What is the name of the person who gave women rights?

Answer 1

In the modern world no one "gave" women rights. They had to fight for them against a male dominated world that blocked them every inch of the way. The primary reason for denying women rights was the fear they would leave the family if they had any legal rights, especially the right to own property, and escape from their husband's control.

US and UK:

When we speak of the modern concept of women's rights we are referring to socioeconomic, political, and legal rights for women equal to those of men. We are referring to equal privileges and opportunities. We are referring to the absence of gender discrimination from laws, institutions and behavioral patterns.

The most important rights a person can possess are the right to vote, the right to own property and the right to an equal legal status. Governments bestow and enforce legal rights so the right to elect representatives and have a voice in the government is extremely important. Women were disenfranchised until the twentieth century when they received the right to vote.

In countries that follow English Common Law, and some others, traditionally, women lost all rights to own property after marriage. Before marriage, such rights usually belonged not to the woman, but to her father, brother or some other male relative. Until relatively recent history the over-riding principal was, "no land comes to a woman".

Generally, prior to the nineteenth century, ownership of a married woman's property passed directly to her husband. If she inherited property, it became her husband's property. If she inherited money, it became her husband's money that he could squander, leaving her and her children destitute, or pass to his own heirs by his will. His creditors could seize the property for unpaid debts. Most of Colonial America followed the English Common Law principles and so denied married women any independent legal status and the right to own their own property.

At different periods in history women have had some male advocates who introduced legislation and rendered common law decisions intended to expand women's rights to own property and make wills. There were gradual changes in the laws but those changes were not followed with any consistency and particularly conservative regions, such as the Northern Colonies, ignored the gradual changes in the laws that benefitted women for a long, long time. To add to their difficulty, women had to act through a sympathetic male representative to press any legal suits. Not surprisingly, the main reason women's rights to own property became an issue at all was that wealthy fathers did not want their property, through their daughters' inheritances, to pass to their husbands.

In the United States, California was one of the earliest states to grant a married woman the right to control property she owned prior to her marriage, property that she inherited or property received as a gift after her marriage, a concept borrowed from Spanish Law. Other states followed with Married Women's Property Acts. New York passed its Married Women's Property Act in 1848 and it was used as a model by other states.

The Federal Homestead Act of 1862 inadvertently gave women a right to own a homestead by not making a person's gender a requirement for homestead ownership. Several states went on to adopt the Act.

It took England a little longer. William Gladstone became Prime minister in 1880 of a government that promised to reduce the legal inequities between men and women. A Married Women's Property Act was passed in England in 1882 followed by another in 1893.

The official women's rights movement began in the nineteenth century with the demand by some women reformers for the right to vote and for the same legal rights as men. Though the vote was secured for women by the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1920, most of the gains women have made in achieving legal equality and ending gender discrimination did not come until the 1960s.

Answer 2

The women's suffrage movement had two big eras in America. One being in the early 1900's and the other being in the 60's.

In 1920 women were given the right to vote under the 19th Amendment.

And in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (under lyndon B Johnson) were given equal rights as we know it today.

Fun fact women used to burn their Bras and panties as a sign of non-willingness to conform the the contraints men had bestowed upon them.