National Woman's Party

Suffrage Movement

The NWP was founded in 1916 by two young suffragists, Alice Paul and Lucy Burns. Before earning a PhD in economics at the University of Pennsylvania, Paul worked and studied in England, where she became friends with the militant women's rights advocate Emmeline Pankhurst. After college, she and Burns joined the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), the principal women's rights organization. Paul quickly earned a leadership position in the NAWSA, leading the congressional committee, the NAWSA s lobbying arm. She became convinced that NAWSA's strategy to win the vote through a state-by-state approach was too cumbersome. Instead, she favored a federal suffrage amendment. Because of this tactical disagreement and Paul's promotion of boycotts and picketing, NAWSA's president Carrie Chapman Catt considered Paul too radical for the NAWSA. Paul left the organization and formed the National Woman's Party in 1913.

The NWP used a number of creative strategies to pressure elected officials to support women's suffrage, including withholding support from political candidates and parties as well as an unprecedented program of silently picketing the White House every day. When picketers were arrested for disrupting traffic, the women held a hunger strike and were force-fed. They used their brutal treatment to gain national media attention and ultimately increased public support for their cause. The NWP's program of civil disobedience served as a model for subsequent protests for social change by labor and civil rights activists.

Equal Rights Amendment

In 1920, women gained the vote with the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment. Believing that suffrage was merely the first step toward women's equality, Paul refocused the NWP's efforts on a federal amendment to eliminate all gender discrimination. At a NWP conference in Seneca Falls, New York (home of the first women's rights convention in 1848), Paul introduced the first Equal Rights Amendment (ERA).

A version of Paul's amendment has been introduced in Congress every year since, but it has not become law. A number of states, however, have passed their own ERAs.

Global Initiatives

The NWP's efforts were not limited to the United States. It was also involved with the incorporation of women's issues as part of the mission of the League of Nations and later the United Nations. NWP also was instrumental in the creation of the Inter-American Commission of Women, and in 1934, it established its own global organization, the World Women's Party.

Education

In 1997, the NWP ceased its lobbying activities and is now a not-for-profit educational organization. It owns and maintains the historic Seward-Belmont House (home to the organization since 1929). The organization's education outreach program includes house tours, online and museum exhibits, research library and archives, and a speaker's bureau. NWP's most recent project is a digital initiative that, when completed, will include over 10,000 items from their collection of publications, records, and images, which document the women's rights movement in the United States.

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