E. J. Erichsen Tench

The onus of leadership is incredibly high in our society; leaders must take command, while at the same time following, must inspire, while at the same time encountering reality, and must imagine wide possibilities, while at the same time ensuring work is accomplished at the base level.  To be a leader is to carry a great deal of responsibility; to be a spiritual leader is to carry out virtues of humility and servanthood.  As a business major whose degree is meant to support my martial arts, visual arts, and social justice work, I was hard pressed to find a leader in my field of study who could fit all the above requirements.  I turned to the basics of my vocation interests and realized I pursued all my interests as a female, and not very long ago in our human history, my vocational interests would have been staunchly closed to me.  I decided to focus on the leader who made it possible for me, as a woman, to pursue my outspoken interests.  Without the leadership of Susan B. Anthony, I would not be in the school or vocational position I currently enjoy. 

Susan B. Anthony was born in 1820 to a common couple of Quaker persuasion.  While her upbringing was common and normal, her parents would heavily influence the social justice giant she later became.  Her father, Daniel Anthony, “introduced [his children to] self-discipline, principled convictions, and belief in their own self-worth” (Barry 11).  He provided the strong force of self-discipline and steady conviction that would characterize Anthony’s later work.  Daniel and his wife, Lucy, were the first individuals in Anthony’s life who woke her to the realization men and women were not politically or culturally equal.  While her father believed in equal schooling and voting opportunities, he balked at the idea of having “a woman overseer in [his] mill,” which Anthony would later recall as one of the common inconsistencies in her gendered upbringing (18).  Lucy Anthony impressed upon Susan Anthony the reality the married woman had to sacrifice her identity to “long years of selfless toil” in “a kind of suffering” (48-9).

It was this peculiar insistence that married women lose their identity that began to awaken in Anthony a sense of deep injustice.  As she finished school and began work as a teacher (the only position open to women who did not marry), she noted her tight-knit circle of female family members and friends was constantly shrinking due to marriage.  “[M]arriage [conventionally] meant that a woman must subordinate all other friendships and relations to the relationship with her husband,” always resulting in daughters and sisters breaking off deep, emotional ties to other women in order to focus these solely on one man, who was still allowed to maintain deep relationships with his family and friends (Barry 36).  Susan B. Anthony noted as a single woman, she was able to “creat[e] her own separate identity in her work at a time when other young women, like her sister Guelma, were learning to establish their identities through their husbands” (39).  As a single woman, she was also able to keep the wages she earned, even though she “did not overlook the fact that she earned one-fourth of what her father was paid for teaching in Rochester and one-half of the eighteen dollars a month her younger brother Daniel R. was earning in a district school” solely because of her gender (47).  A married woman would have to turn over all her funds to her husband, in addition to losing any possible representation before the law, along with losing any legal authority over her own property or children.

While these marital gender-based disadvantages enraged Anthony, the tipping point in her silent brooding was the issue of alcohol.  Like many temperance workers, Anthony noted married women had absolutely no protection from alcoholic and immoral husbands.  Unique to Anthony, and one of the reasons behind her leadership brilliance, she understood without political representation, married women were unable to seek self-protection or to speak out.  With no ability to divorce for cases of abuse and marital negligence, and absolutely no way to support themselves, married women had nowhere to turn.  While the problem was moral and cultural, no tangible relief could be accomplished while women had no political voice; the only way to have political voice was to vote.  Unfortunately, women were not allowed to vote.

Susan B. Anthony realized she had to campaign and work for complete legal and cultural equality for women.  As such, in 1848, Anthony “wove the issues set forth in her … Declaration of Women’s Right (in which she had demanded full rights, including the vote for women) into the problem of intemperance (Barry 68).  It was at this time Anthony joined forces with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who, as a married woman, personally understood and felt the legal and personal losses she had to suffer.  The two became the most inspirational and effective women’s rights power couple of their century, forging a friendship that outlasted Stanton’s marriage in time and depth.

Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton essentially led the women’s rights movement until their deaths.  While women would not be able to nationally vote until fourteen years after Anthony’s death in 1906, the two women impacted their culture in incredible ways.  They managed to convince the United States to allow women to attend colleges alongside men, to allow married women custody rights over their children, property rights, ownership rights, the ability to sue and be sued, more equal pay for female employees, and the ability to vote in four of the states.  In addition, they shook the cultural ideas that allowed men to suppress women in the first place.

While Anthony was a child, the Jacksonian ideal of the self-made man was flaunted for all young white boys; they were “part of the foundation of the new, proud, and growing democracy, in which it was believed that [they], regardless of…class or station in life, could grow up to be president” (Barry 15).  However, with “all the talk about the aspiring common man in search of his unlimited potential, what could be said of the common woman?  Unlike her husband, there was no place for her outside the home, no national themes or grand philosophies to eulogize her” (16).  Susan B. Anthony expanded the cultural boundaries for women by allowing them legal and political rights.  Since women had more chances to earn income, they were more free to pursue their own interests and to create for themselves an identity apart from their husbands. 

Since Stanton was married, Anthony experienced the continual pains of watching her women-friends and lovers submit themselves to men who burdened them with household duties and encroached on their identities.  She encouraged women to challenge the very idea of two individuals of different roles marrying.  With the emphasis on different roles, true legal and cultural equality could never be gained.  She argued “the doctrine that love must prevail in woman while wisdom prevails in men” resulted in a world where “‘woman must look to man for wisdom — must ever feel it impossible for her to attain wisdom equal to him’” (130).  For Anthony, “real love could only exist between two free individuals who came together in equality.”

Leaders show their quality by how they handle challenges.  While Anthony was an incredibly driven individual, she often had to sacrifice her desire for total sexual equality in order to create unity between various women’s movements.  While she desired mutual submission and love between wives and husbands and the ability for wives to divorce abusive husbands, many other women’s groups, such as the American Woman Suffrage associations, wanted a more conservative approach that did not challenge prevailing religious ideas about marital hierarchy (296).  In order to preserve unity, Anthony agreed to narrow her focus down to gaining national suffrage.

Another key challenge in Anthony’s call for equality came from the Republican party and the temperance and abolitionist groups led by men.  Anthony was a key supporter in abolitionism and the right for both men and women of color to vote.  However, male abolitionists continually refused to work with her because of her insistence for suffrage.  In a devastating blow to Anthony, the Republican party took powerful ends to “deliberately exclude women from both the protection of citizenship and the right to vote[.  The] Republicans wrote the word ‘male’ three times into the [14^th] amendment,” thus ensuring women had no loopholes with which to argue for voting rights (164).  “The designation of sex had never before appeared in the Constitution.”  Forced with such obstinacy, Anthony improvised by supporting the male’s abolitionist work through speaking at their events, while separating their support from her suffrage work.  This break in unity resulted in the men’s movements receiving more support, while Anthony lost a great deal of influence during the Civil War.

Susan B. Anthony was an incredibly determined individual with a desire to “focus on what is good for others” (Patterson 1).  In her personal work, she demanded thoroughness and utter dedication from her subordinates.  Her ability to encourage the heart was most keenly felt in her personal relationships with her women friends; she showed deep “appreciation for individual excellence” and was hugely emotionally supportive (Kouzes and Posner 99).  For those outside her circle, her emotional warmth was less apparent.  Not a particularly humble individual to work for, her intra-personal strengths of character were most strong when it came to modeling the way, inspiring a shared vision, challenging the process, and enabling others to act.  She modeled the way through “find[ing her] voice by clarifying [her] personal values and then expressing those values” through her speaking and writing (39).  Her ability to unite all women from all different racial and class backgrounds was a result of her ability to “envision the future by imagining exciting and ennobling possibilities” (53).  Through challenging the legal and cultural processes of the day, she enabled others to act by banding together to change an “unacceptable [status quo]” (89, emphases in original).

Susan B. Anthony is an incredibly interesting person to study; I am hugely in her debt.  Without her work, I would not be able to attend school alongside other men, would not be able to own my own property, would not be able to keep earning my own money once married, would not be able to keep my own name, would not have legal custody over any future children, would not be able to have a life and vocation of my own, would not be able to divorce an abusive spouse, and would not be able to vote.  Her dedication to her work, even when the results were not apparent to her, encouraged me to continue working to better the students I teach and to continue addressing themes of redemption in my art.  It is this dedication in the face of opposition that most challenged me and, I think, most strongly illustrates Susan B. Anthony’s qualities as a leader.

While she was not specifically a Christian, her “spiritual belief in immortality, which meant for her a rejection of the idea that we leave nothing behind us after death, sustained her particularly because her political work often did not bring her immediate rewards” (Barry 96).  This was particularly encouraging for me.  In my on-line work to combat sexism, racism, heterosexism, and childism in media and culture, I know I may never see the positive impact my work has.  Much social justice work is thankless and involves one generation setting the stage for the next generation.  In Susan B. Anthony’s case, she was able to see some of her work gain success, but she died before universal suffrage was granted to women.  She kept her strength through understanding the results of her actions were what mattered.  This is something very close to what N.T. Wright argues for: “looking at Christian behavior [as active virtues bringing about redemption] means that we approach ‘ethical’ questions — particularly questions about what to do and what not to do — through the larger category of the divine purpose for the entire human life” (69).  Susan B. Anthony was working for a life to come, laying down her health and existence to accomplish something grand and redemptive for womenkind.  Her ethical virtues were shaped by a desire to better the human life, something completely in line with the Christian’s duty.  As a leader, she was incredible and an inspiration for generations to come.

Works Cited

Barry, Kathleen. Susan B. Anthony: A Biography of a Singular Feminist. New York: New York University Press, 1988. Print.

Kouzes, James M. and Barry Z. Posner (ed.). Christian Reflections on the Leadership Challenge. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2006. Print.

Patterson, Kathleen. “Servant Leadership: A Timeless Leadership Style.” Christian Leadership Alliance. Asuza Pacific University, 2011. Print.

Wright, N.T. After You Believe: Why Christian Character Matters. New York: HarperCollins, 2010. Print.