K-What We Know:

-Women’s Suffrage was women fighting for the right to vote

 

-A long time ago, women were not allowed to vote

 

-Later, women were able to vote

 

-Women did a lot of suffering
(we don’t know why)

 

W-What We Want To Know:

-Why were women denied the right to vote prior to the Suffrage Movement? 

 

 

 

 

 

L-What We Learned:

 

Cult of True Womanhood:

 

-“By both temperament and ability…, women were ill-suited to hard labor, to the rough-and-tumble of political life, or to the competitive individualism of the industrial economy.”

-

“The lives of nineteenth-century women were deeply shaped by the so-called “cult of true womanhood,” a collection of attitudes that associated “true” womanhood with the home and family. In their homes, presumably safely guarded from the sullying influences of business and public affairs, women effortlessly directed their households and exerted a serene moral influence over their husbands and children.”

 

-What were women’s rights during this time?

 

-Why did some people in the early twentieth century think that women should be denied the right to vote?

Declaration of Sentiments

-“The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

-He has never permitted her to exercise her inalienable right to the elective franchise.

-He has compelled her to submit to law in the formation of which she had no voice.

-He has withheld from her rights, which are given to the most ignorant and degraded men, both natives and foreigners.

-Having deprived her of this first right as a citizen, the elective franchise, thereby leaving her without representation in the halls of legislation, he has oppressed her on all sides.

-He has made her, if married, in the eye of the law, civilly dead.

-He has taken from her all right in property, even to the wages she earns.

-He has made her morally, an irresponsible being, as she can commit many crimes with impunity, provided they be done in the presence of her husband. In the covenant of marriage, she is compelled to promise obedience to her husband, he becoming, to all intents and purposes, her master—the law giving him power to deprive her of her liberty and to administer chastisement.

-He has so framed the laws of divorce, as to what shall be the proper causes and, in case of separation, to whom the guardianship of the children shall be given, as to be wholly regardless of the happiness of the women—the law, in all cases, going upon a false supposition of the supremacy of man and giving all power into his hands.

-After depriving her of all rights as a married woman, if single and the owner of property, he has taxed her to support a government which recognizes her only when her property can be made profitable to it.

-He has monopolized nearly all the profitable employments, and from those she is permitted to follow, she receives but a scanty remuneration. He closes against her all the avenues to wealth and distinction which he considers most honorable to himself. As a teacher of theology, medicine, or law, she is not known.

-He has denied her the facilities for obtaining a thorough education, all colleges being closed against her.

-He allows her in church, as well as state, but a subordinate position, claiming apostolic authority for her exclusion from the ministry, and, with some exceptions, from any public participation in the affairs of the church.

-He has created a false public sentiment by giving to the world a different code of morals for men and women, by which moral delinquencies which exclude women from society are not only tolerated but deemed of little account in man.

-He has usurped the prerogative of Jehovah himself, claiming it as his right to assign for her a sphere of action, when that belongs to her conscience and to her God.

-He has endeavored, in every way that he could, to destroy her confidence in her own powers, to lessen her self-respect, and to make her willing to lead a dependent and abject life.”

 

 

-What happened that made women in the early twentieth century want to gain the right to vote?

 

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpedu/lessons/99/suffrage/legal.html

 

-“A realization of the abstract injustice of the laws governing the property of married women, as well as the moral awakening that accompanied the anti-slavery agitation, led to the first organized effort, in the history of the race, among women, to improve their legal status.”

Declaration of Sentiments

-“Now, in view of [the] entire disfranchisement of one-half the people of this country, their social and religious degradation, in view of the unjust laws above mentioned, and because women do feel themselves aggrieved, oppressed, and fraudulently deprived of their most sacred rights, we insist that they have immediate admission to all the rights and privileges which belong to them as citizens of the United States.”

-“We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights governments are instituted, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of those who suffer from it to refuse allegiance to it, and to insist upon the institution of a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.”