Women’s rights

Nowadays it is really hard to imagine how a few centuries ago women were limited in their rights to the extent when they were not able to vote, work and speak out. As Rodger Streitmatter mentions in his book “Voices of Revolution” “The American women of the 19th century were widely perceived to be incapable of rational thinking – resolutely helpless and inferior to her male counterpart.” Less then two hundred years ago women in our society were supposed to marry, give a birth to child and make her husband’s life easier. That was the purport of their lives. But that situation couldn’t last forever and the whole society needed changes. Those changes came in the person of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who established her “The Revolution” to improve the situation with women rights and initiate women all over the country to join her ideas.
Journalism became the platform for Elizabeth to speak out and inform people of her thoughts and goals. Journalism as a whole always played a great role in initiating the social changes as it ahs a great influence on people’s views and opinions. Elizabeth was in some way a predecessor of an independent journalist, who decided to establish something that hasn’t exist before, something that didn’t fit the typical “social box”, something that she really believed in. As for me, Elizabeth is a great example of how one person can change the whole society once and for all. Although her “The Revolution” survived only for two and a half years and its circulation was not as big as she had been expected, but the fact of appearance of this kind of press for women was itself priceless. As it often happens in a history, people who start doing something, who gibe this first “push” to new idea for the whole society are the once who don’t reach success. But all their beginnings are significant because they “build” a base for others to continue developing the idea. I think Elizabeth was a great and brave person, who worked not for profit (as many independent media outlets even nowadays), but for the idea itself.
Without people like Elizabeth Stanton and Susan Anthony and George Train, who was a controversial millionaire and who supported the newspaper, the society would have stayed on the same level as 200 or 400 years ago. These people, who go against the ideas of their society, who not only disagree, but what is more important, act and often sacrifice their life to the idea; these people are worthy our respect. And nowadays, as independent media becomes even more important then the “old media” I think these people should be as an example foe every truly independent journalist, be he or she citizen journalist or professional.