It was only until the beginning of the twentieth century that women were allowed to vote in the United States. The right of women to vote is guaranteed in the Nineteenth Amendment which became law on August 18, 1920 after Tennessee's ratification as the thirty-sixth state to make the required three-fourths of states to ratify the amendment. The insult experienced by women at the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London 1848, in which women abolitionists were secluded to seat in the balcony while men sat on the convention floor, was the precipitating event for the American women's rights movement. After this convention, Elizabeth Cady and Lucretia Mott convened a meeting at Seneca Fall in New York in July the same year. It is at the Seneca Falls meeting that the Declaration of Sentiments was modeled, in which women gave reasons for their justification of fighting for their various rights including the right to vote (Zahradníková, 2010) .
Presented as evidence to the American people to support the right of women to vote was chiefly injustices against women. In the Declaration of sentiments, cited therein were various grievances that encompassed women’s societal and legal rights. They included women’s exclusion from tertiary education, business, professions as well as the glaring lack of property rights for women. Women could not own property, sign a document, get a quality education, speak publicly or be politically active (Fordham University, 1998) . In the Declaration of Sentiments, women state that they have been denied their right to participate in the elective franchise, have been compelled to abide by laws in which they never took part in legislating. They have also been made civilly dead in the eye of the law in marriage and have had their rights to property and wages alienated from them. Additionally, divorce and separation laws have been created to favor man in relation to property and custody of children, the women are taxed to support a government which hardly recognizes them, profitable employment has been monopolized by men and scanty remuneration accorded to women for those jobs they are allowed to hold (Fordham University, 1998) .
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Based on these injustices, through the Declaration of Sentiments, women identified the cause of their plight as the absolute tyranny of man and declared that “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal..." (Fordham University, 1998) . The culmination of this struggle was the granting of women's right to vote in 1920. While this was a significant milestone towards attaining equality for women, it was far from allowing women full equality and the struggle for this equality would wage on even after the ratification of the sixteenth amendment in which the right of women to vote was enshrined. As women secured a more significant presence in the public arena, backlashes ensued. For instance, Medical schools, feeling threatened by the escalating numbers of female students, opted to limit their numbers through the imposition of quotas (Zahradníková, 2010) . Disparities have also existed between the earning of male and female workers for the same jobs, with women being underpaid. The right to vote in itself was no guarantee of equal opportunities in work and education. Noteworthy, however, is that over time, women have since the sixteenth amendment made many gains towards attaining equality, especially in the education sector and within the family (Zahradníková, 2010) .
Full equality for women is as important for men as it is for women because it is one of the most crucial fundamentals for society's advancement and prosperity globally. Injustices are meted out on half of the world's population when inequality is perpetrated against women, consequently resulting in the disenfranchisement of the female population and in extension, the whole society. Supporting inequality against women also sets a precedent for men to cultivate detrimental habits and attitudes towards women, which in some cases they advance to politics, the workplace, and the international arena at large. To achieve true global peace and prosperity of society, it is paramount that women are granted equality in all spheres of human endeavor to address the issues of illiteracy, poverty and abuse experienced the world over.
References
Fordham University. (1998). Modern History Sourcebook: The Declaration of Sentiments. Retrieved January 27, 2018, from Fordham University: https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/senecafalls.asp
Zahradníková, E. (2010). Women’s Suffrage Movement in the United States, 1821-1921. Thomas Bata University in Zlin.
