Aim #29:What was life like for women in the first half of the 19th century in America?

Do now!1. Read the primary sources (pink

handout) regarding the women’s rights movement and answer the accompanying questions.

2. Please copy down this aim

(I) Background to Women’s Rights Movementa. Following the Revolutionary War, women encouraged to become

models of “Republican Motherhood” (Women were the guardians of “morality and benevolence”)

b. Market economy: impacted the social roles of middle class men and womenc. “Cult of Domesticity” (women’s role is in the home)1. Catherine Beecher wrote Treatise on Domestic Economy for the Use of Young Ladies (guidebook for wives and mothers on how to accomplish their household responsibilities)

(II) The Rise of Women’s Rightsa. Involvement in the public sphere1. Temperance movement2. Circulated petitions, attended meetings, lectures.

parades 3. Abolitionist movement inspired women’s rights (saw their plight as similar to a slave’s)b. Women were prohibited from:3. Voting4. holding office5. higher education6. owning property5. Signing a will or contract6. Bringing a suit in court without her husband’s permission7. Getting custody of their children in a divorcec. Domestic violence virtually unchallenged

(III) Key figures in the women’s rights movementa. Angelina and Sarah Grimke1. First to apply abolitionist doctrine to universal freedom and equality

to status of womenb. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott1. (1840) Delegates at the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London (they were denied full participation because they were women)2. Organized Seneca Falls Convention (1848) (marks the beginning of a 70 year struggle for women’s suffrage)2. Raised issues of women’s suffrage3. Modeled the Declaration of Sentiments after the Declaration of Independence*** 100 delegates (34 were men, including Frederick Douglass)

Seneca Falls DeclarationSeneca Falls Declaration

What It Would Be Like If Ladies Had Their Own

Way!

What It Would Be Like If Ladies Had Their Own

Way!

R2-8

Please consider these questions after watching the documentary “Great Women’s Rights Movement Footage 1970s”

1. What are the ways the relationship between the abolitionist and women’s rights movement of the 1840s is similar to the civil rights and women’s rights movement of the 1960s/1970s?

2. What complaints do you hear in common from the antebellum period (1820s-1840s) of women and the women in the documentary?