For September 24th

Fractures and Fissures in the Suffrage Movement
Last week was our first foray into some of the earliest feminist theories written in English. From Mary Wollstonecraft to Charlotte Perkins Gilman, you had a rapid and grand tour of the wide variety of issues that those concerned with “the woman question” in the long 19th century identified as potential problems for women.

As I said last week, the long 19th century is considered, roughly, the little more than one hundred years between 1790 and 1920. It is bookmarked at either end by the French Revolution (Wollstonecraft was writing during this major historic event) and the attainment of women’s suffrage in Canada, the U.S. and Great Britain just after World War I. Other major historical events that significantly influenced the women’s movement during this time were:

1. The abolitionist movement to end slavery, which was accomplished during the U.S. Civil War (1863- 1865).
2. The height of the British Empire, which reached the pinnacle of its global influence during the reign of Queen Victoria, who ruled England and its colonies in South and East Asia, the Americas, and Africa from 1837-1901.
3. The westward expansion of North America and the genocide of indigenous peoples in both Canada and the U.S. And both countries were growing exponentially via immigration.
4. The rapid industrialization of Europe and the U.S., which led to the building of factories, the CULT OF DOMESTICITY, unbelievably poor working conditions for unprecedented numbers of people—including women, and a major concern among social justice advocates over what to do about it all.
5. An increasing anti-war sentiment among international peace activists in the decade or so before World War I.
6. Scientific innovations that brought closer and closer to reality the possibility of medically controlling women’s fertility.

So, within this milieu, the Western women’s movement in the long 19th century concerned itself, broadly, with several specific and interrelated issues:

• Girls’ and women’s education
• The institution of slavery, both in the U.S. and in the French and British colonies
• Exploitative working conditions for women, including long hours with low pay
• Women’s property rights
• Marriage laws, including domestic violence, child custody and divorce legislation
• Temperance
• Women’s low economic status, particularly their financial dependence on men
• Contraception

And in the middle of the 1800s, some of these concerns started to funnel into one overarching goal: universal women’s suffrage. This one objective enabled the many local and regional women’s organizations to cohere and work together more fluidly on national and international levels. Simultaneously, however, the newly-unified women’s movement faced its first large scale internal conflicts. In Canada, for example, the National Council of Women of Canada (you read the introduction to their major opus, Women of Canada: Their Life and Work for last week) was working to unite a many individual women’s groups across Canada into a single umbrella organization, but Quebecois women’s organizations resisted this homogenizing process because they resented the British-leaning liberal NCWC and advocated instead for a Francophone socialism as a way of achieving their goals. Quebecois feminists also insisted on a RELATIONAL PERSPECTIVE as opposed to the INDIVIDUALIST PERSPECTIVE espoused by the NCWC.

Additionally, there was a major split in the women’s rights movement over the related issues of race and immigration. You may well already have read and/or heard a bit about the racism that seemed to make its way into the various women’s organizations on both side of the Atlantic. For example, in Iron Jawed Angels, black feminist Ida Wells Barnett asks to be included in the suffrage march on Washington, DC and is told by Lucy Stone that in order to gain the support of white supremacist southern feminists, black feminists must march separately. This was the kind of thing that caused friction within the women’s movement. The issues are complicated and differ slightly from country to country, but, by and large, the major umbrella organizations of the women’s movement in the late 19th century espoused eugenics as a way to solve the dual “problem” of poverty and immigration, which is in part why/how advocacy of birth control became part of some feminists’ portfolio during this period. Interestingly, contraception and birth control, which have always been available to women in various forms, were only made illegal in Canada 1892; the law prohibiting the use of contraceptives wasn’t changed until 1969.

Other sites of friction and fissure in the FIRST WAVE of feminist movement (which Schneir calls “old feminism”) included generational differences between the “old guard” and younger feminists, disagreements over tactics and strategies, clashes between urban and rural women, and the continuing conflict between the middle class, white, college-educated women who were leaders in the movement and poor, working class, and/or immigrant women whom they were trying to recruit to their cause. You can see lots of these scenarios at play in Iron Jawed Angels.

The women’s movement in Canada was distinctive because, unlike in the U.S. and the U.K.:
1. There was no flouting of laws; Canadian feminists worked entirely within rather than against the patriarchal legal structures of the state to accomplish their goals.
2. Although the NCWC existed (and still does today; check out their website at http://www.ncwc.ca/, the strength of the Canadian women’s movement was actually in local and regional organizations. Interestingly, Alberta-based organization were among the most vocal and influential in Canada.
3. Suffrage was seen as a means to an end rather than an end unto itself. The desire for enfranchisement came out of the RELATIONAL PERSPECTIVE of Quebecois feminists, who argued that, as mothers of the next generation, women should participate in the political process in order to improve society for their children.

Toward the end of the 1800s, though, conflict arose within the NCWC because the white, middle-class women who were in charge refused to incorporate a concern for the lives and experiences of immigrant women, working class and poor women, and indigenous women into their advocacy efforts. In this respect, the Canadian women’s movement was quite similar to those in the U.S. and U.K. at the time.

This week, we’re going to start by finishing Iron Jawed Angels. After that, we’ll do some work together on Worksheets #2 and #3 in preparation for next Friday’s exam. Be sure as you’re reading this week to think of these materials as in conversation with those from last week. Our focus in class will be not only on the variety of issues that concerned women’s rights advocates in the long 19th century, but also the differences and conflicts among them and the various strategies and tactics they proposed to achieve their goals.

Administrative Stuff
• Remember that when you’re posting to the Bb Dropbox that your file name should be entirely free of funky characters such as #$%^&, etc.
• Lastly, please start thinking about what you’d like to work on for your Term Project: Which academic discipline/profession would you like to research this semester to learn how advocates of feminism approach their work in that area? We're having a workshop next week with the Women's Studies librarian, and I'd like to give her some idea of what you're working on so that she can help you find some appropriate research materials. I’ll also be making the actual assignment available at that time, so you’ll have a clearer idea of your responsibilities and my expectations.

Feminist Stuff Around Town
• Calgary’s annual Take Back the Night march is tomorrow, September 23rd. Check out the website for more info. Yeah, What She Said, Calgary’s only feminist radio show, has posted a list of six reasons why you should attend, but I'll remind you of one more: You can earn extra credit! Go to the “Extra Credit Info” link to learn how.

Also from Yeah, What She Said: "Spike TV (you know, that men's tv channel) has an article on their website called, "The Top Seven Cutest Feminists." I'm not sure whether it's really insulting or really hilarious. Maybe a bit of both. What do you think?"