Ebook: The Rise of the New Woman: The Women's Movement in America, 1875-1930 (American Ways Series)

Matthews's book chronicles the changing fortunes and transformations of the organized suffrage movement, from its dismal period to its final victory that brought women the vote.

The twenty years on either side of the turn of the twentieth
century were a period of fundamental change and expansion in
the roles and opportunities open to American women. The period
culminated in the eventual success of a long drawn-out
agitation for the vote, which seemed to bestow both formal
recognition of equal citizenship and offer the opportunity for political
power. [n these forty years women had at least gained access
to, and sometimes achieved substantial participation in, all
levels of education, almost all the professions, a much wider
range of jobs, and thus opportunities for some financial independence
and a greater level of personal freedom. In the next
fifty years it would become apparent that many doors were still
effectively shut, and that much of the promise and appearance
of equality was illusory, but to most middle-class women this
earlier period offered a sense of progress and widening horizons.