“We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal...”
--Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1848) Elizabeth Cady Stanton took a stand for women’s rights by helping to organizing the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848 from July 19th to July 20th in Seneca Falls, New York. This was the first women’s rights convention, and in it, the participants discussed this issue and signed the Declaration of Sentiments; a document written by Elizabeth Cady Stanton that proclaimed that “all men and women are created equal”, because they felt that society did not treat them that way. This convention, and the Declaration of Sentiments, helped spur the Women’s Suffrage Movement into action.
A Woman’s Role During the 19th century, most of American society’s gender roles were dictated by the Cult of Domesticity, or the Cult of True Womanhood. This was a set of virtues which described the “ideal” or “True” woman - one that “upheld four main principles: piety [being religious], purity [protecting her virginity], submissiveness [dependent on her husband, yet offering him love and affection], and domesticity [doing housework].” To follow
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Opportunities for education were harder to come by, and the topic in itself was controversial and sometimes considered “subversive”. Even within the household, women faced restrictions; upon marriage, her civil and property rights were granted to her husband and she was longer allowed to manage her own wages, make contracts, or participate in any other legal