Womens Rights Essay Research Paper The Women

Womens Rights Essay, Research Paper

The Women’s suffrage movement in the

United States

The suffragist movement in the United States was an outgrowth of the

general women’s rights movement that officially began with the Seneca

Falls Convention of 1848. Several leading figures in the antislavery

movement had also begun to question the political and economic

subjugation of women in a society that claimed to be a democracy.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Martha C, Wright, and Mary Ann

McClintock issued a call for a convention concerning the rights of

women. That convention met in Seneca Falls, New York on 19-20 July

1848.

The convention adopted a “Declaration of Principles,” deliberately

modeled on the Declaration of Independence, which stated, “We hold

these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created

equal. . . .” In addition to the Declaration of Principles, the Seneca

Convention also asserted that women should have the right to preach,

to be educated, to teach, and to earn a living. The delegates passed a

resolution stating that “it is the sacred duty of the women of this

country to secure to themselves their sacred right to the elective

franchise.” With these words the struggle began in earnest to win full

voting rights for women in the United States.

The most influential leaders of the women’s rights movement in the

second half of the nineteenth century were Elizabeth Cady Stanton and

Susan B. Anthony. But the united struggle for women’s voting rights

broke into two factions following the Civil War. Led by Anthony and

Stanton, those who believed that they should seek an amendment to

the U.S. Constitution formed the National Woman Suffrage Association in

May of 1869. Later that same year, the American Woman Suffrage

Association was formed by those who believed the most effective

strategy would be to pressure state legislatures to amend state

constitutions. The leaders of this group were Lucy Stone and Julia Ward

Howe.

The two organizations merged in 1890, as the National American Woman

Suffrage Association (NAWSA), with the intention of simultaneously

pursuing both strategies. Elizabeth Cady Stanton became the first

president of the new organization (1890-1892), followed by Susan B.

Anthony (1892-1900), Carrie Chapman Catt (1900-1904), Anna Howard

Shaw (1904-1915), and then Catt again (1915-1920). In 1920, when

NAWSA was dissolved after achieving its goal of women’s suffrage, it

was replaced by the National league of Women Voters-established in

Chicago in 1920 to educate women about how to use the newly won

vote. In time the National League of Women Voters became the League

of Women Voters, which currently operates under that same name.

When the National League of Women Voters was first established, Carrie

Chapman Catt was elected as its honorary president.

The efforts of the women’s suffrage organizations met with determined

resistance. By seeking a voice in politics, women were challenging the

conventional belief that women’s proper sphere of influence was

domestic, while men properly dominated the public sphere, including the

political process. Even many women deplored the effort to extend the

vote to women. In 1911, Josephine Dodge, the wife of a leading New

York capitalist, formed the National Association Opposed to Woman

Suffrage. Like many other anti-suffragists, Dodge advised women to

influence policy from behind the scenes, through their influence on men.

By involving themselves in politics, she insisted, women would undermine

their moral and spiritual role, as well as create chaos by meddling in

matters that were beyond their understanding.

The first partial suffrage was achieved when some states allowed

widows to vote in school board elections, which many people considered

to be a reasonable extension of a woman’s concern for issues having to

do with home and family.

The first extension of full voting rights to women came in 1869, in the

Wyoming Territory. When Wyoming entered the Union as a state in

1890, it was also the first state to provide for women’s suffrage in its

constitution. In 1893, Colorado extended the franchise to women,

followed by Utah and Idaho in 1896. Fourteen years later, in 1910, the

state of Washington also enfranchised women. One by one over the

next eight years, states began to grant voting rights to women:

California (1911); Arizona, Kansas, and Oregon (1912); the Alaska

Territory (1913); Montana and Nevada (1914); New York (1917);

Michigan, Oklahoma, and South Dakota (1918).

In Illinois women won the right to participate at the federal level by

voting in presidential elections (1913). Nebraska, North Dakota, and

Rhode Island followed (1917), then Indiana, Iowa, Maine, Minnesota,

Missouri, Ohio,

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