Feminism: 150 Years of Action Last year marked the 150th Anniversary of a movement by women to achieve full civil rights in this country. Over the past seven generations, dramatic social and legal changes have been accomplished that are now so accepted that they go unnoticed by people whose lives they have utterly changed. ( Eisenberg 1) Many people who have lived through the recent decades of this process have come to accept what has transpired. And younger people, for the most part, can hardly believe life was ever otherwise. The staggering changes for women that have come about over those seven generations in family life, in religion, in government, in employment, in education – these changes did not happen spontaneously. Women themselves made these changes happen, very deliberately. They have not been the passive recipients of miraculous change in laws and human nature. Seven generations of women have come together to affect these changes through meetings, public speaking and non-violent resistance. (Eisenberg 1) During the early times of our country’s history, men and women were actually considered partially equal. During this time, America was an agrarian society, which means that it was a farm-based country. There was much work to be done around the farm, and the chores were divided equally amongst the men and women. (K., Esther 1) The livelihood of the family relied on both the husband and the wife, so women’s jobs were considered equally important to those of men. When America became an industrialized country, women began to loose their importance. Since many products could be bought cheaply, there was no longer any need for women to make things such as butter, yarn and other household items. Their main duties were to raise the children and to keep the house clean and comfortable for there “hard working” husbands. Therefore, women lost their importance in economic society and fell ...
