How Did Eleanor Roosevelt Impact On Women's Rights

Eleanor Roosevelt had a significant impact on the changing rights of women through her participation and leadership within women’s leagues, unions and American politics. Roosevelt founded a political importance when her husband, Franklin Roosevelt became the President of the United States of America. But she was convinced that “women and men entered politics for different reasons; men entered to pursue their own careers while women were motivated by a desire to change society, to improve daily conditions of life”. While working with other women, Roosevelt became aware of the barriers women faced and with this experience, she began to focus on advancing and advocating for the rights and freedoms of American women. Eleanor Roosevelt’s significance

As Roosevelt worked with women, she began to realise injustice that women were facing so she acted upon this. After 1920, Roosevelt began to actively work with post suffrage feminist groups and activists across America to help build a political foundation for them. She was invited to become a member of the New York State League of Women Voters; this group was devoted to the development of feminist activity and woman’s suffrage on local and state levels. The league also set goals to expand the Women’s Bureau, Sheppard-Towner Maternity and Infant Protection and to support the recognition and full citizenship for American women. After 1921, she came completely engaged in every aspect of the women’s political movement and her work was all for the purpose of advancing women’s freedoms and rights. In 1922, she also joined the Women’s Trade Union League which was committed to better conditions in the workplace and encouraged women to join the labor movement. But with every group and movement Eleanor Roosevelt joined, she made sure that she could create a difference through it rather than the group simply using her name. Because of her conscious actions and motivation to create a difference to the advancement of women’s rights, Eleanor Roosevelt initiated remarkable changes through women’s activist

The ERA was first proposed to the Congress in 1923 and served the purpose of providing women with equal rights as men. This amendment created a lot of debate as there were two disparate attitudes towards the equality of both genders. One perspective accentuated the similarities of both genders and demanded equal rights based on common humanity; while the other approached stressed the natural differences between both sexes and therefore highlighting the specific needs and experiences of women. Roosevelt was one of those who opposed the Equal Rights Amendment as she believed it was aimed at women within the middle class and lacked government protection for the working class. She believed it would then undermine the protective laws for women in the workplace - factory safety standards, minimum-wage laws, the 48-hour workweek, elimination of night work and exclusion from dangerous jobs. But later in the 1960s, groups were unionised which then lead her to the judgement that the ERA would not affect the protective laws for women that she and other activists groups had promoted previously. But her initial opposition of the ERA shows her active passion and reasoning for the rights and freedoms of women and how they should be protected by