19407 - Women's Suffrage: A Continuing Journey
Course Overview
The year 2020 marked the 100th anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment which guarantees American women's constitutional right to vote. The American suffrage movement grew out of the Abolition Movement prior to the Civil War and built on the organized suffrage movement in England when in 1866 a number of prominent women's rights reformers gathered some 1,500 signatures on a petition to Parliament requesting the right to vote. To gain the right to vote, women in both countries were imprisoned, force fed, and blasted with fire hoses to try to force them back into their “natural” realm – the home. However, gaining the right to vote did not mean that they had equality with men. American women could not open bank accounts on their own in the United States until the 1960s and could not have a credit card in their own name until 1974. “‘In 2018, a woman working full time earned 81.6 cents for every dollar a man working full time earned on average.’ according to the most recent available data from the US Census Bureau.” In September 2020, “Four times as many women as men dropped out of the labor force . . . roughly 865,000 women compared with 216,000 men.” A Washington Post article—titled, “Coronavirus child-care crisis will set women back a generation”—pointed out that ‘[o]ne out of four women who reported becoming unemployed during the pandemic said it was because of a lack of childcare—twice the rate among men.”
Women’s journey for equality is still a struggle both in the United States and around the world. This class will examine that journey and introduce you to the some of the resilient women who have – and still are – moving women forward.
Additional Information
Proof of vaccination or a negative COVID-19 test is no longer required for entry. Masks are recommended.
A current OLLI Membership is required to register for this course, please click here to add to your cart. Please purchase one membership per account.
This class is eligible for UNM Tuition Remission under Personal Enrichment.