Editing Public speaking (section)

=== United States ===
During the 18th and 19th centuries in the United States, a prohibition was instituted whereby women were precluded from engaging in public discourse within the confines of the courtroom, the Senate floor, and the pulpit.<ref name="mankiller1998a">{{Cite book |last=Mankiller |first=Wilma Pearl |url=https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780618001828 |title=The Reader's Companion to U.S. Women's History |publisher=Houghton Mifflin Company |year=1998 |isbn=978-0585068473 |pages=485 |url-access=registration}}</ref> It was deemed improper for a woman to be heard in a public setting. Exceptions existed for women from the [[Quakers|Quaker]] religion, allowing them to speak publicly in meetings of the church.<ref name=":1">{{Cite book |last=O'Dea |first=Suzanne |title=From Suffrage to the Senate: America's Political Women |year=2013 |publisher=Grey House Pub. |isbn=978-1-61925-010-9}}</ref>{{Pages needed|date=December 2018}}
[[File:Franceswright.jpg|thumb|Frances Wright was an abolitionist, feminist, freethinker, and social reformer who advocated for many injustices.]]
[[Frances Wright]] was one of the first female public speakers in the United States, advocating equal education for both women and men through large audiences and the press.{{sfn|Mankiller|1998|p=31}} [[Maria Stewart]], a woman of African American descent, was also one of the first female speakers of the United States, lecturing in Boston in front of both men and women just four years after Wright, in 1832 and 1833, on educational opportunities and abolition for young girls.<ref name=":1" />{{Pages needed|date=December 2018}}

The first female agents and sisters of the [[American Anti-Slavery Society]] [[Angelina Grimké]] and [[Sarah Grimké]] created a platform for public lectures to women and conducted tours between 1837 and 1839. The sisters advocated that slavery relates to women's rights and that women need equality.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Bizzell |first=Patricia |date=2010 |title=Chastity Warrants for Women Public Speakers in Nineteenth-Century American Fiction |journal=Rhetoric Society Quarterly |volume=40 |issue=4 |page=17 |doi=10.1080/02773945.2010.501050 |s2cid=143052545}}</ref> They came to a disagreement with churches that did not want the two speaking publicly due to them being women.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Bahdwar |first1=Neera |title=Sarah Grimké and Angelina Grimké Weld: Abolitionists and Feminists |url=https://www.fff.org/explore-freedom/article/sarah-grimke-angelina-grimke-weld-abolitionists-feminists/ |access-date=28 September 2020 |website=The Future of Freedom Foundation |date=November 2017 |publisher=FFF}}</ref>