Women's Role

“Women’s Roles Then & Now”

Diane Pavia

Strayer University

World Cultures – HUM112

Dr. Dennis Bull

February 27, 2013

Women of the 18th and 19th centuries and even women today have all had different roles in society. Two women that were famous during that century were Susan B. Anthony and Harriet Tubman. Susan B. Anthony was a key spokesperson for the 19th century women's suffrage movement. Her occupation was most noted as an activist, reformer, teacher, and lecturer. Harriet Tubman was known for her work with Underground Railroad, Civil War service, and later, her advocacy of woman suffrage. Her occupation was a fugitive slave, worked as an Underground Railroad conductor, abolitionist, spy, soldier, Civil War, African American, and nurse.

Susan B. Anthony was raised in New York as a Quaker. She taught for a few years at a Quaker seminary and from there became a headmistress at a women's division of a school. At 29 years old Anthony became involved in abolitionism and then temperance. A friendship with Amelia Bloomer led to a meeting with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who was to become her lifelong partner in political organizing, especially for women's rights and woman suffrage. Her friend

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, married and mother to a number of children, served as the writer and idea-person of the two, and Susan B. Anthony, never married, was more often the organizer and the one who traveled, spoke widely, and bore the brunt of antagonistic public opinion. After the Civil War, discouraged that those working for "Negro" suffrage were willing to continue to exclude women from voting rights, Susan B. Anthony became more focused on woman suffrage. She helped to found the American Equal Rights Association in 1866, and in 1868 with Stanton as editor, became publisher of Revolution. Stanton and Anthony founded the National Woman Suffrage Association, larger than its rival American Woman Suffrage Association, associated with Lucy Stone, with which...