Legally and culturally, women were tied to their homes. She had no rights of her own, and so could not make her own decisions. A woman was not allowed to do anything alone. She was always accompanied in public. Her freedom to converse with others had strict boundaries, and she was never allowed to speak in a public forum. This was a problem as the Seneca Falls Meeting was planned. These prohibitions had started to change in the 1840’s, but women had no experience speaking in public. Fortunately, they had male supporters like Frederick Douglass. And they had been successful in issues of social change like abolition. You can hear that dedication and passion for justice in Mrs. Stanton’s words from “The Declaration of Sentiments.” Imagine the courage it took to assert the idea that women should be involved in public issues, and more importantly tell women they had a stake in the issues.
“Resolved, therefore, that, being invested by the Creator with the same capabilities and same consciousness of responsibility for their exercise, it is demonstrably the right and duty of woman, equally with man, to promote every righteous cause by every righteous means; and especially in regard to the great subjects of morals and religion, it is self-evidently her right to participate with her brother in teaching them, both in private and in public, by writing and by speaking, by any instrumentalities proper to be used, and in any assemblies proper to be held; and this being a self-evident truth growing out of the divinely implanted principles of human nature, any custom or authority adverse to it, whether modern or wearing the hoary sanction of antiquity, is to be regarded as a self-evident falsehood, and at war with mankind.”
http://www.usconstitution.net/sentiments.html
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