American women's history - Essay Example

Moral control, high wages and more interesting lifestyle than that of the farms attracted them. However, the factory environment had harsh working conditions, which put their lives at great risk. They also worked for long hours. Later, the great depression that took place between 1929 and 1939 led to the lowering of the women’s wages, which made them to boycott the factories. They eventually managed to obtain reasonable wages thus maintaining their jobs. However, the poor working conditions persisted and they felt insecure because there were other women who strived for the same job and were even willing to receive lower wages.

Among these women, there were two types of feminism. First type of feminism consisted of women who greatly cared about the handicaps and wrongs under which women suffered and who admitted the equal significance of other social injustices. They recognized the interrelationship between women question with other great questions. Anderson says that this was a perfectly good kind of feminism. The second type of feminism put the woman question first and above all other issues. To them, what was done with womens problems solely determined the solution of all others.

This group insisted upon the rights of a woman no matter what happened to other rights. The groups were similar in that they felt societys discrimination upon women both in the past and presently. However, they differed in their attitude toward the society that is, in their sense of proportion. There was also the more practical woman who was more moderate, saw and worked with facts. Lastly, there were the theorists who had a single abstract principle in mind, ignored facts persistently, and clung to abstractions devotedly.

Feminists objected the labor laws as in as far as jobs were concerned; they put women on a different legal basis from men. They therefore fought for industrial equality. Labor laws limited