Timeline of Women’s Rights Starting in the late 1700’s states started to write legislation to remove the right of a women to vote. This first started with the State of New York with Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and New Jersey closing folling suiit. Then in 1848 women collected together in Seneca Falls, New York in what would be the first influential women’s rights convention completely organized by women in the western world. Topics discussed such as law and what role women played in modern society. One of the resutling factors of this convention was the Declaration of Sentiments that served as a foundation of the women’s suffarage movement. Such conventions happened on a regular bases, leading to annual events up until the start of the civil war.
In the mid to late 1800’s Susan B. Anthony began her persuit of women’s rights by traveling across the country and lectured for the right for women’s vote. She also campainged for the end of slavery, for the right for women to own property and advocated for women’s labor organizations. On November 18, 1872, her sufferage efforts resulted in her arrest after she participated by voting in the presidential election on November 5, 1872. After her trial and conviction she was charged a $100 fine but never paid it, but continued in her determination in supporting women’s rights.
It was fourty three years after Susan Anthonly’s arrest that Jeanette Rankin, a Montana Republican carried the distinction to be the first women elected into the U.S. Congress. It was the with the help of the work of the women’s suffarage effort that Rankin believed she had a constitutional right to not only vote, but to run for a political position. She successfully fought for a women’s right to vote in the State of Montana and decided to run for public office. She won her campaign for the U.S. House of Representatives in 1917.