In the 1800s women were not given the same
rights as white men were given, they were thought of as "a kind of useless
but beautiful object"(the Lavender article). Through hundreds of years of fighting
for equal rights, American women have gained many rights to make them equal to
men.
Women were not very highly valued during the
1800s and had to follow certain characteristics in order to be an ideal women.
They were expected to have piety which was religious devotion; religion was
able to be undertaken within the home, where women spent most of their days.
Women were also expected to be pure, and purity was not only important to be an
ideal women, but "A woman's only power was seen as coming through her
careful use of sexual virtue."(Lavender article). This meant that a woman
could control her husband if she used her sexual virtue as a reward to her
husband for doing something she wanted. An ideal woman was also expected to be
submissive, and therefore had very little freedom. To ensure that women
remained submissive, it was required that they wore tight corsets which closed
their lungs, and pinched their inner organs, corsets and other uncomfortable
clothing that women were required to wear restricted their physical mobility,
and made them weak. Lastly, a woman was expected to live domestically, or in
the home and out of the public view, this was called the private sphere. Men
lived more in the public sphere, which was a place of commerce and economy. The
Cult of Domesticity limited a woman’s influence to the private sphere where she
spent most of her time, and therefore women were not highly valued in this time.
Many women and some men wanted to change these
unequal rights between men and women, so they held the Seneca Falls Convention.
The conventions goal was to create more equality between men and women by
creating a list of resolutions. These resolutions asked for things like equal
pay, equal voting rights and equal treatment among men and women. From The
Seneca Falls Convention the Declaration
of Sentiments and Resolutions was created. From reading the declaration, we
can see that it is very similar to The
Declaration of Independence in that the beginning two paragraphs have very
similar language. In the Declaration of
Sentiments and Resolutions it was asked that women gained the right to
vote. This idea of women’s suffrage was controversial because women were
supposed to have their opinion voiced by their husband, but women did not have
the final say, and if their husband did not have the same ideas as her, a women’s
voice would not be heard in the vote. Also, a woman without a husband would have
no opportunity to be heard, because she would have no husband to voice her
opinion to.
The Seneca Falls Convention was mostly attended
by white women and some white men, but many voices were not heard at the convention.
African American women, Cherokee women, and the women of New
Mexico had no voice in the
discussions at the Seneca Falls Convention. I studied the New Mexican women,
and found that they might have had some of the same requests, but also might
have had a few different requests. New Mexican woman had been treated very
badly by men, after the United States conquered their land. Ever since their
land was conquered it was hard for them to earn money, half of them lived in
poverty, but men were earning twice as much as the women. Before they were
conquered the women of New Mexico were able to own their own land, but these
rights were taken away after the United States conquered their land, and many
of these people lost their land. These
women might have agreed with the resolutions about equal treatment among men
and women, but might have added a resolution which granted women more rights to
land to the Declaration
of Sentiments and Resolutions.
Of all the resolutions that we discussed as a class
I think the most important resolution is equal pay among men and women. This
resolution would give women more opportunity, value, and independence. This resolution
could change the way society sees woman because it acknowledges that women can
do things just as well as men can. I think our society has come a long way, and
we have almost achieved the resolution of equal pay among men and women. But many
companies would still choose a man over a woman to do a job, because they are still
prejudice towards women.
In America people have definitely changed their
views on women, and women seem to be equal to men in most societies. There are
still some places where women are not valued, or given opportunities, but many
societies have accepted women as strong people who can do things just as well
as men can.
