The religious superstitions of women perpetuate their bondage more than all other adverse influences.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton made religion—especially the ways scripture and church authority were used to justify women’s subordination—a central target of her later women’s-rights work. The sentiment in this quotation aligns closely with arguments she advanced in the 1890s while promoting The Woman’s Bible, a controversial project that critiqued biblical interpretations used to deny women civil and political equality. In that milieu, Stanton repeatedly contended that internalized religious teaching and deference to clerical authority kept women compliant even when legal and economic conditions were changing. The line reflects her conviction that emancipation required not only laws and votes, but also a reformation of belief and conscience.

Stanton argues that women’s subordination is sustained not only by external forces—law, custom, economic dependence—but also by internalized religious beliefs that teach female inferiority and obedience. By calling these beliefs “superstitions,” she frames certain religious doctrines and practices as irrational traditions that women themselves help transmit (through family life, moral instruction, and community piety). The quote reflects Stanton’s long-standing critique of how scripture and clerical authority were used to justify unequal marriage, limited education, and political exclusion, and it underscores her conviction that emancipation requires intellectual and spiritual independence as well as legal reform.