Women sought equal rights in the 1800s because they could not vote, their property became their husband's if they married, a husband had the right to hit his wife, and a working woman's wages belonged to her husband. The Seneca Falls Convention in 1848 was the start of the women's rights movement. It issued a Declaration of Sentiments proclaiming all men and women are created equal and demanded equality at work, school, and church. A resolution for women's right to vote barely passed. Reformers opened new schools for women like Emma Willard's high school for girls and Mary Lyon's Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, the first women's college in America. A few men's colleges began admitting women and some women achieved