The Monroe County Historical Association will host its 103rd Annual Meeting and Award Luncheon on Feb. 23 at Terraview at Stroudsmoor, Stroudsburg. The doors will open at noon for a social hour before lunch is served at 1 p.m.

Following the luncheon and a brief business meeting, Dr. Amy Sopcak-Joseph, assistant professor of history at Wilkes University, will give her presentation, “Votes for Women, Roles for the Republic: Revisiting the 19th Amendment at Its 105th Anniversary.”

In 1848, Elizabeth Cady Stanton penned the “Declaration of Sentiments” and presented it to a relatively small assemblage of like-minded people at a meeting in Seneca Falls, New York. Modeled on the Declaration of Independence, Stanton’s document not only called for women’s suffrage rights but also outlined the limitations to women’s opportunities and what she saw as the circumscribed role allowed for them in society.

Over the next seven decades, women and men debated not only whether women should be able to go to the polls but also why.

Were women to be equal participants in politics, the public sphere, and their families?

Or was their participation in the American republic best defined by different standards from men?

To mark the 105th anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, this program will consider the historical perspectives that shaped the path to women’s suffrage rights in the 19th century and modern echoes of those debates in the 21st century.

The public is welcome and encouraged to attend.

The cost for the luncheon meeting is $45 for MCHA members and $55 for nonmembers. Reservations, with payment, should be made at the Monroe County Historical Association before Feb. 14. To make your reservation, visit https://www.monroehistorical.org/annualmtg.html or call the office at 570-421-7703.