Chapter 17 Section 2 Guided Reading

Chapter 17 Section 2 Guided Reading

1) What types of jobs were women in each group likely to have?
Lower Class: Lower class women had to work for wages outside of their homes. Better-paying opportunities became available in cities and towns, and women were given new options for finding jobs. About 25% of American women held jobs in manufacturing at the turn of the century, and about half of women industrial workers were working for clothing manufacturers
Middle and upper class: Middle and upper-class women were wealthy enough to spend their time taking care of their families and homes, and did not have to take outside jobs to keep their families from poverty.
African American: Many African American women were driven into being domestic workers by poverty. Many worked on farms and as domestic workers, and worked in cities as cooks, laundresses, scrubwomen and maids
Immigrant: Unmarried immigrants were often domestic laborers. Married immigrants were often caring for boarders at their homes or taking in piecework. Many immigrants were lower-class, and so they would do the jobs mentioned in the first category in addition to these, such as manufacturing, particularly garments.

2) How did educational opportunities for middle and upper-class women change?

In the late 19th century, women who were politically active had attended new women’s colleges, such as Vassar College, which opened in 1865 and had a faculty of 8 men and 22 women. Other women’s colleges such as Smith and Wellesley started in 1875. Columbia, Brown and Harvard all refused to admit women, but all started separate colleges for women.

3) How did these new opportunities affect the lives of middle and upper-class women?
Women were still expected to “fulfill traditional domestic roles”, women’s colleges also tried to give them good educations to be used to their advantages. By the late 19th century, women could become workers or “seek higher educations” rather than marrying, and nearly half of the college educated women of the century did not marry. A great number of women began to use their educations to work on social reform.

4) What three strategies were adopted by the suffragists to win the vote?
a. Convince state legislatures to grant women the right to vote.
b. Women pursued court cases to test the14th amendment, which said that any state denying their (male) citizens the right to vote would lose its Congressional representation, arguing that women were citizens as well. Susan B. Anthony and other women attempted to vote 150 times in 10 states, to test this.
c. Suffragists pushed for an amendment to the Constitution that would grant women the right to vote.

5) What results did each strategy produce?
a. Women were granted voting rights in Wyoming in 1869, Utah, Colorado, and Idaho, but after 1896, all of their efforts in other states failed.
b. Congress ruled in 1875 that women were citizens, but then denied that being a citizen automatically gave you the right to vote.
c. Elizabeth Cady Stanton managed to have the amendment introduced in California, but it was later killed. Women were unsuccessful for the next 41 years.