Western New England Law Review Volume 42 42 Issue 3 Article 6 2020 FROM SUFFRAGE TO SUBSTANTIVE HUMAN RIGHTS: THE CONTINUING JOURNEY FOR RACIALLY MARGINALIZED WOMEN Bandana Purkayastha
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.law.wne.edu/lawreview Recommended Citation Bandana Purkayastha, FROM SUFFRAGE TO SUBSTANTIVE HUMAN RIGHTS: THE CONTINUING JOURNEY FOR RACIALLY MARGINALIZED WOMEN, 42 W. New Eng. L. Rev. 419 (2020), https://digitalcommons.law.wne.edu/lawreview/vol42/iss3/6 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Law Review & Student Publications at Digital Commons @ Western New England University School of Law. It has been accepted for inclusion in Western New England Law Review by an authorized editor of Digital Commons @ Western New England University School of Law. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. WESTERN NEW ENGLAND LAW REVIEW Volume 42 2020 Issue 3 FROM SUFFRAGE TO SUBSTANTIVE HUMAN RIGHTS: THE CONTINUING JOURNEY FOR RACIALLY MARGINALIZED WOMEN BANDANA PURKAYASTHA* This Article highlights racially marginalized women’s struggles to substantively access rights. Suffrage was meant to acquire political rights for women, and through that mechanism, move towards greater equality between women and men in the public and private spheres. Yet, racial minority women, working class and immigrant women, among others, continued to encounter a series of political, civil, economic, cultural, and social boundaries that deprived them of access to rights. From the struggles of working-class immigrant women for economic rights, to equal pay, and better work conditions, to the struggles of Japanese American women who were interned because they were assumed to be “the enemy” of the state, the history of the twentieth century is replete with contradictions of what was achieved in the quest for rights and what was suppressed.