Lavender Breeze Essay

Submitted By limitededition95
Words: 2332
Pages: 10

“If the first women God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, together women ought to be able to turn it right side up again.”
-Sojourner Truth The Feminist Movement: A period of time when women fought long and hard battles for their rights and equality. Imagine for a moment, being a woman in this current day and time and not being free to cast a vote, work for a paycheck, play sports, attend school, or obtain leadership roles within your community. Therefore, because of a birth assigned gender, females were not legally able to become independent. When more thought is applied to the matter, if it wasn’t for some brave women, neither men nor women would have the amount of opportunities that are now available to them. The movement began in the mid to late 1800 and continues through to this day. Many issues had to be addressed such as the right to vote, ownership limitations, freedom of speech, and the fact that women were legally dead in the eye of the law. This of course did not go over well with women. There was not an individual credited with starting the movement, however, the contributions of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony were instrumental to the cause. Both bold women helped to advance the movement. It started small and became a mass agreement among women from all across the nation. They were upset at the loss of their positions after the men returned from both World Wars I and II. They did not lose the confidence they gained from the experience. As for documents related to the movement, there was only one known document and it was a petition to the U.S. Senate over women’s suffrage in 1916. There were only about 100 women who signed and in 1918 President Woodrow Wilson changed his position to help support it. The first convention was held on July 19-20, 1848 in Seneca Falls, New York. Stanton and approximately five of her friends (including Mrs. Anthony), and hundreds of other women from across the nation came to the Seneca Falls Convention. They were there to face off with 50 male senators over theirs rights and the conditions available to women. These women were very patriotic and meant to help improve the republic, making life better for everyone living in it. Their message was severely misunderstood. Convincing male senators with “inferior” female thoughts and ideas was not going to be an easy task. With that in mind, Stanton thought of and used the Declaration of Independence for support and evidence for her argument, hopefully winning the senator’s favor. She also used the Declaration as framework to write “Declaration of Sediments” which was a large campaign to get more women involved in the feminist movement. This turned out to be one of the greatest successes of the movement. It described the grievances of the founding forefathers and how unfair treatment was the norm for all European Americans, and how the treatment of them was worse than of black women. It was signed by 68 women and 32 men. This gave Stanton, Anthony, and many more women hope for the future. After a few hours of discussion, the question of women’s vote came into the picture. This began to be hotly debated among the members of the convention. This turned the whole convention upside down. Hope was beginning to fade for women. Stanton anticipated “misconception, misrepresentation, and ridicule” to happen during the convention. Newspapers took the opportunity to backlash the day old movement. The papers would use quotes and the signer’s names to shame the women. This lead to many withdraws of signatures and made many women remain quiet. Many more remained strong and firm. To the surprise of the newspapers, they actually helped the movement more than hurting it. They ended up spreading Stanton’s and Anthony’s messages of women suffrage to all parts of the nation and even to some parts of the world. They had helped to spread the attention to the issues women faced. Women had gained more