On this day in Labor History the year was 1848.
That was the day the convention on woman’s rights began in Seneca Falls, New York.
The organizers of this convention brought together some of the leading woman’s activists of the day, such as Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott.
The meetings included numerous discussions on the role of women in society.
Leaders presented a Declaration of Sentiments.
It included a list of oppressions faced by women of the day.
Several had to do with work and economic issues.
For example it noted that men “monopolized nearly all the profitable employments,” while women could earn only a “scanty remuneration.”
It also declared “He closes against her all the avenues to wealth and distinction, which he considers most honorable to himself. As a teacher of theology, medicine, or law, she is not known.”
Despite these limitations, many women – poor women in particular – were forced by economic necessity to work.
By 1840, 8,000 women and girls as young as 13 worked in New England textile mills.
Women almost always earned far less than men.
Female textile mill workers in Massachusetts had formed the first union of working women in the United States, the Lowell Female Labor Reform Association.
Of course, the Seneca Falls Women’s Rights Convention provoked scorn and outrage from many, especially men.
A local newspaper wrote: “This bolt is the most shocking and unnatural incident ever recorded in the history of womanity. If our ladies will insist on voting and legislating, where, gentlemen, will be our dinners and our elbows? Where our domestic firesides and the holes in our stockings?”
Even today women still earn less than men.
For every dollar men earn, women only earn 78 cents.