Women began voting early in some states - By the 1790s. These rights were taken away, however, and a public movement for women's rights, including suffrage, began in 1848 in Seneca Falls, New York. The movement split during and after the Civil War, and victory seemed distant. This group, the National American Women's Suffrage Association was huge, well organized, and serious about winning women the right to vote by 1910. It was born when two previously competing suffrage groups joined forces in 1890. Marches, rallies, and tireless advocacy were its tools. It educated and acted as a political pressure group, particularly encouraging women to participatgte in patriotic activities during World War One to show their civic worthiness. When women won the vote, the group transofrmed itself into the still-active League of Women Voters, a voter education group.
Indignation at losing voting rights women had in the West when these women moved to the East was one emotion expressed at many suffrage rallies. Led by Wyoming, where scarcity gave women opportunities and status they did not enjoy in the East, several US stataes gave women state and local voting rights long before national suffrage was won. California joined the roster in 1911 after a big battle -- nine years before women won voting rights at the federal level. These women tried to appeal to state pride, but most had to wait until the 1920 national win.
Men who supported women's suffrage saw the need to lobby and convince other men. Reasons they cited to give women the vote included: The Constitution of the United States, the contributions women made to our society, the expectation that women would "clean up" cities and states just as they cleaned house, assumptions about women's likelihood to vote to fund certain projects such as schools and hospitals, the assumption women would vote against war expenditures and candidates, and the fair-play argument that women should not have to live in a society in which they had no voice in governance.
The opposition to women's suffrage was more organized in some states than others, and often quiet, private, and freeform. The arguments used to reflect the sexism of the times: women were too unreliable to vote, women would vote for the most handsome, women needed to stay at home, women should not compete with men for a public voice, women would only vote as their husbands/fathers/sons told them, women would NOT vote as husbands/fathers/sons told them, women would try to run for office and boss men around, women should be happy with more limited roles that matched their limited brain power, it would be too stressful for delicate women to grapple with big public issues, etc. Note that the "Anit-" headquarters seems to be well attended by men -- but it's unclear whether the single woman was on board or not. There were many femail "Antis," however.
Suffrage parades were wonderful spectacles. In this one, Lady Liberty speaks on the grounds of the US Capitol. Women and girls dressed in white, often with gold and purple accents (and violets!) to make their point that women would bring morality and purity to public affairs. Many girls marched alongside their mothers, and men had placed in the parades as well.
Not everyone was happy marching and demonstrating politely with signs. A younger, militant branch of the suffrage movement led by the brilliant Alice Paul took non-violent direct action such as chaining their bodies to the fences at the White House. (In this, they took inspiration from the radical suffrage movement in England led by the Pankhursts.) When they were arrested they often refused food, declared hunger strikes, and risked death -- adding urgency to their message. They were treated brutally in jail, put in solitary confinement, force-fed, and otherwise denied basic rights. The pointed reference to better treatment in Russia was an attempt to shame the democratic United States into fair treatment for these brave women.
President Woodrow Wilson became a special target for originally supporting women's suffrage in theory, but abandoning his enthusiasm once he was elected in 1912. As his 1916 re-election neared, women pointedly held his feet to the fire with special demonstrations like this one outside the White House gates. Some women welcomed US entry into World War I in 1917 expressly because they knew it would give them a chance to prove their value and patriotism by working for victory at home, in factories, and on farms. The war did help change Wilson's mind -- but it also ruined his health and caused an early death. So the president was not a great help in the suffrage drive. Women had to do it on their own.
Latinx women in the Southwest also organized for suffrage. Adelina Otero-Warren, the niece of the popular head of New Mexico's Republican Party, helped lead Mexican American women into the political mainstream. Bilingual flyers and speeches in Spanish at public rallies brought support for suffrage among both men and women in the Histpanic communities. Otero-Warren enjoyed such a loyal following that she was chosen by Alice Paul to lead the state Congressional Union in 1917. Her mission was to bombard the New Mexico congressional delegation to win their support in the battle to pass the "Susan B Anthony" (19th) Amendement. With her help the amendment passed through Congress and to the states for ratification. New Mexico women won full suffrage at last with the final ratification by the state legislature of the amendment in 1920. Women voted with enthusiasm in New Mexico, with participation rates of Mexican-American women exceeding that of Anglo women or men. Source: New Mexico Office of the State Historian.
Noting the effectiveness of African American women involved in the movement, racist media such as this film and its flier did not hesitate to insult the women. Here the insult is doubled: "Coon" is a racist association of African -American people with animals, and "suffragette" both diminishes and feminizes the suffrage supporters; activists in the struggle preferred "suffragist," a more serious, de-gendered, and broader term. And winning the vote did not mean that African-Americans in the South (and elsewhere) were safe using their rights. Until the Voting Rights Act of 1964, many African-Americans were blocked from voting by a variety of legal and social maneuvers -- which the Act finally prohibited. Unfortunately and ironically, large numbers of African-Americans and others face barriers to voting today in states that are re-introducing measures to make voting more difficult.
Women from every background saw the advantages of suffrage, and worked hard to make it come to pass. Today historians can point to specific elections in which women's vote made a difference, but elections are just one part of a participatory democracy, and suffrage alone has not wiped out discrimination, poverty, and exploitation.
African American women, some still able to recall the horrors of life under slavery, were immediate and warm supporters of women's suffrage. In a deeply racist nation, however, the European-American suffrage movement didn't always or immediately welcome them in. Most didn't wait; a Boston convention in 1895 united African-American women under the leadership of Mrs. Booker T. Washington in the new National Federation of Afro-American Women. This group soon merged with the Colored Women's League of Washington to form the active and effective National Association of Colored Women, which lobbied and worked hard for suffrage.
In most states, women had to rely on persuading men to give them the vote, as this Ohio banner makes clear. While many men supported women's suffrage, many also opposed it -- and they were aided by the huge alcohol industry lobby, which rightly feared that women would use the vote to enact Prohibition. Women won the vote by converting the men in their lives one by one -- argument by argument, point by point. In fact, women won federal suffrage by one vote in one state -- Tennessee, where a state legislator changed his Anti vote at the very last minute because his mother had written him a note that morning asking him to support suffrage.
THE INDIAN WOMEN: We whom you pity as drudges reached centuries ago the goal you are now nearing.
WE THE WOMEN OF THE IROQUOIS:
Own the land, the lodge, the children.
Ours is the right of adoption, of life or death;.
Ours the right to raise up and depose Chiefs;
Ours the right of representation at all councils;
Ours the right to make and abrogate treaties;
Ours the supervision over domestic and foreign policies;
Ours the trusteeship of the tribal property;
Our lives are valued again as high as man's.
Because racism excluded indigenous or Native American people from virtually all segments of society, Native women did not win the vote in 1920 when other women did. They had been stripped of US citizenship during the 19th century, also losing huge tracts of open land, freedom to practice their religions, and many aspects of their culture. Ironically, many such as these Iroquois women came from cultures in which their contributions were valued and they were able to exert real power over the direction of their nations. When their US women finally won the vote -- but for many, discriminatory practices and hardships in everyday life became practical barriers to their actually using it.
Feminists on their way to Yonkers, N.Y., city hall to present the mayor with tickets to a suffrage event, August 30, 1913, displayed a banner which read: "Woman's Cause is Man's - They Rise or Fall Together." Earlier in 1829 Francis Wright spoke on this theme at a feminist gathering : " . . . until women assume the place in society which good sense and good feeling alike assign to them, human improvement must advance but feebly . .. . That we could learn that what is ruinous to some is injurious to all; and that whenever we establish our own pretensions upon the sacrificed rights of others, we .. . impeach our own liberties, and lower ourselves in the scale of being! . ..Men will ever rise or fall to the level of the other sex . . . . Surely, then, if they knew their interests, they would desire the improvement of those who, if they do not advantage, will injure them .. . How many, how omnipotent are the interests which engage men to break the mental chains of women! . .. Jealousies, envyings, suspicions, reserves, deceptions these are the fruits of inequality. Go, then! and remove the evil first from the minds of women, then from their condition, and then from your laws . .. "
Women's Rights Poster Collection. DPA Series: The Feminist Revolution no. 6
Although the more tiresome aspects of office work came to be regarded as "woman's work" by men, the first invaders of this male territory were ridiculed and resented by men. Men still re ly heavily on women in the office, but only in the old "helpmate" role. Today a secretary may run the office with the necessary authority and responsibility but most often is not given the corresponding recognition, title, or salary. She is referred to as "my girl" by her boss, underscoring the extent to which secretarial jobs are considered for young girls only. Job descriptions like "Attractive gal for receptionist job" are fast disappearing from newspapers across the country because of feminist pressure. Such physical descriptions have rarely been used in ads for men's jobs. The more ambitious young women are taking lesser paying jobs with promise for advancement rather than succumb to dead-end office work where they identify only with men instead of their own accomplishments.
Women's Rights Poster Collection. DPA Series: The Feminist Revolution no. 3
Social view of woman's "sphere" was recorded on this page from life Maggzine, 1914. Feminist lucy Stone had remprked earlier in 1855: " ... the same society that drives forth the young man, keeps woman at home - dependent .... If she goes heartily and bravely to give herself to some worthy purpose, she is out of her sphere and she loses caste." In 1873, Sara M. Grimke stated: "Woman, instead of being e levated by her union with man, which might be expected from an alliance with a superior being, is in reality lowered. She gene rally loses her individuality, her independent character, her moral being." Why, the n, have women to this day urge ntly sought marriage? Feminists say that because of their occupational limitations, women prefer work at home to work in the factory. Second, having no social status of their own, they must be defined by their husbands and children - hence, the preoccupation with sexual attractiveness, with searching for boyfriends and husbands, and with the bearing of children to achieve social worth. Third, their housewife role enables men to spend time working for money. Fourth, their non-salaried services, although not considered as valuable as the work of men, are absolutely crucial to industrial capitalism. Fifth, by performing this so-called valueless work to pay for their keep, women perpetuate their dependence.
Women's Rights Poster Collection. DPA Series: The Feminist Revolution no. 7.
Social tradition made liberation from whalebone, bustles, and heavy skirts slow and hazardous. In 1792, Mary Wollstonecraft complained: "To preserve personal beauty, woman's glory! the limbs and faculties are cramped with worse than Chinese bands, and the sedentary life which they are condemned to live whilst boys frolic in the open air, weakens the muscles and relaxes the nerves .... " Sixty years later, women who dared wear modest trousers under shortened skirts for outdoor work and exercise were met with damning public indictments. The New York Courier and Enquirer threatened them with loss of respect, "notoriety and .. . the broad glare of publicity." Further, "the sun belongs to man, the shade is woman's. Notoriety is the foul fiend at whose feet she falls and perishes." Despite Amelia Bloomer's assertion that women had the right to control their wardrobe, the trousers were laid aside. "The cup of ridicule is greater than we can bear," sighed Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Eighty-one years later, the above drawing from The Washington Daily News (1933) gave evidence that the tailored-down wardrobe was still resented. Its peevish editorial read: "If women are trying to compensate for a feeling of inferiority, at least it is nothing new, and nothing to get very excited about . . .. The world wags on in spite of the 'feminist' tendencies of the gals in mother's time." What of the "gals" of our time? Under threats of social ostricism and of failure in love by mass media advertising, many continue to subject themselves to grossly uncomfortable fashions. And the feminists of our time continue to protest such pressures.
Women's Rights Poster Collection. DPA Series: The Feminist Revolution no.12
Women celebrating the 50th anniversary of their right to vote, August, 1970, dramatically called upon all women to ..unite. On that same day, the House of Representatives approved the Women's Rights Amendment to the Constitution. Feminism, part of a complex evolutionary process, probably began as a world movement in 1792 with Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. It later emerged as an influential force in the United States from its fight against slavery. Women finally won the vote in 1920, but, having failed to develop feminist consciousness, lost the campaign to remove the social and cultural barriers to full equality. The movement lost momentum and burned itself out. Women are the largest and most unfairly treated group in the world. Those whose sympathies have driven them to fight the causes of other oppressed minorities have historically developed valuable political experience and strength. And so it was that feminism rose from its ashes in the sixties championing civil rights and black power. But where past generations had placed the greatest stress on removing legal and social obstacles from the paths of women, the present generation is more dedicated to making basic changes in the institutions of society that perpetuate the oppression of women and of all mankind.
Women's Rights Poster Collection. DPA Series: The Feminist Revolution no 14.
North America's Betty Friedan (left) and England's Germaine Greer (right) are two of the articulate leaders of the new feminist movement. In 1963, Betty Friedan wrote a bestselling and controversial book, The Feminine Mxstigue because "There (is) a strange discrepancy between the reality of our lives as women and the image to which we (are) trying to conform, the image that I ... call the feminine mystique." In 1966, she founded The National Organization for Women (NOW). Composed of middle-and upper-middle-class women and men, it has been called "the NAACP of the women's movement" because it fights within the system and reaches a constituency uninfluenced by the more radical groups. In 1970, Germaine Greer wrote The Female Eunuch, another bestselling and controversial book on feminism because "we know what we are, but know not what we may be, or what we might have been." Her more radical voice has stirred even the "quiet audiences of provincial women decently hatted and dressed," as well as those disgusted with "conventional political methods." Further: "The revolutionary woman must know her enemies ... and devise her own mode of revolt .. .. Hopefully, th is book is subversive .. . if women are the truly oppressed majority, the revolution can only be drawn nearer by their withdrawal of support for the capitalist system."
Women's Rights Poster Collection. DPA Series: The Feminist Revolution no 16.
This protestor won an injunction in 1972 allowing her admittance to the all-male Gaslight Club. Foundation executives who fight poverty and discrimination lunch at the Harvard Club, "a 107-year old monument to male e xclusivity." Senators who support liberal social concerns ride across Washington to meet at the allmale Cosmos Club. Members of law and investment banking firms who have served in liberal Democratic administrations lunch in men-only clubs. Groups like the Elks and the Moose exclude women despite threats of losing their liquor licenses. If political and money-making discussions are no longer believed to be strictly masculine activities, why then should the participation of women in these activities threaten the cherished "masculine dimension?" Reasons like "having to stand everytime a woman walks into the room," " can't talk about sports," and concerns about toilet facilities, squash courts and locker rooms are feeble and childish. Male feminists believe that all-male ceremonies make some men feel manly and powerful and affirm their difference from, and therefore, their superiority to, women; that men separate themselves from women in masculinity-affirming rituals much as little boys exclude little girls from their tree houses.
Women's Rights Poster Collection. DPA Series: The Feminist Revolution no 24.
A feminist speaking in support of the women's rights movement gets at least one response from a predominately male audience. "The widening of woman's sphere is to improve her lot. let us do it, and if the world scoff, let it scoff- if it sneer, let it sneer .. .. " (lucy Stone, 1855). "Men, as at present instructed, will not help this work, because they also are under the slavery of habit ... they do not look at both sides, and women must leave off asking them and being influenced by them .... " (Margaret Fuller, 1845). " ... unless the men of this nation are made by woman to see that they have been guilty of usurpation, and of cruel usurpation, I believe very little progress will be made . . .. This nation ridicules and derides this movement ... . This is not ignorance. They know all about the truth . It is the natural outbreak of tyranny. It is because the tyrants and usurpers are alarmed. They have been and are called to judgment, and they dread the examination and exposure of their position and character." (William lloyd Garrison, 1853)
Women's Rights Poster Collection. DPA Series: The Feminist Revolution no. 19.
Groups of youths, minorities, and women, as the "cultural revolution" in rebellion against dehumanization and alienation in our society, are challenging traditional mores and examining alternative life-styles. For instance, many have found communal living and collective childrearing less repressive than traditional marriage and the biological/nuclear family. No doubt the hard-to-change notion of women as sexual commodities will impede both the Cultural and the Feminist Revolutions. Feminism, revived amid the political climate of the universities in the late sixties, reached only the better informed and educated. Reaching the politically isolated, like the suburban housewives and the less-educated, working women, is difficult. Many women, in their passive acceptance of "the way things are," have become victims of the "happy slave mentality," participating in their own abuse. like the blacks, women have been alienated from their own culture because feminist history and literature have been ignored; thus, they have no sense of themselves or of their condition. Also, the feminist tactics of political dissent and the intent to change existing structures are frightening and distasteful to the traditional woman.
Women's Rights Poster Collection. DPA Series: The Feminist Revolution no 15.
Women display symbols of their enslavement, london, March, 1971 . Many feminists feel that as long as their time is subject to the demands of others, and as long as they live vicariously through their husbands and children, they will never be free . The roles of wife and mother, and consumer of socially wasteful goods upon which capitalism depends for its survival are not the only outlets for their talents and energies. Although working outside the home is not a panacea (household drudgery is better than factory drudgery), it does bring greater social and econ~mic independence. Unfortunately for many, this independence must be achieved by joining an exploitative labor force only to return at night to assume the double burden of housework which few men are required or expected to do. But, "when women strike in factories, they become conscious of their power, their autonomy, and as a result they are less submissive at home. It's all connected."
Women's Rights Poster Collection. DPA Series: The Feminist Revolution no 17.