2011 Volume 7 Issue 1 Pages 21-34
The United States of America, founded in advocacy of democracy in the late eighteenth century, was confronted with people's discontent and protests against the patriarchal system, with the rise of abolitionism in the 1830s. In the antebellum and postbellum years, people across the country claimed suffrage, equality in employment and education, moral improvement, etc. This paper considers the beliefs and achievements of three pioneer women who not only objected to the patriarchal sociopolitical structure of the nineteenth-century America but also worked toward realizing the true American democracy, clearly expressed in the Declaration of Independence by the Founding Fathers: Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a radical woman suffragist who demanded the equal treatment of both sexes, from the north (the east); Harriet Tubman, a conductor of the Underground Railroad and humanitarian, from the south; and Bethenia Owens-Adair, a pioneer woman doctor who struggled in the male-dominated field of medicine, from the west. The anger and resentment they harbored against people's prejudices and discriminations as well as unjust laws and rules strengthened their beliefs in equality, regardless of race and gender, and motivated and impelled them to live their beliefs. The three women's fight in search of true American democracy that were roused by their life experiences in the private sphere consequently led to their later activities in the public sphere and exposed the governmental hypocrisy regarding human rights and equality. The struggles they undertook in their lives, pursuing the true American democracy, have encouraged our further practices for the cause.
*Ⅰ, Ⅲ, Ⅴ are written by Tamiko Miyatsu, Ⅱ by Yasuko Nakamura, and Ⅳ by Michiko Mayuzumi.
