Ok, so I have to write 1 whole page on this. I have a half of a page already but I’m coming up blank… Help please!!
Sorry that its long, but here it goes.. (serious answers only please)
Fairness of the Law: In 1090, the state legislature of Illinois enacted a statute called the “Woman’s 10-Hour Law.” The law prohibited women who were employed in factories and other manufacturing facilities from working more than 10 hours per day. The law did not apply to men. W.C. Ritchie, an employer, brought a lawsuit that challenged the statute as being unconstitutional in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Illinois Constitution. In Upholding the statute, the Supreme Court of Illinois stated:
It is known to all men (and what we know as me we profess to be ignorant of as judges) that woman’s physical structure and the performance of maternal functions place her at a great disadvantage in the battle of life; that while a man can work for more than 10 hours a day without injury to himself, a woman, especially when the burdens of motherhood are upon her, cannot; and that to require a woman to stand upon her feet for more than 10 hours in any one day and perform severe manual labor while thus standing, day after day has the effece to impair her health and that as weakly and sickly women cannot be mothers of vigorous children.
We think the general consensus of opinion that a working day of more than 10 hours for women is justified for the following reasons:
1. the physical organization of women
2. her maternal function
3. the rearing and education of children
4. the maintenance of the home
Surrounded as women are by changing conditions of society, and the evolution of employment whick environs them, we agree fully with what is said by the Supreme Court of Washington in the Buchannan case; “law is, or ought to be, a “progressive science.”
**Is this statute fair? Would the statute be lawful today? Should the law be a “progressive science”?
Man, I hope I didn’t type all that for nothing! 
C-dub—Actually we were both wrong — its 1909…you were closer
Thanks!! Good answer!
Dime bros (and sis) unite!!
c-dub [DIME bros. unite]
April 22, 2010 at 1:32 pm
Edit…anything for a Dime sis. I’ll give it a try.
Ok first off I think you mean 1900 not 1090
Ok im not sure exactly what you want for an answer but Ya I guess that kind of thing shouldnt be legal today. If a woman needs or wants to work, it shouldnt be legal to impede her from doing that unless there is definitive scientific proof that it is bad for her body or could cause problems with maternal things. I’d say that in 1900 there was no science to back it up and it was just another case of men depriving women of rights.
SCOTT M
April 22, 2010 at 1:35 pm
I think the thinking that underwrote that ruling went away when the courts ruled that women could work in coal mines back in the 1960s.