For many women in mid-19th-century America, the differences between the rights of men and women rankled. Men in the United States and elsewhere had long since established “a different code of morals for men and women” (Paragraph 17). Men insisted they were smarter and wiser than women, and preachers argued that the Bible put women beneath men. Therefore, women were told to obey their male counterparts, remain silent while men discuss important matters, and permit their lives to unfold as men saw fit. The Declaration of Sentiments refutes this stance and insists that the regime of men over women amounts to a tyranny similar to that suffered by colonists at the time of the American Revolution.

The Declaration claims that the “history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her” (Paragraph 3). The document lists 16 grievances concerning men’s disrespectful and oppressive treatment of women. These include the refusal to permit women to vote, the plundering of her property, the suppression of her right to education and professional achievement, and a double standard of conduct that punishes women but not men.