Introduction to Essay Series 6

Western societies have a long history of believing that women are inferior to men and are only suited for motherhood and domestic labor. These beliefs are among the reasons why women have had few human rights and little legal recognition. Even during the American and French revolutions, women gained no additional rights, although they played significant roles in both.

In contrast, women had power in many of the peoples indigenous to North America. Women could choose whom to marry and divorce, control their own bodies, and had decision-making and leadership roles within many tribes. These rights eventually disappeared as the colonizers took over North America and remade it in their European image.

About 200 years ago in the United States, women started gaining some rights through their own efforts and those of the men who were their allies. By the mid-1970s, many crucial protections were in place, and women had some economic independence and reproductive freedoms.

Current societal attacks on women are part of a backlash against the progress toward equal human rights that women and girls have achieved over the past 50 years in the United States. I benefited from this expansion of women’s rights. However, girls and women risk losing even more of the rights and protections that they have had for decades.

Essay Series 6 discusses changes in women’s rights and independence over time and place, including the periodic backlashes that women have experienced. Learning this history made me realize how fragile girls’ and women’s human rights are now.