United States in 19th : Women’s rights

The delegates to the first Women’s Rights Convention at Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848 were veterans of other reforms. They were members of missionary societies, of the temperance movement, and of the moral reform crusade (a movement to end prostitution, obscenity, and lewdness). Most of all, they were veterans of an antislavery movement that attacked patriarchy and hierarchy in all forms. Many applied the logic of social reform to themselves, and they began to think of themselves as human beings first and as women second.

Noting that Jesus made no distinction between the proper duties of women and men, delegates to the Seneca Falls convention attacked the subordinate status of women. Beginning with a manifesto based on the Declaration of Independence, women at Seneca Falls demanded civil and legal equality for women. In particular, they wanted the right to vote. In the American republic, political participation, they argued, separated people who counted from those who did not. Encarta