Question 1: What types of sources could be used to research the economic impact of the women’s movement? What about for its social impact? Develop relevant search terms.
In considering the relative importance of different causes, historians often divide them into necessary causes and contributory causes (Waring, 2010). A necessary cause* is an event or trend that is essential to causing some other event; without the necessary cause, the second event could not take place. Approval by 36 state legislatures was a necessary cause for ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment.
By contrast, contributory causes* are not essential to causing some other event, but they may make that event more likely to occur. President Woodrow Wilson’s eventual decision to come out in favor of woman suffrage was a contributory cause for ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, but it was not an essential factor in the Amendment’s success.
Question 2: Congress held its final vote to approve the Nineteenth Amendment on June 4, 1919. Was this a necessary or a contributory cause of the success of the women’s suffrage movement?
Question 3: The National American Woman Suffrage Association supported the U.S. decision to enter World War I and publicly encouraged women to support the war effort. Was this a necessary or a contributory cause of the success of the women’s suffrage movement?
Apply the information you have learned about examining websites and utilize A.R.I.A. to evaluate the following websites. Take some time to explore each website and check each one for:
Accuracy
Relevancy
Intent
Authority
When evaluating secondary sources, you should keep the following things in mind. You can remember these criteria with the acronym A.R.I.A., which stands for accuracy, relevancy, intent, and authoritativeness.
Question 4: Look at this website for information about women’s suffrage at the Library of Congress:
http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/primarysourcesets/womens-suffrage. Using the A.R.I.A. criteria, answer the following questions:
What is the purpose of this website? Is the information on this website easy to locate?
Can you use a search box or a navigational menu? How reliable and current is the information presented?
Would this website be appropriate to use in a research paper?
Question 5: Look at this website about the Paycheck Fairness Act:
https://www.aclu.org/equal-pay-equal-work-pass-paycheck-fairness-act. Using the A.R.I.A. criteria, answer the following questions:
Who sponsors this website?
Is it easy to navigate and find information?
Is it modern looking?
How current and accurate is the information on the website?
Does it promote a specific opinion or point of view?
Would this website be appropriate to use in a research paper?
For question 6 refer to the article listed in the attachment named:
The Limits of State Suffrage for California Women
Question 6: Accuracy: Are references provided? Does the reference list include other scholarly sources?
Relevancy: Would this article be useful for a paper examining the similarities between political sentiment in states that granted women the right to vote before the Nineteenth Amendment? Would it be useful in an essay focusing on the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA), an activist group based in New York that was dedicated to nationwide woman suffrage?
Intent: What is the point of this article? Is the author making an argument?
Authoritativeness: What are the author’s credentials? What about the publication’s?
Question 7: Building on the keywords you identified in Modules One and Two and the research of secondary sources you have done so far, what subjects, events, people, and time period are related to the topic you have chosen for your historical analysis essay? Identifying these pieces will be useful as you search the primary-source databases.
https://www.loc.gov/resource/rbpe.13200200/ (< poster is on this website for questions 8 and 9)
Question 8:
Who (either a single person or an organization) created this poster? Why did this person or organization write it?
Who is the intended audience? What methods does the creator(s) use to target this audience? How might the intended audience have encountered this poster?
Question 9:
Can you detect any biases in this source? What words does the creator use that might point to his or her biases or assumptions?
What biases might you bring to your interpretation of the source?
What to Submit
Your response to Questions 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 8 and 9 should be between 2 and 3 sentences in length. Your responses to Questions 4 and 5 should be 1 to 2 paragraphs in length. Follow the instructions at the bottom of Module Three: Communicating Historical Ideas, learning block 3-4 (page 3) in the webtext to download your work and submit it to your instructor as a single Microsoft Word document uploaded to your learning environment. Refer to the Submitting Webtext Assignments Guide for assistance on downloading, saving, and submitting this assignment.
