![]() Today we are living the legacy of this afternoon conversation among women friends. This was definitely not the first small group of women to have such a conversation, but it was the first to plan and carry out a specific, large-scale program. Stanton’s friends agreed with her, passionately. Surely the new republic would benefit from having its women play more active roles throughout society. ![]() Hadn’t the American Revolution had been fought just 70 years earlier to win the patriots freedom from tyranny? But women had not gained freedom even though they’d taken equally tremendous risks through those dangerous years. When the course of their conversation turned to the situation of women, Stanton poured out her discontent with the limitations placed on her own situation under America’s new democracy. On that sweltering summer day in upstate New York, a young housewife and mother, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, was invited to tea with four women friends. The Women’s Rights Movement marks Jas its beginning. Like many amazing stories, the history of the Women’s Rights Movement began with a small group of people questioning why human lives were being unfairly constricted. Throughout 1998, the 150th anniversary of the Women’s Rights Movement is being celebrated across the nation with programs and events taking every form imaginable. They have worked very deliberately to create a better world, and they have succeeded hugely. Seven generations of women have come together to affect these changes in the most democratic ways: through meetings, petition drives, lobbying, public speaking, and nonviolent resistance. Women have not been the passive recipients of miraculous changes in laws and human nature. Women themselves made these changes happen, very deliberately. ![]() The staggering changes for women that have come about over those seven generations in family life, in religion, in government, in employment, in education – these changes did not just happen spontaneously. They take the changes completely in stride, as how life has always been. And younger people, for the most part, can hardly believe life was ever otherwise. Many people who have lived through the recent decades of this process have come to accept blithely what has transpired. Over the past seven generations, dramatic social and legal changes have been accomplished that are now so accepted that they go unnoticed by people whose lives they have utterly changed. 1998 marked the 150th Anniversary of a movement by women to achieve full civil rights in this country. society.Īnother initially outlandish idea that has come to pass: United States citizenship for women. Now these beliefs are commonly shared across U.S. But these beliefs were fervently held by visionaries whose steadfast work brought about changed minds and attitudes. These beliefs about how life should and must be lived were once considered outlandish by many. Being allowed to live life in an atmosphere of religious freedom, having a voice in the government you support with your taxes, living free of lifelong enslavement by another person. Her insight has been borne out time and again throughout the development of this country of ours. ![]() Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” That was Margaret Mead’s conclusion after a lifetime of observing very diverse cultures around the world. “ Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Living the Legacy: The Women’s Rights Movement (1848-1998) ![]()
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