Susan B. Anthony advocated dress reform for women. She cut her hair and wore the bloomer costume for a year before ridicule convinced her that this radical dress detracted from the other causes she supported.
In the 1840s, Anthony began to campaign for women’s property rights in New York state, speaking at meetings, collecting signatures for petitions, and lobbying the state legislature. In 1848, largely as the result of her efforts, the New York State Married Women’s Property Bill became law, allowing married women to own property, keep their own wages, and have custody of their children. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton campaigned for more liberal divorce laws in New York.
In 1869 Anthony persuaded the Workingwomen’s Association in New York to investigate the case of Hester Vaughn, a poor working woman accused of murdering her child born outside of wedlock. Vaughn was pardoned, and Anthony used the case to point out the different moral standards expected of men and women, and the need for women jurors to ensure a fair trial.
In 1875 she attacked the “social evil” of prostitution in a speech in Chicago, calling for equality in marriage, in the workplace, and at the ballot box to eliminate the need for women to go on the streets. Click here to view a PDF of an 1895 speech on similar topics.
Women must have a purse of her own, & how can this be, so long as the wife is denied the right of her individual & joint earnings. Reflections like these, caused me to see & really feel that there was not true freedom for woman without the possession of all her property rights … This demand must be made by petitions to the Legislature … Susan B. Anthony, Diary, November 11, 1853