Woman Suffrage, Women’s Rights and the Long Fight for Equality

Origins:

• 1848 Seneca Falls Convention-first nationally recognized woman suffrage document, Declaration of Sentiments (women’s declaration of independence) http://www.nps.gov/wori/historyculture/declaration-of-sentiments.htm
• Susan B Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton (called for equal rights AND suffrage for women). To explore the earlier movement, go to “Not For Ourselves Alone” http://www.pbs.org/stantonanthony/

Organization:

• 2 largest American women’s suffrage organizations banded together in 1890 to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) but not without controversy
• State Laws (achieve voting rights from local and state governments, huge success in West by late 1890s)
• Federal Amendment (not until AFTER the 15th Amendment is passed in 1870, left “sex/gender” out of qualifying voter status and radically changed the focus of the movement)
• Victoria Woodhull (flamboyant, socialist, free love advocate, destructive to late 19th C movement)
• Mary Terrell (leader of African American woman suffrage, campaigned for the open inclusion of black women during a highly racist/nativist age in which most suffragist leaders were white and middle class)

Philosophies:

• Woman Suffrage (voting rights)
  • Social Housekeeping: unique qualities of women reformers and mothers as nurturers needed to secure the ‘home’ of the larger realm of the world
  • Voting influence for protective laws on domestic issues (home, working women and children)
  • NAWSA (national, education-based, work within party system)
    • develops state and national coalitions of women and men to achieve suffrage through state majority first, national pressure second
  • barrage of congressional petitions, lobbyists (Alice Paul originally a member of the NAWSA group, under the Congressional Committee)
• Antisuffragists (Antis, no female voting rights)
  • believed woman suffrage would destroy the social fabric of American life and erode natural order of families, minimize female power over the home and domestic life
  • Rejected voting bloc of women idea: wives will vote the same as husbands, racist/nativist fears that “uneducated, poor or inferior races” would influence voting
  • Largest promoters of protective legislation for women and children but as lobbyists not voters
• Women’s Rights (full equality under the law)
  • Inalienable right of women as human beings to be equal under the law: women were placed in the same legal status as criminals and the insane, few rights personally much less over others
  • Eliminate need for protective legislation/”special” status for women
  • National Woman’s Party (militant, political and public accountability, form women’s bloc party)
    • Draws influence from British militant tactics, national media attention for woman suffrage
    • Mobilize national demonstrations with strong political rhetoric embarrass WWI gov’t
• The Film “Iron Jawed Angels” – historically-based film about Paul, the NWP, and the 1910s suffrage movement; though “Hollywood-ized” for some of the materials, the film is remarkably accurate in most of its portrayal and will make you wish you had the same “gumption!” It is available in segments on YouTube (
• Focuses on the final period of the woman suffrage movement between 1912-1920
  • Height of the Progressive Era of reform, especially political and legal status of citizens
    • large numbers of Eastern European immigrants whose women seek reform in factories
    • upswing in prosperity with expanding middle class and women in higher education
      • Income Tax on personal earnings (Amendment 16) – 1913
      • Direct Election of Senators by the people instead of state legislatures (Amendment 17) – 1913
    • World War I kicks off in 1914
      • US isolationist, supplies both sides until US commercial interests/lives are threatened
      • Woodrow Wilson, originally a pacifist, must change from Neutrality policy to belligerent status by 1917 and shelves Progressive move toward the woman vote
• Internal Conflict in the Movement
  • Catt/NAWSA’s “Winning Plan”
    • build on successful state by state voting rights already achieved by 1910s
    • municipal voting rights for property owners of either sex were achieved in many counties by the early 1910s – a proven pattern of success but slow
    • states had much greater control in this period, representatives and senators who would then be in positions of influence to pass an amendment
      • Jeannette Rankin (R, MT) was first woman elected to the House of Representatives in 1916, introduced first bill for federal voting rights for women) – staunch pacifist
    • secondary goal was always a federal amendment to the US Constitution, presidential support
  • Paul/NWP’s “Hold the Party in Power Responsible”
    • Militant, in-your-face call to action—actively broke the law, highly visible parades (Inez Milholland—martyr), caused riots and damage to gain attention for the cause
    • Used imprisonment for media attention, came out of British suffrage movement which saw prison time, beatings, public humiliation and force feeding as norms
    • Federal amendment was the only way to guarantee universal rights for women
  • NAWSA was directly allied with the Woman’s Peace Party (Alice Paul and Carrie Chapman Catt were two of its strongest supporters)
    • Shift of US policy moves the woman suffrage movement into a vulnerable position of opposing a federal move toward war
    • Catt, President of the NAWSA, recognizes this dichotomy and prepares to shift strategy to fully back the war effort as necessary compromise but “needing a woman’s vote for victory” (courting the White House)
    • Paul (staunch pacifist) refuses to have the NWP back the war effort, pursues anti-war rhetoric against Wilson, accuses him of treachery during wartime in hopes to shame him/Congress into passing voting rights for women (antagonizing the White House)
• After the 19th Amendment (guaranteed the right to vote to women 21 years or older, the voting age for either sex was not changed to 18 until 1971)
  • Women’s voting bloc did not arise, the collapse of the movement left power vacuum and millions of minority women essentially disenfranchised, women voters marginalized into major political parties
  • NAWSA became the League of Women Voters in 1920
    • mobilize women to go to the polls, create planks on women’s issues/social welfare
  • NWP under Paul’s direction
    • moves toward an Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) in1923, promoted peace for America through remaining 20th century wars, helped push for the 1964 Civil Rights Amendment