Chapter 15Section 3

How did the women’s suffrage movement begin?

Women participated in abolitionism and other reform efforts.

Some women activists also began to focus on equal rights for themselves.

Status of Women in the Early 1800s

• Women could not vote, hold public office, or serve on juries

• Few woman received any level of higher education.

• Women could not work in most trades of professions.

• Women were paid less than men doing the same jobs.

• Married women lost legal control of any money or property they owned before marriage to their husbands.

Most Americans believed that a woman’s place was in the home.

Women who were active in social reform movements believed that they could make valuable contributions to American society.

Sojourner Truth was one of these women.

She inspired the large crowds who came to hear her speak in favor of political rights for women and enslaved African Americans.

Lucretia Mott was a Quaker and an abolitionist who had considerable organizing and public speaking skills.

In 1840, Mott traveled to London to attend an international antislavery convention.

There, she met another abolitionist, Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

Mott and Stanton were told that women could not take an active role in the London convention.

Furious, they decided to hold a convention to advance women’s rights.

The Seneca Falls Convention

Time • Summer of 1848

Place • Seneca Falls, New York

Participants • More than 300 women and men attended.

Declaration of Sentiments

• Stanton wrote a Declaration of Sentiments which demanded full equality for women in every area of life.

• Stanton’s argument was the beginning of the long battle for women’s suffrage.

Not everyone wanted to include women’s suffrage in the Declaration of Sentiments, but in the end the convention voted to include it.

In 1869, Stanton and Susan B. Anthony founded the National Woman Suffrage Association.

Women did not win the vote

nationally until 1920.

• In 1860, New York passed a law protecting women’s property rights, and many other states followed.

However, the women’s rights movement did win some victories in the nineteenth century:

• Some states gave married women the right to keep their wages.

The women’s rights movement focused much attention on education for girls and women.

In the early 1800s, women were seldom given the opportunity to study advanced subjects like math and science.

Even before the Seneca Falls Convention, reformers worked to give girls opportunities for better education.

Education for Girls and Women

The Troy Female Seminary

• In 1821, Emma Willard opened an academy in Troy, New York.

• It soon became the model for girls’ schools everywhere.

• Many female reformers of this era attended Willard’s school.

Mount Holyoke Female Seminary

• In 1837, Mary Lyon opened the first college for women in the United States.

• Mount Holyoke showed that women could learn advanced subjects such as Latin, geometry, and chemistry.

More schools began hiring women teachers who had been trained at one of the new schools for women.

American society came to accept that girls could be educated and that women could be teachers.

Career Trailblazers

Margaret Fuller

• Fuller was a journalist, scholar, and literary critic.

• In 1845, Fuller published an influential book, Women in the Nineteenth Century.

Elizabeth Blackwell

• In 1849, Blackwell graduated first in her class at Geneva Medical College in New York, becoming the first woman to graduate from an American medical school.

Maria Mitchell

• Mitchell, an astronomer, was the first professor hired at Vassar College and the first woman elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1848.

EffectsCauses of the

Women’s Rights Movement

• Women lacked many of the rights had by men.

• Many abolitionists believed that women also deserved equal rights.

• The Seneca Falls Convention launched the women’s rights movement.

• Suffragists demanded that women have the right to vote.

• States passed laws to protect women’s property rights.

• Private schools for women were opened; some colleges accepted women.

• Women entered careers once closed to them.