When women can support themselves, have entry to all the trades and professions, with a house of their own over their heads and a bank account, they will own their bodies and be dictators in the social realm.
Elizabeth Cady StantonRead
American women of wealth, education, virtue and refinement, if you do not wish the lower orders of Chinese, Africans, Germans and Irish, with their low ideas of womanhood, to make laws for you and your daughters awake to the danger of your present position and demand that woman, too, shall be represented in the government!
Interpretation
What this quote means
Elizabeth Cady Stanton urges educated and affluent American women to demand political representation to protect their rights and values.
In this quote, Stanton passionately calls on women of privilege in America to recognize the threats posed by social and cultural inequalities. She emphasizes the importance of women's representation in government as a critical means to safeguard their interests and maintain their ideals of womanhood against the influential perspectives of marginalized groups. By awakening to their position and demanding equality, Stanton believes women can play a vital role in shaping laws that affect their lives.
Themes
Women'S RightsRepresentationPolitical VoiceSocial ChangeEquality
In practice
Example use cases
During a women's rights rally, this quote can serve as a powerful reminder of the importance of female representation in politics.
More from Elizabeth Cady Stanton
All quotes →To live for a principle, for the triumph of some reform by which all mankind are to be lifted up to be wedded to an idea may be, after all, the holiest and happiest of marriages.
Elizabeth Cady StantonRead
The strongest reason for giving woman all the opportunities for higher education, for the full development of her faculties, her forces of mind and body... is the solitude and personal responsibility of her own individual life.
Elizabeth Cady StantonRead
Only those who have lived all their lives under the dark clouds of vague, undefined fears can appreciate the joy of a doubting soul suddenly born into the kingdom of reason and free thought.
Elizabeth Cady StantonRead
We demand in the Reconstruction suffrage for all the citizens of the Republic. I would not talk of Negroes or women, but of citizens.
Elizabeth Cady StantonRead
Come, come, my conservative friend, wipe the dew off your spectacles, and see that the world is moving.
Elizabeth Cady StantonRead
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