Chapter
12 Section 3
Objectives
•Explain how the women’s rights
movement began.
• Describe the goals of the Seneca Falls
Convention in 1848.
• Identify the new opportunities that women
gained in the mid-1800s.
A Call for Women’s Rights
Chapter
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Terms and People
• Sojourner Truth – a former slave who spoke
out for the rights of African Americans and
women
• Lucretia Mott – a Quaker and an abolitionist
with considerable organizing and public speaking
skills
• Elizabeth Cady Stanton – an abolitionist who
was a co-organizer of the Seneca Falls
Convention for women’s rights; author of the
Declaration of Sentiments; co-founder of the
National Woman Suffrage Association
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Chapter
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Terms and People (continued)
• women’s suffrage – the right of women to
vote
• women’s rights movement – an organized
effort to improve the political, legal, and
economic status of women in American society
• Susan B. Anthony – a close ally of Stanton’s;
co-founder of the National Woman Suffrage
Association
A Call for Women’s Rights
Chapter
12 Section 3
Warm Up Questions
1. List 2 things that women could not do in the mid
1800’s.
2. Sojourner Truth is unique because she was both
a former ____________ and part of the
____________ ____________ movement.
A Call for Women’s Rights
Chapter
12 Section 3
Chapter 12 Section 3:
A Call for Women’s Rights
Explain how the women’s rights movement
began.
A Call for Women’s Rights
Chapter
12 Section 3
How did the women’s suffrage
movement begin?
Women participated in abolitionism and
other reform efforts.
Some women activists also began to focus
on equal rights for themselves.
A Call for Women’s Rights
Chapter
12 Section 3
Most Americans believed that a woman’s place
was in the home.
Status of Women in the Early 1800s
• Women could not vote, hold public office, or serve on juries
• Few women received any level of higher education.
• Women could not work in most trades or professions.
• Women were paid less than men doing the same jobs.
• Married women lost legal control of any money or property
they owned before marriage to their husbands.
A Call for Women’s Rights
Chapter
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Women who were active in social reform
movements believed that they could make
valuable contributions to American society.
Sojourner Truth was one of these women.
She inspired the large crowds who came to hear
her speak in favor of political rights for women
and enslaved African Americans.
A Call for Women’s Rights
Chapter
12 Section 3
Lucretia Mott was a
Quaker and an
abolitionist who had
considerable organizing
and public speaking
skills.
In 1840, Mott traveled
to London to attend an
international antislavery
convention.
A Call for Women’s Rights
Chapter
12 Section 3
There, she met another abolitionist, Elizabeth
Cady Stanton.
Mott and Stanton were told
that women could not take
an active role in the London
convention.
Furious, they decided to hold a convention to advance
women’s rights.
A Call for Women’s Rights
Chapter
12 Section 3
The Seneca Falls Convention
Time + Place
• Summer of 1848
• Seneca Falls, New York
Purpose
• To advance the Women’s rights movement
Participants
• More than 300 women and men attended.
Declaration of
Sentiments
• Stanton wrote a Declaration of Sentiments
which demanded full equality for women in
every area of life.
• Stanton’s argument was the beginning of the
long battle for women’s suffrage.
A Call for Women’s Rights
Chapter
12 Section 3
Question:
Why was the Seneca Falls Convention so important?
A Call for Women’s Rights
Chapter
12 Section 3
The first student to get the
CORRECT answer to the
following question and who
does not call out gets an
extra credit point:
What name is listed on
this roster that we more
commonly associate
with the abolitionist
movement?
Hint: Look under
gentlemen.
A Call for Women’s Rights
Chapter
12 Section 3
Answer:
Frederick Douglass
A Call for Women’s Rights
Chapter
12 Section 3
Not everyone wanted to
include women’s suffrage
in the Declaration of
Sentiments, but in the
end the convention voted
to include it.
In 1869, Stanton and
Susan B. Anthony
founded the National
Woman Suffrage
Association.
A Call for Women’s Rights
Chapter
12 Section 3
However, the women’s rights
movement did win some
victories in the nineteenth
century:
Women did not
win the vote
nationally until
1920.
• In 1860, New York
passed a law protecting
women’s property
rights, and many other
states followed.
• Some states gave
married women the right
to keep their wages.
A Call for Women’s Rights
Chapter
12 Section 3
In the early 1800s, women were seldom given the
opportunity to study advanced subjects like math
and science.
The women’s rights movement focused much
attention on education for girls and women.
Even before the Seneca Falls Convention,
reformers worked to give girls opportunities for
better education.
A Call for Women’s Rights
Chapter
12 Section 3
Education for Girls and Women
The Troy
Female
Seminary
• In 1821, Emma Willard opened an
academy in Troy, New York.
• It soon became the model for girls’
schools everywhere.
• Many female reformers of this era
attended Willard’s school.
Mount
Holyoke
Female
Seminary
• In 1837, Mary Lyon opened the first
college for women in the United States.
• Mount Holyoke showed that women
could learn advanced subjects such as
Latin, geometry, and chemistry.
A Call for Women’s Rights
Chapter
12 Section 3
American
society came
to accept that
girls could be
educated and
that women
could be
teachers.
A Call for Women’s Rights
More schools
began hiring
women teachers
who had been
trained at one of
the new schools
for women.
Chapter
12 Section 3
Causes of the
Women’s Rights
Movement
Effects
• Women lacked many of
the rights had by men.
• Suffragists demanded that
women have the right to vote.
• Many abolitionists
believed that women
also deserved equal
rights.
• States passed laws to protect
women’s property rights.
• The Seneca Falls
Convention launched
the women’s rights
movement.
A Call for Women’s Rights
• Private schools for women
were opened; some colleges
accepted women.
• Women entered careers once
closed to them.
Chapter
12 Section 3
How would you say the following quote in your own words?
“The fact is, women are in chains, and their servitude is all
the more debasing because they do not realize it.”
– Susan B. Anthony
Servitude - The state of being a slave
or completely subject to someone
more powerful.
Debasing – to lower in esteem, or
character, to degrade
A Call for Women’s Rights
Chapter
12 Section 3
Closing Questions:
1. Identify one other movement besides the Women’s Rights Movement that
women participated in.
2. The Declaration of Sentiments is the first document which called for what?
3.
What was the first profession that women entered in mass?
4. In two complete sentences explain how the Women’s Rights Movement
began.
5. What were some of the overall goals of the Women’s Rights
Movement?
When finished work on your chapter 12 graphic organizer.
A Call for Women’s Rights
Chapter
12 Section 3
Section Review
QuickTake Quiz
A Call for Women’s Rights
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