week 11

There are many reasons why the women's rights movement was slow in getting started. One of the major reasons was that the women, especially in the U.S, were spread out. This was because the U.S. was primarily agricultural. One should note that it was not until the first industrial revolution in america that any large organizations started to have an effect on policy, simply because they did not have enough people to organize effectively before. Organizations also formed due to the expansion of the vote, more voters meant more people who cared about issues, and more people that would try to adress them. However the majority of groups excluded women, because they felt that the women's place was at home raising children, and because women were not enfranchised, and thus should not be involved in politics outside of the home. So initially women could not organize because there were not enough of them in a given area to have a serious effect, and then they were excluded from political organizations, denyng them another chance to organize. However population density, especially in the north was increasing, as were economic oppurtunities for women, as well as oppurtunities to join societies such as benevolent societies which allowed women to meet together and work for the benifit of others. Most societies were formwed in the north, because the south remained very agricultural based, and the women were spread out that meetings were, for the most part impractical. Women's societies in the north, however, expanded increasing in size and purpose. Some women began temperance societeies, to prevent alcohol comsuption, others joined abolitionists. By joining these societies women gained expierience in organizing to accomplish a goal. Despite this the prevailing attitudes of the day were that women should remain at home, raising children to be good citizens, not campaigning for abolition, or temperance, and certainly not for their own rights. But many women had realized that they were in a state similar to that of the slaves, and began to campaign for their own rights. But this was not enough, in the U.S. the prevalent attitude was that women did not need the vote, because their husbands would vote as they would. The early societies for women's rights also lacked support because many of their members were considered abnormal, and eccentric, and because of this label other women were reluctant to join with them. I believe another reason that women were slow to organize for their own rights is that they were busy "campaigning" for other things, such as abolition, temperance, etc. While this would prove valuable later as women began to organize even more, I imagine that it was incredibly time consuming, and while women may have wished for their rights, I think they saw that it would be easier to win at abolition, and chose to devote their resources there, to help further a cause they knew was good, and which did not carry the stigmas of the women's rights movement. Of course another major obstacle to women's rights was that the majority of women were, in fact, raising children, as society believed they should be. This is undoubtedly an immense task, and very time consuming. Families were generally large, and women would therefore have many children to look after, and would be thus occupied for many years. It is likely that some women who occupied themselves raising children were hostile to those in the women's right movement, because they believed that they had not fulfilled their duties of raising and caring for their children. Hostility from other women no doubt slowed the growth of the women's rights movement. It is safe to say that in general women were slow to organize into women's rights groups because of societal ideas about the role of women. However, earlier on the concerns were more logistical, it was simply to hard to get enough like-minded women together. On a completely unrelated note, I was just walking outside the moon had a nice bright wide halo, but noone else looked up, so no one else saw it. I thought, wow what a waste, what's the point of the moon having a halo if noone looks up to see it, then I thought about how nobody reads this blog, so why do I bother writing it? please post any answers as comments, oh and if you bothered to read this, then please "bother" to look up when you go outside, the sky is much cooler than this boring old blog. (note: this was added hours after I posted this for the first time)