Chapter 9 – Religion and Reform 1815-1855 Section 3 – The Movement for Women’s Rights

Private Roles for Women As industrialization and urbanization (?) increased, especially in the North, women were affected. Poorer women took jobs in factories Middle and upper class women had their time freed up by new products on store shelves. Question: how should they spend their time? Most people felt women should stay in the home. Cult of Domesticity or Cult of True Womanhood: Raise and educate children Entertain guests Serve their husbands Domestic activities, like needlework People would have been shocked to see a woman participating in public activities like politics, law, public speaking. (Dorothea Dix example?) The law: No right to vote No owning of property (most states) Could not make a will If they did work, any money earned belonged to their husbands or fathers Catharine Beecher (whose daughter was she?) wrote several books, the most important of which is A Treatise on Domestic Economy, 1841. In this book she explained why it was so important to educate women: The mother forms the character of the future man; . . . the wife sways the heart, whose energies may turn for good or for evil the destinies of a nation. Let the women of a country be made virtuous and intelligent, and the men will certainly be the same. The proper education of a man decides the welfare of an individual; but educate a woman, and the interests of a whole family are secured.

Public Roles for Women As women became more and more involved in the reform movement, they participated in parades, protests, and economic boycotts. Some even spoke at public assemblies. They started to realize the inferior position that women had, while at the same time forming ties with many other women. Most women who entered the public world at this time, did so over the issue of abolition. They saw similarities between how African Americans were treated and how women were treated (neither could vote or have other rights of citizenship). Many women became active in the abolition movement. Harriet Beecher Stowe (Catherine Beecher’s sister) wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1852, which is an abolitionist novel that opened the eyes of many northerners about what slavery was really like. Harriet Ann Jacobs wrote an 1861 book, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Sojourner Truth could not read or write, but dictated The Narrative of Sojourner Truth. 1869 – Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman. Many men felt women should not be involved – that their only influence should be within their homes. Women’s Rights Movement begins

The Seneca Falls Convention Lucretia Mott (?) and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were involved in the abolition movement. They both attended the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London, England, in 1840 and neither was allowed to speak because they were women. July, 1848. Mott and Stanton organize the first women’s rights convention in US history – the Seneca Falls Convention in Seneca Falls, NY. Stanton wrote the Declaration of Sentiments for the convention. (Play it). What does it remind you of? Suffrage = the right to vote. One of the resolutions passed at the convention asked for women to be given the right to vote. This was very controversial. Mott was against the resolution and it caused some at the convention to withdraw their support for the women’s rights movement.

Slow Progress for Women’s Rights Despite the Seneca Falls Convention, most Americans still agreed with Catherine Beecher that a woman’s place was in the home. Progress: 1820 – No college in US admitted women; by 1890, thousands of women graduating from US colleges. Joining professions they once were kept out of. Elizabeth Blackwell was the first American woman to earn a medical diploma and began practicing medicine in NYC in 1851. She later began the first nursing school in the US. Maria Mitchell became the first female astronomer. She discovered a new comet in 1847 and was the first woman elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The role of African American women None went to the Seneca Falls Convention and few attended other women’s rights conventions (why?) One who participated often was Sojourner Truth. In 1851 she attended one made up otherwise of white women. Over the objection of many delegates, she was allowed to speak. Listen to what she had to say.