Right Thing, Right Now: Justice in an Unjust World

by Ryan Holiday

There, at the Seneca Falls Convention, the women’s rights movement—led by women who were all active in the abolitionist movement—was born. “The history of mankind is the history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her,” they declared, paraphrasing and improving on Thomas Jefferson with their own declaration. Their claims were not an exaggeration. Abigail Adams had in 1776 asked her husband to “remember the ladies” when the Founders drafted the laws for a new nation. Now, two generations later, women still could not vote and were forced to submit to a government they did not choose. Once married, a woman became “civilly dead,” with no right to her own property or wages. They had no right to the custody of their own children. The best jobs were taken by men, and women expressly forbidden from them—from even attending schools where they might become qualified for these jobs. They could not sit on juries. They did not have control of their own bodies. They were held to a different code of morals and made to doubt their own value, their own powers and self-respect, to keep them dependent and at the mercy of their male counterparts.