For years women had been left out of all decisions. They had few property rights, faced educational and employment barriers; they had no legal protection in divorce and child custody cases. The biggest thing is that they did not have the right to vote. All of these problems led to the beginning of women’s suffrage and the forming of many different groups.
“The right of the citizens of the united states to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on account of sex.” – Nineteenth Amendment.
Women’s suffrage is an economic and political reform to expand the right to vote. It first took place in the United States back in the 1820’s. This movement spread on to Europe and the European colonized world.
Women’s suffrage came about because women got tired of not being able to have a say so in anything, nor do anything. So they finally decided to stand up for their rights and what they strongly believed in. The women were getting tired of that so they took a stand to bring about women’s suffrage. The women were persuaded that the suffrage movement would be a good way to go.
In 1840, two women from London by the names of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott came to the U.S. They organized the women’s right convention at Seneca Falls in 1848. Later on, by 1866 they got help from Susan B. Anthony and Lucy Stone to establish the American equal rights association. They had help from plenty of other anxious women. These women were very hard working and dedicated to what they did. They never gave up fighting for their rights.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton was the leading feminist philosopher for the first generation of women’s rights activists. Her husband was supportive of her strive. But during the 1840’s and 1850’s, she was busy with maternal chores, and she still found time to write and plan a strategy for the women’s rights movement.
Susan B. Anthony was another activist of the women’s right movement. She spoke in public as a part of the temperance movement in 1847. She called another temperance movement in 1851, because of being refused access to a foregoing convention on account of her sex. Susan became widely known among the agitators for the abolition of slavery in 1857. She was very active in clearing the passage of the act of the New York legislature of 1860. It gave married women the ownership if their earnings and the custody of their children. She also started a petition for leaving out the word male in the fourteenth amendment. She worked with the national women suffrage association to influence congress to give her sex the right to vote.
One of the most outspoken leaders of the anti-slavery and women’s rights movement in America was Lucretia Mott. She was a Quaker minister and just like many Quakers, she was active in the abolitionist movement before the civil war. She helped find two anti-slavery groups and she was known very well for her ability to speak against slavery. Mott attended the world anti-slavery convention in London, England, in 1840. Mott and several other women were denied seats by men who controlled the convention. She did not like it, so she responded by promising to work diligently for women’s rights. Mott and other reformers, helped organize the first women’s right convention at Seneca Falls, New York. There were a series of brave women demanding for increased rights for women. That included better educational and employment possibilities and the right to vote. Mott spoke widely for both women’s right and the abolition of slavery, after 1848.
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