The Separate Sphere Ideology and the Feminists Who Supported It
While the feminist movement made many small steps in the right direction during the Victorian era, the fight for woman's suffrage at the time was being driven by the "wish to strengthen true womanliness in women, and ...to see the womanly and domestic side of things weigh more and count for more in all public concerns." This was said by one of the leading suffragists, Millicent Garrett Fawcett and directly supported the Separate Spheres ideology, which largely defined the beliefs of both men and women at the time. This ideology was the root of the hypocrisy surrounding the women's rights movement in the Victorian era. The idea that women such as Fawcett would advocate for women's rights while subscribing to this ideology is counterproductive. By subscribing to the separate sphere ideology, many suffragists like Fawcett were unconsciously working against the modern . |
While they were in many ways regressing, politically the women's rights movement was very successful in the Victorian era. In the 1860's, Fawcett and a large group of her contemporaries, such as Florence Nightingale and Emily Davies, began a struggle over four major issues. Through these struggles, they achieved a woman's right to property in 1882, her right to control over her wages in 1878 and they were successful at getting the Contagious Diseases Act abolished, this act had allowed police to inspect women thought to be prostitutes for venereal diseases. In addition, they were able to found several women's colleges. 1 |
| While these accomplishments were truly outstanding, they were hampered by the fact that they were achieved through the promotion of the separate sphere mentality. Although they gave married women, female students and prostitutes legal rights they in no way demanded the respect of the men in their society. While married women had the right to property and control over their wages, they were granted these rights because men felt confident that domesticity would rule and that women were inherently inferior to men. This continued mentality had obvious consequences, women were only being paid half of what their male counterparts were being paid and women were unable to hold the jobs that would earn them a significant amount of money. |
| Women furthered the social structure that would delay their social progress until the mid 20 th century by creating institutions such as the Society for the Promotion of the Employment of Women. This society trained women in bookkeeping and other such skills. 2 While this was a slight advancement from the positions that middle class women had previously held it did not go far enough and left women believing that these were greatest skills to which they could aspire. Although the intentions behind the establishment of such institutions were to benefit women, these institutions instead fortified the inferior role of women. |
By denying their own individuality and socioeconomic mobility while simultaneously supporting the church and community, women were working against the modern. Early suffragists were forced to rely on the age-old definition of femininity and domesticity, they were unable to promote social change and thus unable to promote modernity. The effects of this social regression and struggle against modernity caused by the skewed methods used by Victorian feminists to promote women's rights are clear when looking ahead to the twentieth and twenty- first centuries and the social struggles that women have been fighting for over a 100 years. |
1) Bonnie S. Anderson and Judithe P. Zinsser. A history of their own (Harper &Row Publishers, New York,:1988) pg. # 360-362 |