Ruth Herr Speech and Women's Rights activism

Ruth Herr was an activist for women’s suffrage and equal rights. She was a teacher of art in Dayton and Oakwood, Ohio. She played a large roll in the National Women’s Party. She had works published and she gave a speech about equal rights and women’s jobs. The speech that there is a draft of at Wright State is called, “Liberation?-Equal Rights is the Better Term.” This speech is about all the things women do comparatively to men. The main point of her speech is that women get paid less than men, and they get treated poorly by men. She argues that women contribute to the family and her husband, along with other women’s husbands, benefit from the work and wages women bring to the household. She then says that it seems if women ask for equal pay to compensate their equal work then it is seen as awful and unspeakable request. She speaks more about how women work in certain environments, like education, yet they are treated poorly still. She ends her speech with a question for both the ladies and the gentlemen to hear. She asks, “Who ever found that intelligence has sex?” This speech was undated, but it could be assumed that it was written and spoken between 1935 and 1949. These years were her active years in the women’s right fights. She published a few writings about how she felt about different issues. One booklet she published was that she felt that married women should be allowed to teach in Dayton Schools. She was a teacher after all, and she was married and felt like she belonged in the school. She also published a booklet about how the equal rights amendment supports equal rights between men and women.

Speech, undated, Box 1, File 2. MS-91, Ruth Herr Papers, Special Collections and

Archives, University Libraries, Wright State University, Dayton, Ohio.