The Women's Suffrage Movement During The Early Twentieth Century

“ A crusade in political education by women and for women, and for most of its existence, a crusade in search of a consistency” this quote by historian Nancy Woloch describes early suffragists efforts to take one step further to equality among men and women (Office of the Historian, 2007). The women 's suffrage movement changed the political, social and economic stance of women in The United States during the early twentieth century. Today women are one step closer to full equality of the sexes because of the women who fought for suffrage. Before this became the huge movement it was still legal for some women to vote in a few states. In Massachusetts and New York emphasis placed on owning property was the determining factor in voting rights. This allowed a few women, mainly widows who had inherited property from their diseased husbands, to vote( Hill, 2006). Having those few women vote was not an issue because they owned property just like everyone else who voted in the late 18th century. Later the requirements for voting became more exclusive leading into the nineteenth century, and as an affect women and a few men formed various reform groups across the United States (History.com, 2010). One of these movements involving the

Two women, Elizabeth Stanton and Lucretia Mott, decided to call a convention in Seneca Falls, New York taking the women’s rights movement to a national level (Hill,2006). Before the women’s rights movement had just been in small groups in different towns and cities and the convention signified the impact of this movement. July 19th and 20th in 1848 almost three hundred people showd up to the convention the majority being women although there were a few men who had attended even though the advertisement had stated the first day of the convention was for women only ( Kops, 2004 ; Lüsted,