The Women’s Suffrage Movement was the seventy two year fight and movement leading up to the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment that granted women the right to vote. Before the nineteenth century, women were seen as property of their father or husband, and it was not until the mid-1800’s that women began to gain rights similar to men. Women had sought to obtain additional rights held already by men. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Susan B. Anthony, and Alice Paul were among the many women that led and fought for equal rights and the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. Women in the United States had little to no rights in comparison to men until 1920 when the Nineteenth Amendment was signed, giving women their deserved rights that allowed …show more content…
The discrimination due to their gender outraged them and gave them the idea to start a women’s rights movement in the United States. In Seneca Falls, New York in the summer of 1848, the women’s group began. A dissimilarity is the fact that “In many history textbooks, the entire movement is summed up in one sentence: "In 1920, Congress gave women the right to vote.’" (Cooney), but in reality the movement began in 1848 with the start of Stanton and Mott’s womens group. Lucretia Mott’s women’s rights movement promoted equal economic opportunity and political, including suffrage, rights. They were concerned with the fact that our Constitution declared all men equal, but they believed that it should focus on the equality of all citizens, not just the white male. Women’s Rights groups had finally started to gain their popularity, but once they did, the Civil War began. The Civil War had distracted the future passage of women’s rights and shifted its focus on rights of African Americans. The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments extended the right to vote to black men. While many women suffrage advocates believed that this was their opportunity to fight for suffrage for all citizens of the United States, others sided with racist southerners who argued that women votes could be used to neutralize the African American …show more content…
The gender gap is “the differences between women and men, especially as reflected in social, political, intellectual, cultural, or economic attainments or attitudes.” (Gender Gap). A gender gap in politics refers to women typically being more liberal while men are typically more conservative. “In every presidential election since 1980, a gender gap has been apparent, with a greater proportion of women than men preferring the Democrat in each case.” (CAWP) The most recent election in 2016 had a very evident gender gap with a percentage of 11. 41% of women and 52% of men that voted for Donald Trump, whereas 54% of women and 41% of men voted for Hillary Clinton. Similar to the gender gap with voting, there is also a gender gap within the roles of the government. Women made up 19.4% of the 535 seats in the 114th Congress. “If we progress at our current rate, we can expect women to be equally represented in Congress in 500 years, according to Representation 2020.” (Moss). Women taking on roles within the government are not seen as strong as a man. Sexism was alive in our most recent election, the election of 2016. Terri Vescio, a psychology professor at Penn State, said “The more female politicians are seen as striving for power, the less they’re trusted and the more moral outrage gets directed at them.” (Hidden
Many lower class citizens such as women, African American, and immigrants demanded their god-given rights of suffrage and freedom, and being accepted in society as an equal citizen. The Women’s Rights Movement assembled due to the unfair distribution of rights in men and women. According to Document I, women demanded their right to “be free as man is free, to be represented in the gov’t… [and]…we now demand our right to vote according to the declaration of the gov’t under which we live.” Elizabeth Cady Stanton protests of being inferior to men, being governed without their consent, yet still being taxed by the “democratic” gov’t to which they mean nothing.
An official document from the National American Woman Suffrage Association describes the many reasons that females should get the vote. More than a few complaints talk about the unfair treatment of women by men, such as the final statement, which reads, “They should vote equally with men, because women are citizens of a govekrnment of the people, by the people, and for the people, and women are people” (Document 7). When someone holds power over another person, a tactic that is used to validate this dehumanization. Men disregarded women so denying them the right to participate in a free government was an easy rejection. And while men saw these strong women as a threat to their power, women saw the leaders of this movement as saviors.
During the suffrage movement after 1890, women activists from various backgrounds, started to tackling with various social problems dealing with industrialization and other important topics during that time era. Women wanted to focus on topics that appealed to them as women, and mothers. The campaign to get women’s suffrage took over twenty years to get women the right to vote just like the men around them. In these two decades, women had over 480 campaigns in legislatures, over 200 campaigns in state party conventions and almost 20 campaigns in congress before the women got the same right as men. Women's work in the abolitionist movement played a particularly important role in the creation of an organized women's rights movement.
Women used many different methods to earn the right to vote in the Women’s Suffrage Movement. One method women used to earn support is that they organized a parade in Washington, D.C., the same day the president was coming into town so that there was large crowds. Many of the people in the crowd were men who, along with drinking also disagreed with the right for women to vote. They began to yell then even throw objects at the women walking in the parade. Eventually, the police walked away giving the men the opportunity to attack.
People that were for women vote said that they do so much work and deal with so many bad things in work, so why can't they vote. (artifact 3) They used many different strategies to gain the right to vote like moral persuasion. The Women's Christian Temperance Movement fought for the ban on production and sale of alcohol. The 19th amendment was passed in 1920 the women had the right to vote. (artifact
Women’s Suffrage was a movement aiming to give women the right to vote, an equal chance to participate in the government, the right to claim property, and be treated equally to men. Nellie McClung was one of the Famous Five who stood up for women’s right to vote. McClung saw unjust in the law towards women and children, women had no way of protecting themselves from abuse, women couldn’t own property, only men could. Women couldn’t do anything about home issues if they had an abusive spouse, divorce was not an option due to Christianity and that the women would also be left with nothing,. The men would have the children and the property under their name leaving the women under no set back, women were say as inferior, only being expected to do house work and not be involved in politics, women didn’t have the same rights that men did and were always ranked lower than men.
If we want to get something great it will take a lot of effort. This is exactly what women did to help get their goal on August 18, 1920. Although many thought they would not win their battle, they did. They made it possible for all women to have the ability to vote. What they accomplished, showed that through willpower and courage, anything can be achieved.
First, some people may have different opinions about my argument. Until the ratification of the 19th Amendment, women could play limited roles in the society of United States, and there was nothing women could do politically and legally; men did not easily grant women any rights. Furthermore, it could be claimed that the adoption of the 19th Amendment was not because of the efforts and struggles of women to gain the voting rights, but because of the efforts of the government to have the support of the women during World War 1. Also, the 15th Amendment was useless which did not safeguard the African American people, and they had been suppressed for nearly 100 years. When you look at these areas, the voting right movements demonstrated that just how favorable the political system was for the advocates of the status quo and how long it took to reform.
“These two amendments allowed men to vote, but still permitted states to deny the vote to women” (Kirk, G. & Okazawa-Rey, M. 2013). Once they submitted their votes, they immediately had a warrant out for them because women were not able to vote during this time. After they were caught, they were taken to trial, which lasted for a long year (McDavitt 1944). However, the question for women suffrage bubbled up to the service, which proved to legislation that they needed equal rights for women (McDavitt 1944). According to the textbook, Elizabeth Stanton and Susan B. Anthony formed the Woman Suffrage Association and started working towards getting the women the right to vote (Kirk, G. & Okazawa-Rey, M. 2013).
After the Civil War, women were willing to gain the same rights and opportunities as men. The war gave women the chance to be independent, to live for themselves. Women’s anger, passion, and voice to protest about what they were feeling was the reason of making the ratification of the 19th amendment, which consisted of giving women the right to vote. One of the largest advancement of that era was the women’s movement for the suffrage, which gave them the reason to start earning
During polls for voting 100 woman went to vote saying they are a citizen and it is a given right. Soon after Susan B Anthony was arrested for her actions that were being taken. The people believed as if they could stop Susan then they could stop the movement. At Susan's trial there were many people their supporting here. The court would not allow susan to stand up for herself just because she was a woman.
Throughout history women have constantly had fewer constitutional rights and profession openings than men, primarily because women have continuously been considered inferior to men. The working class also possessed fewer rights during the 1800s. Workers were bound to their employers and had little to no rights. As the years moved on, much of that began to change. Employed citizens had little to no voting rights, and they kept trying until they achieved what they wanted.
This movement not only involved with white suffragists, but also with the black suffragists; the whole event was concentrating on sex and racial equality. "As Stanton consistently put it, the republican lesson of the war was that popular sovereignty, the equal political rights of all individuals, preceded and underlay government and nations.... The belief that the right to vote was the individual 's natural right made the case for woman suffrage much stronger." (Dubois, 91) Stanton believed that through the lesion of equal political rights and individual’s natural right made the woman suffrage even stronger.
During the war when the amendments were being put into place many women hoped that they would be granted the same right that were given to free slaves. Although it was a big step for African Americans. This then made the women’s movement have two separate parties one being the National Woman Suffrage Association and the other being American Women Suffrage Association. Both of these associations campaigned for women suffrage believing that it could only be acquired through a constitutional amendment and not just different states.
They held many meetings and conventions to discuss about how they were going to fight for their rights. " In July 1848, the Women’s Rights Convention was held in Seneca Falls, N.Y. It was the opening salvo of the battle for women’s suffrage, although many years would pass before its proponents would finally achieve victory" ("Women 's Rights Convention"). This was one of the first steps in the road to freedom for women. They also had many supporters to make the United States of America pass the law for women to vote and have the rights men have.