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Chronology of Gender (1848 - 1945)
by Keith Carson
© 2000, Keith Carson
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1848
 | first women’s rights conference in Seneca Falls, NY drafts
Declaration
of Statements and Principles |
| Vilfredo Pareto born; Italian social economist who hoped to construct a
science of sociology modeled on the physical sciences; concluded that social
behavior is not basically rooted in reason, but is based instead on nonrational
instincts and emotions; viewed society as comprised of elites and masses; human
beings are inherently unequal |
| Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels issue The Communist Manifesto |
| Revolutions of 1848: Austria, France, Germany, and Italy; Louis Napoleon is
elected president of the Second Republic of France; nationalist uprisings by
Czechs and Hungarians |
1850
| first national women’s rights convention in Worcester, MA |
| Quaker physicians establish the Female Medical College of Pennsylvania in
Philadelphia, PA |
| Honore de Balzac dies; used novel as means of showing how economic and
social conditions affect people’s lives |
1850-1900
| process of categorizing, criminalizing, and medicalizing sex |
1851
| Katherine O’Flaherty (Kate Chopin) born |
| Sojourner Truth delivers her Ain’t I A Woman? speech at women’s
rights convention in Akron, OH |
| Myrtilla Minder establishes first school to train black women as teachers
in Washington, D.C. |
1853
| Antoinette Brown (Blackwell) is first American woman to be ordained as
Protestant Clergy serving a First Congregational Church in NY |
| France criminalizes cross-dressing |
| Charles Dickens publishes Bleak House |
1854
| Charles Dickens publishes Hard Times |
1855
| Walt Whitman privately publishes Leaves of Grass |
| Lucy Stone becomes first known woman documented to keep her own name after
marriage [Lucy Stoners] |
| University of Iowa becomes first state school to admit women |
| Missouri v. Celia declares black woman property without right to defend
herself against master’s act of rape |
| Elizabeth Gaskill, an English author, publishes North and South |
1856
| Sigmund Freud born;Viennese Jewish psychiatrist who asserted that beneath the
plane of reason---conscious level of the human psyche---lies a subconscious
world of psychical forces and instincts; universal conflict between instinctual
nature and demands of society; humans are not essentially rational |
| Gustav Flaubert publishes Madame Bovary |
1857
| Obscene Publications Act enacted by British Parliament |
| Dred Scott decision |
| French physician, B.A. Morel, coins terms “hereditary” (physical) and “progressive”
(mental) “degeneration” to describe and supposedly explain sexual
misbehavior among other phenomena |
| Ambrose Tardieu publishes Etude medical-legal sur les attentats aux moeurs
(Medico-legal studies on offenses against public decency) in France
describing the diagnosis and symptoms of pederasty (male-male sex) |
| William Acton publishes Functions and Disorders of the Reproductive System
in Britain warning against the dangers of sexual excess; claims medical
intervention can cure some disorders resulting from sexual impropriety |
1858
| Emile Durkheim born; French Jewish scholar considered founder of modern
sociology; contended that the three pervasive attributes of
modernism---individualism, rationalism, and secularism---threatened to destroy
western civilization; described the “crisis of modern society” as the
erosion of traditional values and relationships that connect the individual to
society; “anomie” is the collapse of values; modern society was pathological
and morally bankrupt |
1859
| Charles Darwin publishes On The Origin of Species |
| American Medical Association announces its opposition to abortion |
| U.S. birthrate declines in part attributable to availability of reliable
condoms |
| Henri Bergson born; French Jew and philosopher who rejected positivist claims
that reason and science could rationally explain phenomena and solve all human
problems; Bergson was concerned with liberating the individual from the shackles
of positivism, mechanism, and materialism |
| John Stuart Mill publishes On Liberty |
1860
| Walt Whitman publishes 2nd edition of Leaves of Grass |
| Connecticut becomes first state to enact laws prohibiting all abortions |
| average married woman in U.S. bears 6-8 children |
| cult of domesticity---traditional female sphere---and the ideal of true
womanhood (ideal of female as safe harbor of morality, motherhood, and virtue)
begins long process of change resulting from cultural and socio-economic trends
as exhibited in the “New Woman” |
| value of offspring still calculated in terms of labor output in largely
agrarian U.S. economy |
1860-1886
| Impressionism in Western Art |
1861
| sodomy removed from list of British capital offenses |
| formation of the Kingdom of Italy |
1861-1865
| U.S. Civil War |
1862
| Edith Jones (Wharton) born |
| Mary Jane Patterson becomes first African American woman to receive a full
baccalaureate degree from Oberlin College |
| Homestead Act grants 160 acres of free land in American west to anyone who
lives on the property for at least five years including women (“prove up
claims”) |
| Morrill Act establishes land grant colleges in rural areas; over the years
millions of women earn low cost degrees |
1863
| Abraham Lincoln issues The Emancipation Proclamation freeing the
slaves in the states in rebellion |
1864
| Fyodor Dostoevski publishes Notes From Underground portraying a rebel
against rationalism, humanism, positivism, liberalism and socialism---in short,
against the Enlightenment tradition of science and reason---who argues for
abandoning attempts at defining human nature according to universal principles
and for surrender to human subjectivity; underground man realizes that there are
no universal truths in this world, but only raw wills competing for control and
power; Dostoevskian view of human nature sees human beings as inherently
depraved, irrational, and rebellious |
| Max Weber born; German sociologist who talked about the “disenchantment of
the world” resulting from unique combination of science, capitalism, and the
modern nation-state in western history; process of rationalization; paradox of
reason; protestant-capitalist thesis; Weber was committed to Enlightenment
values of reason and science which he believed were threatened by bureaucratic
regimentation and irrationalism |
1865
| hundreds of white women go south to teach at Freedman Schools in the former
Confederate States |
| Gregor Mendel publishes Experiments in Plant Hybridization |
1866
| Katherine O’Flaherty marries Oscar Chopin in St. Louis, MO |
| 14th Amendment to U.S. Constitution passed by Congress (ratified by states in
1868) which for the first time in American constitutional history defines both
“citizens” and “voters” as “male” |
| American Equal Rights Association established to advocate for national women’s
suffrage |
| Austro-Prussian (Seven Weeks’) War |
1867
| cigar makers become first national union to accept blacks and women |
1868
| Working Women’s Protective Union established in New York to advocate for
women’s labor and legal issues |
| National Labor Union endorses concept of equal pay for equal work |
| Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony begin publication of The
Revolution, a women’s movement periodical |
1869
| Daughters of St. Crispin---female shoe stitchers union---becomes first
national women’s labor organization representing women in six states |
| Karl Westphal coins term “sexual inversion” |
| Karl Maria Kertbeny denounces Paragraph 143 (anti-sodomy law) of the Prussian
criminal code as violating “the rights of man” as articulated in the Declaration
of the Rights of Man and Citizen (French Revolution):first published use of
term “homosexuality”; devises elaborate system of classification for sexual
orientation |
| Harriet Mill publishes The Subjection of Women under her husband’s
name (John Stuart Mill) |
1870
| arrest and trial of Ernest Boulton and Frederick Park for conspiracy to
commit sodomite acts (England) |
| women serve on juries in Wyoming Territory for first time in the history of
American jurisprudence |
| Arabella Mansfield of Iowa becomes first woman in U.S. admitted to a state
bar |
| 1st edition of Woman’s Journal edited by Mary Livermore and sponsored by
the American Woman Suffrage Association published |
| 15th Amendment to U.S. Constitution, intended to grant American blacks’
right to vote, does not, by its text, specifically exclude women from the vote;
during next few years scores of women attempt to vote citing the 15th Amendment |
| Karl Heinrich Ulrichs publishes first gay periodical, Urnings, in
Germany |
| Karl Westphal publishes first case history of same sex desire in Archiv
fur Psychiatrie und Nervenkrankheiten in Berlin; describing a case of
female-female attraction, Westphal diagnoses same sex desire as a
psychopathological condition he calls “contrary sexual feeling” |
| Royal Prussian Medical Deputation finds no medical or scientific
justification for sodomy laws |
| 1% of U.S. population college educated; 20% of college graduates are women |
| Italy is unified by the incorporation of the city of Rome |
1870-1871
| Franco-Prussian War |
1870-1900
| Gilded Age in American History |
1870-1940
| The Third Republic of France |
1871
| first national organization of church women, the Women’s Centenary
Association, established |
| German unification; Germany adopts Paragraph 175 criminalizing sexual contact
between members of the same sex; Paragraph 175 was used 60 years later by the
Nazis to justify killing of homosexuals |
| Victoria Woodhull coins term “free lover” |
1871-1872
| Darwin publishes The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to
Sex |
1872
| Congress passes legislation giving women who are federal employees equal pay
for equal work |
| Charlotte E. Ray, a graduate of Howard University law school, becomes first
African American woman admitted to the bar in the United States |
| Susan B. Anthony and fourteen other women register and vote in the
presidential election to test whether the recently adopted 14th Amendment can be
interpreted as protecting women’s rights; Anthony is arrested, tried, and
fined for her part in the action |
1872-1885
| Italian physician and anthropologist Paolo Mantegazza publishes trilogy on
sexuality, Trilogia dell’ amore: “Hygiene of Love”, “Physiology
of Love”, and “Anthropology of Love” |
1873
| Anthony Comstock, a U.S. postal inspector, persuades Congress to enact strict
new obscenity laws; it becomes a crime for physicians to inform patients about
contraception; contraceptive information is deemed obscene material |
| Association for the Advancement of Women established to advocate for higher
education and professional opportunities for women |
| Professor Edward H. Clarke of Harvard Medical College argues that higher
education is detrimental to women and their offspring |
| In Bradwell v. Illinois the Supreme Court upholds states’ right to
restrict women from the practice of any profession in order to preserve family
harmony and obey the law of the Creator |
1874
| Oscar & Kate Chopin move to New Orleans, LA |
| Annie Wittenmyer establishes the Women’s Christian Temperance Union
(WCTU) |
1875
| Sophia Smith becomes first woman to found and endow an American women’s
college; Smith College opened |
| Minor v. Happersett: Supreme Court refuses to extend 14th amendment to
apply to women’s voting rights |
1876
| Besant-Bradlaugh trial for republishing birth control instructional pamphlets
in England |
| Matilda Joselyn Gage writes a Declaration of the Rights of Women which
is widely distributed at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, PA |
| Ellen Swallow Richards establishes the Women’s Laboratory at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) |
1877
| Helen Magill becomes first woman to receive a Ph.D. at an American school;
she earns a doctorate in Greek from Boston University |
| 50% of black women over 16 yrs work for pay |
| Isadora Duncan, pioneer of modern dance, born in San Francisco, CA |
1878
| Wharton privately publishes Verses |
| Susan B. Anthony Amendment---to extend to women the right to vote---is
introduced in the U.S. Congress |
| Oscar Wilde wins Newdigate Prize for poem Ravenna |
1879
| Albert Neisser discovers gonoccocus (bacterium that causes gonorrhea) |
| Belva Lockwood becomes first woman admitted to practice before the United
States Supreme Court |
| U.S. Congress passes bill allowing women to practice law in all federal
courts |
| Henrik Ibsen publishes A Doll’s House |
1880
| 40% of U.S. stenographers and typists are women |
| average married woman in U.S. bears 4 children |
1880-1900
| Post-Impressionism in Western Art |
| yellow journalism: false, misleading, and even baiting journalism that fanned
flames of imperialism and nativism |
1881
| 1 in 21 U.S. marriages end in divorce |
1882
| Oscar Chopin dies of malaria |
| Adeline Virginia Stephen (Woolf) born at Hyde Park Gate, London |
1883
| in Liverpool, England, women from Britain, Ireland, Scotland, and France
attend a reception in honor of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony |
| Mary Hoyt earns highest score on first U.S. civil service examination and
becomes first woman and second person appointed under new merit system; becomes
clerk in Treasury Department |
1883-1885
| Franco-Chinese War in Indochina |
1884
| Kate Chopin moves back to St. Louis, MO |
| Belva Lockwood is the first woman to receive votes in a presidential election
representing the National Equal Rights Party |
| Dublin Castle sex scandal between high male officials; in England, trial and
acquittal of Mrs. Jeffries, a brothel keeper |
| Herbert Spencer publishes The Man Versus the State |
1885
| Edith Jones marries Edward (Teddy) Wharton |
| Kate Chopin’s mother dies |
| Criminal Law Amendment Act, or “An Act for the Protection of Women and
Girls, the suppression of brothels, and other purposes”, passed by British
Parliament; Section 11 provides first legal classification of a sexual relation
(as opposed to a sex act) between men; “sodomy” replaced by “gross
indecency” as legal signifier of same sex relations [also known as Labouchere
Amendment] |
| Maiden Tribute affair in England |
| Emile Zola publishes Germinal |
1885-1900
| Symbolism and Subjectivist Movement in Western Art |
1886
| Austrian psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebing publishes Psychopathia
Sexualis: series of case histories documenting sexual practices that were
supposedly characteristic of “diseases of the mind”; introduces terms “sadism”
and “masochism” |
| Montreal’s La Presse reports the arrest of a man for soliciting sex
from a police decoy on the Champs-de- Mars |
1887
| U.S. Senate votes down women’s suffrage |
| Oscar Wilde assumes editorship of Woman’s World |
1888
| Kate Chopin writes poem If It Might Be, and begins the story
Euphraisie |
| Wilde publishes The Happy Prince and Other Tales |
1889
| Chopin’s If It Might Be published in journal America;
two stories---Wiser than a God and A |
| Point at Issue published in St. Louis Post-Dispatch |
| Edith Wharton has poems published in Scribner’s Magazine |
| Wilde publishes The Portrait of Mr. W. H. |
1889-1890
| Cleveland Street affair, or West End Scandals, in London; prostitution ring
involving young postal messengers and their patrons (some of whom were members
of the aristocracy) |
1890
| Chopin privately publishes novel At Fault |
1890-1900
| fin de siecle in Western arts and letters |
1891
| Wilde publishes The Picture of Dorian Gray, A House of Pomegranates,
Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime, and Intentions; Wilde and Lord
Alfred Douglas (Bosie) meet |
1892
| physician Clelia Mosher surveys sexual attitudes and experiences of educated,
middle class American women; survey results remain unpublished until 1980 |
| Sociology Department at University of Kansas offers an early example of a
course in “women’s studies” entitled : Status of Women in the United
States |
| Alice Mitchell trial (for murder of her lover, Freda Ward) in Tennessee |
| Wilde produces Lady Windmere’s Fan; Salome (written in
French) banned |
1893
| Chopin publishes Desiree’s Baby in Vogue magazine |
| Colorado passes an amendment to the state constitution granting women the
right to vote |
| Hannah Breenbaum Solomon establishes the National Council of Jewish Women |
| Wilde produces A Women of No Importance and writes The Sphinx |
| murder trial of Lizzie Borden |
1894
| Chopin publishes Bayou Folk |
| Woman’s Era, a national, monthly publication, edited by Josephine St.
Pierre Ruffin hits newstands |
| Edward Carpenter privately publishes Homogenic Love, and its Place in a
Free Society |
| Wilde publishes Salome |
1894-1895
| Sino-Japanese War |
1895
| Wilde produces An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest |
| trials of Oscar Wilde in Great Britain |
| Elizabeth Cady Stanton publishes first volume of The Woman’s Bible
revising biblical passages that degrade women (second volume published in 1898) |
| Sigmund Freud and Josef Breuer publish Studien uber Hysterie |
| Virginia Woolf’s mother dies |
| Gustav LeBon publishes The Crowd |
1895-1909
| Fauvism in Western Art |
1896
| Chopin publishes Athenaise |
| Plessy v. Ferguson; U.S. Supreme Court upholds the doctrine of separate,
but equal |
| National Association of Colored Women formed with Mary Church Terrell as its
first president |
| German translation of Havelock Ellis and John Addington Symonds’ Sexual
Inversion published |
| performance of play A Florida Enchantment features two actresses
kissing onstage |
| Adolf Brand publishes the gay periodical Der Eigene (One’s Own) in
Germany |
| Marc Andre Raffalovich publishes Uranisme et Unisexualite
infuriating French physicians who view homosexuals as effeminate degenerates |
1897
| Chopin publishes A Night in Acadie |
| Wharton publishes Decoration of Houses with Ogden Codman |
| in Berlin, Germany, Magnus Hirschfeld establishes the Wissenschaftlich-Humanitare
Komitee (Scientific-Humanitarian Committee) whose mission is ending legal
and social intolerance against homosexuals |
| English edition of Sexual Inversion published |
| Berlin physician, and opponent of Hirschfeld, Albert Moll publishes
Investigations
Concerning the Libido Sexualis
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| Wilde is released from prison after serving time for engaging in “unnatural
practices”; writes De Profundis |
| Virginia Woolf begins studying Greek at King’s College |
1898
| Wilde publishes Ballad of Reading Gaol |
| Freud publishes The Psychical Mechanism of Forgetting |
| Spanish -American War |
1899
| Chopin publishes The Awakening which receives scathing reviews |
| Wharton publishes (stories) Greater Inclination |
| Freud publishes The Interpretation of Dreams (1900 listed as printing
date) |
1899-1902
| Boer War |
1900
| Chopin publishes The Gentlemen from New Orleans |
| Chopin is listed in 1st edition of Who’s Who in the USA |
| Wilde dies in France |
| 2/3 of divorce actions brought by wife; in 1800, women did not have the right
to sue for divorce |
| German philosopher Friedrich Nietschze dies of syphilis |
| average married woman bears 3.5 children |
| 1 in 12 U.S. marriages end in divorce |
| 40% of black women work for pay; 25% of married black women work for pay; 20%
of white women work for pay |
| 25% of U.S.clerical employees are women; more than 75% of U.S.stenographers
and typists are women |
| Boxer Rebellion |
| Max Planck articulates the quantum theory of modern physics |
1900-1920
| Progressive Era in American History |
| Expressionism in Western Art |
1900-1930
| avant-garde in Western Art |
1902
| Wharton publishes Valley of Decision |
| German Society for the Fight Against Venereal Diseases established in Berlin |
1903
| Women’s Trade Unions League (WTUL) established by middle class reformers
and women labor activists |
| Remy de Gourmont publishes Physique de l’amour (The
Natural Philosophy of Love) |
| Hirschfeld begins statistical surveys on homosexuality which are halted by
legal action |
1904
| Chopin visits Louisiana Purchase Exposition where she suffers a stroke
and dies a couple of days later |
| Eugen Steinach, a Prague endocrinologist, investigates the effects of sex
hormones on the development of animal and human bodies |
| Friedrich Salomon Krauss, a Viennese ethnologist, starts publishing
Anthropophyteia,
a ten volume work in ethno-sexology; by 1913, as a result of his work, he is
economically ruined and his career is curtailed |
| formation of the Bloomsbury group at London’s Garden Square |
| Virginia Woolf’s father dies |
| Lochner v. New York: U.S. Supreme Court strikes down state labor statute
that unnecessarily interfered with the right of contract between employer and
employees |
1904-1905
| Russo-Japanese War |
1904-1914
| Cubism in Western Art |
1905
| Wharton publishes The House of Mirth |
| Freud publishes Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, Jokes and
Their Relation to the Unconscious, and Fragment of an Analysis of a Case
of Hysteria |
| Fritz Schaudinn observes Treponema pallidum (bacterium which causes
syphilis) |
| Auguste Forel, a Swiss psychiatrist, publishes The Sexual Question
which recommends, among other things, abolition of many sex laws and advocates
for same sex marriage |
| Helene Stocker establishes the Bund fur Mutterschutz (Association for
the Protection of Mothers) which advocates for protection of unwed mothers and
for the legal equality of illegitimate offspring |
1906
| Paul Ehrlich and Sahachiro Hata develop first effective medical treatment for
syphilis (Salvarsan) |
| Emma Goldman publishes Mother Earth magazine |
1907
| Wharton settles in Paris |
| Iwan Bloch, a Berlin physician, publishes The Sexual Life of Our Time
which argues for the development of sexology as a legitimate science combining
the research and methods of natural science and socio-cultural studies |
| Albert Einstein proposes the theory of relativity |
1908
| Teddy Wharton suffers a nervous breakdown |
| Hirschfeld edits Zeitschrift furSexualwissenschaft (Journal of
Sexology) |
| Muller v. Oregon: U.S. Supreme Court strikes down protective legislation
for female laborers |
| Edward Carpenter publishes The Intermediate Sex in England |
| Edward Irenaeus Prime-Stevenson (Xavier Mayne) publishes Intersexes in
Italy |
1909
| Albert Moll publishes The Sexual Life of the Child which, disregarding
Freud’s psychoanalytic theory, describes four stages of human sexual response |
| thousands of women garment workers in NY strike for better wages and working
conditions |
| Ogai Mori, Japanese soldier and physician, publishes Vita Sexualis an
autobiographical work describing early adolescent sexual experiences; the book
is banned shortly thereafter |
1910
| Hirschfeld coins term “transvestite” distinguishing them from homosexuals |
| number of women attending college increases 150% in first decade of twentieth
century (1901-1910) |
| women granted suffrage in state of Washington |
| Women’s Political Union stages first mass suffrage parade in NYC |
| term “feminism” comes into regular use in discussing women’s ideology
and to describe the activities of a distinct social group |
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