The Declaration of Sentiments begins by asserting the equality of all men and women and reiterates that both genders are endowed with unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It argues that women are oppressed by the government and the patriarchal society of which they are a part.

usurpation. wrongfully seizing and holding by force. 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 right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

(1815-1902) A suffragette who, with Lucretia Mott, organized the first convention on women’s rights, held in Seneca Falls, New York in 1848. Issued the Declaration of Sentiments which declared men and women to be equal and demanded the right to vote for women.

Issued the Declaration of Sentiments which declared men and women to be equal and demanded the right to vote for women. Quaker activist in both the abolitionist and women’s movements; with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, she was a principal organizer of the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848. You just studied 11 terms!

It was very important for the women’s movement because it asserted that men and women are equal and both genders deserve rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. This was the base of the further women’s rights movement because it inserted the idea that men and women deserve the same rights.

During the 1800s, women had very little rights and were most definitely barred from the court system. Women could not vote, put property in their name, or even create any legal documents themselves, only a man could.