Ch. 17 Section 2 Women in Public Life

Chapter 17 Section 2 Women in Public Life

Section 2 Overview
Objectives
To trace women’s growing presence in the turn-of-the-century work force.
To summarize women’s leadership in reform movements and the efforts to achieve women suffrage.

Focus & Motivate
Starting With the Student
Do boys and girls have the same opportunities open to them?
Do men and women share equal rights in public life? Why?

More About. . . .
Susette La Flesche
La Flesche was aided in her efforts to help the Poncas by Thomas H. Tibbles, an Omaha journalist, whom she later married. After traveling abroad to further the Native American cause, she returned to the reservation where she gained recognition as a writer.

Objective 1 Instruct
Women in the Work Force
Discussing Key Ideas
African-American and immigrant women often work as domestics.
More women, especially immigrants, work in industry, where they are paid only about half as much as men doing equivalent jobs.
More women take white-collar jobs as teachers, typists, and bookkeepers.

Now & Then
Telephone Operators
Critical Thinking:
Analyzing Causes and Effects
How did the gap between men’s and women’s salaries draw more women into the work force?
Possible Response:
Women’s salaries were lower than men’s, prompting businesses to hire them to save expenses.

Objective 2 Instruct
Women’s Leadership in Reform
A time line of important dates in the suffrage movement would help clarify its development.
What should be first?
1848 First women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls.

Historical Spotlight
Vassar’s Maria Mitchell
Critical Thinking:
Evaluating
Was Matthew Vassar correct in offering Mitchell a teaching post at Vassar even though she had not attended college?
Possible Responses:
Some students may feel that degrees that are denied women could not be expected of them; however, anyone may push themselves to gain an education, whether it be formal or informal.

More About. . .
Sophia Smith
Largely self-educated, Sophia Smith completed her formal education at 14. Since she never married, she decided to leave her money to a worthy cause. Deaf at the age of 40, she at first planned to endow a school for the deaf near her western Massachusetts. Home. But when another such school opened, she rewrote her sill, leaving nearly $400,000 to found Northhampton, Massachusetts, women’s college that now bears her name.

Key Player
Susan B. Anthony
Critical Thinking:
Evaluating
What do you think of Anthony’s outrage when only African-American males—and not women, black or white—were granted the right to vote after the Civil War.Possible Responses:
Some students may sympathize with her outrage. Others may feel that such divisions foster prejudice or split and weaken the progressive cause.

Close
As more and more women entered the work force and led the movements for progressive reform, they also pressed for the right to vote.