For about 155 years, dramatic social and legal changes have been accomplished that are now very accepted. The staggering changes for women that have come about over these 155 years, in family life, in religion, in government, in employment, in education did not just happen spontaneously. Women themselves made these changes happen, very deliberately. Women have not been the passive recipients of miraculous changes in laws and human nature. Women have come together to affect these changes: through meetings, petition drives, lobbying, public speaking, and nonviolent resistance. They have worked very deliberately to create a better life for women in the United States. The Women's rights movement is still going on today and has been an enduring issue in American Society.
The Women's Rights Movement began July 13, 1848. On that day in upstate New York, a young housewife and mother, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, was invited to tea with four women friends.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton (seated) with Susan B. Anth...
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Portrait of Elizabeth Cady Stanton with her sons D...When the course of their conversation turned to the situation of women, Stanton she described her discontent with the limitations placed on her own situation under America's new democracy. Women had not gained freedom even though they'd taken equally tremendous risks through those dangerous years. This was not the first small group of women to have such a conversation, but it was the first to plan and carry out a specific, large-scale program.
Within two days of their afternoon tea together, the small group had picked a date for their convention, found a suitable location, and placed a small announcement in the Seneca County Courier. They called "A convention to discuss the social, civil, and religious condition and rights of woman." The gathering would take place at the Wesleyan Chapel in Seneca Falls on July 19 and 20, 1848. ( ). Elizabeth Cady Stanton used the Declaration of...