Historical Progression of American Woman

Does this Historical Progression of American Woman assignment look familiar? Many professor's assign topics just like this and our writers custom write each one.

Below you will see a topic suggestion for a research paper that will show some of the social/cultural, economic, literary, political, and religious changes that have occurred in American History in the progression of women over time.

How to Write a Research Paper on the Historical Progression of American Women

Begin with establishing a clear thesis:

• Develop your thesis statement.
• The thesis statement will become the point or perspective you will argue or prove in the paper.

Writing an Annotated Bibliography - For Historical Progression

Annotated Bibliography: For this paper you need to do research in peer-reviewed journals or other journals that are considered to have reliable information (do not use sources from the secular press, i.e. Time, Newsweek, Parent's Today). In addition to the textbook, you need at least eight articles from professional scholarly journals and not popular Internet sites (if you do find something on the World Wide Web, it must be authored and be a reliable source). In these journals, the research and information is either reviewed by an editorial team (such as for the Harvard Business Review) or a group of peers (such as in many journals you find through the Ashford University online library).

The purpose of the Annotated Bibliography is to assist you in developing research analysis skills including: critical thinking, writing, and literature research skills.

Dubois and The American Women

In her book, Women's Suffrage and Women's Rights, Dubois examines the progression of the women's suffrage movement and how it affects the larger issue of women's rights. In this book, there are fourteen different essays that examine the issues of gender, class, and race. Each of these subjects interweave in the feminist struggle in particularly with the suffrage movement. The suffrage movement was the first instance where women went into the political sphere that before was exclusively male. They took their movement out of the private and into the public for the first time. In these series of essays, Dubois explores how the suffrage movement shaped the history of the women's movement and how it relates to what issues are still affecting women.

Dubois began the book by explaining her reasons for writing this book. In "The Last Suffragist: An Intellectual and Political Autobiography," Dubois gives her own historical background and how it has influenced her writing. She first became interested in the feminism movement in graduate school in the late 60s to the mid 70s where there was a political shift from focusing on the prominent leaders to the ideas that change came from the common people. She explains her own historical background on what drove her in her writings and how they have changed over the years because of influence of these changes.

In the essay, "The Radicalism of the Woman Suffrage Movement: Notes Towards the Reconstruction of Nineteenth Century Feminism," the ideas behind the beginning of the women's suffrage movement is explored. In the beginning of the movement which happened right before the Civil War in the 1800s, women began to change their traditional roles in society. Women always had power in the private sector as members of a family. These early changes in which women were seen as individuals outside of the family were very radical ideas for the time.
"By demanding a permanent, public role for all women, suffragists began to demolish the absolute, sexually different barrier marking the public world of men off from the private word of women." In the beginning, women were more focused not necessarily in public equality but on recognization in the male dominated public sphere.

In "Politics and Culture in Women's History," Dubois explores the similarities between the races and the gender movement in the pre-Civil War era. It was during this time that many of same issues were being explored in both the women's and slaves' spheres.These issues of dominance by males mirrored the issues of dominance of the black slaves by their white masters.

The response to both of these issues was that the groups, both the slaves and the women started to form subcultures within the society. Within these subcultures, the people had power. For example, in the woman's culture, the way the women used to control their husbands were subtle in the domestic sphere.

Women had developed many ideas and practices that men had no understanding of. The same happened within the slave population. The difference between the slave movement and the women's movement is that women took their ideas out of the social sphere and politicized them. In "Women's Rights and Abolition: The Nature of the Connection," Dubois delves deeper into the beginning of the movement which dates back to the 1820s. She explains that the women's movement was not connected with the abolitionist movement of slavery as many historians believe but that it started long before. In these first three essays, Dubois makes it clear that many of the abolitionists who supported the women's suffrage movement were males.

These males helped the women by opening the door to the male dominated world. This lead to the ideas of equal taxation and treatment under the law because they should be considered humans and the laws should not be based on gender. Not only was the movement against the political issues at the time but was also focused at undermining the separation of the roles in the society with regards to gender.

In "The Nineteenth Century Woman Suffrage Movement and the Analysis of Women's Oppression," Dubois begins to look at the class that was source of the major suffrage struggle, the working class. It focuses on the decades directly after the Civil War and how there were radical changes in both capitalism and the males dominance which made much possible for women. The idea was that women could not change their status unless the laws of the state were changed therefore, it was only logical that the feminist movement focus on the suffrage debate and the right to vote.