Essay About Quaker Women And Greatest Women

Seneca Falls Convention
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The Seneca Falls Convention
Woman in early 19th century created the first women’s movement and gain right on
their own names which represented start of a great fight over being recognized as an
equal human being to men. They were gaining access in many different areas: political,
legal and cultural.
Quaker women pioneered in these kinds of changes. They had organized women’s
meetings at churches and preach sometimes at the cost of their lives. Quakers had many
of the greatest women such as Lucretia Mott. But it was still not enough for a major
reform. The South was more tolerant for women and it respected it’s position at that
period. On the North opposition to slavery became moralistic and all defenders of women
rights weren’t strong enough for starting any kind of reform because it was potentially
dangerous. So by giving away more public roles to women the society on South became
more successful and more and more women got involved in public activities then ever
before. With the first thread and textile factories in small New England entrepreneurs
hired the young women as their workers. The urban economic growth also contributed to
the development of women’s voluntary associations. The majority of employed women
worked as domestic servants and school teachers. The two Grimke sisters contributed
directly to the growing strength of abolitionist sentiment. They were speaking to big
audiences and then after a short period of time they wrote a letter that denounces them
which made the following point: “We cannot therefore, bear an obtrusive and
ostentatious part in measures of reform, and countenance any of that sex who so far
forget themselves as to itinerate in the character of public lecturers and teachers
(Matthews 112). “They were significant and inspirational to a lot of other women who
did public speeches and lectures. When they retired from the front lines they remained
the two who did the most about woman’s right to be a public speaker and speak about
important issues. Sojourner Truth and Frances Harper were two African-American
women born in slavery and became active in lectures and public speaking. They made a
strong impression on everyone who heard them and they were able to deliver strong
political messages. In Boston women like Maria Weston Chapman and Lydia Maria
Child were starting to oppose slavery in public. They founded Female Anti-Slavery
Society which had both blacks and whites as their members.
In the mid 1830s white working women did not accept lowering on their wages in New
England mills. So they went in a strike. By the 1840s women all around the U.S. were
organized into thousands of societies for charity and some kind of reforms. ”Their
activities would once again expand the things that woman could do-the idea of woman’s
sphere”. (Goldberg 104)”But women in textile industry had difficulties with the male
workers. Sarah Bagley became leader of labor and she organized mill workers against
longer working hours and for better conditions. She even organize petition to
Massachusetts legislature.
Some workers used their experience to challenge the ideal of domesticity itself.
“Woman is never thought to be out of her sphere t home; in the nursery, in the
kitchen, over a hot stove cooking form morning till evening-over a washtub, or toiling in
a cotton factory 14 hours per day. But let her once step out, plead the cause of right and
humanity, plead the wrongs of her slave sister of the South or of the worker of the
North…and a cry is raised against her, “out of her sphere”. (Goldberg 108)”
in the 1840s Antoinette Brown and Lucy Stone fought against discrimination in their
fields of work, Susan Anthony in teaching profession and Lucy Stanton in medicine.
Soon in some states, where there were possibilities, national conventions were held.
Speeches, newspaper publicity, letters and petitions contributed and signified that the
movement is slowly beginning to organize. In 1840 Mrs. Mott and Mrs. Stanton had talk
about possible convention about woman’s rights. After eight year from proposing such
meeting Lucretia Mot and Elizabeth Cady Stanton finally met at New York on summer
1848 at Woman’s rights Convention to discuss about the social, civil and religious