¶ … Emancipation of Women

It was inevitable that women would, by early 20th century, achieve emancipation. The road towards emancipation began in the late 19th century through the agency of other social movements, especially the Anti-Slavery Society (Brammer, L., 2000, p. 21). "In 1840, the U.S. women delegates sent to the Anti-Slavery Convention in London were refused entry to the convention and forced to sit in the gallery (p. 21)."

The action taken against them at the Convention in London was enough to begin talk about the gender related disparities that were causing women to "sit in the gallery (p. 21). At that time, women did not have a right to vote, or the right to participate in socially or politically significant events, except to the extent that they demonstrated a presence in show support of their husbands. Women's significant roles were that of supporting their husbands, and functions related to the family, home, and church (Ulrich, L., 1990). However, women's rights were inevitable as was the end of slavery, because when human rights, certain basic freedoms, are denied a people, then those people will respond by rebellion and revolution against that which holds them bound.

Such was the case by the mid 19th century as women advocated the rights of all people to be free, as it followed logically that they would then seek the same rights for women as a group. On July 19, 1848,.".. The Woman's Rights Convention at Seneca Falls opened with James Mott, Coffin Mott's husband presiding over 300 people in attendance (Brammer, 2000, p. 22)." Three hundred people in attendance for a woman's rights rally was a remarkable indication of the interest and support as it existed early in the campaign for women's rights. "I argue that two distinct founding schools of suffrage history, both feminist in perspective, were evident by 1914. Two main inheritors of these schools are distinguished, and termed "new feminist' and 'masculinist' schools... (Holton, S., 2000, p. 13)." Marching in parades, demonstrating for woman's rights and no end to manipulating their husbands, women were by 1914 well within the pursuit of their rights, but had not gained the right to vote in England or America (p.13-14) on the other hand, the women of the American south seemed very much behind the times as regards the feminist movement by 1914 (Brown, a., 2000).