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The movement was sparked by women demonstrating their awareness of problems they as a group faced in a male-dominated society. In the nineteenth century, women faced not only traditional societal restrictions and expectations, but also the emerging ideas of 'separate spheres' for men and women in society, as well as the transformation of the ideal family. However, not all American women agreed with these ideas, and they believed that they deserved the same rights as American men.

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Although it was hard for the movement to gain traction in the male-dominated society of the 19th century, women finally earned the right to vote after decades of petitioning and protesting. They earned the right to vote after the 19th Amendment was passed in 1920.

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The movement's goals were to elevate the status of women in society and to gain the same inalienable rights that had been granted to American men in the Constitution.

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Women did eventually gain the right to vote in August 1920, which meant that the movement had achieved one of its goals, albeit long after the start of the 19th century feminist movement. By bringing to light the problems they faced in 19th century society, women also aimed to elevate their place in society. As the movement failed to gain traction in a male-dominated society, women were still seen as generally subservient to men, but women gained the ability to compete for jobs, and feminist movement leaders also successfully fought to rescind coverture laws.

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How Movement Attempted to Attain Its Goals

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How Movement Attempted to Attain Its Goals

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Members of the movement drew parallels between the plights of women and enslaved people in an attempt to show that women had so few rights and privileges in society that they were experiencing a life somewhat similar to that of enslaved people, and argued that they also had inalienable rights that were not being granted. Members of the movement also organized a convention in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848 in order to discuss the question of women's rights. Those in attendance helped to produce the "Declaration of Sentiments", which is the document in which members of the feminist movement laid out their beliefs and missions and their reasoning behind it. This document clearly outlined the feminist ideology and allowed men, other women, and people in positions of power to be informed about the movement and potentially take action on the behalf of women.

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Effect of the Movement on the Rest of American History

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Effect of the Movement on the Rest of American History

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The 19th century feminist movement paved the way for further fights for equality, whether it be the Civil Rights Movement (and civil rights organizations) or more recent and modern feminist movements and organizations, such as the National Organization for Women (NOW).

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Women in the 19th Century: Crash Course US History #16

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Women in the 19th Century: Crash Course US History #16

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Image Depicting the Beginning of the "Declaration of Sentiments"

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Image Depicting the Beginning of the "Declaration of Sentiments"

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Image Depicting the Names of Those Who Signed the "Declaration of Sentiments"

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Image Depicting the Names of Those Who Signed the "Declaration of Sentiments"

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Depiction of the Seneca Falls Convention 

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Depiction of the Seneca Falls Convention 

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Introduction to Women Gender Sexuality Studies

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Text Explanation of 19th Century Feminist Movement

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Text Explanation of 19th Century Feminist Movement

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What has come to be called the first wave of the feminist movement began in the mid 19th century and lasted until the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920, which gave women the right to vote. White middle-class first wave feminists in the 19th century to early 20th century, such as suffragist leaders Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, primarily focused on women's suffrage (the right to vote), striking down coverture laws, and gaining access to education and employment. These goals are famously enshrined in the Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments, which is the resulting document of the first women's rights convention in the United States in 1848.

Demanding women's enfranchisement, the abolition of coverture, and access to employment and education were quite radical demands at the time. These demands confronted the ideology of the cult of true womanhood, summarized in four key tenets-piety, purity, submission and domesticity-which held that white women were rightfully and naturally located in the private sphere of the household and not fit for public, political participation or labor in the waged economy. However, this emphasis on confronting the ideology of the cult of true womanhood was shaped by the white middle-class standpoint of the leaders of the movement. As we discussed in Chapter 3, the cult of true womanhood was an ideology of white womanhood that systematically denied black and working-class women access to the category of "women," because working-class and black women, by necessity, had to labor outside of the home.

The white middle-class leadership of the first wave movement shaped the priorities of the movement, often excluding the concerns and participation of working-class women and women of color. For example, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony formed the National Women Suffrage Association (NWSA) in order to break from other suffragists who supported the passage of the 15th Amendment, which would give African American men the right to vote before women. Stanton and Anthony privileged white women's rights instead of creating solidarities across race and class groups. Accordingly, they saw women's suffrage as the central goal of the women's rights movement. For example, in the first issue of her newspaper, The Revolution, Susan B. Anthony wrote, "We shall show that the ballot will secure for woman equal place and equal wages in the world of work; that it will open to her the schools, colleges, professions, and all the opportunities and advantages of life; that in her hand it will be a moral power to stay the tide of crime and misery on every side" (cited by Davis 1981: 73). Meanwhile, working-class women and women of color knew that mere access to voting did not overturn class and race inequalities. As feminist activist and scholar Angela Davis (1981) writes, working-class women "...were seldom moved by the suffragists' promise that the vote would permit them to become equal to their men-their exploited, suffering men" (Davis 1981: 74-5). Furthermore, the largest suffrage organization, the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA)-a descendent of the National Women Suffrage Association-barred the participation of Black women suffragists in its organization.

Although the first wave movement was largely defined and led by middle class white women, there was significant overlap between it and the abolitionist movement -which sought to end slavery-and the racial justice movement following the end of the Civil War. Historian Nancy Cott (2000) argues that, in some ways, both movements were largely about having self-ownership and control over one's body. For slaves, that meant the freedom from lifelong, unpaid, forced labor, as well as freedom from the sexual assault that many enslaved Black women suffered from their masters. For married white women, it meant recognition as people in the face of the law and the ability to refuse their husbands' sexual advances. White middle-class abolitionists often made analogies between slavery and marriage, as abolitionist Antoinette Brown wrote in 1853 that, "The wife owes service and labor to her husband as much and as absolutely as the slave does to his master" (Brown, cited. in Cott 2000: 64). This analogy between marriage and slavery had historical resonance at the time, but it problematically conflated the unique experience of the racialized oppression of slavery that African American women faced with a very different type of oppression that white women faced under coverture. This illustrates quite well Angela Davis' (1983) argument that while white women abolitionists and feminists of the time made important contributions to anti-slavery campaigns, they often failed to understand the uniqueness and severity of slave women's lives and the complex system of chattel slavery.

Black activists, writers, newspaper publishers, and academics moved between the racial justice and feminist movements, arguing for inclusion in the first wave feminist movement and condemning slavery and Jim Crow laws that maintained racial segregation. Sojourner Truth's famous "Ain't I a Woman?" speech, which has been attributed to the Akron Women's Convention in 1851, captured this contentious linkage between the first wave women's movement and the abolitionist movement well. In her speech, she critiqued the exclusion of black women from the women's movement while simultaneously condemning the injustices of slavery:

That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain't I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me!....I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain't I a woman?

Feminist historian Nell Painter (1996) has questioned the validity of this representation of the speech, arguing that white suffragists dramatically changed its content and title. This illustrates that certain social actors with power can construct the story and possibly misrepresent actors with less power and social movements.

Despite their marginalization, Black women emerged as passionate and powerful leaders. Ida B. Wells , a particularly influential activist who participated in the movement for women's suffrage, was a founding member of the National Association of the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), a journalist, and the author of numerous pamphlets and articles exposing the violent lynching of thousands of African Americans in the Reconstruction period (the period following the Civil War). Wells argued that lynching in the Reconstruction Period was a systematic attempt to maintain racial inequality, despite the passage of the 14th Amendment in 1868 (which held that African Americans were citizens and could not be discriminated against based on their race) (Wells 1893). Additionally, thousands of African American women were members of the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs, which was pro-suffrage, but did not receive recognition from the predominantly middle-class, white National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA).

The passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920 provided a test for the argument that the granting of women's right to vote would give them unfettered access to the institutions they had been denied from, as well as equality with men. Quite plainly, this argument was proven wrong, as had been the case with the passage of the 18th Amendment followed by a period of backlash. The formal legal endorsement of the doctrine of "separate but equal" with Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896, the complex of Jim Crow laws in states across the country, and the unchecked violence of the Ku Klux Klan, prevented Black women and men from access to voting, education, employment, and public facilities. While equal rights existed in the abstract realm of the law under the 18th and 19th amendments, the on-the-ground reality of continued racial and gender inequality was quite different.

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Introduction to Women Gender Sexuality Studies

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What has come to be called the first wave of the feminist movement began in the mid 19th century and lasted until the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920, which gave women the right to vote. White middle-class first wave feminists in the 19th century to early 20th century, such as suffragist leaders Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B.

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Image Depicting NOW's 1966 Statement of Purpose

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Image Depicting NOW's 1966 Statement of Purpose

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Although there were many women who influenced the 19th century feminist movement, Lucretia Mott is especially notable for having been present and at the forefront of most of the key points of the feminist movement.

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How Background Experiences Led to Involvement

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How Background Experiences Led to Involvement

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Mott was a woman and a Quaker. Unlike most religions, Quakerism had long embraced the idea of sexual equality and had not only tolerated but sometimes encouraged women to become preachers and community leaders - roles that include and extend beyond being a publicly seen member of the community. Mott, having experience with a community where sexual equality is the expectation, used her background to help the feminist movement reflect the same ideas of equality and equal rights onto American society as a whole.

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Role that Key People Played in the Movement

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Role that Key People Played in the Movement

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Mott was among the more well-known figures of the feminist movement, and was known to have been an outspoken reformer even prior to the organized movement. She was one of the women turned away from the world antislavery convention in London, and one of the women who redefined the mission of the movement, as well as helped to organize the Seneca Falls Convention. She assisted in drafting the "Declaration of Sentiments", and as such signed it upon its finalization.

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Depiction of 19th century Quaker society

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Depiction of 19th century Quaker society