Last week, on Monday July 20 I tweeted that on the same date in 1848, the first women’s convention was held in the United States. While six days late, this is the accompanying blog. Better late than never, right? In fact, this might be a sentiment shared by nineteenth century women regarding their convention and by twentieth century women once suffrage was attained.
At the time of the convention, known as the Seneca Falls Convention, women enjoyed few rights. They were denied access to most jobs, with the exception of those positions that perpetuated the traditional gender roles. While they could participate in politics by attending meetings and giving speeches, they were denied the right to vote. They had limited access to education. They were wards of their husbands and fathers, lacking the autonomy to govern their own lives. Some women compared their lives to those of slaves.
The women who claimed their lives mirrored those of the slaves, the women who participated in the Seneca Falls Convention, understood the comparison they were making. These women were veterans of the anti-slavery cause. The founders of the convention, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, had traveled to London in 1840 to attend the World Anti-Slavery Convention. However, they were barred from participating due to their gender. Eight years later, inspired by the scorn felt in London, they held the first women’s convention.
The Seneca Falls Convention gathered women together in upstate New York to raise the issue of women’s rights for the first time. Hundreds of supporters attended. The convention called for laws that would allow women to own their own property, to have access to jobs and education, to have legal equality, and they wanted to repeal laws that gave fathers custody of children in the event of a divorce. However, it was suffrage that was the convention’s most controversial issue. In fact, it was the only resolution that did not pass the unanimously. The convention also produced a Declaration of Sentiments, modeled by Stanton on Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence. The document added women to the statement that all men are created equal. It condemned the injuries and usurpations of men against women.
While it would take over seventy years for women to achieve that controversial issue of the convention, other points were taken from the convention. Several states granted women greater control in property, some made divorce easier to obtain, and finally in some places women received the right to sue in court. While it was quite a small step for women’s rights, it legitimized the movement. It gave women a voice that was not focused on the domestic sphere but instead on her status as a equal human being.
