The Seneca Falls Convention was the USA’s first woman’s rights convention. It took place on July 19, 1848, at the Wesleyan Chapel in New York’s Seneca Falls. It was in this meeting where the participants launched the women’s suffrage movement that fought for women’s right to vote.

The Seneca Falls Convention was born out of the original Woman’s Rights Convention. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Mary M’Clintock, Jane Hunt, Martha Coffin Wright and Lucretia Mott organized this convention, which was aimed to fight for women’s religious, civil and social rights. The meeting started on July 19, 1848, and ended on July 20, 1848.

Although it wasn’t publicized much, over 300 participants attended. Only women were allowed to attend on the first day, but the second day was opened up for men as well.

Stanton and Lucretia were abolitionist women who met for the first time during the World Anti-Slavery Convention that took place in London in 1840. During this anti-slavery convention, both Stanton and Mott were barred from the floor. 

This aroused indignation, whose climax stirred a movement to fight for women’s rights in the US.

During the Seneca Falls Convention, Stanton said they were assembled as a protest against a government that exists against the wishes of the governed. She said that women had a resolve to be free, just as men were also free to have representatives in the government. Other participants in this convention aired the same sentiments.

The Seneca Falls Convention discussed 11 resolutions that touched on women’s rights. The participants passed all the resolutions unanimously, save for the 9th resolution, which demanded that women should have the right to vote. 

However, Fredrick Douglas and Stanton both gave moving and passionate speeches supporting the 9th resolution, and it eventually passed. However, it was not until after over seven decades and several agitations that women were finally granted the right to vote.

The 11 resolutions demanded equality of men and women. They called on Americans to do away with any laws that treated women as inferior to men. They resolved that women should have the same right as men and also have the same access to employment opportunities.