Love of Women

Women have been taking care of this planet since the beginning of time. We are the very heart of our community and it is important that we support each other in every aspect of life. We have the power to inspire each other’s journey. Together we can teach each other how to live with purpose.

As you grow older, you will discover that you have two hands, one for helping yourself and one for helping others. -Maya Angelou

The Benefits of Us Helping Each Other:

Progress

Balance

Community

Inspiration

Support

Beautification

WOMEN MAKE THE WORLD A BEAUTIFUL PLACE TO LIVE!

Whenever I think of beautification, it also reminds me of the Mexican Artist Frida Kahlo. Her braided hair gathered in flowers on top of her head.

Frida Kahlo (Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderon) was born in 1907 in Coyoacan Mexico City, Mexico.  Frida experienced a horrible vehicle collision that caused her severe bodily harm. She was famous for creating meaningful self-portraits. Even as a women with physical challenges, Frida still managed to make a name for herself and display her unconventional beauty in her paintings.

 

 

“The difference between a broken community and a thriving one, is the presence of valued women.”-Michelle Obama

Before We Had Wings We Had To Learn To Walk Together

Elizabeth Cady Stanton born and raised in Seneca Falls, New York to an upper class family. Her social elite status gained her political and social influence as a wife of Henry Brewster Stanton and mother of seven children. She was supported by Quaker activist women and that support prompted political campaigning against economic, social and political gender inequality in America. Female abolitionist weren’t very well accepted, let alone female rights activists. However, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott stood up for women’s rights, hoping to get the same rights to vote as African American slave men by the 15th amendment after the civil war.

These radical ladies birthed the women suffrage movement that began on July 19th through the 20th of 1848 at the Wesleyan Chapel in Seneca Falls, New York. Only 100 abolitionist (68 women and 32 men) met to discusses the issues with constituting women’s rights. At the convention, The Declaration of Sentiment was recited and declared by women with the support of their abolitionist husbands.

Although there were only white women in attendance, Fredrick Douglas did represent the African American slaves at that time. He was the only non-white in attendance. The women’s suffrage movement in America was mostly led by white women.

Susan B. Anthony was another influential woman campaigning for gender equality. She was a great activist with the ability to gather women together and march us forward. Anthony was arrested for voting in Rochester, New York.

Carrie Chapman Catt and Alice Paul were great leaders in the National American Women’s Suffrage Association (NAWSA) leading the world to the progressive era (1890-1920), era of reforms.  They were women who protested and picketed to have the same political, economic and social standing as men. The word suffrage illustrates the domestic violence, solitary confinement (imprisonment) and various forms of abuse and injustice that all kinds of women, even married upper class women experienced  in order to have better opportunities.

 

There were also many courageous women of all races, colors, and creeds before this period that reflected the strength of women.

Sojourner Truth was also an activist during the time of the 19th century. She was an African American female abolitionist, which meant that she was a double minority. She gave an insightful soliloquy expressing the intersectional challenges of being a black woman who was de-feminized due to racism and made to feel less than a woman.

 

AIN’T I A WOMAN?

by Sojourner Truth

Delivered 1851 at the Women’s Convention in Akron, Ohio

That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain’t I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain’t I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man – when I could get it – and bear the lash as well! And ain’t I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain’t I a woman?

Then they talk about this thing in the head; what’s this they call it? [member of audience whispers, “intellect”] That’s it, honey. What’s that got to do with women’s rights or negroes’ rights? If my cup won’t hold but a pint, and yours holds a quart, wouldn’t you be mean not to let me have my little half measure full?

Then that little man in black there, he says women can’t have as much rights as men, ’cause Christ wasn’t a woman! Where did your Christ come from? Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him.

If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back , and get it right side up again! And now they is asking to do it, the men better let them.

Obliged to you for hearing me, and now old Sojourner ain’t got nothing more to say.

I love speech because I believe African American women, myself, are not considered in the category of aesthetics.  We were once consider animals or in other words what a ‘nigger’ meant at that time in the United States, ‘ugly’, ‘black’, ‘nasty’. We had to tell the world that we were beautiful! We were led to believe that we weren’t beautiful because of the color of our skin and we were less than human. Only white women were consider beautiful in social America for a long time. The world is changing and colorful women are still slowly breaking those stereotypes, even today. We are raising in status and moving toward a diverse ideology that all women of different colors, cultures and creeds are beautiful! As an African American woman, I’m especially proud of these black women for break the mold for us,  ‘sistahs’.

 

 

By the 20th century, women were granted the right to vote by the 19th amendment in 1920 in the United States.

In the bigger picture, it takes women to pave the way for others. It takes women to make the world whole and abundant. Even today in the 21st century women’s suffrage is rarely taught in the education system, although we’ve progressed past the cult of true womanhood, we still have a long road ahead of us.