It took more than a decade for women to get the right to vote in the United States. For nearly 100 years activists and reformers fort to win the right to vote. In the year 1848, a small group of visionaries started a movement to secure equal rights for women in the United States. According to Women's Suffrage, On August 18, 1920, the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was finally ratified, enfranchising all American women and declaring for the first time that they, like men, deserve all the rights and responsibilities of citizenship.
Before the 19th Amendment was added to the Constitution many women across America didn’t have the right to vote or participate in any political decision. Men saw women as the weaker gender and that a woman’s place was in the house cooking, cleaning, and taking care of children. Men were believed to be the stronger gender because they did all the labor and were the main provider of the house. But not long after many women wanted to have the same rights as men, like voting, equality, and working like men. According to Women's Suffrage, in 1848 a group of abolitionist activists gathered in Seneca Falls, New York to discuss the problem of women’s rights in America. The Seneca Falls convention was led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Jane Hunt, Mary Ann M’Clintock, Martha Coffin Wright, and Frederick Douglass.
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According to Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Stanton was one of the main fighters in the women’s rights movement. Like most women, she was a wife, mother, and homemaker. Stanton grew up in a privileged background and made her decision early in life to fight for equal rights for women. According to Women's Suffrage, Stanton helped with the writing of the Declaration of Sentiments modeled after the Declaration of Independence. The document compared the rights that men had to what women in America should have. For example, the right to vote, the right to own land, the right to earn wages, the right to a college education, and women being created equal to men (The Women’s Rights Movement).
Alongside Stanton was Susan B. Anthony who was not only fighting for women’s rights but too also to end slavery. Stanton and Anthony met in 1850 and worked together to build a movement that was dedicated to women’s suffrage after the Civil War. According to Elizabeth Cady Stanton, In 1869, Stanton and Anthony created a new group called the National Woman Suffrage Association which directed its efforts toward changing federal law. According to the Women's Rights Movement, the National Woman's Suffrage Association fought for women’s rights like having the same rights as their husbands when it comes to property, having the right to child custody in case of a divorce, the right to vote, and much more. Finally in Washington on January 12, 1915, the women’s suffrage bill was brought before the House of Representatives and was passed into law on August 18, 1920.
Today, women still face many problems when it comes to equal rights. Because many women are now working outside of the home, they face preambles like sexual harassment and unfair payments. Many women do the same work as men, but their salaries are different. Women’s right has become much better than it was 100 years ago. Thanks to the Seneca Falls convention led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Jane Hunt, Mary Ann M’Clintock, Martha Coffin Wright, and Frederick Douglass women would still be in the house taking care of the children. We have come to learn that women should right the same rights as men and that women do anything just as men can. It is impotent to have the same number of women and men in the area of education, politics, and business.