It is widely known that people viewed women as the lesser sex and many saw it as a bad thing to educate women in things such as algebra. Yet women played a big part in history especially in the 19th century as the era of reform was happening in America. Women had a big role as leaders in the religious and reform movements. Women lead the way in many reforms because it was a time of social and economic change. Women were becoming economically independent from men as they worked jobs in factories and had their own money to spend on what they want. As women became more independent they married less or later and when they did and they had children they teached their children what they believed in. Economic independence encouraged …show more content…
Women were leaders in many abolitionist campaigns because women felt like they were slaves to their husbands. If you look at women’s rights compared to slaves rights they are very similar. Women could not vote, Husbands could legally beat their wives, and women had no right to property once they became married. So women felt that they were slaves so they fought alongside slaves for freedom and for women equal rights (Reynolds). Another area that women took charge in, in particular Dorothea Dix, was in mental hospitals. Dorothea Dix had been to one of these mental wards and she saw what was happening. The caretakers at mental hospitals were treating the patients as if they were beasts and chained them up and other cruel punishments. Dorothea Dix lead the way in reform for the mentally ill and she eventually got her reforms to pass in Massachusetts and then it spread across the U.S. (Reynolds) The difficulties that women faced during the reform movements were tremendous. The beliefs of people were that women be housewives staying at home and not getting into politics. But women wanted to go out and get involved. The struggles for women to fight on their own behalf included the fact that women were not included in the constitution until 1848 at Seneca Falls when feminists gathered and rewrote the constitution to include women