of extending the vote to women was known except by amendments to the constitutions of the various slates. Several attempts were made in this regard after the American Civil War (1861—1865), but even though the Territory of Wyoming granted women the right to vote in all elections in 1869, it soon became apparent that an amendment of the federal Constitution would be a preferable plan. Accordingly, the National Woman Suffrage Association was formed in 1869 with the declared object of securing the ballot for women by an amendment to the Constitution. Anthony and Stanton were the leaders of this organization, which held a convention every year for 50 years after its founding. In 1869 another organization — the American Woman Suffrage Association — was founded by Lucy Stone with the aim of securing woman suffrage by securing amendments to that effect in the Constitutions of the various states. In 1890 the two organizations united under the name of the National American Woman Suffrage Association and worked together for almost 30 years.
In the next 25 years, various individual states yielded to the movement's demands and enfranchised their women; each such state increased the members of Congress elected partly by women. These members were thus at least partly obliged by the nature of their constituency to vote for a woman suffrage amendment to the United States Constitution. By 1918 women had acquired equal suffrage with men in 15 states.
World War I, and the major role played in it by women in various capacities, broke down the remaining opposition to woman suffrage in the United States. Amendments to the federal Constitution concerning woman suffrage had been introduced into Congress in 1878 and 1914, but the 1878 amendment had been overwhelmingly defeated, and the 1914 amendment had narrowly failed to gain even a simple majority of the votes in the House of Representatives and the Senate. On August 26 the 19th Amendment was proclaimed by the secretary of state as being part of the Constitution of the United States, women in the United States were enfranchised on an equal basis with men.
