History of feminism
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott met in 1840 while en route to London where they were shunned as women by the male leadership of the first World's Anti-Slavery Convention. In 1848, Mott and Stanton held a woman's rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York, where a declaration of independence for women was drafted. Lucy Stone helped to organize the first National Women's Rights Convention in 1850, a much larger event at which Sojourner Truth, Abby Kelley Foster, and others spoke sparked Susan B. Anthony to take up the cause of women's rights. In December 1851, Sojourner Truth contributed to the feminist movement when she spoke at the Women’s Convention in Akron, Ohio. She delivered her powerful “Ain’t I a Woman” speech in an effort to promote women’s rights by demonstrating their ability to accomplish tasks that have been traditionally associated with men. Barbara Leigh Smith met with Mott in 1858, strengthening the link between the transatlantic feminist movements.
Equality feminism
In both law and in theology women were portrayed as both physically and intellectually inferior. One of the first feminist documents that set the stage for feministic movements occurred when Mary Wollstonecraft wrote "Vindication of the Rights of Woman" in 1792. While this literature was seen as rebellious at the time it echoed the feelings of women throughout France as women's republican clubs demanded that liberty, equality and fraternity should be applied to both men and women. While this movement gained notoriety it was eventually extinguished by Napoleon Bonaparte's Code Napoleon that established that the husband had complete control over the family and regressed equality feminism.