Historical Sources on Women’s Rights

In the mid-nineteenth century, women’s rights activists called for the end of social and legal inequality for women. Although women won the right to vote in 1920 with the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, the struggle for equality was not over. Students will read primary sources related to gender discrimination, suffrage, and reproductive rights as they learn about the continued struggle for gender equality. Through these sources, students will understand how feminism has roots in the Revolutionary War and the abolitionist movement, how women moved from the private to public sphere, and how sexism continues to prevail.