Editing Lucy Stone (section)

=== Equal pay strike ===
Stone hoped to earn most of her college expenses through teaching in one of the institute's lower departments. But because of its policy against employing first-year students as teachers, the only work Stone could get other than teaching at district schools, during the winter break, was housekeeping chores through the school's manual labor program. For this, she was paid three cents an hour—less than half what male students received for their work in the program. Among measures taken to reduce her expenses, Stone prepared her own meals in her dormitory room. In 1844, Stone was given a position teaching arithmetic in the Ladies Department, but, again, received reduced pay, because of her sex.

Oberlin's compensation policies required Stone to do twice the labor a male student had to do to pay the same costs. Stone frequently rose at two o'clock to fit in work and study, and she found her health declining. In February 1845, having decided to submit to the injustice no longer, she asked the Faculty Board for the same pay given two lesser-experienced male colleagues. When her request was denied, she resigned her position. Pleading with the faculty to restore Stone, her former students said they would pay Stone "what was right," if the college would not. Stone had planned to borrow money from her father, when funds ran out, but Francis Stone, moved by his daughter's description of her struggles, promised to provide money when needed. Help from home was not needed, however, because after three months of pressure, the faculty yielded and hired Stone back, paying both her and other women student teachers at the same rate paid male student teachers.<ref>Million, 2003, pp. 61-62.</ref>