6 page paper in which you address the following question: Chart the experiences of a single group of people (I chose women) from 1865 through the 1930s. Your paper should have an argument centered on how life improved or declined (or both) for this group. The most important part of this assignment is that you take a position on this question and that you use evidence from the primary source documents to PROVE your position (also called a thesis or main argument). The documents must be the CENTRAL PART OF YOUR PAPER on which you base your argument.

Without a specific national context, this question is very broad, so I will answer in regard to the United States.
The Civil War ended in 1865. Two years before, the Emancipation Proclamation was signed, freeing (some) enslaved black Americans. Shortly thereafter, three amendments were added to the Constitution to ensure the citizenship of those who had been denied it since the nation's inception, in 1607. The Fourteenth Amendment ensured equal protection under the Constitution, and the Fifteenth Amendment extended voting rights to male citizens regardless of race. However, neither of these amendments applied to women, despite how closely the abolitionist and suffragist movements were linked.
The suffragist movement intensified, and, by 1912, women's suffrage became a plank in the Progressive Party's platform. The party, led by future president Theodore Roosevelt, became the first to adopt women's suffrage to its platform as part of an extensive national effort to improve the nation's ills. Several years later, in 1916, Jeanette Rankin of Montana became the first woman to become a representative in the House.
In April 1917 (the timeline I've provided below gets World War I dates wrong), the United States entered World War I. The war provided women with an opportunity to demonstrate their competence, patriotism, and activism. Though they were no longer working fervently toward suffrage, their war effort proved why they deserved the vote. In 1920, white women attained it, with the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment.
The 1920s were a good decade for white women, many of whom entered the workforce and, therefore, had great power as consumers. The country was also flush with money at that time. However, women of color, particularly black women, were largely excluded from that abundance and were still largely employed as servants.
When answering your question, it's key to acknowledge that the conditions of women's lives were largely determined by race. It's also important to note that the suffrage movement was dominated by white women (e.g., Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony). These women would feature some black women at conventions (e.g., Sojourner Truth at the Women's Convention in Akron, Ohio)—as long as those black women conformed to their ideas of how black women should be. Other black suffragists who did not conform to racist stereotypes (e.g., Frances Ellen Watkins Harper) were met with more skepticism. I mention all of this to say that race and class were key factors in sowing disunity among women and keeping all of them under the heel of patriarchy.
https://www.nps.gov/wori/learn/historyculture/womens-suffrage-history-timeline.htm