Background Information
Women have arrived, at last! For thousands of years men defined and controlled female existence. It was a different kind of revolution those women began in 1848. At Niagara Falls, women drafted the Declaration of Human Sentiments. It followed the Declaration of Independence both in style and wording. While the latter emphasized political freedom, the former subordinated the idea of freedom to gender equality.
Neither blood nor extreme upheavals characterized what could arguably be defined as the greatest long lasting revolution of the 20th century. Women faced a long history of sexual discrimination, psychological alienation, economic thievery, and legal blindness. The female identity will no longer be limited to the role of mothers and wives. No longer will women have to fear male judgment. Never again will the woman of the 21st century have to be "the problem that has no name" which wasted the lives of a generation of housewives in the 1950's. The time of women with no choice has come to an end. Which models they follow will considerably affect the future of the United States.
Nowadays, women are the majority of college students. They dictate the "tempo" and conditions to start a family, and they are entering in professions thought unthinkable just a decade ago. And the last gasp of male patriarchy, female sexual objectification, is progressively undermined by a growing number of women's organizations using economic boycott to stop sexism in advertising. In sum, women have a bright future ahead of them to express their identities with minimal male interference.
The picture I portrayed is not too far off from reality. Consider gender equality changes in the past 30 years. Before, the women's movement was for the most part an object of contempt if not of social indifference. Women were portrayed as mainly submissive, impressionable, and highly emotional. It has always been very difficult for men to leave behind the tradition that assigned women a role circumscribed to domesticity; a domain that assigned women the part of "bar tending" male's psychological needs/fantasies.
In this research, I want to revisit their battles for equality, their strategies to gain equal rights, and present some of the great leaders of the women's movement in the 20th century. Moreover, I am also interested about in how five United States Presidents used rhetoric to cope with gender issues. You will not find any mention of the African American women's equal right movement. They indeed shared many similar issues with their Caucasian counterparts. I hope the reader will not either be offended, or think, "here we go again." Very simply, the amount of focus would have required an extended time frame and depth of research on my part that I frankly did not have. My Yale fellows know that time is a banished luxury from our New Haven residence.
Finally, I am restricting the topic of gender equality to find the answers to the following questions: how did Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon's rhetoric help the women's movement for equal rights? What strategies proved more effective to women's agenda? Why did women not link their struggle more firmly to the Civil Rights movement? Furthermore, how did gender stereotypes produce a false female identity? And finally, what were the causes that convinced a large section of women to vote against the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment?
Since FDR, people expect their president to be directly involved in solving the problems of the country. With a few exceptions, presidential rhetoric emphasized morality and patriotism to appeal to people's emotions. Presidents before him, however, interpreted their role as guarantor of the Constitution. They served the Constitution first and people indirectly. They legitimized their power by staying above the "parts."
Appealing to emotions and to the people risked falling into what the spirit of the Constitution tried to avoid at all cost: demagoguery. Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson were two exceptions to the traditional role of the President as intended by the Framers. They carried the banner of social reforms that swept the country from 1890s to the 1920s to purify the excess waste and corruption of the Gilded Age. Common citizens wanted leaders who acted on their behalf. The 16th through the 19th Amendments to the Constitution (direct election of Senators, establishment of an income tax, prohibition of alcohol consumption, and women's suffrage, respectively) are the tail end of a unique period in U.S. history that resulted in a more open and fair democracy. It was within this framework that T. Roosevelt and W. Wilson interpreted their power as a reflection of the people rather than of the Constitution.
Both Presidents were elected to reform government. They relied on unprecedented popular support. Their Presidencies were forceful, activist, and drove the major issues of the time such as child labor and legalization of unions, immigration initiative/recall/and referendum. They shifted the power of government from the legislative to the executive branch of government. T. Roosevelt said it best: "I acted for the common well–being of all our people, unless prevented by direct constitutional or legislative prohibition." (1)
Let us see how T. Roosevelt acted in this unprecedented period of reforms on the issue of women's rights.
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