StaggShire

Why do you think it took so long before women decided to organize a concentrated effort to receive equal rights? Please make your response 650-800 words.
Well beforehand there weren't very many opportunities for women to speak out. When they did speak out, they were viewed with mistrust and the perspective that that kind of women weren't "proper" or "wholesome". They were shunned in every aspect that before speaking out they were permitted to participate in, so why even try? Since society was everything in those days, I can see why women didn't go against that. Also, it's not like there were many opportunities to organize anyway.
Additionally, a woman's place before the Industrial Revolution was always in the home, and in some countries it was illegal to educate a woman. I found a quote that explains well the attitude, "Women had their responsibilities, none of which required philosophy, biology, rhetoric, and so on to accomplish. So why teach them?" "Why teach them?" or course, was the erring mentality of the ages. The male schoolteacher in Little Women says, “It is as useless to educate a woman as to educate a female cat.”
Additionally, since there was so much to do and because of agriculture farmhouses were so far apart, it made getting organized and speaking in public about ideas difficult. Also, women were very beaten down, along with men. But since they were treated even more unfairly than men were, unfortunately it seemed that white men's suffrage and rights would naturally come into play before that of women's.
Christian Pena, another member of the class, says this, " After years of 'education' (quotations added), many women were essentially trained in the art of being fragile and tender, weak and submissive. While their male counterparts were being to taught to manage money, people, and in some cases, nations, the women were learning to remain oppressed." I totally agree with that. A lot of their behavior was not necessarily nature-centered, but rather imposed on them by men and society. In matters of politics, in matters of money, in matters of philosophy, women's brains were not exercised, but rather encouraged to be feeble-minded. In addition, manner of dress has something to do with it too, as Marmee in Little Women says: "Feminine weaknesses and fainting spells are the direct result of our confining young girls to the house, bent over their needlework, and restrictive corsets." I would look pale and weak too if I never had the opportunity to exercise, be out in the fresh air, and had to wear tight little heels and big huge dresses that were impossible to run in. I wonder how much further along our world and society would be if women had been allowed to partipate fully in life earlier in the life of the world?
Also, the church wasn't restored until later, and the church, besides changing people's lives and perspectives in almost every way, treating women with much more freedom and respect than other organized societies. Joseph Smith turned the keys in behalf of women, by the inspiration of God. As God inspired the founding fathers to bring the Revolution, God was responsible for turning the keys in behalf of women. Inside the church women were able to teach and speak in public, they had experience with leadership and organization. Many of the men of the church were in prison, and while their husbands were in prison, their wives ran the family business. There was no occupation that was closed to LDS women, especially by 1886. In the temple, men and women perform the same rites, and participate equally. This has also a doctrinal implication, in that men AND women have to be together and be exalted. Through the temple clothing, women are dressed in the robes of the priesthood; they administer and receive the keys of the kingdom, given equally to men and women. With the Church and the Gospel as a jumping off point, the women’s rights movement was facilitated.