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Related Resources • Index to Etexts on Women's History • Mary Wollstonecraft • Abigail Adams

Note that this entry is a product of its time, and should be read in that context. Footnotes have been omitted to make the text easier to follow. Also note that scanning and editing may have introduced a few errors into the transcription. Because of these errors, if you need to use this information in an academic paper, please consult the original, available at many libraries.

This continues the entry under "Women" in the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.

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The movement for the abolition of the sex distinction in respect of the right conferred upon certain citizens to share in the election of parliamentary representatives dates for practical purposes from the middle of the 19th century. The governmental systems of the ancient world were based without exception on the view that women could take no part in state politics, except in oriental countries as monarchs. Exceptional women such as Cleopatra, Semiramis, Arsinoe, might in the absence of men of the royal house, and by reason of royal descent or personal prestige, occupy the throne, and an Aspasia might be recognized as the able head of a political salon, but women in general derived thence no political status. Though Christianity and a broadening of men's theories of life tended to raise the moral and social status of women, yet Paul definitely assigns subservience as the proper function of women, and many of the fathers looked upon them mainly as inheriting the temptress function of Eve. This view generally obtained throughout the middle ages, though here and there glimmerings of a new idea are seen; many of the great English abbesses discharged their territorial duties as landowners, and women as custodians of castles voted for knights of the shire. In the 17th and 18th centuries in England and America, under the influence of advancing political theory, and in France in the 18th century, this idea began to take shape. In England the writings of Mary Astell (Serious Proposal to Ladies, 1697) and others led to the gradual revision of the inherited idea of the education and the true sphere of women, while in 1790 Mary Wollstonecraft published her Vindication of the Rights of Women. In America the dawning of a political consciousness is evidenced by the claim made in 1647 by Margaret Brent to sit in the Assembly of Maryland as the executor of Lord Baltimore, and by the requests made by Abigail Adams (wife of John Adams), Mercy Otis Warren and Hannah Lee Corbin, that women taxpayers should enjoy direct representation. In France the movement towards democracy did not in the hands of Rousseau include the enfranchisement of women, and Comte taught that women were politically inferior to men; Condorcet, however, demanded equal rights for both sexes. Although, through an oversight, women could vote under the first constitution of New Jersey from 1776 to 1807, there is no doubt that women's suffrage had made practically no progress in any country till comparatively late in the 19th century. There has been considerable discussion as to whether women had constitutionally a right to vote in England prior to the Reform Act of 1832 (see Mrs C. C. Stopes, British Freewoman). The discussion, however, is one of purely antiquarian interest, and the Reform Act made quite clear what had certainly been the recognized custom before, by introducing specifically the word "male" in the new franchise law (2 and 3 Will. IV., cap. 45, sections 19 and 20).

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More of this article: General | Mosaic Law, Ancient India | Roman Law | Christian Law  | Northern Europe Law | English Law | Husband and Wife | Criminal Law | Education | Professions | Nursing and Medicine | Government and Politics | Women Practicing Law | Women as Clergy | Women's Rights Agitation | Woman Suffrage | Woman Suffrage 1865-1906 | Woman Suffrage 1906-1910 | Woman Suffrage Societies | Woman Suffrage New Zealand and Australia | Woman Suffrage America | Woman Suffrage Europe | Woman Suffrage International | Sources

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Part of a collection of etexts on women's history produced by Jone Johnson Lewis. Editing and formatting © 1999-2003 Jone Johnson Lewis.