WHAT WOMEN WON IN WISCONSIN
Gale, Zona
What Women Won in Wisconsin Badger Commonwealth First to Enact an Equal Rights Law; Discriminations Are Now Removed by New Statute By ZONA GALE Text of Law An act to create new sections 6.615 of...
...Wisconsin thus occupies to equal rights the position which Montana occupies to equal suffrage...
...Formerly, if the father was living, his signature was required...
...Married women who live in another voting precinct from that of their husbands may now cast their votes where they live...
...The various courts, executive and administrative officers shall construe the statutes where the masculine gender is used to include the feminine gender unless such construction shall deny to females the special protection and privileges which they now enjoy for the general welfare...
...All discriminative laws against women are relics of the old English common law or remnants of chattel slavery days...
...It has been made possible for married women to enter into partnership with their husbands...
...The Equal Rights Jaw has also been objected to as blanket legislation which throws the interpretation of the law into the courts...
...And the answer is that there can be no democracy while there are discriminations against any citizens...
...is now able, in other words, tc contract in regard to her own person...
...And if these married women have that control, then the married women listed as "housewives" who chance to have separate property should have the same control...
...HOLDING AND CONVEYING PROPERTY...
...It was not until after our Wisconsin Equal Rights Law was brought forward that the university ruled that the wife lived where she lived...
...She could not leave her young children to go to the country to vote and had not voted since the passage of the national suffrage amendment...
...Such a bill was introduced in the 1921 legislature by the Wisconsin branch of the National Woman's party, and after a brilliant campaign it passed the legislature—making Wisconsin the first state in the union to place women on absolute equality with men...
...And since there are so few instances they say: "You see you never did need the law...
...More Legislation Needed AS cases arise in which the issues involved in this general legislation are not clear, specific legislation must follow...
...As to the effect of the law on justice to women six agreed that it has a greater degree of justice and three that they bad observed no effect...
...The new status of women under this law assumes that woman's best interests are not that she be protected like a child against the blandishments of her male relatives and her husband, but that she learn to care for her property as would any other human being...
...Among other specific charges brought against her and on which she was discharged, was the failure to report her name promptly, and the fact that after her marriage she had signed her maiden name to the school records...
...The most obvious of these discriminations was the custom which barred women from juries...
...No Suit Against Law IN a little pamphlet, "How The Women's Rights Law Works in Wisconsin," issued by the National Woman's party, Mr...
...In the time since its enactment, these are all the instances which show the application of the law...
...This is the principle laid down by those who have begun the long work to bring about civil and legal equality of women to match their political equality...
...The second instance was in regard to two new police-women...
...Witte, then secretary of the Wisconsin Industrial commission, says: "No suit has been filed to contest the validity of womens' welfare laws, in view of the passage of the so-called Womens' Rights Bill by the last legislature, nor has any employers' association ever suggested that the effect of the law is to repeal the womens' welfare laws...
...Women In Gainfal Work IN connection with the property rights of marrried women it may be noted that in Wisconsin the number of women in gainful occupations is 182.466—an increase of 20,000 in the last ten years...
...Nothing could have made more evident than did this experience the futility of attempting to remove legal discriminations against women statute by statute...
...There was a Richland Center woman who has been deprived of her vote because, although she and her husband live in town with their children, the husband keeps his voting residence in the country district where their farm lies...
...If there had been much litigation involved, the opponents of the law would say: "See the confusion and turmoil caused in the statutes by this troublesome law...
...And Chairman Wilcox of the Wisconsin Industrial Commission said in the same booklet that no employer or his attorney has ever urged that Chapter 529 has set aside the Wom-ans Hours of Labor or the Minimum Wage law...
...The courts, executive and administrative officers shall make all necessary rules and provisions to carry out the intent and purpose of this statute...
...Perhaps this law will operate to sweep away somewhat the old inferiority complex—not in the minds of women, who have been getting rid of it for some time, but in the opinion which legislators sometimes have held in regard to the rights of women...
...In Wisconsin they were not expressly denied the right but it was not clear that they had the right under the Nineteenth amendment...
...The court held that her dismissal violated the Equal Rights Law...
...JURY SERVICE...
...She mentions also the general praise expressed of women jurors that "They have served as quietly and competently as men...
...Also a married woman may now contract with a physician for services...
...Section II...
...Various women protested, and with the backing of Mayor Hoan and Assistant City Attorney Babcock, both oi whom said that this ruling was in direct violation of the Equal Rights Law, after several meetings and much argument gained their point...
...This provision clears up all doubts as to the rights of women to serve on juries...
...When their son was of college age, this woman returned to Wisconsin to live so that he could enter the state university...
...and the Assembly Judiciary Committee thereupon introduced a bill definitely denying women the right to jury service...
...CHOICE FOR RESIDENCE FOR VOTING PURPOSES...
...I have observed them pouring tea...
...Women bad worked hard for the establishment of these posts...
...And other minor equalities are established...
...The passage of the Nineteenth amendment made them citizens but it left them citizens against whom discriminations existed...
...The teacher who was dismissed, Mrs...
...The most important of these effects, briefly summarized, ere as follows: FREEDOM OP CONTRACT.—A married woman can now pledge her separate estate as a surety or guarantor of her husband or of any third person, regardless of whether such action is for the benefit of her separate estate...
...Married women are eligible to civil service positions and teaching and all other positions...
...eleven stated that they had no occasion to consider the law in respect to jury service alone and these eleven agreed that women make excellent jurors...
...Frank Putnam, chairman of the Wisconsin branch of the Woman's Party, who conducted the successful campaign for the law, says: "With regard to the rights and privileges granted women by the Wisconsin law nothing has come to public attention indicating that these new rights have made Wisconsin women any less regardful of their domestic ties...
...And all discriminations against all women must be removed...
...CARE AND CUSTODY OF CHILDREN...
...The teacher had been dismissed under a ruling made by the Milwaukee Board that a married woman cannot "be transferred, promoted, Or permanently appointed to regular teaching positions...
...VOTES for women does not mean equal rights for women...
...And in approaching the legislatures Wisconsin women will now have the moral backing of their bill of rights...
...The Milwaukee Circuit Court of Wisconsin rendered a decision on July 7, 1922, under our Wisconsin Equal Rights Law, ordering a Milwaukee teacher reinstated and awarding her back pay for the time she had been deprived of her position...
...Objections To Law THE law has been objected to on technicalities of statute drafting, because the law amends various sections of the statutes without indicating them by number...
...In the legislature of 1921 an optional jury service bill for women was introduced and defeated in the Assembly...
...Governor Blaine, Justice Crownhart, Judge E. Ray Stevens, Senator La Follette and Senator Lenroot have all expressly endorsed both the principle and the legislation, as have Congressmen Cooper, Voigt, John M. Nelson, Kleczka, Lampert, Beck, Browne, Classon and Frear...
...Of these, twelve stated that in no instances had the operation of the law come to their attention...
...The entrance of women into industry is one of the many changes in modern life which have made the old English common law ridiculous when applied to our complex living conditions...
...This fact," he adds, "we think is significant, especially in view of the fact that articles appearing in the east have claimed that the law has swept away all special legislation for the protection of women...
...Of this number, statistics of the proportion of married women are not at hand but it is manifestly absurd to give to unmarried women in gainful occupation the control of their property and to deny it to married women in gainful occupations...
...Two objected that the law should have supplementary legislation clarifying it and this is the hope of the sponsors of the bill...
...And section 2344, Statutes of 1921, expressly giving to a married woman the right to transact business in her own name only when she had been deserted or when her husband failed "to provide" for her, has been broadened to permit a married woman to transact business under her own name under all circumstances...
...Formerly this was not the case...
...This is the most serious objection to the law...
...They have done this by using their invariable measuring rod, namely, the question: "Is this legislation in the interests of democracy...
...Accomplishments Under Act MISS IRMA HOOHSTEIN cites the case of a Wisconsin woman who moved with her husband to Montana where he was engaged in mining business...
...Any woman drawn to serve as a upon her request to the presiding judge or magistrate, before the commencement of the trial on hearing, shall be excused from the panel or venire...
...There was, one winter in New York, an Englishman whom I heard say: "My word, these American women know how to preside at a tea table...
...The women again protested...
...Elsie Dickerhoff Thompson, 559 Muskogee Avenue, Milwaukee, was married March 5, 1921, to Peter Thompson, but continued to use her maiden name and did not inform the school board of her marriage until August 30, 1921...
...The husband remained with his business in Montana...
...Wisconsin passed an Equal Guardianship law three months before Chapter 529 went into effect...
...Imagine their dismay when it was announced in the newspapers that married women would be barred...
...The chief right conferred by this provision is that the wife may recover her individual earnings for her services, even if the contract for her services was made by her husband...
...Formerly if a husband and wife were living in different states, the wife lost her vote...
...And the bill of rights of women has in this state become Chapter 529, Wisconsin Laws of 1921...
...Husband and wife separated but not divorced thus had one vote between them, and this vote was his vote...
...The city officials replied that the newspapers had misstated the case, and that the Equal Rights Law would not permit them to discriminate against married women...
...But the record of these few instances is important as an answer to the fear sometimes expressed that the equal rights law would render invalid the present welfare and industrial laws protecting women, or at least would delay new legislation favoring women on biologic grounds...
...This is the celebrated "cajolery" clause which, in the Legislature of 1921, caused much debate as to whether the change would be in the best interest of women...
...IN ALL OTHER RESPECTS Under the equalities implied by this clause, married women may now sue and be sued as regards their separate estates under precisely the same conditions as men...
...The university ruled that since the husband's home was in Montana, the wife also lived in Montana, that the boy was therefore non-resident and must pay tuition...
...Mrs...
...But as these issues arise women are going to be vigilant to have them legally clarified...
...Section I. Women shall have the same rights and privileges before the law as men in the exercise of suffrage, freedom of contract, choice of residence for voting purposes, jury service, holding office, holding and conveying property, care and custody of children, and in all other respects...
...Max Rotter, treasurer of the Wisconsin branch of the Woman's party, furnishes two instances in which the Equal Rights Law has been of service to women: "The first instance was one in which the Civil Service Commission of Milwaukee ruled that married women were not eligible to take civil service examinations...
...They get it in the blooming cup every time...
...Twenty four replies have been received to a questionnaire on the operation of the law sent out by the Legislative Reference Library to Wisconsin county, circuit and municipal judges...
...On September 15, 1921, she was discharged by the school board under the ruling quoted above...
...The need was the need of the colonies—a general bill of rights, for a foundation...
...but when every law likely to require court interpretation is thrown out of the statute books, women may accept that as an insuperable objection to Chapter 529...
...Discriminations Are Now Removed by New Statute By ZONA GALE Text of Law An act to create new sections 6.615 of the statutes to remove discriminations against women and to give them equal rights before the taw...
...The removal of political disability did not imply the removal of civil and legal disabilities...
...Under the Equal Rights Law she can now vote in the town where she lives...
...But the Emancipation Proclamation was objected to on grounds of technicality and these did not prove insuperable...
...How Law Works INSTANCES of the actual working of the law in twelve months after its passage are as follows: Mrs...
...I do not know what was expected of them— by this praise of women I am always amused...
...E. E. Witte, chief of the Legislative Reference Library, has made an analysis of the new law, clause by clause, noting its effect on previously existing statutes...
...The only effect therefore which the equal Rights law has upon the custody of children is in respect to the apprenticeship law, the mothers' signature to an apprenticeship indenture now being valid regardless of whether the father is living or not...
...As in the struggle for political equality, so in this affirmation of legal and civil equality the progressives of Wisconsin sin have used their influence for women...
Vol. 14 • October 1922 • No. 10
