The abominable doctrine taught in the pulpit, the press, in books and elsewhere, is that the whole duty of women is self- abasement and self-sacrifice. I do not believe subjection is woman’s duty any more than it is the duty of a man to be under subjection to another man or many men. Women have the right of independence, of conscience, of will and of responsibility.
ATTRIBUTION:
Anna Howard Shaw (1847–1919), U.S. minister and suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 14, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902).
From a Sunday sermon preached in February 1894 to attendees of the twenty-sixth annual convention of the National Woman Suffrage Association. Shaw’s text was “Let no man take thy crown.”
