Yiping(Alice) Dong
April 2018
Women and Children of Progressive Era
The progressive era was the time period of America developing. It was from 1890 to 1920.1
During this era, there were big amounts of reforms in all kind of aeras. American leave one period and
enter another at that time. Also there was big differences on children’s and women’s life. Women started 2
to fight for their right, people realize the problem of child labor, improving the school system to educate
children. People address the equality of women, and found out the bad condition of grow for children as a
child labor instead of going to school. So people started to try to solve these problems.
The biggest part of the change in women’s right was women suffrage. During that time, women
join national organizations, one of them was the National American Woman Suffrage Association which
is founded in 1869 by Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. The problem of women’s right was 3
advocated since immediately after civil war, however it was not passed for a long time, they have used
some radical method of suffrage movement. Some people got arrested, and use the way of hunger strike
and ended up forced feeding. These movement caught attentions and brought sympathy of people. When
Carrie Chapman Catt return to the president sit of NAWSA, the support got widespread. Until 1919, the
19th Amendment was finally passed. However, not only voting rights, women also work for the rights of
them on broad-base economic and political equality and social reforms. Family will take away a big part
of freedom of women, so many women don’t want to be limited in freedom chose not to marry or later the
time of them getting marry. Individual freedom was also a big issue. Jane Addams was the founder of 4
Hulls House in Chicago. She was the representative of the first group of women got college education.
Hulls House provide convenient for these women who were ambitious. The Hulls House offer classes and
operate different kind of business. Many women live and work there for long time until they leave to get
marry. They also give service to surrounding community. This formation got popular and started to
appear all over the country and mostly runned by women. The residents of these settlement houses
entered the political field. They supported legislation of child labor, improving the working condition etc.
Florence Kelly investigate sweatshop conditions and have securing passage of Illinois’ first factory safety
statute passed, which is the beginning of passing the law that limit the time of working of women. 5.4
millions of increase of amount of women employed in 30 years, women gained the right to control their
earnings, own property, and, in the case of divorce, take custody of their children in the area of politic.
There were more and more women organization formed, and these women’s club had influence on social
1 Allison Lange, Ph.D., “Female Reformers in the Progressive Era,” National Women’s Hist...
