Women's Rights

The 1900s and 2000s have dramatically improved the rights and liberties of women. Through decades of reform, women have dramatically reduced the education and workforce gaps through a social structure that began to encourage these advances. Throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, women not only have gained more rights and representation, but they have also succeeded in coming close to achieving relative parity in some areas with their male counterparts.

 

The roots of the growth of women’s rights in the 20th and 21st centuries can be traced to two waves of feminism. The first wave of feminism, dating to the late 19th century and early 20th century, focused primarily on granting women the right to vote and coincided with the Industrial Revolution. According to Pacific University professor Martha Rampton in her article “Four Waves of Feminism,” the activists of this period “challenged the ‘cult of domesticity’ [the belief that women have lesser rights than men and should be relegated to the home]” and fought to improve their legal rights and grant them access to the political process (Rampton). However, the second wave of feminism was dramatically different from the first. Rather than focusing exclusively on rights related to gender, “feminists spoke of women as a social class and coined phrases such as "the personal is political" and "identity politics" in an effort to demonstrate that race, class, and gender oppression are all related” (Rampton). Occurring from the 1960s to the 1990s, the second wave of feminism was integral to breaking down barriers to education, employment, and dramatically changing the belief of what a woman should be and should be relegated to doing. The first and second waves of feminism helped spur into motion the trends that would inevitably improve the social status of women.

 

Arguably the largest gain women made in the 20th and 21st centuries was an increase in the number of women who attained an education. Historically, education for women tended to perpetuate the stereotyped view that women should only be allowed to work in specified fields or the home. According to research conducted by Jennifer Madigan in her journal article “The Education of Girls and Women in the United States,” some institutions, such as, “‘dame schools’ in the 1700s to seminaries for teacher training,” exclusively trained women to work in limited fields such as nursing or education (Madigan). This trend continued well into the early 1900s where males and females were given different courses of study, with women being educated to jobs seen as socially appropriate. However, the 1900s also saw a rise in coeducation institutions and a dramatic increase in the number of women attending school. A dramatic shift towards equality occurred in the 1970s with the passage of Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972, protecting students from gender-based discrimination in educational programs that receive federal financial assistance or funding (Madigan). Because of the long-standing trend of increasing feminist ideals to end the belief that women could only work in certain fields and with the support of Title IX to “level the playing field,” women quickly became integrated into higher education. According to a 2019 study conducted by Pew Research and reported by journalist Richard Fry, as a result of this quick progress, women have become the majority of college-educated adults. Women began “[receiving more than half of the bachelor's agrees [awarded starting]] in the 1981-1982 academic year; today they earn about 57% of bachelor’s degrees” (Fry). Considering that women now make up a majority of new college graduates, it stands to say that significant progress has been made in the field of education, especially considering that most women were barred from a college education approximately one-hundred years ago.

 

Women have also made enormous strides in achieving parity in the workplace. A major division between men and women is the gender pay gap, a statistical measure that calculates how much a woman earns comparatively to a man. According to a 2020 study by Pew Research and reported by Rakesh Kochhar, women’s average earnings rose at a greater rate from 1980 to 2018 comparative to men. On average, the “hourly wage at the workplace increased 24% from 1980 to 2018, from $19 to $24.17 Women’s earnings rose at a greater rate over the period, by 45%, from $15 in 1980 to $22 in 2018. In contrast, men’s wages increased by 14%, from $23 to $26” (Kochhar). Much of this growth is driven by the increased education of women, where more college-education women are now in the workforce comparative to the past. According to the same aforementioned Pew Research article, “In 1980, 16% of employed women ages 16 and older had completed four years of college education or more, compared with 20% of men. By 2018, 40% of women had completed at least a four-year college program, compared with 35% of men” (Kochhar). As a result of increased numbers of women being educated at the college level, they have been able to enter the workforce and perform highly-skilled jobs that used to only be accessible to men.

 

Despite the immense and rapid progress for women over the last century, there are still glaring issues that still need to be addressed. According to Richard Fry, “Though women are at parity with men in the overall college-educated labor force, they lag significantly behind in many specific occupations. For example, women account for only 25% of college-educated workers in computer occupations and 15% of college-educated workers in engineering occupations” (Fry). Discrepancies exist in various fields because a majority of people educated in those fields are male, resulting in a male-dominated occupation field. Also according to Richard Fry, “One important factor is that college-educated women are less likely than their male counterparts to be in the labor force. In 2018, 69.9% of college-educated women were in the labor force, compared with 78.1% of college-educated men” (Fry). Though there are several reasons (both quantifiable and non-quantifiable), including discrimination, networking, and the effect having a family can have with engagement in the workforce compared to men, there is no one clear answer as to why women don’t have an equal labor force participation as men. As a result, significant challenges are still present for women in the workplace and education.

 

In spite of clear progress, work remains to be done to ensure true equality between the genders. Despite dramatically closing the gender pay gap, the fact of the matter is that a pay gap still exists. The same is true for labor force participation and positions within certain fields. Despite the dream of equality not being fully realized yet, the US is now closer to achieving gender equality than ever before.

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Works Cited

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Fry, Richard. “U.S. Women Near Milestone in the College-Educated Labor Force.”

Pew Research Center, 20 June 2019, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/06/20/u-s-women-near-milestone-in-the-college-educated-labor-force/. Accessed 25 April 2020.

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Kochhar, Rakesh. “Women Make Gains in the Workplace Amid a Rising Demand

for Skilled Workers.” Pew Research Center, 30 January 2020. https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2020/01/30/womens-lead-in-skills-and-education-is-helping-narrow-the-gender-wage-gap/. Accessed 25 April 2020.

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Madigan, Jennifer. “The Education of Girls and Women in the United States: A

Historical Perspective.” Advances in Gender and Education, Volume 1, Issue 1, 2009, pp. 11-13.

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Rampton, Martha. “Four Waves of Feminism.” Pacific University Oregon, 2008,

https://www.pacificu.edu/magazine/four-waves-feminism. Accessed 25 April 2020.