Womens Rights

The Legal Status of Women

The myth of the natural inferiority of women greatly influenced the status of women in legality. Under the common law of England, an unmarried wo man could own berth, make a contract, or march and be sued. But a married woman, defined as being one with her husband, gave up her name, and virtually all her station came under her husbands control.

During the early history of the United States, a man virtually owned his wife and children as he did his hooey possessions. If a poor man chose to send his children to the poorhouse, the mother was lawfully defenseless to object. Some communities, however, modified the common law to brook women to act as lawyers in the courts, to sue for topographic point, and to own property in their own names if their husbands agreed.

Equity law, which developed in England, emphasized the principle of equal rights rather than tradition. Equity law had a liberalizing effect upon the legal rights of women in the United States. For instance, a woman could sue her husband. Mississippi in 1839, followed by new York in 1848 and Massachusetts in 1854, passed laws allowing married women to own property separate from their husbands. In divorce law, however, generally the divorced husband kept legal control of both children and property.





In the nineteenth century, women began workings outside their homes in large numbers, notably in textile mills and garment shops. In poorly ventilated, move rooms women (and children) worked for as long as 12 hours a day. Great Britain passed a ten-hour-day law for women and children in 1847, but in the United States it was not until the 1910s that the states began to pass legislation limiting working hours and improving working conditions of women and children.

Eventually, however, some of these labor laws were seen as circumscribe the rights of working women. For instance, laws prohibiting women from working more than an eight-hour day or from working at night effectively prevented women...If you want to get a full essay, order it on our website: Orderessay



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