by Tracy Thomas

Created on: July 08, 2009   Last Updated: July 11, 2009

Up until the early nineteenth century, women were treated as second class citizens. Expected to be the obedient servants of their husbands, they did not have the right to vote, to own their own property, to sign contracts or to maintain their own wages. A women's place was considered to be in her home tending to the needs of her husband and her children.

It was believed that females were fragile objects of beauty and therefore should not take part in any intense physical or intellectual activities, lest they become injured. Women were dissuaded from stating their own opinions and strongly discouraged from pursuing an education. Held captive by the bonds of archaic, religion-based sex roles, women did not speak in public or travel alone because it was viewed as improper.

Then along came Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, two progressive women who dared to challenge the male dominated status quo. In 1848 the two decided to hold a convention to discuss the rights of women. Stanton created the Declaration of Principles and presented it at the Seneca Falls Convention. Following much debate, the call for woman suffrage was passed and the Declaration of Sentiments, based on the Declaration of Independence, was created to spell out the suffragist's demands.

Annual conventions and much discussion continued for the next eighteen years. In 1866 Stanton and her colleagues established the American Equal Rights Association, an effort to organize and strengthen the fight for women's rights. In an affront to the movement, ratification to the Fourteenth Amendment was passed which excluded women from the vote by stating that the definition of both citizenship and voters was male. Two years later, in 1870, the Fifteenth Amendment was ratified to enfranchise black men. These continuous attempts to deny women the right to vote only served to empower the suffrage movement.

In 1872 Susan B. Anthony was arrested while trying to cast her vote for Ulysses S. Grant in the Presidential Election. The arrest and the days leading up to her subsequent trial, provided Anthony with an opportunity to present speeches to large audiences on women's suffrage, which helped to further the cause. In 1878, a Woman's Suffrage Amendment was introduced to the United States Congress, yet women did not receive the right to vote until 42 years later.

It was not until the year 1919, following over 50 years of protests for women's rights, that both houses of Congress passed the Nineteenth Amendment, providing women with the right to vote. After its ratification in 1920 under Woodrow Wilson, the National American Woman Suffrage Association disbanded and formed the first League of Women Voters.

Sources:

http://www.thelizlibrary.org/suffrage.html

http://www.rochester.edu/SBA/suffragehistory.html

http://www.history.com/content/womenhist/the-history -of-women-s-suffrage

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