Womens Rights :: essays research papers fc

     When one reads Ibsens A Dolls House Today, he may find it very difficult to cipher how daring it might have calculateed at the time it was written. Noras actions were just about unheard of at the time the play was written, and were thus rather controversial.      For Millennia, women were mainly child-bearers and homemakers, their domestic responsibilities gener on the wholey prevented them from participating in hunts and waging war. Consequently, they were not allowed to share the rights and responsibilities presumption to hunters and warriors.      Throughout history religion and mythology have regarded women as naturally weaker and wherefore inferior to men (209). The ancient Greeks believed that Pandoras curiosity was the root of all the evils in the world. The Bible tells how Eve led Adam into sin, and was placed at a lower place Adams authority by God. It was a typical intuitive feeling that women should be controlled, not only for their own protection, but for that of everyone else.      In more or less traditional societies, women were put at a distinct disadvantage to men. In ancient Rome, women had no rights whatsoever, they were the property of their father until they were married and then they became their preserves possession. They had no rights to money, land, or even over their own children. Women were educate only in domestic skills, making it impossible for them to gain power, and approximately a necessity to marry. Without the knowledge of how to live women had to rely on their husbands conquest or make a living through less chastely acceptable means.      The rights of women went largely unaltered until 1792 when a woman named Mary Wollstonecraft wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Woman the first major modern feminist work. Sadly, however, her demands for equivalence and her revolutionary tone, made her work unacceptable at the time. "Men, in general, seem to employ their reason to justify prejudices. (Wollstonecraft) A more noticeable wage increase in the equality of womens rights was the industrial revolution. Lower classed women became wage earners in factories. Although their jobs were lower paying than their male counterparts, and controlled by men, financial independence was a major first step towards equal rights.     In 1848 the first womens rights convention was held. In 1919 Congress approved the 19th amendment, which, as quoted in Funk and Wagnalls New Encyclopedia, provided that The right to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United resigns or by any State on account of sex.