You turn to us for voices you won't hear anywhere else.

Sign up for Democracy Now!'s Daily Digest to get our latest headlines and stories delivered to your inbox every day.

Sisters in the Spirit: The Iroquois Influence On the Early Women’s Rights Movement

Listen
Media Options
Listen

Related

    Seneca Falls, the seat of the women’s rights movement, is located in the territory of the Iroquois Confederacy. The impact of the Iroquois people on the feminist movement is a story that had been forgotten. While it was against the law for women to vote in every state in the union, the suffragists knew that women of the neighboring Indian Nations selected their chiefs. Leading feminists like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Matilda Joslyn Gage specifically described the greater rights of Iroquois women as proof that the subordinate position of women was neither natural nor divinely inspired.

    A new exhibition on view at Seneca Falls called “Sisters in Spirit: Celebrating the Iroquois Influence on the Early Women’s Rights Movement,” seeks to redress the historical omission.

    Guest:

    • Sally Roesch Wagner, was one of the first women to receive a doctorate in Women’s Studies, and she was a founder of one of the first college Women’s Studies programs.

    Related Story

    StoryMar 22, 2024U.S. Said It Was Calling for a Gaza Ceasefire, But Its U.N. Resolution Didn’t Say That: Phyllis Bennis
    The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.

    Non-commercial news needs your support

    We rely on contributions from our viewers and listeners to do our work.
    Please do your part today.
    Make a donation
    Top