Womanizing the West
Thesis
Much of women’s rights advancements from 1840-1914 were made possible because of the expanding opportunities and circumstances in the isolated, remote western frontier. The purpose of this paper is to provide a high-level overview of the multiple battlefronts and the methodologies employed in the development of women’s rights in the Old American West, as well as how these circumstances set the foundation for an egalitarian present.
For my exploration, I will define major terminology, explain my personal context and motivation in greater depth, describe the historical context of Old West America, and use historical documentation and sources to illustrate the unfolding of women’s advancements and their impact on the West today.
Definition of Terms
Feminist Theology: Glenn Asquith defines feminist theology as ‘theology that seeks to empower women to personal creativity and self-confidence by enabling them to remember that they too are created in the image of God” “It criticizes aspects of "patriarchal religion" such as the "maleness" of God in imagery, language, and function, the origin of sin, the history of human origins, hierarchical structures, and the dualities of good/evil, mind/body, cendent/immanent, inner/outer, heaven/earth, sacred/secular, and male/female.“
American West: Geographical, socio-political term predominantly covering the lands and histories west of the Mississippi River to the Pacific Coast, mostly focused on the settlement during 1840-1914. I will focus on the interior plains, from Texas to Montana and between Colorado and Missouri. In the past, the West was viewed as a "meeting point between civilization and savagery" in the words of historian Frederick Jackson Turner”. But now, historians “have begun writing about the West as a crossroads of cultures, where various groups struggled for property, profit, and cultural dominance.”
Manifest Destiny: The ideology of the white patriarchal elite and Christians sought to settle the West as their prophetic and ordained duty to settle North America. The ideology, perpetuated by President James K. Polk (1845-1849), led to tensions between federal and states and in socio-political affairs.
Homestead Act: On May 20, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Homestead Act on May 20, 1862. This act not only helped men buy property, but women, too: “enabled tens of thousands of women to realize the dream of land ownership that had been bound up with citizenship and status since the agrarian founders' day. This advance, verified by their signatures on government registers, set a powerful precedent for equalizing their legal status.”
Morrill Land Act of 1862: “The Morrill Act of 1862 set aside lands for each state or territory to establish a university to educate the agricultural and industrial populations.” This forced states to discuss women’s rights to education.
Comstock Act: On March 3, 1873, Congress passed the Comstock Act, which defined contraceptives as “obscene and illicit”, making it a felony to distribute across states. This act prohibited birth control from being imported, manufactured, and distributed. The law allowed for the “seizure and destruction of any materials related to birth control” and deemed such items “obscene”.
Birth Control: The pharmaceutical, medical, or procedural methods used to regulate fertility and childbearing.
Historical Context
Winifred Gallagher says, “between the 1840s and the early twentieth century, the women's rights movement and the colonization of the West were overlapping epochs, and three generations of women were critical to both. Just as during the Revolution and wars since, the vast region's settlement disrupted society's rules of the game enough to give determined women opportunities to become more equal by acting more as equals.”
Victorian-era America New England ushered in a new world of immigration, policies, and nation-building in which many of the laws regarding women were questioned and confronted. While the East saw early equal rights progress at Seneca Falls, the need for hard workers and community-building in the Wild West drove egalitarian philosophies and legal accomplishments that advanced the rights of American women.
Hellbent on fulfilling Manifest Destiny, the nation launched a series of legislation and propaganda to encourage East Coast Americans to ‘go West!’. The Comstock Act stalled birth control resources (possible intentional government birthing?), and mounting tensions grew between existing states and incoming states over the issue of slavery and federal oversight. Furthermore, the country was growing increasingly diverse in its immigration, and new legislation and federal funding forced the states to draft constitutions and build systems that had to consider the legal rights of all constituents.
Property & Marriage
The West was rough. No hospitals, no infrastructure. Everything was built by the hands of those who arrived. Hostile native and white relations led to fatalities and conflicts; fires, grizzlies, and blizzards killed men and cattle alike. Many women were brought to the West on the wild whim of their eager husbands, only to be widowed and alone thousands of miles away from family. Additionally, isolation and dark winters did nothing to help alcoholism and domestic aggression, prompting the need for divorce, and divorce with child custody. As Gallagher states, “American struggle for women’s rights did not originate with the determination to vote but to own and control property, sue for divorce, and have custody of their children.”
Women either needed to purchase property or inherit property in response to a man’s behavior or death. As Gallagher claims, “to eke out a living on the unforgiving prairie at first, most homesteaders, especially the independents, had to be wage earners as well as farmers and homemakers.” They needed money to live and subsist on. Others periodically took jobs in larger towns, then hurried home to maintain the residency requirements for their claims.
They owned businesses as well, and used properties for hotel lodging, offices, and storefronts: “As both employers and employees, these independents contributed to the economy and helped hard-pressed men to support their own farms and families”, notes Gallagher. This did not just benefit the women and their immediate network, but the local governments recognized the economic viability of enabling women to own property, pay property taxes, and not have to live off public funds.
Medical
The American Medical Association was established in 1847, and American healthcare standards were governed by the class of people legally allowed and socially encouraged to attend medical school: white men. Prior to the AMA’s standardization and protocols, women’s healthcare, particularly childbirth, was overseen and facilitated by women, namely their neighbors, mothers, sisters, and even daughters, as it had been for thousands of years. Men being involved in birth and women’s healthcare is relatively a new concept in terms of human history and is one that is highly controversial in today’s society.
The AMA, determined to have full authority and legislation over all things medical, launched a campaign against midwifery in the papers and in the courts, specifically on its sanitation (when has childbirth ever been sanitary?). Midwifery was a common practice in Europe and had been an institutionally accepted career since the 17th century, and was now rising in America via European settlers. Childbirth and birthing knowledge were handled and disseminated by midwives and other women. The pioneer women worked hard to ensure women’s healthcare remained in the power of women in the face of the all-male American Medical Association. To this day, the West, specifically the interior West, tends to lend libertarian on women’s health issues.
Comparison to the South
Down in the warm, fertile, highly-populated South, white male labor was replaceable by another white man, or by a slave, or by a low-earning person of color. White women were shielded from manual work and maintained the home and community relations. Through the busy-ness of the home and community, and the sentiment towards women as "not supposed to be in business", their status and respect were not given the opportunity to flourish in the southern professional world.
By casting women as different from men, the dubious thesis of women’s ‘higher morality’ / ladylike-ness undermined their equality, reinforced their identification with the home as housekeepers of the nation, and subtly supported patriarchy.
Whereas in the North/West, the population scarcity and communal needs necessitated women to step up and step into leadership and political roles with legal rights. Winifred Gallagher argues that despite a “chronic lack of funds and a shortage of experienced leadership among other challenges”, western women reformers kept up the fight — “lobbying legislators to sponsor bills for suffrage and more basic goals, especially full property rights”.
The government was forced to discuss women’s property, healthcare, marital, education, and labor rights, largely because much of the West was settled by the hands of tough women survivors. The population scarcity bred need, and the lack of regulation bred opportunity.
When we uplift women, we uplift entire communities. When we restrict women, when we oppress them and assume what is ‘womanly’ and what is not, we remove the autonomy and dignity of a human being.
Equality does not strictly benefit women, as men see many benefits from female professional colleagues. Men are freed up from the constant testosterone competition of all-male workspaces that spurs loneliness, anxiety, and stress; they can develop strong male friendships; and ultimately promote a safer and more loving community. The blend of women and men in these spaces also allows for greater trust, creative decision-making, and larger benefits.
In Conclusion
The Modern American Woman™ was made possible by the women of the West. Many of these women left their Victorian societies and close-knit, resource-rich communities to follow their husbands’ frontier dreams, but when those men died in the Wild West or betrayed the safety of the women, the women needed legal equality to survive, and ultimately, give birth to the West.
Women needed to own land, they needed jobs to help support their work on the land, and they needed education for those jobs. Women also ran the churches and schools, and served as nurses and midwives. Women were everywhere in the community, but without the right to vote or hold property, the community's knowledge or needs could not be voiced. Every bit of a woman’s life is inherently communal and political, and the scarce population and lack of regulation in the American West was the perfect battleground for moving the early women’s rights efforts from the American East.
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