Women's Centennial Congress

The date chosen was 100 years after the first World Anti-Slavery Convention in London in 1840. That convention had been a gathering of abolitionists from around the world. The organisers were surprised when women were sent as a delegates and the initial reaction was to deny them entry. Women including the female delegates were only allowed in under sufferance and they were forbidden from speaking or voting. This event was, in time, the catalyst for later efforts in the suffrage movement, especially the Seneca Falls Convention. At the Women's Centennial Congress, 100 successful women, most notably Eleanor Roosevelt, were selected to represent female progress in numerous fields,[1] although Catt had failed to get Roosevelt to attend the conference.[2] The 100 women chosen were all American, alive and doing jobs that would have been impossible for a woman to undertake in 1840.[3]

A later commentator evaluated the conference as a media event.[2]