A Battle for Equal Rights Among Sexes.
Over an extended period of time, women have struggled constantly for equal rights. In history women have fought for appanages such as the right to an education, the right to vote, and the right to take on a career without sexual discrimination. Struggling for a social, educational, legal, and moral status became the focus of the women's movement. Around the mid 1830's more women began to take a stand against the inequalities between themselves and men. This movement produced some of the first female reform organizations including the American Female Reform Society, created in 1939. This society played an important role in sparking the interest of hundreds of women to make changes in the social standards of America. .
To understand the importance of the founding of this society, one must be able to understand the social background of women. Leading up to this movement, women were best kept "in the home"". Jobs and voting privileges were not available to women. Women were even denied the right to property and control of wage status after she was bound in marriage. Women were also denied the right to further their education and were not allowed to engage themselves in certain occupations. .
In colonial America, women who earned their own living usually became seamstresses or kept boardinghouses. But some women worked in professions and jobs available mostly to men. There were women doctors, lawyers, preachers, teachers, writers, and singers. By the early 19th century, however, acceptable occupations for working women were limited to factory labor or domestic work. Women were excluded from the professions, except for writing and teaching.
In this time period, one also notices the relation of the women's movement to the current fashion. Corsets were very popular among women and the public encouraged all ages of women to invest in them. The idea behind the corset was to slim the waist and make the woman look more appealing, mainly to men.