In barbarous ages women have been ignored or have been treated as mere adjuncts to the ruling sex.

But wherever there has been a distinct contribution to the cause of liberty there has been a distinct recognition of woman's share in the work.

The Society of Friends was organized on the principle that men and women are alike moral beings, hence are equal in the sight of God.

As a matter of experience, women were quite as often moved to break the silence of a religious meeting as were the men.
For two hundred years women had been accustomed to talk to both men and women in Friends' meetings and, when the moral war against slavery brought religion and politics into close relation, they were ready speakers upon both topics.

When the Grimke sisters came into the church with a fresh baptism of the Spirit, they overcame all obstacles and, with a passion for righteousness, moral and spiritual and political, they carried the war against slavery into politics.
In 1833, at the organization of the American Anti-Slavery Society in Philadelphia, a number of women were present.