Although many women had been advocating for voting rights for years, the women’s suffrage
movement began to pick up steam in the mid-nineteenth century. A major milestone for the
movement occurred in 1848, when Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott organized the first
convention for women’s rights in Seneca Falls, New York. The two women also supported the
abolition of slavery. They came up with the idea for the women’s rights convention after women
were barred from participating in the 1840 World Anti-Slavery Convention in London.