Women in the 19th Century

The prevalent view of many during the 19th century was that women should stay home to raise children and not work in the industrial plants of the time. While this was clearly the ideal of most in the 19th century, the view that marriage was the only honorable career for a 19th-century woman did not always apply to the lower classes where women often needed to work to bread on the table.

To middle-class women, however, marriage was the only option. Men earned money, and the women tended to the house. By the end of the century, there was a significant decline in the number of births in middle-class families. The movement for women's rights began in Europe during the French revolution and was based on the doctrine of universal human rights. By the 1830s, there were active movements for women to gain the right to own property separate from their husbands. In the 1840s, women in the United States and Great Britain began to press for political rights. In the 1860s, women gained the right to vote in the state of Wyoming in the United States. Women also pushed for the right to attend universities and pursue professions. In 1836 Oberlin College in Ohio admitted women for the first time. The medical profession became the first profession to admit women.