Throughout America’s history, legal rights and job opportunities have been dominated by men. Prior to the twentieth century, women were most commonly wives and mothers, and usually did not have jobs outside of the home (Britannica). This began to lead to a different view of women and their roles in society (State). Elizabeth Cady Stanton had a significant impact on women because she initiated the first women’s rights and suffrage movement.

Before Elizabeth Stanton, there were a number of issues that weren’t being solved for women. These issues included “Women’s parental and custody rights, property rights, employment and income rights, divorce laws, the economic health of the family and birth control” (PBS). One of the general views of women was that they were evil. St. Jerome, a 4th-century Latin father of the Christian church, reflected this view when he said: "Woman is the gate of the devil, the path of wickedness, the sting of the serpent, in a word a perilous object."(PBS) People truly believed that women did not deserve the same opportunities as men did. There are all of these reasons for lessoning women to men and people just believed it. Many people truly believed and lived by the idea that women were considered naturally weaker and less smart than women.

Women were treated like weak and useless human beings and were treated unfairly in comparison to men. Things like house hold work were left to women while the hunting and working were left to the men because of their strength (Britannica). Women were prohibited from attending college and were not allowed to speak in school. The law prohibited married women from being owners or inheriting property. In fact, wives were the property of their husbands, entitled by law to her wages and her body. (Britannica).

Stanton’s influence on women to change the world can be somewhat credited to her father’s grief over the death of Stanton’s brother. One of the defining moments of Elizabeth’s life was the death of her brother, Eleazer’s, when she was eleven years old. “As Elizabeth sat on her grieving father’s lap, trying to comfort him shortly after Eleazer’s death, Daniel Stanton said, ‘My daughter, I