Violence against women is certainly not an unusual event nor has it ever been.
# Nearly one-third of American women (31 percent) report being physically or sexually abused by a husband or boyfriend at some point in their lives, according to a 1998 Commonwealth Fund survey.4
# Nearly 25 percent of American women report being raped and/or physically assaulted by a current or former spouse, cohabiting partner, or date at some time in their lifetime, according to the National Violence Against Women Survey, conducted from November 1995 to May 1996.5
# Thirty percent of Americans say they know a woman who has been physically abused by her husband or boyfriend in the past year.6
# In the year 2001, more than half a million American women (588,490 women) were victims of nonfatal violence committed by an intimate partner.7
# Intimate partner violence is primarily a crime against women. In 2001, women accounted for 85 percent of the victims of intimate partner violence (588,490 total) and men accounted for approximately 15 percent of the victims (103,220 total).8
#As many as 324,000 women each year experience intimate partner violence during their pregnancy.11
# On average, more than three women are murdered by their husbands or boyfriends in this country every day. In 2000, 1,247 women were killed by an intimate partner. The same year, 440 men were killed by an intimate partner.
# Women are much more likely than men to be killed by an intimate partner. In 2000, intimate partner homicides accounted for 33.5 percent of the murders of women and less than four percent of the murders of men.
# Pregnant and recently pregnant women are more likely to be victims of homicide than to die of any other cause18 , and evidence exists that a significant proportion of all female homicide victims are killed by their intimate partners.
Nationwide legislation for women's property rights wasn't achieved until the early 1900's. Some states had limited property right laws before then.
In English and American law, coverture refers to women's legal status after marriage: legally, upon marriage, the husband and wife were treated as one entity. In essence, the wife's separate legal existence disappeared as far as property rights were concerned.
Under coverture, wives could not control their own property unless specific provisions were made before marriage, they could not file lawsuits or be sued separately, nor could they execute contracts. The husband could use, sell or dispose of her property (again, unless prior provisions were made) without her permission.
Consider that for many years in this country women had no birth control available and a husband had the right to demand his conjugal rights. Many, many women died simply from having too many children. Women had no right to say no and certainly no right to abortion. Some were simply bred to death.
Even today the Catholic Church as well as other churches deny women the right to birth control and abortion.
Black men got the right to vote before women by 45 years.
Sexism is still much more acceptable than racism. At a Clinton rally when a heckler yelled out "iron my shirt" it was taken as rather amusing. Can you imagine the outrage had someone yelled "shine my shoes" at Obama. Did you know there is an anti-Hillary website entitled Citizens United Not Timid?
http://www.citizensunitednottimid.org/ Can you imagine the outrage if there was an equivalent website for Obama? There's been no outrage about the anti-Hillary website except for that of a group of women. Even on liberal boards the terms cunt and pussy are used to denigrate.....if slang terms for blacks were used there were be an outrage.