Women's Rights Dbq

“Well behaved women rarely make history.” -Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

For as long as anyone could remember, the vast majority women quietly accepted the fact that they were their husband’s property and had little to no rights, while merely performing their duty as housewives. However, in 1848, things started to change.

The Seneca Falls Convention was held on July 19-20 in 1848 in Seneca Falls, New York. It was the first assembly devoted to discussing women’s rights. While it didn’t actually change the law, the attendees, mostly women, wrote the Declaration of Sentiments based on the Declaration of Independence with twelve resolutions that aimed to resolve grievances that the women had.

While the convention was a success in many ways, as the

attendees set precise goals and participated in an act of civil disobedience, with women being banned from speaking publicly at the time, it failed in other ways. For one thing, while Lucretia Mott along with Elizabeth Cady Stanton thought of and organized the convention, it was presided over by Mott’s husband, James, proving how sexism was always present during that time even at a convention specifically for women's rights. Also, the only women who attended were white and privileged, so the voices of all women were not heard. Even so, the outcomes of the convention were only positive. With the Declaration of Sentiments, which has more signatures than the Declaration of Independence, a direct plan of action was set and people were motivated to carry out this plan, with the most controversial resolution being granting women the right to vote. Even though Lucretia Mott originally disagreed with adopting this resolution, its controversy allowed there to be a large amount of media attention focused on the dispute over this belief.

To get an amendment guaranteeing the right to vote to women passed, the suffragettes tried many strategies, and I believe the most successful one was public speaking.

As it was considered illegal and improper for women to do this at the time, the rallies drew great of crowds and lots of press attention. Stanton would start out her speeches by forming a personal connection with the audience so they would sympathize with her instead of thinking of her as an emotionless politician, then towards the end would fit in all of her points about women’s suffrage. Also, when Susan B. Anthony was arrested for voting as a woman, she legally lost her court case, but “won” it when her speech in court gathered lots of press attention and supporters of the cause. To ratify an amendment, half of congress and three quarters of the states has to approve it. So even if the Congressmen didn’t agree with Stanton and Anthony, because they persuaded so many people, many Senators and Representatives found it necessary to do what the people they were representing wanted them to do in order to remain in high regard. However, it still took 72 years since the Seneca Falls Convention for this amendment to be ratified. Why?

At the time, all elected officials of that time were male and most men then found the movement frightening. They liked their wives confined to the house; they liked their power. They thought their current roles had worked well, so why change it? Change is hard to enact in general, and also, women were competing with the abolition movement for attention from the press as well as from

congress.

But finally, on August 18th, 1920, the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified, and although Stanton, Mott and Anthony weren’t able to see it pass, the ways they defied the law with acts of civil disobedience changed the lives of half the United States population. They weren’t well behaved, and they changed the world. Women’s rights in America have greatly improved, but men and women still aren’t treated equally today. Malala Yousafzai defied the Taliban in her country by fighting for girls’ right to an equal education, but was shot. We need to be like Malala and keep performing acts of civil disobedience until everyone is truly equal.