Why did Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton decide to organize the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848? During an antislavery convention, women activists were prevented from speaking, which made them focus on women’s rights. The two women saw how effective women organizers were in churches and other religious institutions and wanted to build on that. They wanted women to become leaders of a movement because men led the abolitionist and temperance movements. Because their involvement in other social movements had failed, they wanted to start something they thought could succeed.