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Me asked in Arts & HumanitiesHistory · 8 years ago

What were women's rights in America before 1915?

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  • 8 years ago
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    Women had the vote in some states, mainly western ones.

    Education for both boys and girls had been compulsory since the late 19th century, up until the age of fourteen. Women had been going to college since the 1870s, and by 1915 they made up about 40 percent of college students.

    Married women's property acts had been passed in the mid 1800s, so married women had control of their own property and earnings.

    A married woman could obtain a divorce,on certain grounds, especially adultery, but divorce was more difficult to come by than nowadays, and carried a strong social stigma.

    Some jobs were not open to women, and it was legal to pay a woman less for doing the same job as a man, for instance women teachers generally earned less than male teachers.

  • 8 years ago

    Before and after 1915, and even before the birth of the United States, the status of women's rights, de facto and de jure, on the continent have been unusually robust. Alexis de Tocqueville gives us an excellent impartial account of this in his work "Democracy in America."

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