Women's Suffrage From the moment we are born, we are put into categories. The boxes are checked and the information noted in the margin. Yet it seems that the ticked box that separates us the most is the first ticked. Lass? or boy? Under our current and past system of government, it seems that it is better to be controlled by one than the other. Because we live in a first world country, we take for granted the rights afforded to us. However, as an American woman, I wanted to know who I can thank for the opportunities and rights I enjoy every day. The freedoms and rights that belong 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 living room to discuss the future of their gender. This first organized meeting of suffragettes was known as the Seneca Falls Convention. It was a formation of women's rights groups throughout the United States. Members of this reform movement believed they were women fighting against the limitations imposed by society. The long journey of struggle of the women's rights movement was ironically set in motion publicly by a man. The Reverend Charles Grandison Finney began allowing women to pray aloud in the meetings of his mixed church. This outraged the male population of the congregation as women were expected to remain silent and hide from view while in church. This is considered the beginning of the women's reform movement. Among the movements made during 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 made up of men and women, helping women's causes. After months of protests… mid-paper… opportunities for women, yet we are stymied in our predominantly male society history of political leadership. The representation of women in the United States political system must increase in order to adequately govern America as a whole. Being a country made up of both men and women, it is obvious that the ruling faction should have the same ratio. The women who identified as suffragettes were no different from the women of modern America. They thrived at some times and struggled at others. Sometimes they doubted themselves and their cause as a whole. Yet they still resisted in the face of oppression and domination. These women demonstrated that women's place was in the House and Senate. These women, as Gail Collins said, “did not believe that the fact that things had always been done one way made them right” (Collins 105). These women were suffragettes.