How Did Carrie Chapman Catt Fight For Women's Rights

Women have been fighting the battle for rights for the past two centuries. From women like Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Carrie Chapman, and Susan B. Anthony who argued for our voting rights as United States Citizens to Betty Friedan, Billie Jean, Gloria Steinem, and Coretta Scott King who protested and fought for the equality of women in men in general areas such as work. Though, over time we as women have made successful changes to our society, women still suffer from inequality, and horrible backlash from men from 1848- 2017. Women’s rights have changed since the beginning of times where the idea that women should have a part in this world other than to make babies or cook food. This all originated due to the Seneca Falls Convention

Carrie Chapman Catt would start this change by changing the ideology behind women's suffrage. She stated that women needed suffrage in order to protect their family and kids by being able to vote at school or town meetings. This perspective changed the thoughts of many people and eventually started creating a chain of states letting women have suffrage from the first state of Wyoming in 1869 to an amendment being made to nationalize women's suffrage known as the 19th amendment in 1920. This was known as the first wave of feminism the second wave so only emerges wanting to change to the equality of women in places like school, the workforce, and in athletics. The second wave of feminism was seen to be brought up by the addition of women in the workforce. Starting in WWI women had been the backbone of America and worked in the factories to make those bullets and machine guns. This was repeated again in WWII, but this time more women stayed in the workforce. These women were revolutionizing as instead of carrying the idea of cult of domesticity, they carried the idea that women can work

The first real emergence of a continuity in women’s rights is the idea of cult domesticity. This idea first thrived in the early 19th century where the idea that a woman's role was in the home and family. This idea was denied by many of the first wave feminists at the Seneca Falls Convention where they condemned the idea as being unfeminine. It is also very sexist in the idea that women cannot work which would even be proved at the federal level as cases such as Muller v. Oregon where it was thought that women should be protected by shortening their working hours. This reemerges after WWI and WWII. In WWI the idea appeals that women should return home after working the factories which supported this whole war. In WWII the same idea had reemerged, but this was defined by a whole decade. After WWII, families were booming once soldiers came home, many ideas such as the GI Bill and the Federal Housing Administration helped create many families and many towns known as Levittown. These were the classic suburban homes originating in Long Island this is where the idea of cult of domesticity. The idea that the husband would come home from work to a fresh baked meal and that the wives only duties are to clean, cook, and take care of children. Sarcastically Betty Friedan quoted this as “What kind of a woman was she if she did not feel this mysterious fulfillment waxing the kitchen floor? ” (Friedan 19).