Women's Suffrage Movement

Women had fought the battle for suffrage since the founding of the United States. The sheer length of this fight for the right to vote shows its importance. For three generations, the suffrage movement gave American women a separate sphere of political life, one with purpose, spirit, and continuity. It politicized networks of women, created new ones, and spurred their efforts in a sense of common cause.

Throughout the 19th century, American society believed that social roles were divided by gender. The ideology of separate spheres argued that men were better suited for life in the public domain and that women should remain in the home to care for the family and children. Men were considered rational, independent, competitive, and aggressive, while women were seen as emotional, maternal, domestic, and dependent. This division of society was considered natural and ordained by God. It was obvious to society at the time that men and women's biological differences should rightly translate into differences in their lives. The two spheres were considered completely separate for many years. But by the beginning of the 20th century, American women were beginning to live longer, become better educated, and join voluntary organizations to find rewarding lives outside the home.

Women argued that since they were consigned to the home because of the separate spheres ideology, they should have some form of participation in the political, social, and economic decisions that affected the home and family life. The best way for that to happen, according to suffragists, was for women to gain the vote. The push for the vote for women was not universally applauded. Woman suffrage was very much a middle-class woman's movement. Working-class women were less interested in a vote, which they saw as largely symbolic. In their lives, economic oppression was central, and most did not believe that a vote would improve the drudgery of their existence. The arguments that suffragists used to press for the vote were also very much in tune with middle-class values. Previously, antebellum suffragists focused on women's rights as a whole—they saw the lack of voting rights as a part of a complex process of oppression that involved marriage, family, employment, education, and religion. By the 1890s, demands for this kind of complete equality gave way to the argument that women, with their distinctive feminine qualities, would “do good” for society by voting for social changes that would benefit the family. These ideas of civic housekeeping, in which women care for the children, clean the house, prepare the food, and uphold morality, translated into a political agenda. After all, some argued, if women are better at managing the home and the moral landscape of the family, they can do the same for the country as a whole. While this argument seems suspect today, this new brand of woman suffrage connected with large numbers of Americans, who began to support the movement.

Women supported the push for suffrage for many reasons, some political, some personal. Some were firmly committed to the idea of equal rights. Others, called social feminists, turned to suffrage in order to further another cause such as the temperance movement, women's club activities, settlement work, consumer protection, or the organization of women in industry. While all female activists challenged male power in some ways, suffragists were the only group [Page 1487]to do so overtly. By assaulting the main bastion of male power, politics and government, the suffrage movement was a women's crusade to legitimize women's role in public life, a campaign to ensure that women could participate in society as individuals, rather than just as family members. To win this battle, suffragists had to convince male voters, state legislatures, and congressmen not only that woman suffrage would benefit society but also that women wanted the vote. This second step soon proved to be the most difficult, because in many cases the suffragists had to convince other women that they wanted the vote.

...