Interview With Phyllis Shlafly Summary

The organizers of the movement were not just angry about the prohibitions then existing against women speaking in public or being active in political organizations, there was a separation of domestic and nondomestic. The identification of women with the home and family could exist outside of civil society. Eleanor Flexner described it as married women suffered civil death, in which they have no rights to property and legal entity or existence away from their husbands (Nicholson, 1986). The women’s rights movement was gathering interest of men, one of them being Ralph Waldo Emerson, whom spoke on their behalf at the 1855 National Women’s Rights Convention in Boston. Emerson spoke of women as the educator of humanity, the care of her children, and civilizer of mankind.

She says that men denied them opportunities such as voting and others and forced women to become less valued than men. She also was very focused on getting rid of the term separate spheres. Her main points were that women and men have equal rights and women should be able to be involved in

Derek I Snedden POLS-Y 353 Professor Fowler 20 July 2015 Eagle Forum: The Pro-family movement The Eagle forum was founded by Phyllis Schlafly in 1972 and began as a trust fund to defend conservative agendas in 1967. During the proposal of the Equal Rights Amendment in 1972, Schlafly founded a group with more proactive approach called “Stop ERA” with one goal in mind, to defeat the ratification of ERA. After the success of the “Stop ERA” campaign, Phyllis Schlafly founded the eagle forum, a pro family group dedicated to “opposing all encroachments against American sovereignty through…feminist goals” (Schlafly). Althoug the primary interaction that eagle forum has had with the womens movement was the ERA, they also are incessantly combating

The primary source I am analyzing is the Declaration of Sentiments adopted at Seneca Falls Convention in 1848. This source was from the Seneca Falls Convention which was the first woman's rights convention of the 19th century. Women at this time were coming to the realization that they deserved the same legal rights as men, such as the right to vote or own property. Since this was from the first convention, I assume that the sentiments were recent frustrations and were refined or added to as the movement progressed. During the time period of the source, women were starting to gather formally to try to make significant changes or develop plans of action to earn rights.

Her leadership and ERA draft would become a key part of the battle for women’s rights as her work would be revised and modified many times during the women’s rights and suffrage movement of the 1960s to better address the social norms and gain more support. On the opposing end of the battle, Phyllis Schlafly was a conservative activist who founded the STOP ERA organization to fight against the ratification of the ERA. “Under Schlafly’s guidance, conservative era opponents seized a moral high ground by claiming that while ERA backers wanted to topple traditional values, they—the amendment opponents—were the true supporters of the American family” (Dewolf, pg. 228, 2021). Schlafly believed the ratification of the ERA would remove traditional gender roles which would harm the American family structure and the entire movement was “opposing Mother Nature herself”(Schlafy, 1981). This opinion was led by the belief that under the ERA, women would pursue careers of their own which would increase divorce rates, leave children home alone, and disrupt traditional family life.

Primary Source Analysis This paper will contain an analysis on two documents that I have chosen on Women’s Rights. The two documents are: Abigail and John Adams Converse on Women’s Rights, 1776 and the National Organization for Women (N.O.W.) Statement of Purpose, 1966. Both were created hundreds of years apart, but they will give an understanding of how long of a fight it was for women to obtain a sense of equality.

The Women’s Rights Movement originated from the public protest meeting in Seneca Falls, New York in 1848. Many at the meeting were skeptical about the demands being made to allow women to exercise the right to participate in government and vote. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the primary organizer of the meeting, remembered that many attending, including radical Lucretia Mott, thought that the demand was too far advanced for the time. They believed that advocating for political equality was also “too morally questionable” to include in this movement

The movement began with Betty Friedan’s book Feminine Mystique, in her book she discusses misogyny in America. She describes a social construct and economic system that affected mostly white middle class women, but resonated with all women(The 1960s in America). Feminist alo believed personal is political, especially when it came to equal pay,childcare, and abortion(The 1960s in America). Congress passed the Equal Pay Act of 1963. The failure of the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment in 1974( designed to guarantee equal rights for women)was mainly blocked by Phyllis Schlafly.

Women’s Rights and The Constitution At the mark of the Seneca Falls Convention’s 75th anniversary, 1923, Alice Paul drafted the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) that called for a constitutional amendment that specifies equal rights of citizenship for women. The ERA, however, took half of a century to be passed by Congress for ratification, and this passage to the state legislatures is reflective of the period’s strengthened political demands of the women’s movement. Inspired by the concurrent Civil Rights Movement, sparked and moved by Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique and the National Organization for Women (NOW), and rendered by the real economic and political advancement of American women, the ERA was able to launch a serious nationwide discussion for itself in 1972.

As seen in both Documents #6 and #7, the aforementioned women’s rights activists sought to empower the female citizen, blatantly expressing how women ought to be granted the same God-given rights that men have, as outlined in the Constitution. With the

Throughout history discrimination has had a negative impact on people and has cause certain groups of people to suffer. Discrimination can be against people of different race, religion, gender and sexuality and in the late 1800’s women were one of the groups that were discriminated. Women had to fight hard to obtain the rights they now have in the 21st century and many of the women who fought for equal rights didn’t get to experience those rights since laws in their favor weren’t passed until years and years of fighting. In the late 1800’s American women were discriminated because they were not granted the same rights as men in the workforce, women had to be obedient to their husbands in their marriage and society had certain norms that women

Leaders of the American Feminist Movement began to draw parallels between the struggles of women and the plight of slaves, and pressed the boundaries of “acceptable” female behavior. The Seneca Falls Convention was organized to discuss the question of women’s right, and out of the meeting came the Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions. This declaration stated that “all men and women are created equal,” and women no less than men are endowed with certain inalienable rights (Doc 6). In demanding the right to vote, they launched a movement for woman suffrage that would survive until the battle was finally won in 1920. Yet, during this time, women who were black faced an even greater struggle.

The Unnamed Woman Up until the 1900’s woman had few rights, thus they relied heavily on men. Women could not vote, they could not own their own property, and very few worked. Women’s jobs were solely to care for children and take care of the home. Women during this time, typically accepted their roles in society and the economy ( “Progressive Era to New Era, 1900-1909”).

The life of Women in the late 1800s. Life for women in the 1800s began to change as they pushed for more rights and equality. Still, men were seen as better than women, this way of thinking pushed women to break out from the limitations imposed on their sex. In the early 1800s women had virtually no rights and ultimately were not seen as people but they rather seen as items of possession, it wasn’t until the late 1800s that women started to gain more rights. The Civil War actually opened opportunities for women to gain more rights, because with many of the men gone to war women were left with the responsibilities that men usually fulfilled during that time period.

In other words, feminism describes a culture in which women, because they are women, are treated differently than men, and that, in that difference of treatment, women are at disadvantage; feminism assumes that such treatment is cultural and thus possible to change and not simply “the way the world is and must be”; feminism looks to a different culture as possible, and values moving towards that culture; and feminism consist of activism, individually and in groups, to make personal and social change towards that more desirable culture. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott spearheaded the women’s Right convention in Seneca Falls, NY in 1848. The convention brought in more than 300 people. The discussion was focused on the social, civil, and religious condition of women.