FREE ESSAY ON WOMENS RIGHTS

WOMENS RIGHTS

Beginning in the mid-19th century, several generations of woman suffragesupporters
lectured, wrote, marched and disobeyed many rules to change in the Constitution. parades,
silence and hunger strikes where used to demonstrate the need for a change in the
constitution. Women struggled for their rights ,and they struggled equally to black
americans who desired voting rights as well(The Fifteenth Amendment., Susan Banfield
pp.11-20). 
Women had it difficult in the mid-1800s to early 1900s. There was a difference in the
treatment of men and women. Married women were legally concidered a property of the man
they married in the eyes of the law. Women were not allowed to vote. Married women had no
property rights. Women were not allowed to enter professions such as medicine or law.
Women had no means to gain an education since no college or university would accept women
students. 
Then the first Women's Rights Convention was held on July 19 and 20 in 1848(What's Right
with America., Dwight Bohmach pp.261). The convention was convened as planned, and over
the two-days of discussion, the Declaration of Sentiments and 12 resolutions received
agreement endorsement, one by one, with a few
amendments(http://www.nara.gov/education/teaching/woman/home.html). The only resolution
that did not pass unanimously was the call for women's authorization. That women should
be allowed to vote in elections was impossible to some. At the convention, debate over
the woman's vote was the main concern.
Women's Rights Conventions were held on a regular basis from 1850 until the start of the
Civil War. Some drew such large crowds that people had to be turned away for lack of
meeting space. The women's rights movement of the late 19th century went on to address
the wide range of issues talked about at the Seneca Falls Convention. Elizabeth Cady
Stanton and women like Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, and Sojourner Truth, who were
pioneer theorists, traveled the country lecturing and organizing for the next forty
years. Winning the right to vote was the key issue, since the vote would provide the
means to accomplish the other reforms. The campaign for woman's right to vote ran across
continous opposition that it took 72 years for the women and their male supporters to win
(When Hens Crow : the Woman's Rights Movements in Antebellum America pp.66).
During the Women's Rights Movement, women faced incredible obstacles to win the American
civil right to vote, which was later won in 1920.There were some very important women
involved in the Women's Right Movement. Esther Morris, who was the first woman to hold a
judicial position, who led the first successful state campaign for woman's right to vote,
in 1869(What's Right with America., Dwight Bohmach pp.260-263). Abigail Scott Duniway,
the leader of the successful fight in the early 1900s. Ida B. Wells-Barnett and Mary
Church Terrell, arrangers of thousands of African-American women who worked for the right
to vote for all women. Anna Howard Shaw and Carrie Chapman Catt, leaders of the National
American Woman Suffrage Association in the early years of the 20th century, who got the
campaign to its final success.
If the suffrage movement had not been so ignored by historians, women like Lucretia Mott,
Carrie Chapman Catt and Alice Paul would be as familiar to us as Thomas Jefferson,
Theodore Roosevelt, or Martin Luther King, Jr. We would know how men took away the right
to vote. We would know how women were betrayed after the Civil War, defeated and often
cheated in election after election, and how they were forced to fight for their rights
against the opposition, with virtually no financial, legal, or political power of their
own. If the history of the suffrage movement was better known, we would understand that
democracy, for the first 150 years of our nation's existence, excluded more than half of
the population. And we would realize that this situation changed only after one of the
most remarkable and successful nonviolent efforts the world has ever seen. 
The suffragists' nonviolent approach was a logical strategy since a remarkable number of
the movement's prominent leaders, including Lucretia Mott, Susan B. Anthony, and Alice
Paul, were Quakers and pacifists. They were committed to peaceful resistance and they
were opponents of war and violence. And, they were clear about their goal: not victory
over men, but equality with men.
Women won the vote. They were not given it or granted it. Women won it as truly as any
political campaign is ultimately won or lost. And they won it by the slimmest of margins,
which only underscores the difficulty and magnitude of their victories
Bibliography
Hoffert, Sylvia D. When Hens Crow : the Woman's Rights Movements in Antebellum America.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995. 
Lunardini, Christine A. Women's Rights. Social Issues in American History Series.
Phoenix, AZ: Oryx Press, 1996. 
Sheppard, Alice. Cartooning for Suffrage. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press,
1994. 
Smith, Betsy Covington. Women Win the Vote. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Silver Burdett
Press, 1989. 
(http://www.nara.gov/education/teaching/woman/home.html
SuSan Banfield. The FifTeenth Amendment . Springfield, Union County, New
Jersey:KF4893.B39,1998