Anaïs Le Fèvre-Berthelot American Women in the 20th century

Introduction: Gender and History

Introduction: What is history?
 A written narrative constituting a continuous chronological record of important or
public events (esp. in a particular place) or of a particular trend, institution, or person’s
life.
 The branch of knowledge that deals with past events; the formal record or study of
past events, esp. human affairs. Also: this as a subject of study.
 The whole series of past events connected with a particular person, country,
institution, or thing.

History is associated to science, facts, nuances and reality. But it is important to remember
that history has two meanings: first the facts, and then the narrative written or told to make
sense of those facts. There is no neutral account of historical facts, because historians are
historically situated. This means that they are influenced by the society they live in and by
what was written before.
British historian Edward H. Carr wrote a book entitled What is History? in 1961. He
argued that it is a mistake to believe that one can get a complete, objective picture of what the
past was like. Historians, those who write history, decide what facts become parts of history.
And this leads to several biases: they usually do not have access to all the facts; they usually
find only the facts they were looking for; and finally, their interpretation of those facts will
depend on their own prejudices and their own agenda. In this process, historians decide which
“facts of the past” become “historical facts.” Carr provides an answer to the question raised in
the title: history “is a continuous process of interaction between the historian and his facts, an
unending dialogue between the past and the present.”
This is not to say that history is completely relative, that any one can say anything based on
the same facts, or that you should not believe anything you read. History is based on facts, on
the study of archives, on material elements and as such, it can be trusted. But it is important to
be aware of the limitations of any one account and to think about the perspective that is
adopted. It is also important to be able to tell that some interpretations are just plain wrong.
Ellen Carol DuBois and Lynn Dumenil explain that, “traditionally, American history
employed a framework of steady national progress, from the colonial revolt against England
to modern times. Starting in the 1960s, the writing of American history emphasized an
alternative story line of the struggles of workers, slaves, Indians, and (to some degree)
women, to overcome enduring inequalities.”1
This course adopts a specific perspective to study the 20 th century in the United States. To
use the words of historian Mary Ritter Beard (1876-1958), we are going to study “America
Through Women’s Eyes.” This means that I will place women’s experiences at the center of
my narrative as we cover the events of the long 20th century in the United States.

I. Gender (race, class) and History

Women’s history really started receiving extensive attention in the 1970s under the
influence of the reemergence of the feminist movement in the United States. At that time,
feminists started using the word “gender” to refer to the way a particular society constructs
the differences between women and men, between the feminine and the masculine.

1
Ellen Carol DuBois and Lynn Dumenil, Through Women’s Eyes: An American History with Documents, 4
edition (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2015), p.xxx.

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 Anaïs Le Fèvre-Berthelot American Women in the 20th century

A. Gender
Originally, the word “gender” was used in grammar to classify nouns in certain languages
(Latin, French, German…). It seems that the word was first used to mean the social and
cultural construction of feminine and masculine in the late 1940s, in the USA, in the field of
psychology.2 Scholars in the social sciences but also in the medical field used the term. In the
1960s and 1970s, feminist academics increasingly used the term to mean the socially-imposed
division between women and men. But this use of “gender” only became mainstream in the
1980s and 1990s.
Using the word “gender” is not a way to deny the existence of biological differences
between female and male; it is a way to acknowledge that what a society defines as feminine
or masculine varies across time. And history provides tools to study the social, political and
economic evolutions that shape gender.

B. “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis,” Joan Scott

Joan Scott is an American historian who studies French history. In 1986, she published an
article entitled “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis.” 3 [Document #1] This
essay was very influential, and its French translation is credited for introducing the word
“gender” in French academia. In this article, Scott argues that the concept of gender is not
only useful to talk about the social construction of the differences between the sexes; it can
also be used as a “way of signifying relationships of power.”4
According to Scott, using “gender” to signify that one is going to study women was a first
step but it is necessary to take into account the relational dimension of gender. Masculine and
feminine experiences are not absolutely separate; they shape one another because they are
caught in relationships of power. Therefore, Scott argues in favor of historical research that
takes women’s experience into account while studying how these relationships of power are
constructed, how they are built and how they shape definitions of feminine and masculine.
She also suggests that the concept of gender can renew traditional approaches and methods
in history. Studying gender does not only mean studying the family or the domestic sphere.
Scott affirms that gender can be useful to understand relationships of power in general. Even
when the relationships of power are not literally about gender itself, that is, even when they
do not concern men and women, they can be expressed or understood in gendered terms.

C. Intersectionality
This course is about women, and the plural is important. We are going to focus on how
women experienced the 20th century as women. But people are never just defined by their
gender identity. One is not only man or woman or non-binary, one may be also black, white,
Asian, Cherokee, rich, poor, gay, straight, bi, immigrant or native-born… The experiences of
women in the United States in the 20 th century varied tremendously across time, but also
depending on their race, their class, their sexual orientation…
Intersectionality is a concept that was coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw 5 that helps us take
into account the various aspects that shape someone’s identity and situation in society. Issues
of gender, race and class are not separate; they are intricately interwoven.
2
“Gender, N.,” OED Online (Oxford University Press, n.d.),
http://www.oed.com.distant.bu.univ-rennes2.fr/view/Entry/77468.
3
Joan W. Scott, “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis,” The American Historical Review 91, no. 5
(1986): 1053–75.
4
Scott, 1067.
5
Kimberle Crenshaw, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of
Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics,” University of Chicago Legal Forum 1989
(1989): 139, http://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/uchclf1989&id=143&div=&collection=.

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 Anaïs Le Fèvre-Berthelot American Women in the 20th century

Throughout this course, we will try to take into account the stories of women who have
been marginalized because of their racial or ethnic identity, because of their social conditions
or because of their sexual orientation, and to tell not just the stories of upper and middle-class
white women, but those of the many women who shaped the United States.

II. American women from 1776 to the late 19th century

A. Women and Independence
In 1776, the thirteen British colonies in North America were revolting against what many
considered the tyrannical power of the British Crown and Parliament. In a letter sent to her
husband, Abigail Adams wrote,
I long to hear that you have declared an independency -- and by the way in the new
Code of Laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make I desire you would
Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors.
Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men
would be tyrants if they could. If perticuliar care and attention is not paid to the Laidies
we are determined to foment a Rebelion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws
in which we have no voice, or Representation.6
To this, John Adams, a lawyer who was involved in the revolutionary war and later helped
draft the Declaration of Independence replied:
As to your extraordinary Code of Laws, I cannot but laugh. We have been told that
our Struggle has loosened the bands of Government every where. That Children and
Apprentices were disobedient -- that schools and Colledges were grown turbulent -- that
Indians slighted their Guardians and Negroes grew insolent to their Masters. But your
Letter was the first Intimation that another Tribe more numerous and powerfull than all
the rest were grown discontented. – […] Depend upon it, We know better than to repeal
our Masculine systems.7
In his answer, Adams suggests an analogy between children, apprentices, Native Americans,
African-American slaves and women as rebellious groups that may threaten the dominant
group. It is worth noting that all these groups were excluded from the nation when, a few
months later, the thirteen colonies did declare their independence from Great Britain.
The declaration of independence, signed on July 4, started with the following words: “We
hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by
their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the
Pursuit of Happiness.”
A major change brought about by the revolution and independence, was the emancipation
of black slaves in most northern states beginning with Vermont in 1777. But despite the
universal ambitions of the revolutionary rhetoric, women were denied the vote and were
generally considered as dependent on men (often their fathers or their husbands). Women
were thus partly –or completely in the case of African-American women in the slave South, or
in the case of Native American women– excluded from the new republic. But as Abigail
Adams’s admonition to her husband shows, some women made connections between the
ideology of the Revolution and their position.

6
“Letter from Abigail Adams to John Adams, 31 March - 5 April 1776,” accessed December 1, 2017,
https://www.masshist.org/digitaladams/archive/doc?id=L17760331aa.
7
“Letter from John Adams to Abigail Adams, 14 April 1776,” accessed December 1, 2017,
https://www.masshist.org/digitaladams/archive/doc?
id=L17760414ja&rec=sheet&archive=&hi=&numRecs=&query=&queryid=&start=&tag=&num=10&bc=.

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 Anaïs Le Fèvre-Berthelot American Women in the 20th century

B. Women’s Rights Movement

1. Second Great Awakening
In the late 18th and early 19th century, a religious revival took place in the United States.
During this period called the “Second Great Awakening,” itinerant preachers travelled across
the country promising salvation to all those who repented. The religious gatherings welcomed
all members of society, including women (and black people in the North). This revival
democratized religion, because, instead of being restricted to the happy few, salvation was
now in everybody’s hands. The Second Great Awakening also allowed women to take a more
active part in public life. Since they were excluded from electoral politics, being active in
religious organizations was a way for them to play a role in the life of their communities. This
revival led to a movement of reform: on religious grounds, people (especially in the
Northeast) started to organize to oppose alcohol consumption (the temperance movement) and
slavery (anti-slavery movement and abolitionism).
2. Abolitionism
In the abolitionist movement, two Quaker women became famous in the late 1830s by
traveling around New England, giving lectures to mixed audiences about the “sin of slavery.”
Sarah and Angelina Grimke came from a slave-holding family and testified to the horrors of
slavery. Their appeal to other women to join the fight against slavery associated the issues of
race and gender. For instance, Angelina Grimke wrote: “Women ought to feel a peculiar
sympathy in the colored man’s wrong, for like him, she has been accused of mental inferiority
and denied the privileges of a liberal education.”8
The experiences and positions of the Grimke sisters illustrate how women’s participation
in the abolitionist movement paved the way for a movement that would question traditional
gender role and women’s exclusion from the public sphere.
The first important element here is the often-negative reaction women had to face when
they tried to take have their voices heard in the public debate. The Grimkes and other female
lecturers were criticized for their indecency as they spoke to mixed audiences about public
issues. When the American anti-slavery movement sent a delegation of men and women to the
World Anti-Slavery Convention in London in 1840, the presence of women was debated and
eventually they were barred from participation and forced to sit behind a curtain. 9 Among the
American women that were thus excluded was Lucretia Mott, a Quaker minister who
befriended Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the wife of another delegate. Together, they would go on
to initiate a women’s rights convention.
Indeed, and this is the second point, women’s involvement in the fight against slavery and
for equal rights between black and white, led them to realize that women’s legal situation was
not satisfactory either. In her Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Conditions of
Woman published in 1838, Sarah Grimke focused in Letter XII on the “legal disabilities of
women.” In this letter, she explicitly compared the status of women to that of black slaves in
the South:
the very being of a woman, like that of a slave, is absorbed in her master. All
contracts made with her, like those made with slaves by their owners, are a mere nullity.
[…] This law that “a wife can being no action,” &c., is similar to the law respecting
slaves. “A slave cannot bring a suit against his master, or any other person, for an injury –
his master, must bring it.” So if any damages are recovered for an injury committed on a
wife, the husband pockets it; in the case of the slave, the master does the same.
8
Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women (1st : 1837 : New York), An Appeal to the Women of the
Nominally Free States, Issued by an Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women. Held by Adjournments from
the 9th to the 12th of May, 1837 (Boston, Isaac Knapp, 1838), 36,
http://archive.org/details/appealtowomenofn00anti.
9
Sara Evans, Born for Liberty, Reprint edition (Princeton, N.J.: Free Press, 1997), 81.

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 Anaïs Le Fèvre-Berthelot American Women in the 20th century

Women’s involvement in the abolition movement showed that women could participate in
political debate. But most importantly, as historian Sara Evans puts it, “the antislavery
movement provided women with both an ideological and a practical training ground in
political activism for democratic and egalitarian change.”10
3. Seneca Falls
On July 14, 1848, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott announced:
A Convention to discuss the social, civil, and religious condition and rights of
women will be held in the Wesleyan Chapel, at Seneca Falls, N.Y., on Wednesday and
Thursday, the 19th and 20th of July current; commencing at 10 o’clock A.M. During the
first day the meeting will be exclusively for women, who are earnestly invited to attend.
The public generally are invited to be present on the second day, when Lucretia Mott, of
Philadelphia, and other ladies and gentlemen, will address the Convention.
Over two hundred women and forty men gathered in Seneca Falls. Among the participants,
many were active in other movements: Cady Stanton had given public lectures on
temperance; Lucretia Mott was a Quaker minister who advocated antislavery and the boycott
of all products of slave labor.
The Seneca Falls convention argued for a completely new role for women in the American
republic. Women were not to be part of the Republic only as mothers or wives; instead they
claimed their right to be considered as autonomous individuals. Sara Evans writes that, “thus
they directly challenged the doctrine of separate spheres at the heart of Victorian domesticity
by asserting women’s public rights as citizens.”11
During the convention, the assembly adopted the “Declaration of Sentiments and
Grievances” [Document #2] a text that referenced the Declaration of Independence and
started thus: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created
equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights…” 68 women
and 32 men signed the text.
The assembly also passed 12 resolutions demanding specific equal rights for women. One
was hotly debated. Added by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, it read, “it is the duty of the women of
this country to secure themselves their sacred right to the elective franchise.” Most people
who opposed the resolution feared that demanding the right to vote would ridicule the
movement and that the convention should focus on civil rights. Frederick Douglass was an
eloquent supporter of the resolution. Douglass was a former slave and a leader of the
abolitionist movement. He spoke as the only African-American man present. At the time,
most African-Americans were enslaved in the South and most free black men did not have the
right to vote in the North.
Gender and race were intricately linked in the 19 th century and some reformers prioritized
one dimension over the other. One woman remains famous for a speech that linked the two.
Sojourner Truth was born a slave in the state of New York and after escaping to freedom she
became an abolitionist. In 1851, she gave a speech at the Ohio Women’s Rights Convention.
The rewritten transcription of this speech in which she argued for women’s rights and for
black rights remains famous. [Document #3]
At the Seneca Falls Convention, the resolution on woman’s vote was eventually adopted
and the convention marked the beginning of the women’s suffrage movement in the United
States.

10
Evans, 80–81.
11
Evans, 95.

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 Anaïs Le Fèvre-Berthelot American Women in the 20th century

Sources and references

Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women (1st : 1837 : New York). An Appeal to the
Women of the Nominally Free States, Issued by an Anti-Slavery Convention of
American Women. Held by Adjournments from the 9th to the 12th of May, 1837.
Boston, Isaac Knapp, 1838. http://archive.org/details/appealtowomenofn00anti.
Crenshaw, Kimberle. “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist
Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics.”
University of Chicago Legal Forum 1989 (1989): 139.
http://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/uchclf1989&id=143&div=&col
lection=.
DuBois, Ellen Carol, and Lynn Dumenil. Through Women’s Eyes: An American History with
Documents. 4th edition. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2015.
Evans, Sara. Born for Liberty. Reprint edition. Princeton, N.J.: Free Press, 1997.
“Gender, N.” OED Online. Oxford University Press, n.d. http://www.oed.com.distant.bu.univ-
rennes2.fr/view/Entry/77468.
“Letter from Abigail Adams to John Adams, 31 March - 5 April 1776.” Accessed December
1, 2017. https://www.masshist.org/digitaladams/archive/doc?id=L17760331aa.
“Letter from John Adams to Abigail Adams, 14 April 1776.” Accessed December 1, 2017.
https://www.masshist.org/digitaladams/archive/doc?
id=L17760414ja&rec=sheet&archive=&hi=&numRecs=&query=&queryid=&start=&
tag=&num=10&bc=.
Scott, Joan W. “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis.” The American Historical
Review 91, no. 5 (1986): 1053–75.