Women's right to voteFrom our birth, we are classified into categories. The boxes are checked and the information noted in the margins. Yet it seems that the box checked that separates us the most is the first one checked. Girl? or boy? Under our current and past system of government, it seems that it is better to control one than the other. As we live in an industrialized country, we take the rights afforded to us for granted. Yet, as an American woman, I wanted to know who I could thank for the opportunities and rights I use every day. The freedoms and rights belonging to women today are attributed to women who took action against oppression and identified themselves as suffragettes. On July 19, 1848, a group of women gathered in a parlor to discuss the future of their gender. This first organized meeting of suffragists was known as the Seneca Falls Convention. It was a formation of women's rights groups across the United States. Members of this reform movement saw themselves as women fighting against the limits imposed by society. The long, divisive journey of the women's rights movement was ironically publicly sparked by a man. The Rev. Charles Grandison Finney began allowing women to pray aloud at the gatherings of his coed church. This outraged the male population of the congregation, as women were expected to remain silent and hidden while in church. This is considered the beginning of the women's reform movement. Of the movements made at the Seneca Falls Convention, the first and most important was the Declaration of Sentiments. It was signed in 1848 by 68 women and 32 men. It was a Declaration of Independence composed by men and women, contributing to the cause of women. After months of protests...... middle of paper ...... opportunities for women, but we are hampered by our male-dominated society. history of political leadership. The representation of women in the American political system must increase in order to properly govern America as a whole. As a country made up of both men and women, it is obvious that the ruling faction should be made up of the same ratio. The women who identified as suffragettes were no different from the women of modern America. They prospered at times and struggled at others. At times, they doubted themselves and their cause as a whole. Yet they still resisted oppression and domination. These women proved that a woman's place was in the house and in the Senate. These women, as Gail Collins puts it, “did not believe that the fact that things had always been done one way made them right” (Collins 105). These women were suffragettes..