ELIZABETH CADY STANTON'S MOTIVATION

Elizabeth Cady Stanton's Motivation

Elizabeth Cady Stanton's Motivation

Elizabeth Cady Stanton was the chief feminist and legal philosopher women's movement in the nineteenth century. Her work catalyzed the demand for civil, political, and social rights for women. Although, she is best known for her work on behalf of women's suffrage, Stanton advanced a broad platform of civil liberties for women as individuals and citizens, which she argued were different from their incidental relations of wife and mother. She sought equal rights for women in employment, education, marriage and divorce. In addition, she advocated for the reciprocal obligations of citizenship for women, seeking the right of women to sit on juries and to own the marital property for which they were taxed. The vote, for Stanton, was simply one mechanism to obtain a voice for women with which to alter the existing legal and social structure.

Women have struggled hard to have rights in this country, throughout the history. Women have been treated like second-class citizens. The battle for rights has been extensive and tough. In the early times, women were viewed as a source of bringing new human life into this world. However, they have also been viewed by the dominant group as intellectually inferior and as a source of temptation and evil. In the past, women were deprived of many rights. They were not allowed to sign a contract, own property, vote or hold an opinion that contradicted that of their husband. Women were to marry and tend to their household and husband. Education meant only learning to write and read. Few women worked, but if they did, they had no control of their earnings. They had no right to sue, and if they divorced, they lost custody of their children and possessions. Women have been considered the weaker gender. Women were viewed and today still viewed by many as weak, delicate, and not able to perform work requiring logical or muscular skills. Much of the society assigns domestic chores to women, leaving the heavier labors such as hunting and plowing only to men (Piercy, 2005).

The early days of the suffrage movement coincided and in fact grew out of the abolition movement. The sexist and exclusionary manner in which the abolitionist organizations were run led many women leaders to leave and form women's organizations. However, one other moment splintered the abolitionist and then suffrage movement—the idea that former slave men would receive the right to vote before educated women and mothers. One side, including Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, called for educated white women to receive the right to vote before former slaves and immigrant men, if there had to be a pecking order. Scholars are torn between labeling Cady Stanton and Anthony as racists as people, versus racist in their methodology, to win the vote for women (Davis, 2008).

The first debate began as an upper-class movement to allow women to retain property they inherited from their fathers after ...