Women’s Suffrage Movement

Officially began with the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848

Asserted that women should have the right to preach, to be educated, to teach, and to earn a living.

Struggle for women’s voting rights broke into two factions following the Civil War

Where it all starts…

While both groups ( American Woman Suffrage Association and National Woman Suffrage Association) wanted women to have more say in the government, they raise their family, voting, everything, they differed on how they should approach the issue.

Differences in Opinions

Formed in May of 1869 Believed that they should seek an

amendment to the U.S. Constitution

National Woman Suffrage Association

Formed by those who believed the most effective strategy would beto pressure state legislatures to amend state constitutions. Formed later in 1869

The American Woman Suffrage Association

Organizations merged in 1890 As dissolved after achieving its goal of

women’s suffrage, it was replaced by the National league of Women Voters

National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA)

Established in Chicago in 1920 to educate women about how to use the newly won vote

Became the League of Women Voters, which currently operates under that same name

National league of Women Voters

Influential Leaders of the Women’s

Rights Movement

Susan B. Anthony

Helped formed the National Women Suffrage Association

Traveled and lectured across the nation for the vote for women

Also campaigned for the abolition of slavery, women's rights to their own property and earnings, and women's labor organizations

Susan B. Anthony

Susan B. Anthony

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Helped formed the National Women Suffrage Association

Stanton often served as the writer and Anthony as the strategist in this effective working relationship.

Served as the president of the resulting National American Woman Suffrage Association.

Best known for her long contribution to the woman suffrage struggle, she was also active and effective in winning property rights for married women, equal guardianship of children, and liberalized divorce laws.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Lucy Stone

Leader of the American Women Suffrage Association

She was the first woman in Massachusetts to earn a college degree

A year after she graduated, Lucy Stone was hired as an agent -- an organizer -- of the American Anti-Slavery Society. In this paid position, she traveled giving speeches on abolition. She included speeches, as well, on women's rights

Lucy Stone

Julia Ward Howe

Leader of the American Woman Suffrage Association

Today best known as the writer of the Battle Hymn of the Republic

Julia Ward Howe

Called the “Anthony Amendment,” was introduced in the Senate in 1878, but was defeated by a vote of 34 to 16.

Alice Paul organized a huge parade down Pennsylvania Avenue on the day before President Woodrow Wilson’s first inauguration.

Later in 1913 Alice Paul organized the Congressional Union, later called the Woman’s Party, to lobby Congress on behalf of a constitutional amendment granting the vote to women

Fight for the 19th Amendment

In 1917 the Woman’s Party embarrassed President Wilson by picketing the White House around the clock. When many of the demonstrators were arrested and jailed, they went on a hunger strike and were force-fed.

Fight For the 19th Amendment

They began to argue for women’s suffrage within the framework of traditional views about women’s proper role in society. Rather than focusing on issues of justice or equal rights, they argued instead that women would bring their moral superiority and maternal instincts into the often brutal arena of politics

Fight For the 19th Amendment

The Women’s Christian Union (WCTU) came to support the cause of women’s suffrage on the grounds that without the vote women lacked the power to protect home and family and to defend morality.

The active participation of women in the nation’s war effort from 1917 to 1918 also helped to win support for a constitutional amendment enfranchising women

Fight For the 19th Amendment

By a vote of 274 to 136 the amendment was passed by the House on 10 January 1918. On 4 June 1918, it was passed in the Senate by a vote of 66 to 30. On 18 August 1920 Tennessee became the thirty-sixth state to ratify the amendment, and it officially became part of the U.S. Constitution on 26 August 1920, as the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution.

Although women had finally won full voting rights, they did not really begin to have access to most political offices until well into the 1970's

Fight For the 19th Amendment

The 19th amendment guarantees all American women the right to vote.

“The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”

The 19th Amendment

The first partial suffrage was achieved when some states allowed widows to vote in school board elections, which many people considered to be a reasonable extension of a woman’s concern for issues having to do with home and family.

The first extension of full voting rights to women came in 1869

Notes

Wyoming was the first state to provide for women’s suffrage in its constitution.

In 1893, Colorado extended the franchise to women, followed by Utah and Idaho in 1896. Fourteen years later, in 1910, the state of Washington also enfranchised women.

One by one over the next eight years, states began to grant voting rights to women: California (1911); Arizona, Kansas, and Oregon (1912); the Alaska Territory (1913); Montana and Nevada (1914); New York (1917); Michigan, Oklahoma, and South Dakota (1918).

In Illinois women won the right to participate at the federal level by voting in presidential elections (1913). Nebraska, North Dakota, and Rhode Island followed (1917), then Indiana, Iowa, Maine, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio, Tennessee, and Wisconsin (1919).

Timeline

1894: Some cities in Kentucky and Ohio give women the vote in school board elections.

1902: Kentucky repeals limited school board election voting rights for women.

1912: Kentucky restores limited voting rights for women in school board elections.

1971: The United States lowers the voting age for both men and women to eighteen.

Timeline

1920: The Women's Bureau of the Department of Labor is formed to collect information about women in the workforce and safeguard good working conditions for women.

1996 In United States vs. Virginia, the Supreme Court rules that the all-male Virginia Military School has to admit women in order to continue to receive public funding. It holds that creating a separate, all-female school will not suffice.

Timeline