all right this is openstax u.s history chapter 13 section 5 women's rights so one of the more important things to come out of the antebellum reform movement is the movement of women's rights it's important to remember that we're talking about a time period in american history where women were prohibited from holding office prohibited from voting so in order to enact any sort of public change women were very engaged in reform movements whether that was the abolitionist movement the temperance movement whatever that movement may be other various moral reform movements and it was sort of within those movements that women with the same or similar experience took up the cause of women's right so we might say that out of the antebellum reform movement out of various antebellum reforms or antebellum reform movements became the movement or women's rights and a good example of this is the case of the grimke sisters sarah and angelina grimke initially they were abolitionists right so we'll say they were abolitionists and they gave public lectures on the evils of slavery and advocating for its end however during these lectures they oftentimes would find themselves just defending the fact that they were women and had a public platform to speak not only is this a time period where women are prohibited from voting or holding office but stereotypes also really prohibit women from having a public voice and so the issue of women's rights in some sense took precedence to the issue over uh you know over abolition or temperance or whatever it was it opened up a conversation or opened up a dialogue in thinking about what is a woman's role in society and really what we mean is in the public right how public should it be and so people like sarah angelina grimke went from talking instead about the abolition of slavery went to talking about issues related to the women's rights movement those that you know sort of took up this cause labeled it or called it feminism feminism is simply just kind of another word for you know advocating for women's rights again we're talking about a wide variety of issues whether it's the right to vote the right to hold property um the right to represent one in court uh battling stereotypes you know exactly this question of uh you know what the role of women should be in society so it could take on a lot of different fronts but the first women's rights convention was held in seneca falls new york in 1848 again we called this the first there were you know there may have been some before this but this is typically understood 1848 as the first women's rights convention and it included other pioneers of the women's rights movement like lucretia mott elizabeth cady stanton susan b anthony lucy stone the story of stanton also is a good example of how this movement came out of earlier reforms she was an abolitionist along with her husband she traveled all the way to london to go to an abolitionist or anti-slavery exposition and they wouldn't let her in because she was a woman and it was from that point that you know the the cause of women's rights um you know she became a women's rights advocate as opposed to an abolitionist advocate and that was a similar experience that many of these women women had so we might call them we call them the pioneers of the women's rights movement and at seneca falls a declaration of sentiments was created it was drafted very similar to the declaration of independence right so it was inspired by the words that jefferson had written um it stated that you know like jefferson all men and women are created equal as opposed to the declaration which just said men although jefferson probably probably meant men as in mankind but also said that it was you know jefferson in the declaration of independence stated that it was you know uh the british who had exercised tyranny over the colonies uh in the declaration of sentiments it states that men exercise tyranny over women and that it is the cause of the women's rights movements to um you know to right that wrong and so this is the beginning of the movement so this is a movement that continues in the united states up through the civil war and afterwards one important thing that was established at seneca falls was to place the emphasis on suffrage like i said you know this was uh women's rights was an issue that had a wide variety of arenas that it could play out but uh you know those who consider themselves suffragettes were um you know kind of putting the uh the goal posts in place for what would be measured as equality and that was the right to vote national suffrage didn't happen in the united states until 1920 so a very long ways from 1848 all the way until 1920. others use the stereotypical position of women in society to propel themselves into the public sphere for the most part we're talking about an american culture which considers the public sphere to be you know sort of a male only sphere the domestic sphere to be a female only sphere however there was also with that stereotype that women in a sense were in control of what was moral in society they were the guardians of morality the private the home area was moral the public was immoral and so people like catherine beecher and others said well the solution or the antidote to an immoral society is to allow women to have a greater role in public society so it continued to sort of feed into the stereotypes of the day but was leveraged into getting women more influence in the public one thing that catherine beecher advocated for was education specifically more for women so they could be in charge of raising the next generation of americans catherine beecher she's the daughter of protestant preacher lehman beecher wrote the duty of american women to their country we might say about this advocated women's education