Question

The doctrine of separate spheres, which held that women were best suited to the world of home and family, ironically opened the way for women to enter politics. True or false?

Answer 1

Yes, it did.

The ideology of separate spheres contributed to resistance to coeducation and to the emergence of gendered educational institutions such as the female seminary and women's college in higher education and the woman's club in continuing education. The rise of teaching as a woman's profession was also closely linked to the ideology of separate spheres, as women came to be regarded as uniquely skilled at classroom management.[36] In coeducational universities in the late 19th century, the separation of spheres contributed to the emergence of home economics as a field of advanced study for the woman's sphere, and the dean of women as frequently the only high-ranking woman administrator in coeducational institutions.

Although it created a space for women's academic and professional advancement, the separation of spheres also provided an excuse for keeping women out of fields not specifically marked as female. Thus many talented woman scientists were pushed into professorships in home economics rather than in their principal fields. Some women educators resisted this typecasting even while working within the framework of separation. Frances Shimer, founder of Shimer College, which was a woman's school from 1866 to 1950, insisted that she was "in favor of the co-education of the sexes" and that the education at her school was equal to what was given to young men.

The women’s rights movements in the mid-1960s proposed that to achieve true equality between the sexes, it is necessary for the laws to be put in place to move past the simple separate spheres model and address the “interspherical impacts”. In 1966, the National Organization for Women (NOW) pushed for equality of women in society and in the workplace and in order to attain this equality, there would have to be changes in family regulation. NOW stressed the importance of focusing on structurally altering the family sphere in order to then create gender equality in the education and workplace spheres. The family sphere is acting as a catalyst seeing that without a change in it, women would simply lack access to the opportunities that men already have available to them. Franklin also pointed out that the gender inequality among the American population in the 60’s and 70’s was a major contributor to the civil rights statutes of the Second Reconstruction.

So, basically, The doctrine of separate spheres led to a movement for the welfare and development of Women in US who opposed the thought of women meant to do household works only, that worked as a revolution for their benefits and welfares.