North Bay Woman

S P R I N G | S U M M E R 2 0 2 0 NORTH BAY WOMAN 23 in 1848 at the Seneca Falls Convention in Seneca Falls, N.Y., where 68 women and 32 men gathered to discuss in- equality and the rights denied to wom- en. Organizer Elizabeth Cady Stanton realized that the only way women could gain control over their own lives was by being part of the decision-making pro- cess, and that meant having the right to vote. The convention's Declaration of Sentiments identified a long list of ways women were treated unfairly, and Stanton insisted on including the denial of electoral rights. Delegates were reluctant to include it, because they didn't think winning votes for women was an attainable goal. Nevertheless, they retained the statement, launching a decades-long battle. From Upper State New York, the women's suffrage movement spread across the country, and in 1869, the Wyoming Territory granted women the right to vote in its elections. California lagged, and a referendum on wom- en's suffrage failed in 1896. The fight continued, however, and Elizabeth Thacher Kent, the wife of Marin County Congressman William Kent, was a prominent suffragette who fought for its passage. A second attempt was successful, and Proposition 4, passed in 1911, allowed women to vote in state elections. After victory in California, Kent became active in the national campaign, and in 1912, she spoke to the U.S. House Represen- tatives as a proponent of the right of women to vote. Women cast their ballots in a national election for the first time on Nov. 2, 1920, and while being able to vote didn't give them equal rights, it did give them great- er power to work for change. Thus, the feminist movement continued with a new focus. The first Equal Rights Amend- ment, a proposed amendment to the Constitution that would guarantee equal legal rights for all, regardless of gender, was introduced in 1923, but women of the 1920s were expected to conform to entrenched societal expec- tations, and it was unsuccessful. The Great Depression limited opportunities for women even further in the 1930s, and it took cataclysmic global events to effect change. In 1941, the United States entered World War II. As men left for combat, women suddenly became welcome in the workplace, doing essential jobs usually reserved for men. Marinship Corp. opened a facility to build ships for wartime use in Sausalito in 1942 and actively recruited women to fill positions such as riveters and welders. Throughout the country, Rosie the Riv- eter became a symbol of the vital role of women in the war effort. Mary Entwistle Poole of Belvedere was a schoolteacher in Galt, in Sacra- mento County, when the United States entered the war. She returned to Marin County to learn welding at San Rafael High School, where Marinship was giv- ing classes. She found it daunting but was determined. "For two weeks, she tried to strike an arc and couldn't do it," says her son, Rob Poole, of Tiburon. Then in the last class, she finally got it, and her weld was perfect —the best the instruc- tor had ever seen. She excelled in her job at Marinship, and even though welding wasn't considered appropriate work for wom- en in normal circumstances, they proved to be very skilled at it, because they have more sensitivity in their hands than men. She worked the swing shift, and, "She said it was so incredibly cold, but she stayed at it," says Poole, and she became a leaderman and ran a crew. He explains that his mother's brother had joined the Navy, and she wanted to contribute to the war effort. "She absolutely felt good about it," he says, and she earned enough money to buy a house on Lagoon Road in Belvedere. When the war ended, women had to give up their jobs to make way for men and were told to go home to look after their homes and families. Nostalgic The iconic Rosie the Riveter poster urged women to join the war effort and go to work. Mary Entwistle Poole answered the call and became a welder at Marinship. – Image courtesy of istockphoto/Getty images

• Cover