Final answer:
The debate about women's roles known as The Woman Question was pivotal during the Enlightenment and was later addressed by the Women's Suffrage Movement, which aimed at securing voting rights for women. The Seneca Falls Convention was a significant event that established the foundation for women's rights in the United States.
Step-by-step explanation:
The Woman Question and Women's Rights Movements
The spirited debate about women's roles in society is commonly referred to as The Woman Question. This debate was particularly vibrant during the Enlightenment, when the role of women was discussed with a new intensity in contrast to earlier periods, such as the Age of Pericles among the Athenians. The Enlightenment ushered in an era where the roles and rights of individuals were critically examined, including those of women. While some elite women, like Émilie du Châtelet and Germaine de Staël, were influential in the intellectual discourse of the time and hosted salons where ideas were exchanged, many Enlightenment thinkers still viewed women as subordinate to men.
The Seneca Falls Convention, held in 1848, was a landmark event that worked to establish women's rights. It marks the beginning of the formal Women's Suffrage Movement in the United States, aiming to secure the legal right to vote for women. By the late nineteenth century, with the proliferation of liberal thought and the claim that 'all men are equal' evolving to 'all people are equal', the push for women's suffrage found strong intellectual support. The early 1900s witnessed substantial progress for the Women's Suffrage Movement, culminating in the adoption of the nineteenth amendment to the U.S. Constitution, granting women the right to vote.
Middle-class women during this time increasingly joined organizations like the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs and the Women's Christian Temperance Union, becoming more active in community issues and public life. The involvement of these women in broader public concerns laid a foundation for the suffrage movement and continued dialogue about gender roles and the 'proper sphere' for women in society.