NCJ Number
180700
Date Published
1999
Length
16 pages
Annotation
This essay describes what has occurred in the United States regarding women's gains and losses in striving for equality.
Abstract
Historically, women were not considered citizens, let alone recognized as individuals with the same rights and privileges as men. The women's movement started when Abigail Adams told her husband, John, to "remember the ladies," in writing the Constitution of the United States. The Seneca Falls convention of 1848 was viewed as the first organized movement of women. In 1963 women won a major battle with the passage of the Equal Pay Act; workers who perform the same job must now be paid the same wages. As laws continued to be developed, it was done with the idea of protecting women for their own good. From the subject of women victimized by the laws passed to protect them, the article turns to the study of women who are victims of physical violence, including domestic violence and rape. The article concludes that, though American law has been reformed, the American justice system is still influenced "by attitudes that view women as sexual property, reproductive instruments of the state and unworthy of belief. Such attitudes [continue to] shape police practices, prosecutorial discretion, judicial rulings and jury verdicts." References, cases