Women's Suffrage- Part One
Throughout history and even by some today, women are considered less valuable than men.
Women have been historically been treated as property. Unable to disagree or disobey the men in their life. During tribal times, a man's daughter was given to someone as a wife in order to provide some advantage to their family. Peace could be made with enemies, by giving their tribesmember your daughter. Ties with allies could be made stronger. And the respect of a family could grow if their daughter were married to someone respected. Women therefore were useful and of value to their fathers for this reason. Young women were much more valuable if they were virgins. Non-virgins were and to many even today, considered used goods and less valuable. And therefore had hurt their families.
Deuteronomy 22
13 If a man takes a wife and, after sleeping with her, dislikes her 14 and slanders her and gives her a bad name, saying, “I married this woman, but when I approached her, I did not find proof of her virginity,” 15 then the young woman’s father and mother shall bring to the town elders at the gate proof that she was a virgin... 18 and the elders shall take the man and punish him. 19 They shall fine him a hundred shekels of silver and give them to the young woman’s father, because this man has given an Israelite virgin a bad name. She shall continue to be his wife; he must not divorce her as long as he lives.
20 If, however, the charge is true and no proof of the young woman’s virginity can be found, 21 she shall be brought to the door of her father’s house and there the men of her town shall stone her to death. She has done an outrageous thing in Israel by being promiscuous while still in her father’s house. You must purge the evil from among you."
Husbands were not required to be virgins.
What happens to the woman if her secret is found out? What happens if the husband was lying but her parents couldn't prove it?
What happens to the man if he's found to be lying?
Deuteronomy 22
"28 If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered, 29 he shall pay her father fifty shekels[a] of silver. He must marry the young woman, for he has violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he lives."
Because therefore, women were property. They don't have the same freedom men do.
Timothy 2:11
"A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. 12 I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet. 13 For Adam was formed first, then Eve. 14 And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. 15 But women will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety."
Corinthians 11
2 I praise you for remembering me in everything and for holding to the traditions just as I passed them on to you. 3 But I want you to realize that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God. 4 Every man who prays or prophesies with his head covered dishonors his head. 5 But every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head—it is the same as having her head shaved. 6 For if a woman does not cover her head, she might as well have her hair cut off; but if it is a disgrace for a woman to have her hair cut off or her head shaved, then she should cover her head.
7 A man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God; but woman is the glory of man. 8 For man did not come from woman, but woman from man; 9 neither was man created for woman, but woman for man. 10 It is for this reason that a woman ought to have authority over her own head, because of the angels. 11 Nevertheless, in the Lord woman is not independent of man, nor is man independent of woman. 12 For as woman came from man, so also man is born of woman. But everything comes from God.
13 Judge for yourselves: Is it proper for a woman to pray to God with her head uncovered? 14 Does not the very nature of things teach you that if a man has long hair, it is a disgrace to him, 15 but that if a woman has long hair, it is her glory? For long hair is given to her as a covering. 16 If anyone wants to be contentious about this, we have no other practice—nor do the churches of God.
1st Wave (Education,Voting & Property Rights)
Mary Wollstonecraft - (1759-1797)
During the enlightenment age, Europeans were talking about the equality of man. They weren't kidding. Even the majority of enlightenment thinkers believed all man were created equal but women were to be at the service of men. Most of Christian Europe used the bible to justify this dynamic.
During the enlightenment, rich young women were tired of being overlooked by their parents in favor of their brothers. Boys were given a full education, inherited their families wealth and family name. Meanwhile, girls were often only taught how to do chores within the house such as cooking and cleaning. Girls were often told who to marry in order to benefit their family. Wealth fathers would seek to form family connections with influential people. Marrying your daughter to a judge or son of a judge might help you and your family escape accusations of breaking the law. Women were taught how to look pretty and do chores. It's unsurprising that not all women desired this life.
One of the most notable of these women was named Mary Wollstonecraft. She was an educated woman, something many men feared at the time. Although she never said men and women should be equal, she did state that women should all be educated, claiming that women are essential to the nation because they educate its children and because they could be "companions" to their husbands, rather than just house-wives. Her daughter, Mary Shelley Wollstonecraft would go on to write the famous novel, Frankenstein.
Jane Austin - (1775-1817)
In Victorian England, educated female authors had to hide their true identity in order to avoid backlash and criticism. An educated woman was seen as a dangerous woman. Mary Evans published many successful books including a novel titled, Middlemarch. In 2015 it was voted as the greatest British novel. However, for much of her life, Mary Evans had to publish boons under the name of George Elliot. The Bronte sisters also published under male names. They published Wurthering Heights and Jane Eyre under the names Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. They worried that people wouldn't buy or read their books if they knew they were women.
Jane Austen - 4:30 to end
https://youtu.be/KwD-1rW254g?si=A4ec2Oi0jMfNeBDi
These educated women had opinions and felt compelled to express them. Their immature or ignorant younger brothers would be listened to and hold sway. But their educated and considered point of view was often dismissed.
At the time, Women couldn't sign contracts or purchase houses or land. Mary Anning, who was a British fossil hunter, couldn't take her discoveries to the scientific institutes because she was a woman. Instead, she had to send a man to present them without her.
Seneca Falls Convention - 1848
In upstate New York, educated women held meetings, promoting the rights of women to make their own money, own their own property and have an education.
Up until this time, a woman's earnings belonged to her husband, if they divorced the husband automatically gained custody of the children, and an education was seen as pointless for women. Many people, male and female, wanted this changed. However, some of the foremost members decided to fight for more, a right to vote.
When they met for a women's rights convention in Seneca Falls, NY in 1848, the desire to see women gain the ability to vote was raised. A document was read aloud:
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.
The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries on the part of man toward woman. 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 laws, 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.
• He has taken from her all right in property, even to the wages she earns.
• He has monopolized nearly all the profitable employments, and from those she is permitted to follow, she receives but a scanty compensation.
• He closes against her all the avenues to wealth and distinction, which he considers most honorable to himself.
• He has denied her the facilities for obtaining a thorough education - all colleges being closed against her.
• 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 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.
Now, in view of this 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 these United States.
Firmly relying upon the final triumph of the Right and the True, we do this day affix our signatures to this declaration."
For many there that day, the declaration was asking too much. Of the over 300 people in attendance, only 100 signed. This included 40 men, which also included Frederick Douglass.
The youngest person to sign the document was 19 years old, Rhoda Palmer. She would be the only woman there who would one day vote.
After Seneca Falls
Most of the attendees, who all advocated for women's rights, believed that allowimg women to vote, was in fact, asking too much.
Out of around 300 people in attendance, only 100 signed in agreement to ask for the right to the vote. 68 women and 32 men including Frederick Douglass. Many of the people present supporting women's rights believed that this was too extreme. This didn't stop the 100 that believed that it was the right thing to do.
When the letter was made public, many people made fun of them. Newspapers called it, "A woman is nothing, a wife is everything."
& "Insane and Ludarcis". Many men as well as women, didn't believe women were ready to have political power. They believed women were irrational, belonged at home and shouldn't be involved in politics. After being made fun of and critized so publicly, several signers withdrew their names from the document. They had figured that if everyone else disagreed with them, they must be wrong or at least they didn't want friends and family know that they had supported something so controversial.
However, news of the convention gave some great hope.
2 years after the convention, the first national woman's rights convention was held in Worcester, Massachusetts. 1,000 people attend, three times that of the Seneca Falls Convention and 10x as many than signed the document demanding the vote. Representatives from 11 states attended. People began to notice that women's sufferage wasn't just a fringe movement and was picking up steam.
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