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Women’s Right Convention

In Class and Race in the Early Women’s Right Campaign, Angela Davis depicts the conflict of interests and struggles within the women’s right movement. Davis starts her argument by informing us about the demands and sentiments of the white upper-class women who declared at the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848. In that occasion,  privileged white women spoke about equal rights between the sexes, changes in the gender roles of women, and criticized the oppression of the marriage institution. These women opposed male domination in areas of education, professions, health  and demanded economic freedom.

However, David shows that these affluent class women did not include in their declaration the demands and interests of working class white women and women of color. Upper-class women wanted to share their social rank with men.Their main goal was to obtain political participation and the right to vote. But  women  who belonged to lower social strata wanted rights as well. Emancipation, recognition, basic rights, and access to education and regulations in their workplaces were some of their grievances. The first convention was not successful because women were not unified. But it was a positive outcome to uncover that social class and race were other structural issues that overlapped within the women’s right.

On the other hand, in future conventions advocates of the women’s movement such as Charlotte Woodward, would represent a larger number of working class-white women, who  were treated as domestic slaves in their private homes. They complained for their fathers and brothers and husbands who micromanaged their activities and deprived them from receiving the salaries they earned sewing. Other white-working class women would join the women’s movement to fight against exploitation as well. These women were in their majority immigrants and worked in the textile industry. Women would work double shifts in crowded factories,  under terrible conditions, for minimum wages as well.  These women were active in their participation and they organized in demonstations against the industrial capitalists in numerous occasions.

Another woman who had a great impact in the women’s right was Sojourner Truth, who spoke in the first National Convention on Women’s Right in Worcester Massachusetts 1850. This women of color was an ex-slave and advocate of the abolition movement. She fought for access to education for colored women, women’s suffrage and equal rights. In her speeches she demonstrated a great strength and commitment to resist those who opposed the changes proposed by the women’s movement.

Therefore, the outcomes of these conventions were to identify that the struggles in terms of class, race and gender in the north and the south had a common denominator. Political power, economic exploitation and oppression were directed towards working class, African Americans, and women. This awareness or class consciousness was the major gain of the  women’s right movement. But the fight for obtaining equal rights, abolition of slavery, access to education, and economic freedom would continue in the coming decades.