07.04 Her Rights – Handout

Focus of Lesson Content:

·  Inspirations

o  By the 1830s, many women were active in reform movements

o  The Second Great Awakening inspired women to focus on solving social problems

o  Many Americans believed women to be better than men at guarding morality (“morality” means to refer to some codes of conduct put forward by a society, some other group, (such as a religion) or accepted by an individual for his/her own behavior)

·  Early Steps

o  Women believed it was their civic duty to improve society--they were active early in the antislavery and temperance movements

o  The antislavery movement derailed the push to win the right to vote for women

o  Participation in other reform movements helped strengthen the women's movement, because women's successes in them made people question the limitations placed on women in society

o  Society accepted women’s reform actions as long as women did not take men’s normal roles

o  Women could have meetings, publish essays, and speak in front of other women

o  However, they could not rise to leadership positions within reform organizations or speak to groups containing men

o  The Seneca Falls Convention in 1848 – Elizabeth Cady Stanton authorized the Declaration of Sentiments

·  Significant Steps in the Right to Vote for Women

o  In 1869, the movement reorganized specifically for suffrage

o  Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton formed the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) to focus on a constitutional amendment for women’s suffrage

o  Lucy Stone and husband Henry Blackwell formed the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA) to focus on passing laws at the state level

o  That same year in Wyoming, Louisa Swain was the first woman to vote in the nation

o  Wyoming was then a territory

o  The movement found it easier to convince the territories to include women in voting partly because their populations were so much smaller

o  In 1890, the NWSA and AWSA combined to form one national organization. Women across the nation would not all be able to vote until 1920, with the passage of the 19th Amendment