Comparing Pankhurst And Stone

Pankhurst and Stone Throughout history women have been degraded and belittled. They were looked down upon with such discern and were expected to obey their male superiors and the norms of a male dominant society. However, many women across history have fought to become equal in society. From Elizabeth Blackwell who was admitted into medical school in 1847 as a joke and continued to receive ridicule, opened up her own hospital after nobody would hire her to the modern day female education activist Malala Yousafzai who literally looked death in the eye for something as simple as going to school. Though there is a growing list of feminists, two particular feminists, Emmeline Pankhurst and Lucy Stone, have contributed to the feminist movement
This missing piece became apparent when Pankhursts parents were discussing the importance of sending her brother to receive an education while Pankhurst and her sister’s education was ever hardly, if ever, discussed. Pankhurst attended a small girl’s boarding school taught by gentlewomen where she was taught writing, reading, grammar, arithmetic, French, history and geography. However; the main purpose of this school was to teach the young girls the role of the woman, such as caring for the husband, home, and family, something Pankhurst found puzzling. Pankhurst didn’t understand a woman’s obligation to care for a man who was perfectly capable of caring for himself. Even though the education of the men in the family were prioritized first, Pankhurst was sent to Paris where she studied at the Ecole Normale de Neuilly, a pioneer institution for the higher education of girls. At this school, Pankhurst learned subjects such as chemistry, book-keeping, and the sciences, something the headteacher believed should be taught to girls as they are taught to boys (Purvis). Similar to that of Pankhurst, Stone’s parents also put forth her brother’s education before her own. However, Stone defied her parents and started working as a teacher at the age of sixteen to earn money for her college tuition. Almost a decade later, Stone enrolled into Oberlin College, the first coeducational college in the United States. While attending Oberlin, Stone taught former slaves, worked in the school cafeteria, learned Greek, founded the college’s first women’s debating society, and delivered her first public speech on women’s rights and slave emancipation (Townsend). However, even though the school was coeducational, they still did not offer an equal playing field for women. When the school denied Stone the opportunity to pursue public speaking, she did not let that