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Virginia Dare
The first English child born in the United States in the colony of Roanoke, North Carolina. -
Pocahontas
Daughter of the Native American chief Powhatan. John Smith, an English settler, claimed that he was saved by her as her father tried to club him to death, which became the justification for war on Powhatan's Army. She was taken prisoner as conflict arose and was forced to convert to Christianity and agreed to marry John Rolfe, becoming the first recorded interracial marriage in history. -
Tobacco Brides
Young women came to the new colony of Jamestown, where they were auctioned off to the men who lived there for 150 pounds of tobacco. They left Europe because they were promised free passage and were often treated better in the rough colony because there were so few women who lived there and they were vital for survival. -
Anne Hutchinson
Wife of a merchant and mother of two kids, she defied the Massachusetts Bay Magistrates and said that there was no covenant of works, only a covenant of grace. She also said that God revealed divine truth directly to individuals. She was exiled from the colony and went to Rhode Island. -
Southern Elite Women
Wealthy Chesapeake And South Carolina women who emulated the English Elite. They read newspapers and fashionable clothing and dined in english fashion. They hired english tutors to enhance their daughters gentility and once married they deferred to their husbands, reared children and maintains elaborate social networks. -
Women's Roles in New England
Women still remained tightly bound by a web of legal and cultural restrictions. They were praised for their piety but still were not allowed to have an equal role in church. Many, such as Hannah Heaton, sought out churches that had a mindset of equality for women, but by the 1760s, men’s dominance in church had been reinstated. -
Daughters of Liberty
American women who became involved in the nonimportation movement against English goods. They worked to reduce consumption of imported goods and also began the in-house manufacturing of cloth and other goods needed across the colonies. Newspapers began celebrating these women’s important role in the effort against England which led to more members. -
Mother Ann
Ann Lee Stanley had a vision that she was the second coming of Christ and established the church of the Shakers. After her death in 1784, she was honored as the second coming of Christ and the church formed disciplined religious communities. -
Abigail Adams
Wrote to her husband, John Adams, and pleaded with him to remember the women of society as he helped revise the Declaration of Independence. However, John did not include women’s rights in the Declaration against Abigail’s wishes, but she was very influential in John's life and helped him through many political issues. -
Republican Motherhood
Produced by the American Revolution, this was the idea that if the republic of America were to succeed, women must be taught to be strong patriots and raise their children in a way so that they become good citizens in society. -
Sacagawea
She was a Shoshone who was the only woman to accompany Lewis and Clark on their expedition as an interpreter for the Shoshone language. She was married to the French-Canadian fur trapper Toussaint Charbonneau. -
The Cult of Domesticity
An ideal of womanhood, home, and family that stated that men now could work in jobs that produced goods and services, while women stayed at home to care for the family. The ideal woman became one who stayed at home and was submissive. This was encouraged and exemplified in women’s magazines, advice books, religious journals, newspapers, and fiction. -
Waltham Lowell System
In order to compete with British rivals in manufacturing, the Boston Manufacturing Company began recruiting young women from farm families and provided them with board and food, and enforced curfews, banned alcohol, and required church attendance. One of the first times that women left their traditional roles in the home and began working jobs in cities. -
Women in the Second Great Awakening
Women took control of religious and charitable enterprises because of their exclusion from other public roles. The predominance of women prompted congregational ministers to end traditional gender segregated prayer meetings and promoted mixed sex praying. This led to men trying to curb their power. -
Margaret Fuller
She was exploring the possibility of freedom for women during the Emerson transcendentalism movement. She pushed the idea that every human could develop a life-affirming, mystical relationship with God. Therefore, every women deserved psychological and social independence. -
Seneca Falls Convention
The first women’s rights convention, held in New York. Started because Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott were refused seats at the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London. Around 300 men and women attended the convention, and it influenced the first National Women’s Rights Convention that was held in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1850. -
Sojourner Truth
An activist who gave a speech called “Ain’t I a Woman?” at the Women’s Convention in Akron Ohio. In this speech, she condemned the idea that women were too weak to have equal rights as men, pulling from the hardships she herself had endured as a slave. -
Harriet Beecher Stowe
She wrote the book “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” that depicted the horrors of slavery. This book became a national best seller and lead to the start of the Civil War as many people who hadn’t known about slavery now realized how bad it actually was, so it lead to many abolitionist movements. -
Dorothea Dix
setout to improve public institutions. In 1841 she began to take up a new cause of providing insane women with their own areas and proper treatment in insane asylums across the country. By 1854, she had established 18 state penitentiaries, 300 county jails and 500 hospitals. -
Harriet Tubman
A runaway slave herself who freed more than 70 slaves over the course of 13 secret rescue missions to the South before the Civil War. She became the first woman to plan and execute an armed expedition in history because she was an advisor to Colonel James Montgomery where they freed over 800 slaves. -
American Equal Rights Association
An organization for white and black women and men dedicated to the goal of suffrage for all started by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. When the 14th amendment passed, which defined voters as male, the organization split into two factions that didn’t reunite again until 1890. Stanton and Anthony founded the more radical NWSA while Lucy Stone and Julia Ward Howe organized the more conservative AWSA. -
Women's Christian Temperance Union
Founded by Annie Wittenmyer and Frances Willard. They worked for the prohibition of alcohol and became an important force that fought for women’s suffrage. -
Ida B Wells
An african American advocator for the equality of women and blacks. Wells took a very aggressive stance against lynching and published pamphlets across the country to raise support of her cause. -
Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr
These women established the first settlement houses in America, which were centers, often in impoverished areas of big cities, that provides community services. Jane Addams started the Hull House in Chicago that provided activities such as health and child in the poorest immigrant slums. The majority of the settlement workers were middle class women due to the Second Great Awakening and the Social Gospel. -
Ida Tarbell
A reporter who exposed John D Rockefeller’s mechanizations which was published in the Cosmopolitan in 1906 and proved that Rockefeller had paid off US Senators to aid him in his corporate interests. Part of the Era of Yellow Journalism and the beginning of the power of media. -
National Association of Colored Women
An association in which black women arranged for the care of orphans, founded homes for the elderly, advocated temperance, and undertook public health campaigns. These women would not sit idle in the face of the challenge of curbing the evils of society. -
Women in the Corporate Office
Before the civil war, most front desk jobs were given to young men, but as it began to be seen as a dead end job, the jobs went mainly to women. By the turn ofthe century, 77 percent of all stenographers and typists were women who began holding over half of all low level jobs. -
Women's Trade Union League
Financed by Wealthy Women in New York, the league trained working class leaders who organized unions amongst garment workers. Eventually, many of these unions united to fight for women’s suffrage. -
Margaret Sanger
Worked as a visiting nurse in the New York City’s tenements and wrote about sex education and women’s health. She was arrested for violating the Comstock Act, which had banned information on sexuality and birth control since 1873. She started the idea of Planned Parenthood. -
Feminism
A step beyond suffrage, women’s full political, economic, and social equality. Led to many unorthodox rebellions and the founding of the Heterodoxy Club in 1912. Feminists argued that women should not just fulfill expectations but work on their own behalf as well. -
Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom
Many women members including Jane Addams, denounced imperialism, stressed the human suffering caused by militarism, and proposed social justice measures. -
19th Amendment
Passed in 1920, and gave all American women the right to vote. Huge turning point on the history of women’s rights in America and jump started the movement in the 1920s of female liberation. -
Flapper
Inspired by actress Clara Bow, who became known as Hollywood's famous Flapper, wore knee length skirts, smoking, and wearing makeup. Although Flappers only represented a tiny minority of women, thanks to movies, they became important symbols of women's sexuality and social emancipation. -
Sheppard-Towner Federal Maternity and Infancy Act
Many progressives hoped that with women being given the right to vote, they could more easily tackle problems such as poverty. They created organizations such as the Women’s Joint Congressional Committee, who created the first federally funded health care legislation, the Sheppard Towner Federal Maternity and Infancy Act. -
American Birth Control League and Planned Parenthood Federation of America
Opened by Margaret Sanger and she provided contraceptives to women and collected statistics to prove their safety and effectiveness. The ABCL worked on global issues of population growth and world famine. -
WACS, WAVES, and WASPS
Women who served in the military during WW II. They often served as state and overseas nurses. They computed the velocity of bullets, measured bomb fragments, and worked as draftsmen, mechanics, and electricians. Also as radio operators. WASPS were pilots who flew missions as farriers, test pilots, and artillery trainers. -
Rosie the Riveter
An illustration by Norman Rockwell that depicted a woman working a job during the war time. This led to government officials and corporate recruiters urging women to take jobs in defense industries. These campaigns were aimed at housewives but also got across to working women who would gladly leave their typical women’s jobs for a higher paying defense industry job. -
Rosa Parks
A volunteer secretary for the NAACP who was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama for refusing to give up her seat on a bus to a white man, which was required by law at that time. Shortly after this, the bus boycott began as it was inspired by her actions. -
Equal Pay Act
Signed by President Kennedy, and prohibits pay discrimination because of sex. It requires the employer to pay equal wages to men and women doing equal work on jobs requiring equal skill, effort, and responsibility, which are performed under similar working conditions. -
Betty friedan’s The Feminine Mystique
A book that targeted middle class women who found themselves not working for wages but rather stifled by their domestic routine. Her book was a bestseller and urged women to realize that to live full and rich lives, they needed education and work outside the home. -
National Organization of Women (NOW)
founded by labor feminists around the country to force compliance with the new Civil Rights Act in regards to women. NOW intended to be a civil rights organization for women, with the aim of bringing women into full social participation in America. -
Women's Liberation
A new brand of feminism whose members were younger, college educated women fresh from the civil rights movements. Fed up with second class treatment by male civil rights organizations, these women eventually broke away. They were very loosely structured and sought an end to the denigration and exploitation of women. -
National Women’s Political Caucus
Congresswoman Bella Abzug and Shirley chisholm joined Friedan and Steinem to create this caucus. It was effective in pushing congress to pass child care tax deductions for working parents in 1972 and the Equal Credit Opportunity Act in 1974. -
Equal Rights Amendment
the Women’s movement renewed the fight for the addition of this amendment to the Constitution. It states that the “equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on the basis of sex.” The Amendment was finally adopted in 1972 after support was found in congress. -
STOP ERA
Led by Phyllis Schlafly, this stop era was meant to put the breaks on the ERA ratification. Schlafly believed in conventional roles for women and believed that women joining the army and branching out in feminist ways would create an unnatural “unisex society.” In this movement, thousands of women mobilized and showed up to statehouses with baked goods asking for people to vote NO to the ERA. -
Roe v. Wade
Justices nullified a Texas state law that prohibited abortion under any circumstances and laid out a new standard which stated that if the pregnancy was in the first trimester then women were allowed by law to have an abortion. This created a national law that protected women’s reproductive freedom. -
Webster v. Reproductive Health Services
the supreme court upholds the authority of state governments to limit the use of public funds and facilities for abortions.