For many years, women voices were not heard and were subevent to men. Women were restricted to certain freedoms and chained to a set of archaic rules. They were taught skills, such as sewing and cooking and were the property of man. During the 1700s' and 1800s', "women were not allowed to own property" and if divorced occurred, everything would go to their husbands, including children.

On 1848, in Seneca Falls, New York, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott held the first influential women's rights convection called, The Seneca Falls Convection. The document they produced was called The Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments, which is a list of grievances the women had that they wanted to address such as, "own their own wages