The Study Of American Women's Movement In The Progressive Era

Whether women's rights gets guarantee or not is measured the national important standard of dimension of democracy. Women were still placed to be subjected to oppression and the position of bias during quite a long time when the American independent war was over. It was out of proportion to their achievement whose women made contribution to their country and fell short of necessary demand of social development of democracy. As time went by, women played more and more important role in the social activities and awaken their thought of democracy rights gradually. In order to strive for their own rights, women's movement broke out finally in 1848 .The movement had been lasting in 1920. Women obtained suffrage and a series of democratic rights by working hard for 72 years. The movement left deep impression involving politics, economy, culture and social lives in the United States .We can get more illumination by studying it. According to these factors, we tries to put the women's movement in the particular environment of the Progressive Era to investigate and understand so as to know American women's history more thoroughly and get deeper study on the foundation.Development of industrialization made American society change greatly so that women had opportunity to get away from patriarchal system. America women participated in social economical activities extensively during the independent war and heightened their consciousness of thought while they struggled for their independence of country at the same time. They also came to know to strive for the necessity of the free rights clearly under the influence of enlightenment's concept of nature of freedom. American initiated movement of "The Republic Mother" to advance development of woman's education in the United States at that time. These factors established necessary foundation for creation and development of women's movement and got ready for thought and knowledge for the feminism as well. In conclusion, the emergence and development of the movement is a result of many kinds of forces consisting of economy and politics and culture and consciousness and so on. Women mainly struggled for their suffrage and birth control and fight for eight hours of work system and the equal pay act during the movement. At last, women achieved great success.Not to be neglected, the movement wasn't smooth in all the way. Because there was influence of traditional idea and part of encumbrance of forces of social reaction and women's own arousal of thought was inadequate, these factors that counteracted the development of the movement made it difficult in the Progressive Era. The depth and extent of the women's movement in Progressive Era fell behind the second women's movement in 1960s.But we can't neglect its value by reason of the cause. Feminism in Progressive Era offers more experience including thought of guidance of the movement and organized forms and combination with black movement to the second women's movement. Consequently, I not only concentrate to analyze the background, experience, influence, cause of coming into being and development and negative factors prevented the development of the movement, but also provide the many comparison of the women's movement that happened in the Progressive Era and in the 1960s.