Women's Liberation Coming Out of the 19th Century Research Paper

Women's Liberation Coming Out of the 19th Century - Research Paper Example that ideology to help provide a socially acceptable avenue of refuge for other young women like her who felt trapped but did not wish to become ‘fallen women.’ Beecher struggled to find comfort in her religion after her fiance was lost at sea, but was unable to relinquish her sense of self and self-will (Sklar, 1973). She moved to Hartford, Connecticut and opened up new schools designed to benefit girls and providing women with additional acceptable life options outside of marriage. Her tracts, books and lectures were intended to make her less threatening to men and women who felt True Womanhood was the only natural and right social arrangement (Sklar, 1973). Her efforts provided women with a sense of self-respect and paved the road for future female activists such as Francis Willard. Francis Willard also worked from within the cult of True Womanhodd to help bring other women into a more public sphere by focusing attention on the expected responsibilities of women within their 'natural' role within the family. According to Amy Slagell (2002), â€Å"Willard knew that by recruiting, organizing and energizing interested women to being their work of transforming the world as she believed they were called to do, women would come to a new awareness of their power so that not only would the outer world be transformed, but the women themselves as well† (23). She introduced the Home Protection argument to the Women’s Christian Temperance Union â€Å"as a wedge argument, a way to break through the walls of prejudice an ‘average woman’ would likely bear toward suffrage and women’s political work† (Slagell, 2002: 10). According to Flexner, she took a â€Å"shrewd† approach; â€Å"a series of tangential moves, in the course of which women †¦ were gradually led to understand... The Women’s Liberation Movement as we know it today emanated from two different ideological sources and continues to promote two widely different points of view. Feminist issues are multifaceted, so it is unsurprising that the approaches to remedying these issues are often contentious and inadequate. Feminists don't always agree on the recommended solutions and not all of the needs of women have been met. Women and their ever changing lives cannot be placed in specified categories nor can the answers to their specific needs be found in theories. What all feminists should recognize is that the overall goal of leveling the playing field for everyone is a never-ending effort. There are very few absolutes in attempting to find the correct answers to the human rights debate as engaged by liberal and radical feminists. Both groups claim that the opposite view subverts their common goal of gender equality. At its core, the women’s movement that was touched off by feminist thou ght more than a century ago through the modern movement of the 1960s and continuing even today has successfully addressed equality and human rights issues for women.