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1765 William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England: The concept of "marital unity" reflected in Blackstone’s version of the common law was influential in the American states. However, there were significant regional differences in the extent to which married women (feme couverts) could own separate property; conduct their own businesses; and in dower and inheritance rights and the law of divorce. pre-1776 Free women and male and female slaves considered to be in private sphere of home and family; free men are considered to be in the public sphere where work and politics are located post-1776 Era of Republican Motherhood, creation of female culture through voluntary associations 1800 Divorce available in New England, but not generally in the Southern states; slave marriage not recognized by law at all 1807 New Jersey women of property lose their vote as universal white male suffrage spreads 1821 Free African-American men in New York lose their vote as universal white male suffrage spreads 1828 Andrew Jackson elected President, capping spread of democracy among white males 1820-45 Second Great Awakening & reform; Age of Association, dramatic rise in female spaces 1827-on Sex-neutral proposals for 10 hrs day 1829-31 Catherine Beecher organizes national women’s petition campaign against “Indian Removal” 1832 Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society organized by Maria Weston Chapman & sisters 1833 Lydia Maria Child publishes Appeal on Behalf of That Class of Americans Called Africans 1836 Angelina Grimké publishes An Appeal to the Christian Women of the South Catherine Beecher replies rejecting women’s role in the public arena 1836 Sarah Grimké publishes Epistle to the Clergy of the Southern States decrying their criticism of women’s public role in the abolitionist movement 1836 First Married Women's Property Act 1837 Sisters Angelina and Sarah Grimké become first female abolitionist traveling agents 1837 Sarah Grimké publishes her Letters on the Equality of the Sexes indicting the separate spheres doctrine, claiming the right for females to engage in abolitionist campaigns and producing the first text of American feminism

1 w<imeline+ rev 1838 Angelina Grimké addresses the Massachusetts legislature on slavery, the first appearance by any woman before a state legislative body 1838 Angelina Grimké marries fellow abolitionist Theodore Weld in a wedding ceremony with African-American guests that defied Pennsylvania marriage law that would otherwise have given Weld rights over the property of his wife 1838 Meeting hall at which Angelina Grimké & sister abolitionist Lucretia Mott were speaking burned down by a mob opposed to women speaking in public and black/white association 1839 Angelina and Sarah Grimké provide background for Theodore Weld’s American Slavery As It Is, an important publication that sold more copies than any other anti-slavery pamphlet ever written and that provided some of the basis for Harriet Beecher Stowe’s later Uncle Tom’s Cabin 1839 Mississippi Married Women’s Property Act (after Panic of 1837) 1839-50 Many states pass MWPAs 1840 Schism in the anti-slavery movement inter alia over decision to permit election of women officers; two competing organizations and newspapers emerge 1840 London anti-slavery conference where women barred from participating; Lucretia Mott & Elizabeth Cady Stanton meet and vow to organize woman’s rights convention 1842 Supreme Court rules in Prigg v. Pennsylvania that a Maryland slave taker could forcibly seize Margaret Moran, an alleged slave, and her children in Pennsylvania, regardless of that state’s law 1846-48 Mexican-American war unleashes territorial expansion and upsets congressional balance 1848 Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott organize first woman's rights conference in upstate New York’s “burned-over” district at Seneca Falls; Stanton’s Declaration of Sentiments based on Declaration of Independence adopted and goal of woman’s suffrage narrowly embraced 1840s Female textile workers in Massachusetts seek 10 hours day 1850 Fugitive Slave Act 1850-60 Annual national women's right conventions (exc. 1857) 1851 Sojourner Truth’s “Ain’t I A Woman” speech at Akron women’s rights convention 1853-54 Unsuccessful New York campaign for MWPA reforms; Elizabeth Cady Stanton addresses legislature 1857 Supreme Court rules in consolidated “freedom” cases of Harriet and Dred Scott (Dred Scott v. Sanford) that federal court has no jurisdiction because descendants of Africans can never be “citizens” of the United States, even if free. 1858 Supreme Court rules in Barber v. Barber that woman separated from her husband under New York law can have a separate “citizenship” for diversity jurisdiction purposes in federal court 1850-1870 Liberalized divorce laws generally prevail 1860 "Tender years" presumption of child custody of young children for mother codified in New Jersey

2 w<imeline+ rev 1860 Successful New York MWPA campaign; Elizabeth Cady Stanton again before legislature; most radical reform passed to date (includes married women's control of separate property earnings) 1862 Rollback of some of most thoroughgoing of NY reform 1863 Emancipation Proclamation frees slaves in areas still under rebellion; abolitionist women organize National Woman’s Loyal League which collects 400,000 signatures in favor of the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery 1865 Thirteenth Amendment—but southern states evade through Black Codes making a Fourteenth Amendment necessary 1865 Radical Republican (former abolitionist) Wendell Phillips tells woman’s rights activists “this hour belongs to the negro” 1866 Civil Rights Act of 1866 1866-68 Passage of the Fourteenth Amendment Split in woman's movement over supporting 14th Amendment with "male" language in it 1869 Split in American Equal Rights Association (abolitionist/feminist) over 14th and 15th Amendments leads to establishment of first independent woman’s rights organization in U.S. history by Susan B. Anthony & Elizabeth Cady Stanton-- National Women's Suffrage Association (NWSA). In response Lucy Stone and Henry Ward Beecher establish rival American Women's Suffrage Association (AWSA) 1873 Susan B. Anthony tried and convicted for voting in violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1870, a statute intended to prohibit multiple voting by white voters in order to dilute black votes 1872-3 Fourteenth Amendment “privileges and immunities” clause diluted to practically nothing in Slaughterhouse & Myra Bradwell v. Illinois cases 1875 Despite woman’s movement’s “new departure” campaign, Supreme Court rules that women cannot vote under privileges and immunities clause’s guarantee (Minor v. Happersett) 1875 Last Civil Rights Act of Reconstruction passed (public accommodations) but Supreme Court will soon strike it down on basis of “state action” doctrine 1875-76 End to Reconstruction; federal troops withdrawn from the South 1874-1898 pre-Lochner era in which only 65 Supreme Court cases held state laws invalid 1870-1900 “Gilded Age”—U.S. economic development takes off, age of monopoly and industrial and finance capitalism, increasing urbanization, and immigration 1880s Significant numbers of women moving into nonagricultural labor force for the first time in American history, including many immigrant women 1881 California first limits on type of work women can do 1882 Connecticut repealed permissive divorce statute due to successful campaign of the New England Divorce Reform League 1886 Growing concern about "race degeneracy" 1889 Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr establish Chicago’s Hull House, the first and most influential “settlement house” in the U.S. 1890-1920 “Progressive Era”; height of “maternal commonwealth” and “politics of

3 w<imeline+ rev domesticity” with women’s collective activity flourishing (starting with temperance) 1898 National Consumer League (NCL) organized using "white list" consumer boycotts to support better working conditions 1890 Restrictions on night work for women begin in Mass. 1890 4 million women worked for wages outside their home; about 1 of 7 women; mostly single; 1 million of them black women in southern agriculture, domestic labor and service industries (but generally not factory employment) in an age marked by industrialization, urbanization, and immigration. Women's work characterized in 1880s and 90s by low pay, lack of skills, and segregation in jobs by sex; even skilled women earned 1/2 pay of skilled men; black women 1/2 white women; and women concentrated in low-wage industries such as textiles, garment, tobacco, printing and food processing 1890 Rival woman’s suffrage organizations unite to form National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) 1890 Wyoming entered Union with female suffrage 1890s Alliance between women's reform groups and organized labor 1893 Florence Kelley and Hull House group secure passage women's and children's hours’ regulation in Illinois 1895 Women accounted for 5% of union membership; 1881 Knights of Labor opened to women; AFL interested in organizing women after 1888 but union dues too high for women's wages. 1895 Ritchie--Illinois state case, only one to invalidate women-only hours’ regulation (see above) 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson, approving separate but equal, gives vitality to Jim Crow laws throughout the South. 1897 Allegeyer-invalidating La. statute on insurance, initiates era of substantive review & “liberty of contract” doctrine 1898 By this time, some 13 states had limited female suffrage (schools or municipal) 1900 NCL and other social feminists support protective labor legislation for women workers 1900 Women entering work force in great numbers from 1890s, by now, 5 million women, 1 of 5 employed; 4x # in 1870; mostly young, 3 of 4 being under 25; largely white and urban based. Although in 1870 men almost all the clerks, by 1890 women 17% of clerical work force; 50% by WWI; typewriter came to be associated with women's work. 1903 National Women's Trade Union League (NWTUL) est. to support organization of women workers. 1903 NAWSA convention sought support from South, tacitly endorsing white supremacy 1904 General Federation of Women's Clubs (GFWC)--Sarah Platt Decker elected President; turns to protective labor legislation 1905 Lochner (New York’s 10 hour workday for bakers struck down) & the age of substantive due process review (between 1897-1937, Court invalidated state

4 w<imeline+ rev statutes in 197 cases, although also upheld many) 1908 Muller v. Oregon--Brandeis-Goldmark brief & NCL--"electrifies" protective legislation by creating exception for female workers 1908-09 NCL & NWTUL supporting min. wage legislation 1910-15 1/2 million non-English speaking females under age of 30 emigrated to US, largely from southern and eastern European, and flocked into the exploitable labor force. 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Fire exposed sweated labor conditions of women workers 1912 NWTUL switches priority from organizing women workers to protective legislation 1912 Campaign for minimum wage --Mass. law 1913 “New suffragists” such as Alice Paul who were influenced by British radical tactics break off from NAWSA 1916 Alice Paul’s suffrage group becomes “National Woman’s Party” or NWP 1916 NAWSA embraces it “winning plan” under leadership of Carrie Chapman Catt 1917 US Employment Service campaign to recruit women workers for war-industry jobs. By end of 1917 women's work seen as necessity. 1918 Despite resistance by female workers, women phased out of heavy industries at end of war. Female employment however remained high in female industries. 1920 Women's Bureau established in the Department of Labor, headed by Mary Anderson, labor organizer (she opposed Alice Paul’s ERA “blanket amendment”). 1920s Unions committed to labor legislation for women 1920 Nineteenth Amendment (Women's Suffrage) ratified (but hopes for women’s voting bloc largely unrealized) 1920 Post-suffrage, NAWSA becomes non-partisan League of Women Voters (LWV) post-1920 Erosion of women’s collective activity in face of urbanization and pursuit of autonomy, pleasure and consumption; breakdown of segregation of sexes 1922 Cable Act passed eliminating law that stripped American women of citizenship if married foreign men (unless married Asian men ineligible for citizenship) 1923 Campaign for the "Lucretia Mott" Equal Rights Amendment led by Alice Paul (who opposed social feminists over minimum wage law) 1923 Adkins v. Children's Hospital—Supreme Court invalidates female minimum wage law 1923-26 Positions harden over the "blanket amendment" (Equal Rights Amendment) 1929 Crash initiates Great Depression. 1930 22% of workforce is female 1930 Ten years after suffrage, only about one-half of states allow women to serve on juries 1933 Over 25% of American workers unemployed. 1933 Economy Act of 1933 barred 2 members of same family from employment by federal government. The League of Women Voters and the National Women’s Party protested to no avail. Of the workers who had to resign, 3/4s of them were female. State and local governments also refused to hire married women. But the numbers of employed married women went up in 1930s anyway. The Women's

5 w<imeline+ rev Bureau tried to protect women’s right to work and the League of Women Voters fought legislation barring married women from jobs and nepotism rules in the federal civil service. The Business and Professional Women’s Clubs argued that self-realization was as legitimate a reason for women to work economic necessity. Men displaced women from many hitherto female professions. 1933 National Industrial Recovery Act guaranteed labor the right to organize, and women’s numbers in organized labor reached an all-time high, even while still being highly underrepresented in the ranks of organized labor. 1934 Nebbia--beginning of the end of substantive due process (milk price board upheld) 1930s While a number of prominent “social feminists” become part of FDR’s New Deal, women not necessarily well treated by its policies 1935 Social Security Act passed inaugurating U.S. version of the social safety net and distinguishing between “earned” benefits (typically tied to male employment) and dependency programs like Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) (typically associated with women’s needs) 1936 FDR re-elected with a landslide, initiating second half of New Deal 1937 West Coast Hotel v. Parrish--overturned Adkins and permitted sex-specific minimum wage law 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) gender-neutral wages and hours law passed in but it omits many occupations dominated by women and/or by African-American women and men 1938 U.S. v. Carolene Products--footnote 4 suggests heightened scrutiny for fundamental rights; discrete & insular minorities 1941 Fair Labor Standards Act upheld in Darby v. U.S. clearly marking end to Lochner Due Process era; also overturning negative Commerce Clause doctrine 1948 Goesaert v. Cleary (upholds state law barring women from working in bars, unless they are daughters or wives of the owners) 1955 At urging of the first women judge in Texas, Sarah T. Hughes, and sponsored by Texas legislator Oscar Mauzy, Texas permits women to serve on juries 1961 JFK’s Commission on the Status of Women 1961 Hoyt v. Florida (Supreme Court upholds state exclusion of women from jury service) 1960s “Second Reconstruction” of the civil rights movement 1963 Report of Commission endorsed changes which led to the Equal Pay Act and prohibition of discrimination against women in federal civil service. 1963 Betty Friedan’s Feminine Mystique published 1964 Civil Rights Act passed, including Title VII, which bans discrimination in employment on grounds of race, national origin, religion and “sex” 1965 Griswold v. Connecticut recognizes a "zone of privacy" involving the marital relationship and procreation 1970s “Second wave” of the woman’s movement 1970 California begins the "divorce revolution" with enactment of first completely no- fault divorce law

6 w<imeline+ rev 1971 Reed v. Reed invalidates sex-based probate laws, initiating era of constitutional equal protection for women 1973 Roe v. Wade establishes a woman’s constitutional right to make the abortion decision (in the first two trimesters of pregnancy) 1974 CLUW (Coalition of Labor Union Women) launched to work within existing labor union structures. 1975 Taylor v. Louisiana—Supreme Court overrules Hoyt, declaring exclusion of women from jury service unconstitutional 1960-80 Female work force almost doubled, growing at a rate almost twice that of 1950s in the 1970s. By 1980 over 1/2 of all married women worked; 3/5 women with children had jobs. By 1985 3/5 plus women worked, although still at largely sex- segregated occupations such as clerical, sales and office jobs. In 1985 women workers were still earning 55-57 cents on the male worker dollar. Many historians and economists believe that the 1970s was a watershed for the employment of women. Black women were moving into new areas--by 1981 up to 46% of black women held white collar jobs compared to 24% in 1965. Black women abandoned domestic service. Many farm women who under economic pressure in 1970s and 1980s took side jobs. The numbers of women in graduate schools and the professions increased. 1981 Kirchberg v. Feenstra holds unconstitutional Louisiana statute giving the husband exclusive control of community property. 1998 41 million women in the waged labor force, or 3 of every 5 women of working age. Married women and women with children under 6 increase labor force participation. More dual-wage families, although women often in lower-paying service sector. 2000 U.S. v. Morrison, Supreme Court strikes down Violence Against Women Act of 1994. 2002 Although the gap in pay between women and men has narrowed, particularly among certain age groups, and in certain occupations, and at certain levels of education, significant gaps still remain: overall, for employed women, full-time wage and salary workers, over 16 years old, the ratio of women’s earnings to men’s earnings was 77.9%.Women’s employment is still highly occupationally sex-segregated. The poverty rate for working women is still higher, although the differential (not the absolute level) is highest for black women, smaller for white women, and not much difference for Hispanic. 2010

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