Our Moment Is Now

173 Our Moment Is Now Ambassador Melanne Verveer and Kim Azzarelli In 1848, Charlotte Woodward was earning a pittance stitching gloves in her home in Waterloo, New York.1 Like other women of her era, the former schoolteacher, not yet twenty years old, had been denied property ownership rights, citizenship, and political representation. In some states, if a woman married, everything she owned or earned belonged to her husband. That July, Woodward was intrigued by an announcement she read in the newspaper about a meeting of women to be held in a chapel forty miles away, in the town of Seneca Falls. Looking for an opportunity to better her life and that of her family, she did what women have done throughout history and to this day: she joined a network. Woodward’s experience and those of others contextualize the movement for women’s rights and equal participation from a historical perspective, both in the Ambassador Melanne Verveer serves as the Co-Founder of Seneca Women and Executive Director of Georgetown University›s Institute for Women, Peace and Security. She is co-author with Kim Azzarelli of the new book Fast Forward: How Women Can Achieve Power and Purpose and a Founding Partner of Seneca Point Global. In 2009 President Obama appointed Melanne Verveer to be the first ever Ambassador- at-Large for Global Women’s Issues at the U.S. State Department. Ambassador Verveer has a B.A. and M.A. from Georgetown University. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and has served as the 2013 Humanitas Visiting Professor at Cambridge University. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including the U.S. Secretary of State’s Award for Distinguished Service Kim Azzarelli is a business, philanthropic, and legal advisor focused on advancing women and girls. Together with Ambassador Melanne Verveer, Ms. Azzarelli is a co-founder of Seneca Women and co-author of the upcoming book Fast Forward: How Women Can Achieve Power and Purpose. She is Chair and Co-founder of Cornell Law School’s Avon Global Center for Women and Justice, and a Partner at Seneca Point Global. Ms. Azzarelli is also an adjunct professor at Cornell Law School, where she teaches Women, Law and the Economy and Women, Law and Technology. Ms. Azzarelli is a graduate of Cornell Law School, Cornell University, and Friends Seminary High School in New York City. vol.40:1 winter 2016 174 the fletcher forum of world affairs United States and internationally. These experiences demonstrate the mounting evidence that women’s equal participation is not only beneficial for half the world’s population, but for humanity overall. SENECA FALLS AND THE 19TH AMENDMENT Over tea one Sunday in 1848, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, and three other women came up with the idea for the Seneca Falls Convention.2 Stanton and Mott recalled their journey to London, where, as women, they had been relegated to the sidelines at an international aboli- Women’s equal participation tionist gathering. They agreed then is not only beneficial for half and there to organize a women’s rights the world’s population, but convention when they returned to for humanity overall. the United States. Back home, they discussed their frustration with their second-class status, and together they drew up an announcement for an assembly “to discuss the social, civil, and religious condition and rights of woman.” Their resulting campaign to reform child custody, divorce, property laws, equal pay, and suffrage gained momentum from the moral outrage and organizational channels of the abolitionist movement. Stanton and Mott also drew inspiration from the writings of Sarah Moore Grimké. The erudite daughter of a plantation owner, Grimké was one of the first women to espouse women’s rights and perhaps the earliest proponent of equal pay for women in the United States. Her revulsion at slavery moved her to join the abolitionist cause, but her energies shifted to women’s rights when, working as a schoolteacher, she learned that her male colleagues earned three times as much for the same work. Charlotte Woodward longed for connection to such a purposeful sorority. She tentatively approached her neighbors to see if anyone might like to join her on the trip to Seneca Falls, which would take more than two days. She was met with mixed reactions when she knocked on doors. Undeterred, she set out early on July 19 by horse and carriage, accompa- nied by the handful of other travelers she had mustered. If they formed a dishearteningly thin procession at first, they were joined at each crossroad by other women, gaining heart and strength.3 Also traveling to Seneca Falls were abolitionists, including the former slave Frederick Douglass, who found common cause with women’s suffrage and would prove to be an important male ally. Years later, at a speech before vol.40:1 winter 2016 our moment is now 175 the International Council of Women in Washington, D.C., he would state: There are few facts in my humble history to which I look back with more satisfaction than to the fact, recorded in the history of the woman suffrage movement, that I was sufficiently enlightened at that early day, and when only a few years from slavery, to support your resolution for woman suffrage. I have done very little in this world in which to glory except this one act—and I certainly glory in that. When I ran away from slavery, it was for myself; when I advo- cated emancipation, it was for my people; but when I stood up for the rights of women, self was out of the question, and I found a little nobility in the act.4 Others on the road to Seneca Falls included pacifist Quakers from Philadelphia, wives and mothers who had never had the opportunity to work outside their homes, and teenage girls, including one who had started going door to door at age twelve with antislavery petitions. When Woodward reached the hot, packed Wesleyan Methodist Chapel in Seneca Falls, she found a diverse crowd, bound together by a shared purpose, moved to further action by the inspiring speeches.5 To be sure, not everyone was moved. The convention was widely derided in the press. A Philadelphia newspaper editorial huffed, “A woman is nobody. A wife is everything.”6 An Albany newspaper warned that equal rights would “demoralize and degrade” women. The convention was condemned as “the most shocking and unnatural event ever recorded in the history of womanity.”7 By the end of the momentous two-day gathering, one hundred signa- tures—those of sixty-eight women and thirty-two men—were dry on the Declaration of Sentiments,8 which demanded basic civil, economic, and political rights, including the right to vote, for women. The negative press fueled publicity, as word of mouth traveled and spurred women’s rights activ- ists to form regional groups. By 1850, It would take more than a national event held in Worcester, seventy years from the date of Massachusetts, drew about 1000 the Seneca Falls Convention attendees. In 1851, Susan B. Anthony before women would legally would join Elizabeth Cady Stanton in her efforts, spending the next fifty have the right to vote. years of her life advocating for women’s suffrage. Each year, Anthony traveled around the country, giving up to one hundred speeches, in an effort to educate her fellow citizens. vol.40:1 winter 2016 176 the fletcher forum of world affairs The early women’s movement was a slow-burning movement. While this can be partially attributed to the pace of transportation and communi- cation in the mid-nineteenth century, most important was the momentous shift in thinking that was needed to secure the right to vote. It would take more than seventy years from the date of the Seneca Falls Convention before women would legally have the right to vote. The Nineteenth Amendment, also known as the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, was passed on June 4, 1919. However, neither Susan B. Anthony nor Elizabeth Cady Stanton would live to see women cast their votes. Indeed, Charlotte Woodward, the young glovemaker, was the only participant of the Seneca Falls Convention who lived to see their dream achieved.9 JEYHOUNABAD, IRAN One year after the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, in 1920, halfway around the world in Jeyhounabad, Iran, a fourteen-year-old girl was beginning to notice the first painful signs of losing her sight.10 Malak Jân Nemati, born in 1906 into a landowning family with an ancient lineage, would prove instrumental in transforming the mindset of a male- dominated community toward a more egalitarian view of the role and value of women and girls. Located near Mount Bisotoun, Jeyhounabad is an agricultural village whose climate is marked by harsh winters and blistering summers. With no electricity (that would come only in the 1980s), the rustic living conditions of Jeyhounabad during Malak Jân’s time have been likened to those of pre- modern life in the West. The simple clay houses formed a small and inti- mate community that was isolated, dependent wholly on the surrounding agricultural land. Jeyhounabad and the nearby villages, however, were not isolated from the regional and national patriarchal view of the role of women and girls. In accordance with age-old tradition, females were deemed subser- vient to males in every way. Women were not entitled to express a point of view, and under the law their statements were considered to have half the value of men’s. The birth of a girl was not a celebrated occasion, but rather one for which people would frequently offer their condolences.

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