8.6.6

Women’s Rights

The Big Idea

Reformers sought to improve women’s �rights in American society.

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Main Ideas

• Influenced by the abolition movement, many women struggled to gain equal rights for themselves.
• Calls for women’s rights met opposition from men and women.
• The Seneca Falls Convention launched the first organized women’s rights movement in the United States.

Vocabulary

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

American woman suffrage leader, she helped to organize the Seneca Falls Convention

Lucretia Mott

American woman suffrage leader, she planned the Seneca Falls Convention with Stanton

suffrage / franchise

both are synonyms for voting rights

Declaration of Sentiments

A statement written and signed by women’s rights supporters at the Seneca Falls Convention detailing their beliefs about social injustice against women. Modeled after the Declaration of Independence

Susan B. Anthony

An American social reformer who was active in the temperance, abolitionists, and women’s suffrage movements, she was president of the National Woman’s Suffrage Association

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� Influenced by the abolition movement, many women struggled to gain equal rights for themselves.

• Fighting for the rights of African Americans led many women abolitionists to fight for their own rights.
• They found that they had to defend their right to speak in public, particularly when addressing men.
• Critics did not want women to leave traditional female roles.

Rights Sought by Women

• Freedom of speech
• Equal educational opportunities
• Equal pay for equal work
• The right for married women to retain control over their property and wages
• The right to vote and sit on juries
• Equitable divorce and child custody laws

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Check for Understanding

• What problems did many female abolitionists face when they began speaking out against slavery?
• How did this lead to the women’s rights movement?
• What were some of the rights sought by women?

� Calls for women’s rights met opposition from men and women.

• Some women believed they did not need new rights.
• They said they were not unequal to men, just different
• Some people thought that women lacked the physical or mental strength to survive without men’s protection.
• Critics argued that “a woman’s place is in the home.”

- They worried that children would suffer if women turned their attention outside the home.

Opposition to Women’s Rights

• What were 3 arguments against equal rights for women?

The Movement Grows

• Women’s concerns became a national issue when women took a more active and leading role in reform and abolition.
• Some men also began to fight for women’s rights.
• The American Anti-Slavery Society splits over the issue of women’s rights.

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The Grimke Sisters

Sarah and Angelina Grimké wrote pamphlets arguing for equal rights for women

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“I ask no favors for my sex… All I ask our brethren is that they will take their feet from off our necks, and permit us to stand upright on that ground which God designed us to occupy.”

- Sarah Grimke

Sojourner Truth

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Sojourner Truth traveled across the North speaking out about abolition and women’s rights.

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“That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages or over mud puddles, or gives me any best place… Look at me! I have ploughed and planted and …no man could head me. And ain’t I a woman?”

- Sojourner Truth

• Why did Sarah Grimke believe women deserved equal rights?
• Why did Sojourner Truth believe women deserved the same rights as men?

Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott

• Stanton and Mott attended the World’s Anti-Slavery Convention in London.
• All women were forced to sit behind a curtain in a separate area and not participate in discussion
• This experience inspired them to form a separate society for the advancement of women’s rights.

Lucretia Mott

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

� The Seneca Falls Convention was the first organized women’s rights meeting in the United States.

• Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott organized the Seneca Falls Convention.
• The convention was the first public meeting about women’s rights held in the United States.

Seneca Falls Convention

• The convention opened on July 19, 1848, in Seneca Falls, New York.
• 240 people attended, including men such as abolitionist Frederick Douglass.
• Many other reformers who worked in the temperance and abolitionist movements were present.

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Declaration of Sentiments

• Organizers of the Seneca Falls Convention wrote a Declaration of Sentiments.
• It detailed beliefs about social injustice toward women
• Modeled after the Declaration of Independence
• Included 18 charges against men
• Signed by 100 people

• “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal..”

Seneca Falls Convention

• What was the Seneca Falls Convention?
• Who organized it?
• Who attended the Seneca Falls Convention?
• What document was approved at the convention?
• What ideas did that document express?

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Susan B. Anthony

• Argued for equal pay for equal work—no woman could be free without a “purse of her own”
• Concerned about laws that affected women’s control of money and property
• New York gave married women ownership of their wages and property in 1860, largely due to Anthony’s efforts.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

• Wrote many documents and speeches of the movement
• Founder and leader of National Woman Suffrage Association
• Considered radical because she argued that abolition was not a more important cause than women’s rights.

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Antisuffragists

• As the women’s movement picked up speed, its opposition began to organize
• Antisuffragists, or “antis” formed groups in the late 1800s
• They argued that suffrage would distract women from building strong families and building communities

An Ongoing Battle

• Major reforms, such as voting rights, were not achieved at this time.
• However, more women than ever before became actively involved in women’s rights issues
• This was the early movement’s greatest accomplishment, as it would lay the groundwork for future successes

19^th Amendment

• The 19^th amendment granted voting rights for women was not passed until 1920, 72 years after the Seneca Falls Convention.

• What gains did women make due to the efforts of Susan B. Anthony?
• What belief of Elizabeth Cady Stanton was thought to be radical?
• What did opponents of women’s suffrage rights fear would be its result?
• Was the early movement successful?
• When and how did women receive the vote in the United States?

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