author
Matilda Joslyn Gage
1826–1898
A fearless voice in the 19th-century fight for women's rights, she also pushed for abolition, Native American rights, and freedom of thought. Her work helped shape the suffrage movement while challenging the limits of reform in her own time.
1 Audiobook
Woman, Church & State The Original Exposé of Male Collaboration Against the Female Sex
by Matilda Joslyn Gage
About the author
Born in Cicero, New York, in 1826, Matilda Joslyn Gage grew up in an abolitionist household and became one of the boldest thinkers in the American women's rights movement. She was a writer, speaker, and organizer who argued not only for women's suffrage, but also for broader social change.
Gage worked closely with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony and was a co-author of the first three volumes of History of Woman Suffrage. She is remembered for refusing to separate voting rights from other issues of justice, including abolition and the rights of Native peoples. Her criticism of the ways organized religion and law limited women's freedom made her one of the movement's most radical public voices.
She died in 1898, but her influence lasted well beyond her lifetime. Later generations have returned to her writing for its clarity, courage, and willingness to confront power directly, and her name lives on in the "Matilda effect," a term inspired by her observations about how women's achievements are often overlooked.