1. Chapter 15 sec 3 notes
• Why did some women call for equal rights in the 1800s?
Reasons people sought equal rights for women in the mid-1800s
• Women could not vote or hold office.
• When a woman married, all of her property became her husband’s property.
• A working woman’s wages belonged to her husband.
• A husband had the right to hit his wife.
• The abolitionist movement made people aware that women, too, lacked full social and
political rights
What goals were set at the Seneca Falls Convention?
• Seneca Falls Convention—meeting held in 1848 at Seneca Falls, New York, to discuss the
problems that women faced. It was the start of the women’s rights movement, an organization
campaign for equal rights.
• Goals
• The convention issued a Declaration of Sentiments, which proclaimed, “We hold these truths to be
self-evident: that all men and women are created equal.”
• Resolutions demanded equality at work, at school, and at church.
• A resolution demanding women’s right to vote passed narrowly.
How did women win new educational opportunities?
Reformers said that education was a key to women’s equality.
Reformers opened new schools for women.
• Emma Willard opened a high school for girls in Troy, New York.
• Mary Lyon opened Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in Massachusetts, the first women’s college in
the United States.
A few men’s colleges began to admit women.
• Elizabeth Blackwell attended medical school at Geneva College in New York.
• Maria Mitchell became a noted astronomer.
• Sarah Josepha Hale became editor of Godey’s Lady’s Book.
• Antoinette Blackwell was the first American woman ordained a minister.