Women in the U.S. and England in 1840s were actively engaged in the battle against slavery, and from that group of activists and abolitionists were drawn many of the major voices in what would become the women's movement:



The seed for the first Woman's Rights Convention was planted in 1840, when Elizabeth Cady Stanton met Lucretia Mott at the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London, the conference that refused to seat Mott and other women delegates from America because of their sex. Stanton, the young bride of an antislavery agent, and Mott, a Quaker preacher and veteran of reform, talked then of calling a convention to address the condition of women. Eight years later, it came about as a spontaneous event. In July 1848, Mott was visiting her sister, Martha C. Wright, in Waterloo, New York. Stanton, now the restless mother of three small sons, was living in nearby Seneca Falls. A social visit brought together Mott, Stanton, Wright, Mary Ann McClintock, and Jane Hunt. All except Stanton were Quakers, a sect that afforded women some measure of equality, and all five were well acquainted with antislavery and temperance meetings. Fresh in their minds was the April passage of the long-deliberated New York Married Woman's Property Rights Act, a significant but far from comprehensive piece of legislation. The time had come, Stanton argued, for women's wrongs to be laid before the public, and women themselves must shoulder the responsibility. Before the afternoon was out, the women decided on a call for a convention "to discuss the social, civil, and religious condition and rights of woman."

"I was born and lived almost forty years in South Bristol, Ontario County--one of the most secluded spots in Western New York, but from the earliest dawn of reason I pined for that freedom of thought and action that was then denied to all womankind ... But not until that meeting at Seneca Falls in 1848, of the pioneers in the cause, gave this feeling of unrest form and voice, did I take action."

—Emily Collins For Emily Collins, who went on to start a local equal rights organization, and for other women of the 1840s America, the news of a women's rights convention was a vivid reminder of their inferior status. By law or by custom, an unmarried woman generally did not vote, speak in public, hold office, attend college, or earn a living other than as a teacher, seamstress, domestic, or mill worker. A married woman lived under these restrictions and more: she could not make contracts, sue in court, divorce an abusive husband, gain custody of her children, or own property, even the clothes she wore. Though middle-class wives reigned over the domestic sphere, legally their husbands controlled them. Individual women publicly expressed their desire for equality, but it was not until 1848 that a handful of reformers in Seneca Falls, New York, called "A Convention to discuss the social, civil, and religious condition and rights of Woman."

Signatures to the "Declaration of Sentiments"

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one portion of the family of man to assume among the people of the earth a position different from that which they have hitherto occupied, but one to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes that impel them to such a course. 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 powers from the consent of the governed. Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these rights, 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. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed, but when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their duty to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of the women under this government, and such is now the necessity which constrains them to demand the equal station to which they are entitled. The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpation on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her. 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 her from rights which are given to the most ignorant and degraded men—both natives and foreigners. Having deprived her of this first right as a citizen, the elective franchise, thereby leaving her without representation in the halls of legislation, he has oppressed her on all sides. He has made her, if married, in the eye of the law, civilly dead. He has taken from her all right in property, even to the wages she earns. He has made her morally, an irresponsible being, as she can commit many crimes with impunity, provided they be done in the presence of her husband. In the covenant of marriage, she is compelled to promise obedience to her husband, he becoming, to all intents and purposes, her master - the law giving him power to deprive her of her liberty, and to administer chastisement He has so framed the laws of divorce, as to what shall be the proper causes of divorce, in case of separation, to whom the guardianship of the children shall be given; as to be wholly regardless of the happiness of the women - the law, in all cases, going upon a false supposition of the supremacy of a man, and giving all power into his hands. After depriving her of all rights as a married woman, if single and the owner of property, he has taxed her to support a government which recognizes her only when her property can be made profitable to it. He has monopolized nearly all the profitable employments, and from those she is permitted to follow, she receives but a scanty remuneration. He closes against her all the avenues to wealth and distinction, which he considers most honorable to himself. As a teacher of theology, medicine, or law, she is not known. He has denied her the facilities for obtaining a thorough education - all colleges being closed against her. He allows her in church, as well as State, but a subordinate position, claiming Apostolic authority for her exclusion from the ministry, and, with some exceptions, from any public participation in the affairs of the Church. 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 usurped the prerogative of Jehovah himself, claiming it as his right to assign for her a sphere of action, when that belongs to her conscience and her God. 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.

Resolved, That such laws as conflict, in any way, with the true and substantial happiness of woman, are contrary to the great precept of nature, and of no validity; for this is "superior in obligation to any other. Resolved, That all laws which prevent woman from occupying such a station in society as her conscience shall dictate, or which place her in a position inferior to that of man, are contrary to the great precept of nature, and therefore of no force or authority. Resolved, That woman is man's equal—was intended to be so by the Creator, and the highest good of the race demands that she should be recognized as such. Resolved, That the women of this country ought to be enlightened in regard to the laws under which they -live, that they may no longer publish their degradation, by declaring themselves satisfied with their present position, nor their ignorance, by asserting that they have all the rights they want. Resolved, That inasmuch as man, while claiming for himself intellectual superiority, does accord to woman moral superiority, it is pre-eminently his duty to encourage her to speak, and teach, as she has an opportunity, in all religious assemblies. Resolved, That the same amount of virtue, delicacy, and refinement of behavior, that is required of woman in the social state, should also be required of man, and the same tranegressions should be visited with equal severity on both man and woman. Resolved, That the objection of indelicacy and impropriety, which is so often brought against woman when she addresses a public audience, comes with a very ill grace from those who encourage, by their attendance, her appearance on the stage, in the concert, or in the feats of the circus. Resolved, That woman has too long rested satisfied in the circumscribed limits which corrupt customs and a perverted application of the Scriptures have marked out for her, and that it is time she should move in the enlarged sphere which her great Creator has assigned her.2 Resolved, That it is the duty of the women of this country to secure to themselves their sacred right to the elective franchise. Resolved, That the equality of human rights results necessarily from the fact of the identity of the race in capabilities and responsibilities. Resolved, therefore, That, being invested by the Creator with the same capabilities, and the same consciousness of responsibility for their exercise, it is demonstrably the right and duty of woman, equally with man, to promote every righteous cause, by every righteous means; and especially in regard to the great subjects of morals and religion, it is self-evidently her right to participate with her brother in teaching them, both in private and in public, by writing and by speaking, by any instrumentalities proper to be used, and in any assemblies proper to be held; and this being a self-evident truth, growing out of the divinely implanted principles of human nature, any custom or authority adverse to it, whether modern or wearing the hoary sanction of antiquity, is to be regarded as self-evident falsehood, and at war with the interests of mankind.

In 1848, Douglass was the only African American to attend the Seneca Falls Convention, the first women's rights convention, in upstate New York. Elizabeth Cady Stanton asked the assembly to pass a resolution asking for women's suffrage. Many of those present opposed the idea, including influential Quakers James and Lucretia Mott. Douglass stood and spoke eloquently in favor; he said that he could not accept the right to vote as a black man if women could not also claim that right. He suggested that the world would be a better place if women were involved in the political sphere. “In this denial of the right to participate in government, not merely the degradation of woman and the perpetuation of a great injustice happens, but the maiming and repudiation of one-half of the moral and intellectual power of the government of the world.” After Douglass's powerful words, the attendees passed the resolution.

It attracted women like Emily Collins , who was both an abolitionist and suffragist, discussed in the article, Why a Woman's Rights Convention? The opening paragraphs of the Declaration of Sentiments were modeled on the Declaration of Independence.More of The Sentiments The Resolutions The right to vote resolution was the one that almost didn't pass. It was Frederick Douglass who carried the day:Douglass would later split with Stanton over the 15th Amendment giving black men the right to vote, and this would also cause a racial split in the women's movement, which I've discussed in " The ballot and black women ."

It would be decades before women finally gained the constitutional right to vote in 1920, after years of pitched battles and suffragist actions.

After winning the franchise, women's struggles, though not on hiatus, took a back burner in many ways—to wars, and other movements, but by the 1970s women's dissatisfaction with their second-class status in U.S. society bubbled up yet again.

And so, a torch was lit in Seneca Falls and a marathon was run carrying it to the opening of the National Women's Conference in Houston, Texas:



Two months before the First National Women's Conference was held in Houston in November 1977, a torch was lit 2,600 miles away in Seneca Falls, N.Y., site of the first women's rights convention in 1848. Carrying the torch was Kathy Switzer, who had broken the gender barrier in the Boston Marathon a decade before. She passed it to Olympic swimmer Donna deVarona. Over 51 days, the torch traveled through Central Park and down Park Avenue in Manhattan; to Washington, D.C., and into Lafayette Park across from the White House, scene of many a suffrage protest; to Montgomery and Selma Ala., civil rights landmarks and to the Beaumont, Texas, birthplace of multi-talented -Olympic track athlete "Babe" Didrikson Zaharias. The torch-bearers, of every ethnicity in the country, also linked past to present: They were descendants of 19th century women's rights activists; outstanding athletes and girls from local high schools; grandmothers, moms and kids; pregnant women; women in wheelchairs. More than 1,000 women, holding U.S. flags aloft, came out to walk the last mile to the conference hall. "The road to Houston started more than a century and a half ago, when American women began organizing to win the rights of citizenship," presiding officer Bella Abzug, the congresswoman from New York, said in her opening remarks. Texas Rep. Barbara Jordan, who in 1976 had been the first woman and African American to keynote the Democratic convention, galvanized nearly 2,000 delegates, thousands of other guests and the worldwide media. The conference "mission" was to create a national plan of action toward full gender equality.

You can watch the runners in this video clip:

More on the National Women's Conference:



During November 18–21, 1977, 20,000 women descended upon Houston, Texas for the National Women's Conference. The goal was to hammer out a Plan of Action to be presented to the Carter Administration and Congress for consideration and/or adoption. Each of the twenty-six Resolutions on Women's Rights in the Plan was proposed to the attendees and voted upon collectively. The Conference was chaired by Member of Congress Bella Abzug. The opening ceremony speakers included: First Ladies Rosalynn Carter, Betty Ford and Lady Bird Johnson, activists Coretta Scott King, Bella Abzug, Betty Friedan, Barbara Jordan, Liz Carpenter, and Jean Stapleton. Maya Angelou read the declaration of intent. Heated debates ensued over 26 major topics addressed at the Conference, such as the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), reproductive rights, child care funding, sexual orientation, and the rights of disabled, minority and aging women. There was also a lengthy discussion about disarmament and a series of talks featuring numerous women who had reached impressive levels of responsibility in governmental positions such as chair of Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), Assistant Secretary for the United States Department of Commerce, and head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Outcome "The National Plan of Action [of the National Women's Conference] was submitted to the president and Congress in March 1978, and a month later Carter established the National Advisory Committee for Women. The Senate granted a three-year extension for ratification of the ERA within a year of the Houston meeting; this unprecedented move was viewed as a major postconference achievement, despite the final failure of the amendment in 1982." Under political pressure, President Carter fired Abzug from the Commission. No further action was taken by the Administration or Congress on the Plan.

From the trailer description of Sisters of 77:



Twenty thousand people from across the U.S. gathered in Houston, Texas on a historic weekend in November 1977 for the first federally funded National Women's Conference, aiming to end discrimination against women and promote their equal rights. In the crowd were former first ladies Betty Ford and Lady Bird Johnson, current first lady Rosalyn Carter and women of all ages, ethnicities and political backgrounds. Combining footage of the conference with interviews—both then and now—with influential women’s leaders such as Barbara Jordan, Bella Abzug, Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, Eleanor Smeal, Ann Richards and Coretta Scott King, SISTERS OF '77 is a fascinating look at that pivotal weekend in 1977, an event that not only changed the lives of the women who attended, but the lives of Americans everywhere. Filmmakers Cynthia Salzman Mondell and Allen Mondell began researching SISTERS OF ’77 as an opportunity to capture an historic event that was also part of their personal history: Salzman Mondell, who attended the conference, was also one of the many relay runners that helped carry a torch to Houston from Seneca Falls, New York—the site of the first U.S. women’s rights convention in 1848. On the table at the 1977 conference were countless hot-button issues that ran the gamut of American women's concerns: equal pay, day care, healthcare, minority rights, abortion, lesbian rights and workplace discrimination. After four days of feverish arguments, all-night caucuses, and with the attention of both protesters and the world's media upon them, the women hammered out a plan of action, ending the weekend ready to take on the world.

Some of you reading here today were not even born in 1977, or were too young to remember the excitement generated by the conference. I was elated to find the entire film on YouTube in five parts.

Here's Part One, with links below to the other four.







Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5

During the '60s and '70s, in what has often been called the "second wave" of feminism, many doors began to open for women as a result of political action and protests, starting in 1963 with the Equal Pay Act, and with gender discrimination being made illegal as part of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

When I wrote about Mary Dore's documentary about that time period in the movement, "She's Beautiful When She's Angry," I shared this anecdote:



Amy Kesselman, professor emeritus, Women's Studies at SUNY New Paltz, and co-author of a seminal women's studies textbook, Women: Images & Realities, though now retired, comes back each semester to lecture our very large class on the second wave, which she was a part of. She does an interesting exercise with the students at the beginning of the lecture. Most of them are first-year students, or taking their first women's studies class. It's a large class, with over 100 students, who are predominately female. She tells them to stand up (and keep standing): ...if you or anyone you know ever had a legal abortion.

(about a third of the students stand)

(about a third of the students stand) ...if you or anyone you know ever used a rape hotline or battered women's shelter

(a few more rise)

(a few more rise) ...if you or anyone you know has ever worked in a job which was traditionally considered to be 'a man's job'

(by this time two-thirds of the group is standing)

(by this time two-thirds of the group is standing) ...if you have ever played a team sport

(almost everyone is now on their feet)

(almost everyone is now on their feet) ...if you have ever taken a women's studies course

(the four or five still seated stand up) With the entire group is standing, she asks them,"What do these things, and you all have in common?" Rarely are any of the students able to connect the dots. She tells them to be seated, and explains that all of the above are a result of the second wave women's movement. During the course of the lecture, it becomes very clear that our young women and men have no real concept of our very recent history, or of the gains we made—through struggle—and how they have benefited. During that same class, I'm fond of remarking, "We're not dead and buried," yet few students—if any—can name specific women feminists, who were part of that second wave. Not even the "big" names, like Gloria Steinem, who most readers of this piece would assume everyone knows. I draw blank stares when I ask them to name black, Latina, Asian-American, and Native American women who were organizing during that time. They all know Malcolm X. None know the name of the activist woman in whose arms he died—Yuri Kochiyama. They all know about rapper Tupac Shakur, but none know of his mother, Black Panther Party member Afeni Shakur. A few have heard of SNCC, but they didn't know about Fran Beal. Even though Barbara Smith, co-founder of the Cohambe River Collective, has been an elected official in our nearby state capitol of Albany, and is a key founder of black women's feminist theory—they've never heard of her.

While this history was being buried and lost, and when divisions grew wider between the economic achievements of men (yes, there is still an economic gap in pay between women and men, and especially for women of color ), the right wing, including the religious right in the U.S., ramped up the volume against everything we had gained and poured massive amounts of money into lobbying and legislative efforts to turn back the clock. We refer to it as " the war on women ," and we are not winning that war.

Rights to control our own bodies are eroding, state by state. Though the Women’s Health Protection Act (S. 217/H.R. 448) was introduced in 2013, it had no chance of being passed with the current composition of Congress:



After first introducing the bill in November 2013, Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Representative Judy Chu (D-CA) re-introduced the Women’s Health Protection Act on January 21, 2015 — in an effort to defend access to safe, legal, essential reproductive health care and the constitutional rights of every woman in the U.S., regardless of where she happens to live. The Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the Women’s Health Protection Act in July 2014. This opportunity signified important progress for the bill, bringing women a step closer to cementing federal protection against the state-by-state erosion of women’s constitutionally protected rights.

... After years of relentless assaults on women’s health, safety, and constitutional rights, it’s about time we had a law that puts women’s health and rights first. The Women’s Health Protection Act protects and promotes a woman’s health and individual constitutional rights, no matter where she lives by: Prohibiting laws that interfere with the medical decisions that are rightfully made by a woman in consultation with the medical professionals she trusts; Outlawing regulations that threaten women’s health by choking off access to high-quality, safe, legal health care, while preserving regulations that already exist to ensure women’s safety; and Giving us the legal tools to repeal the harmful restrictions and regulations that have forced too many reproductive health providers to close their doors.

"Sometimes in contemporary American life, we come to believe that all the great causes are over, that the past generation fought all the important battles: abolition, the Civil Rights Movement, women’s suffrage. But it’s not true. In fact, one of the most important battles is the one that you are engaged in now."

Republican Presidential candidate Marco Rubio recently compared his campaign to abolish women's reproductive rights at home and abroad to the women's suffrage movement, the abolition of slavery, and the civil rights movement. He said:Hypocrisy at its finest. We are supposed to believe that he is now a torch-bearer for freedom.

Say "Hell No!" to Rubio and their entire chorus line of clown car candidates.

We need to elect Democrats who support women's rights and reproductive justice, who are anti-rape and who will support legislation designed to outlaw violence against women, and who will push for economic justice for all. We need to elect them to the White House, the Congress, and statehouses across the nation.

Stop Republicans from turning back time. We've come too far to be turned around.

Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around: Boston Children's Chorus