Dr. Sally Roesch Wagner will present a lecture titled Women Voted in New York — Before Columbus as part of Rochester's Rich History Series in the Rundel Auditorium of the Rundel Library Building.

March is Women's History Month! While white women were the property of their husbands and considered dead in the law, Haudenosaunee women had more authority and status before Columbus than United States women have today. Women of the Six Nation Iroquois Confederacy (the Haudenosaunee) had the responsibility for putting in place the male leaders. They had control of their own bodies and were economically independent. Committing violence against a woman kept a man from becoming Chief in this egalitarian, gender-balanced society. When women in New York State began to organize for their rights in 1848, they took their cue from the nearby Haudenosaunee communities, where women lived in the world that non-native women dreamed. Amazingly, despite the assimilation policy of the United States, Haudenosaunee women still maintain much of this authority today.

[source: Monroe County Library website, 2016-Mar-21]