Women's Suffrage Movement

(noun)

Women's suffrage in the United States was achieved gradually, at state and local levels, during the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, culminating in 1920 with the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which provided: "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."

Related Terms

Examples of Women's Suffrage Movement in the following topics:

  • The Campaign for Suffrage

    • The movement for women's suffrage gained new vitality during the Progressive Era.
    • The demand for women's suffrage began to gather strength in the 1840s, emerging from the broader movement for women's rights.
    • Many of its participants saw women's suffrage as yet another Progressive goal, and they believed that the addition of women to the electorate would help their movement achieve its other goals.
    • The burgeoning Socialist movement also aided the drive for women's suffrage in some areas.
    • Describe the women's suffrage movement at the end of the nineteenth century

  • Women's Rights

    • Women's rights in the nineteenth century focused primarily on women's suffrage, or the right to vote.
    • "First-wave feminism" refers to the feminist movement of the nineteenth through early twentieth centuries, which focused mainly on women's suffrage, or right to vote.
    • Some 300 attended, including Frederick Douglass, who stood up to speak in favor of women's suffrage.
    • Elizabeth Cady Stanton was an important early figure in the women's-suffrage movement in the mid-nineteenth century.
    • Her "Declaration of Sentiments," presented at the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848, is often credited with initiating the first organized women's-suffrage movement in the United States.

  • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and the Movement for Women's Suffrage

    • Some 300 attended, including Frederick Douglass, who stood up to speak in favor of women's suffrage to settle an inconclusive debate on the subject.
    • Susan Brownell Anthony (1820 – 1906) was a prominent American civil rights leader who played a pivotal role in the 19th century women's rights movement to introduce women's suffrage into the United States.
    • She was co-founder of the first Women's Temperance Movement with Elizabeth Cady Stanton as President.
    • Her Declaration of Sentiments, presented at the first women's rights convention held in 1848 in Seneca Falls, New York, is often credited with initiating the first organized woman's rights and woman's suffrage movements in the United States.
    • Examine the key achievements of figures of the movement for women's suffrage, especially Susan B.

  • Women in the Early Republic

    • Grassroots movements championing women's rights, including women's suffrage, developed in the antebellum period.
    • Women's rights activists held opposing stances on many difficult issues: Should the movement include or exclude men?
    • Anthony who, stung by discrimination against women in the temperance movement, gradually diverted her considerable energy to the cause of women's rights.
    • Anthony eventually assumed leadership of the women's rights movement and formed a formidable partnership with Stanton.
    • Describe the mid-19th-century campaigns for women's rights and the obstacles in the way of the movement

  • Women's Activism

    • The term "first-wave feminism" describes the women's movements during the Gilded Age, which primarily focused on women's suffrage.
    • It focused on remedying legal inequalities, and especially on gaining women's suffrage.
    • The limited membership of the NWSA was narrowly focused on gaining a federal amendment for women's suffrage, whereas the AWSA, with 10 times as many members, worked to gain suffrage on a state-by-state level as a necessary precursor to federal suffrage.
    • Many white women excluded black women from their organizations and denied them the right to participate in events because they feared that the racist attitudes of Southern voters would impede their support of the women's movement.
    • Her best-known speech was delivered extemporaneously, in 1851, at the Ohio Women's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio.

  • Republican Motherhood

    • Republican Motherhood, while maintaining women's role in the private sphere, gave women more rights to education.
    • Educated Northern women became some of the strongest voices and organizers of the abolitionist movement, which blossomed in the 1830s and 1840s.
    • Working on civil rights for enslaved people caused women to want more power for themselves, giving rise to the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848 and the women's rights movement in the United States.
    • Women worked for suffrage, property rights, legal status, and child custody in family disputes.
    • Though an analysis of Republican Motherhood highlights its complexities, it was undoubtedly an influence on later women's-rights movements.

  • The Women's Rights Movement

    • In contrast to other organizations, such as the National American Woman Suffrage Association, which focused on lobbying individual states (and from which the NWP split), the NWP put its priority on the passage of a constitutional amendment ensuring women's suffrage.
    • Alice Paul and Lucy Burns founded the organization originally under the name the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage in 1913; by 1917, the name had been changed to the National Women's Party.
    • Women associated with the party staged a suffrage parade on March 3, 1913, the day before Wilson's inauguration.
    • They also became the first women to picket for women's rights in front of the White House.
    • Evaluate how the actions of the National Women's Party pressured Wilson to support the Suffrage Amendment

  • Women's Rights after Suffrage

    • The Women’s Rights Movement made great strides in the 1920s, both in the areas of gender discrimination and women’s health.
    • Groups such as the National Woman’s Party worked hard not only to secure women’s continued suffrage, but also to oppose the ongoing mistreatment of women under President Woodrow Wilson’s administration.
    • Originally called the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage, its name changed to the National Women's Party in 1917.
    • Alice Paul founded the National Woman's Party in 1913 to promote women's suffrage and greater equal rights for women.
    • Members of the National Woman's Party picket in front of the White House for women's suffrage in 1917.

  • Domesticity and "Domestics"

    • The division between the domestic and public spheres had an impact on women's power and status.
    • In society as a whole, particularly in political and economic arenas, women's power declined.
    • Oregon were based on the assumption that women's primary role was that of mother and wife and that women's non-domestic work should not interfere with their primary function.
    • The new woman, frequently associated with the suffrage movement, represented an ideal of femininity which was diametrically opposed to the values of that cult.
    • After the Jacksonian Period, 1812 to 1850, had granted universal white male suffrage, extending the right to vote to virtually all white males in America, women believed it was their opportunity for civil liberty.

  • Frances Willard and the Women's Christian Temperance Union

    • Frances Willard founded the Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) in 1874 in Cleveland, Ohio.
    • Frances Elizabeth Caroline Willard was an American educator, temperance reformer, and women's suffragist.
    • Her influence was instrumental in the passage of the Eighteenth (Prohibition) and Nineteenth (Women Suffrage) Amendments to the United States Constitution.
    • As the movement grew in numbers and strength, members of the WCTU also focused on suffrage.
    • The WCTU was instrumental in organizing woman's suffrage leaders and in helping more women become involved in American politics.