Women During the Late 1800’s (Pg.

824 – 835)

• Women remained, generally, in positions of economic

dependence and legal inferiority, whatever their social class

• Social Disabilities Confronted by All Women

o Women and Property

 Until the last quarter of the century in most European

countries, married women could not own property in
their own names no matter what their social class.

 Their legal identities were subsumed in their

husband’s identities, and they had no independent
standing before the law.

 For example, the courts saw the theft of a woman’s

purse as a theft of her husband’s property.

 Reform for women’s rights came very slowy

• By 1882, GB had passed the Married

Woman’s Property Act, which allowed
married women to own property in their own
right.

• In France, a married woman could not open a

savings account in her own name until 1895,
and not until 1907 were married women
granted possession of the wages they earned.

• In 1900 Germany allowed women to take jobs

without their husbands’ permission, but except
for her wages, a German husband retained
control of most of his wife’s property.

o Family Law

 Legal codes actually required wives to “give

obedience” to their husbands.

 In England before 1857, divorce required an act of

parliament.

• Thereafter, to obtain a divorce, a woman had

to prove her husband’s adultery plus other
offences, whereas a man only had to prove his
wife’s adultery.
  French law forbade divorce between 1816 and 1884.

 In Germany, only adultery or serious maltreatment

were recognized as reasons for divorce.

 Everywhere, divorce required legal hearings and the

presentation of legal hearings and the presentation
of legal hearings and the presentation of legal proof,
making the process expensive and all the more
difficult for women who did not control their own
property.

 A husband could take children away from their

mother and give them to someone else for rearing.

 In most countries, only the husband could permit his

daughter to marry.

• In some countries, he could virtually force his

daughter to marry the man of his choice.

o Educational Barriers

 Throughout the nineteenth century, women had less

access to education than men had and what was
available to them was inferior to that available to
men.

• Therefore, the illiteracy of women exceeded

that of men.

 University and professional education remained

reserved for men until at least the third quarter of
the century.

 The University of Zurich first opened its doors to

women in the 1860’s

 Prussian universities did not admit women until after

1900.

 Russian women did not attend university until 1920.

 The absence of a system of a private or public

secondary education for women prevented most of
 them from gaining the qualifications they needed to
enter a university whether or not the university
prohibited them.

 By the turn of the century, some men feared the

challenge-educated women posed to traditional
gender roles in the home and workplace.

• Restricting women’s access to secondary and

university education helped bar them from
social and economic advancement.

 School teaching at the elementary level, which had

come to be seen as a “female job” because of its
association with the nurturing of children, became a
professional haven for women.

• Secondary education remained largely the

province of men.

• New Employment Patterns for Women

o During the decades of the Second Industrial Revolution,

two major developments affected the economic lives of
women.

 First was a significant expansion in the variety of jobs

available outside the better paying learned
professions.

 Second was a significant withdrawal of married

women from the work force.
o Availability of New Jobs

 The expansion of governmental bureaucracies, the

mergence of corporations and other large-scale
businesses, and the cast growth of retail stores
opened many new employment opportunities for
women.

 Women by the thousands became secretaries and

clerks for the governments and for private
businesses.

• These jobs required low training and low-level

skills.
 • Unmarried women or widows primarily
occupied them.

 Employers continued to pay women low wages

because they assumed that a woman did not need to
live on what she herself earned.

o Withdrawal from the Labor Force

 Most of the women that were filling the new service

positions were young and unmarried.

 Upon marriage. Or certainly after the birth of their

first child, many women would withdraw from the
labor force.

 Employers in offices and retail stores preferred

young unmarried women whose family
responsibilities would not interfere with their work.

 The real wages paid to male workers increased

during this period, so families had a somewhat
reduced need for a second income.

 Because health conditions improved during this

period of time, men lived longer therefore wives
were less likely to be thrust into the work force by
the death of their husbands.

• Working Class Women

o Although the textile industry and garment making were

much less dominant than earlier in the century, they
continued to employ many women.

o In Berlin, in 1896, more than 80,000 garment workers,

mostly women, were so employed.

 When business was good and demand strong,

employment for these women were high.

 When seasons shifted or business became poor,

however, less and less work was put out, idling many
 of them.

o The expectation of separate social and economic spheres

for men and women and the definition of women’s chief
work as pertaining to the home contributed mightily to the
exploitation of women workers outside the home.

• Poverty and Prostitution

o Most of 19th century cities were the presence of a surplus

of working women who did not fit the stereotype of wife or
daughter supplementing and family’s income.

o There were almost always many more women seeking

employment than there were jobs.

o The economic vulnerability of women and the consequent

poverty many of them face were among the chief causes of
prostitution.

o On the continent, prostitution was generally legalized and

was subject to governmental and municipal regulations
passed my male legislatures and councils and enforced by
male police and physicians.

o Prostitutes usually stayed active from their late teens to

about 25 years old, and were usually poor women that had
recently moved from rural areas.

o There were more prostitutes in cities with large populations

than in industrial towns.

• Women of the Middle Class

o A vast social gap separated poor working class women

from their middle class counterparts.

o The middle class filled their homes with manufactured

items, including clothing, china, furniture … etc.

o They enjoyed improvements in sanitation and electricity.

o They could demand the services of numerous domestic
servants.

o Cult of Domesticity

 Middle class women, if at all possible, did not work.

 They became limited to the roles of wife and mother.

 During the first half of the century, the spouse of a

middle class husband might very well contribute
directly to the business, handling accounts or
correspondence.

• These women left the rearing of children to

Nurses.

 As time developed, men began to want to do

business with other men.

 Magazines and Books directed at women, began to

praise motherhood, domesticity, religion, and charity
as the proper work of women in accordance with the
concept of separate spheres.

 For middleclass Frenchwomen, the home came to be

seen as the center of virtue, children, and the proper
life.

• Marriages were often arranged for some kind

of family economic benefit and romantic
marriages were considered as a danger to
social stability.

• Most married around 21 and children were

expected to follow very soon.

 Within the home, middle class women were in charge

of the household.

• She was in charge of the home as a unit of

consumption, which is why so much advertising
was directed toward women.

o Religious and Charitable Activities

 The cult of domesticity in France and elsewhere

assigned firm religious duties to women, which the
Roman Catholic Church supported.
  Women were expected to attend mass frequently
and assure the religious instruction of their children

 In addition, they were charged with maintaining

Meatless Fridays.

 This close association between religion and a strict

domestic life for women was one of the reasons for
later tension between feminism and religious
authorities.

 Another important role for middle class women was

the administration of charity

• Women were judged qualified for this work

because of their presumed innate spirituality
and their capacity to instill domestic and
personal discipline.

• Women were supposed to be particularly

interested in the problems of poor women,
their families, and their children.

• By the end of the century middle class women

seeking to expand their spheres of activity
became social workers for the church, for
private charities, or for the government.

o Sexuality and Family Size

 Neither wives not their families all conformed to the

stereotypes

 The middle classes of the 19th centuries enjoyed

sexual relations within marriage far more than once
thought.

 Inhibitions about sexuality stemmed from the

dangers of childbirth rather than from any dislike of
sex itself.

 One of the major changes during the second half of

the century was the acceptance of a small family size

• The birthrate in France dropped throughout the

19th century.

• During the last decades of the century, various

 new contraceptive devices became available.

 One of the chief reasons for the apparently conscious

decision of couple to limit their family size was to
maintain a relatively high level of material
consumption.

• Children became expensive to rear, and fewer

children probably meant more attention for
each of them.

o The Rise of Political Feminism

 Obstacles to Achieving Equality

• Women were often reluctant to support

feminist causes.

• Except in England, it was often difficult for

working class and middle class women to
cooperate.

• Although liberal society and law presented

women with many obstacles they also provided
feminists with many of their intellectual and
political tools.

• In 1792, Mary Wollstonecraft, in The

Vindication of the Rights of Woman, had
applied the revolutionary doctrines of the
rights of man to the predicament of the
members of her own sex.

• John Stuart Mill, together with his wife Harriet

Taylor, applied the logic of liberal freedom to
the position of women in The Subjection of
Women

• The Earliest statements of feminism arose from

critics of the existing order and were often
associated with people who had unorthodox
opinions about sexuality, family life, and
property.
 Votes for Women in Britain

• Europe’s most advanced women’s movement

was in Great Britain.

• Millicent Fawcett left the moderate National

Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies.

• Emmeline Pankhurst led a more radical branch

of British feminists.

o In 1903, Pankhurst and her daughters

founded the Women’s Social and Political
Union.

o For several years they and their followers

were named Suffragettes, because they
publicly lobbied for women vote.

o By 1910, having failed, they turned to

violent tactics such as arson, breaking
windows, and sabotage of postal boxes.

o Only in 1918, and then as a result of their

contributions to the war effort did some
British women gain the right to vote.

 Political Feminism on the Continent

• The contrast between the women’s movement

in Britain and those in France and Germany
shows how advanced the British women’s
movement was.

• France

o In France, when Hubertine Auclert began

campaigning for the vote in the 1880’s
she stood virtually alone.

o In 1901 the National Council of French

Women (CNFF) was organized among
upper middle class women but it did not
support the vote for women for several
years.

o Almost all French feminists rejected any

form of violence.
 o They were also never able to organize
mass rallies.

o The leaders of French feminism believed

the vote could be achieved through
careful legalism.

o 1919, the French Chamber of Deputies

passed a bill granting the vote to women
but in 1922 the French Senate defeated
the bill. It was not until after WWII that
woman would receive the vote.

• Germany

o German law forbade German women

form political activity.

o In 1894, the Union of German Women’s

Organization (BDFK) was founded.

 By 1902 it was supporting a call for

the right to vote.

 It was largely involved in improving

women’s social conditions, their
access to education, and their right
to other protections.

o Women received the vote in Germany in

1919

o Jewish Emancipation

 The slow and never fully completed process of the

emancipation of the Jews from the narrow life of the
ghetto was a major accomplishment of political
liberalism.

 Differing Degrees of Citizenship

• In 1792, Joseph II issued a decree that placed

the Jews of his empire under more or less the
same laws as Christians.

• In France the national assembly recognized

Jews as French citizens in 1789.

• The various steps toward political

 emancipation were always somewhat uncertain
and were frequently limited or partially
repealed with changes in rulers or
governments.

• Even in countries that had advanced Jews

some political rights, they could not own land
and could be subject to special discriminatory
taxes.

• In Russia, the traditional modes of prejudice

and discrimination continued unabated until
WWI.

o Jews were treated as aliens under

Russian rule.

o The government undermined Jewish

community life, limited the publication of
Jewish books, restricted areas where Jews
might live, required internal passports
from Jews, banned Jews from many forms
of state service, and excluded Jews from
many institutions of higher education.

o Police and others were allowed to

conduct prgroms, which were organized
riots against the Jews.

 Broadened Opportunities

• European Jews saw a general improvement in

their situation after the revolutions is 1848.

• In Germany, Italy, the Low Countries, and

Scandinavia, Jews attained full rights of
citizenship.

• After 1858, Jews could sit in British parliament.

• Austria Hungary extended full legal right to

Jews in 1867.

• From about 1850 to 1880, relatively little

organized prejudice was expressed against
Jews.

o They entered professions once closed for

 them.

• Jews married freely amongst non-Jews.

• Outside of Russia, Jewish political figures

entered cabinets and served in the highest
offices of the state.

• Politically, they were more aligned with the

Liberal party because they championed equal
rights.

• Security began to erode during the last 2

decades of the 19th century. Anti-Semitic voices
began to be heard during the 1870s.

• In the 1880’s, organized anti-Semitism erupted

in Germany, as it did in France during the time
of the Dreyfus affair.