Iron Jawed Angeles - Natalie

 The film Iron Jawed Angeles highlights some important moments of the women's suffrage movement of the early 1900s. The film sets clear divisions within the category of being a woman but brushes on these in some subtle ways. One of the first scenes we see looks at the division between college-educated women and women working in the factories. At first, the factory women see Alice as a snooty college grad spreading big ideas that could never apply to them. An immigrant woman shuts her down initially and then hears her point that a vote means a fire escape for their building and for better working conditions. This also demonstrated some differences in class, but they wanted the uneducated, lower-class white women to support their cause. However, the same is not as true for black women. They show a brief scene with Ida B. Wells arguing for her right to join their movement and walk with them at the front of the march, but Alice Paul shuts her down saying she needs to wait her turn. Alice knew that including black women in the movement would set them back from winning the vote, so she told her to wait. As we have seen throughout history black women have gotten the shortest end of the stick when it comes to progress. Parental status plays the biggest role in the film once they start protesting the wartime president. Alice makes it clear that no mothers can be on the front lines. This also gets to women's role in the household as the caregiver. A large argument against women’s right to vote is that they are too busy taking care of their children to care about politics. Alice even gets to the point that she would never want to have kids because it would hold her back and push her into the role of mother and caregiver. In this film time and time again women are told off for being crazy, and emotional which is a stereotype that has been maintained in today’s world. Women in politics especially have been way over ridiculed for simple things and been called crazy for their actions. Often people refer to PMS as the reason for women’s irrational behavior which is another stereotype that has been perpetuated. Today women have recently had their right to an abortion taken away at the federal level which was an extreme action. Just as back in the 1920s, taking away the right to an abortion is limiting women's rights and freedoms. It is setting us back to these oppressive motherhood gender roles. 

 

Comments

  1. David BernellFebruary 10, 2023 at 5:21 PM

    The role of motherhood here leads to some interesting observations, in that Alice Paul clearly understood the importance of this distinction in American politics, and how it would resonate in the movement to secure the right to vote. This in turn prompted her to limit participation to moms, in addition to Black women.

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  2. David BernellFebruary 10, 2023 at 5:23 PM

    Be sure to also submit a photo, graph, table, cartoon -- some visual representation of the topic and the points being addressed. That's part of the assignment too.

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