The women"s struggle for equal rights has existed throughout American history. For thousands of years women had been denied of their rights and always been thought of as having a second-class role in society. Women were powerless and considered the property of men. .

             Women were only expected to fulfill certain roles in life. They have been given the role of being the weak, submissive, and a house-wife that was meant to stay home and care for the children. She was not expected to work outside the home. The women of the mid 1800"s realized that it was time for a change and so began the women"s right movement.

             It was the mid 1800"s and the women started to take a step. Women began fighting for equal opportunities just as men. On July 1848, three hundred people came together at Seneca Falls, New York, to discuss and resolve the inequities that had place women as second-class. At this meeting, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, one of the women who organized the convention and was also known as "Mother of the Suffrage Movement," presented a speech. She listed the areas in which women should have equality, and surprised everyone by including the right to vote. She had used a piece from the Declaration of Independence as her model "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal." This meeting was the start of a fight that would drag on for years.

             Women thought that the first step to gaining equality was being able to vote. The fight for the right to vote began in 1840. This was not an easy goal to accomplish. Along with other rights they wanted, they had to fight their way through state legislatures and congressional obstacles. Men argued that women were too sensitive and emotional and therefore would not be able to reach fair political decisions. Almost a century later, August 1920, the women"s right to vote was finally passed. It was the Nineteenth Amendment, "The right of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.