Women’s Suffrage

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Womens Suffrage
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Alexis de Tocqueville Democracy in America
(1840)

• Alexis de Tocqueville was a French citizen who
  traveled to America and wrote about his
  observations of American culture and politics.
• In Democracy in America, he discusses how
  Americans viewed the equality of the sexes.
• Tocqueville acknowledged that women were not
  completely equal in American society, but he also
  claimed that they enjoyed greater equality here
  than in Europe.
• Americans do not think that man and woman have
  either the duty or the right to perform the same
  offices, but they show an equal regard for both
  their respective parts and though their lot is
  different, they consider both of them as beings
  of equal value.

3
The Seneca Falls Declaration (1848)

• The Seneca Falls Declaration of 1848 outlined the
  women's rights movement of the mid-19th century.
• As can be seen in the opening passages, the
  document was modeled after the Declaration of
  Independence.
• We hold these truths to be self-evident that
  all men and women are created equal that they
  are endowed by their Creator with certain
  inalienable rights that among these are life,
  liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that to
  secure these rights governments are instituted,
  deriving their just powers from the consent of
  the governed.

4
Susan B. Anthony In Favor of Women's Suffrage
(1872)

• In this speech, given following her arrest for
  attempting to vote in the 1872 election, Anthony
  argues that respect for America's fundamental
  principles requires that women be allowed to
  vote.
• In thus voting, I not only committed no crime,
  but, instead, simply exercised my citizen's
  right, guaranteed to me and all United States
  citizens by the National Constitution, beyond the
  power of any State to deny.
• It was we, the people, not we, the white male
  citizens, nor yet we, the male citizens but we,
  the whole people, who formed this Union. And we
  formed it, not to give the blessings or liberty,
  but to secure them not to the half of ourselves
  and the half of our posterity, but to the whole
  people-women as well as men.

5
Agnes Nestor Working Her Fingers to the Bone
(1898)

• Beginning in the late 19th century, the rapid
  increase in the number of women in the work force
  reflected a significant shift in the role and
  status of women in American culture.
• As women become more economically empowered,
  their methods and scope of organization also
  became increasingly more apparent and often tied
  to labor disputes.
• Such disputes often provided the impetus for
  organized movements to achieve suffrage with the
  general understanding that political influence
  would provide women with greater protection in
  the work place.
• Agnes Nestor was a factory worker who played a
  substantial role in the emerging women's labor
  movement.
• This reminiscence by Nestor described how the
  oppressive conditions of the glove factory pushed
  her to take a leading role in a successful strike
  of female glove workers in 1898.

6
Alice Stone Blackwell The Military Argument
(1897)

• Alice Stone Blackwell made a strong argument
  against the connection between eligibility for
  serving in the armed forces and suffrage.
• The insuperable objection to woman suffrage is
  fundamental and functional, and Nature alone is
  responsible for it, since she has created man
  combatant and woman non-combatant. If this
  theory were correct, all men who can fight would
  be admitted to the ballot box, and all men who
  cannot fight would be excluded.
• It must be rendered that if women do not render
  military service, they do render equivalent
  service to their country in another way, since it
  is the women who bring all the soldiers into the
  world. This ought in all fairness to be taken as
  an offset for the military service which is not
  required for them.

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Womens Suffrage Map
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Headquarters of an Anti-Suffrage Group (c.1910)

• Opposition to the goal of womens suffrage came
  from many arenas. Some objected because they
  believed that women would only duplicate the
  voting of their husbands, while others believed
  that women were unable to exert the rational
  thought that voting required.

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Anti-Suffrage Pamphlet (c.1910)

• Housewives!
• You do not need a ballot to clean out your sink
  spout. A handful of potash and some boiling water
  is quicker and cheaper
• Why vote for pure food laws, when your husband
  does that, while you can purify your Ice-box with
  saleratus water?
• Vote NO on Woman Suffrage
• BECAUSE 90 of the women either do not want it,
  or do not care.
• BECAUSE it means competition of women with men
  instead of co-operation.
• BECAUSE 80 of the women eligible to vote are
  married and can only double or annul their
  husbands votes
• BECAUSE in some States more voting women than
  voting men will place the Government under
  petticoat rule.
• BECAUSE it is unwise to risk the good we already
  have for the evil which may occur.

10
Alice Miller Why We Don't Want Men to Vote
(1915)

• Alice Miller was a prominent writer who often
  expounded on topics relevant to women. Here she
  satirizes the viewpoints of many men who wanted
  to deny women the right to vote.
• Why We Don't Want Men to Vote
• Because man's place is in the army.
• Because no really manly man wants to settle any
  question otherwise than by fighting about it.
• Because if men should adopt peaceable methods
  women will no longer look up to them.
• Because men will lose their charm if they step
  out of their natural sphere and interest
  themselves in other matters than feats of arms,
  uniforms, and drums.
• Because men are too emotional to vote. Their
  conduct at baseball games and political
  conventions shows this, while their innate
  tendency to appeal to force renders them unfit
  for government.

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"Kaiser Wilson"

• During World War I, militant suffragists,
  demanding that President Wilson reverse his
  opposition to a federal amendment, stood vigil at
  the White House and carried banners such as this
  one comparing the President to Kaiser Wilhelm II
  of Germany.
• In the heated patriotic climate of wartime, such
  tactics met with hostility and sometimes violence
  and arrest.

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Carrie Chapman Catt Do you know? (1918)

• This work was intended to inform about the status
  of womens suffrage across the globe and point
  out how far behind America was up to that point
  in time.
• Catt also stressed the importance of suffrage for
  women working to secure their rights as citizens.
• DO YOU KNOW that the movement for woman suffrage
  is just a part of the eternal forward march of
  the human race toward a complete democracy that
  in the American colonies only a very small
  proportion of the men could vote that even after
  the Revolution only property-holders could vote
  that it was only by slow and hard-fought stage
  that all men finally won the right to vote and
  that in most foreign countries the franchise for
  men is still heavily loaded with restrictions?...
• DO YOU KNOW one single sound, logical reason why
  the intelligence and individuality of women
  should not entitle them to the rights and
  privileges of self-government?

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Women's Voting Rights

• Possibly the biggest change in the political
  landscape of the 20th century has been the
  enfranchisement of women. When the century began,
  only one small country (New Zealand) allowed
  women to vote, but now, only one small country
  (Kuwait) does not allow women to vote.

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Chronology of Womens Suffrage

• 1869 Wyoming Territory grants suffrage to women.
• 1870 Utah Territory grants suffrage to women.
• 1880 New York state grants school suffrage to
  women.
• 1890 Wyoming joins the union as the first state
  with voting rights for women. By 1900 women also
  have full suffrage in Utah, Colorado and Idaho.
  New Zealand is the first nation to give women
  suffrage.
• 1902 Women of Australia are enfranchised.
• 1906 Women of Finland are enfranchised.
• 1912 Suffrage referendums are passed in Arizona,
  Kansas, and Oregon.
• 1914 Montana and Nevada grant voting rights to
  women.
• 1915 Women of Denmark are enfranchised.
• 1917 Women win the right to vote in North Dakota,
  Ohio, Indiana, Rhode Island, Nebraska, Michigan,
  New York, and Arkansas.
• 1918 Women of Austria, Canada, Czechoslovakia,
  Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Poland, Scotland, and
  Wales are enfranchised.
• 1919 Women of Azerbaijan Republic, Belgium,
  British East Africa, Holland, Iceland,
  Luxembourg, Rhodesia, and Sweden are enfranchised.

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Passage of the 19th Amendment

• Passed in 1919
• 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.

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Multimedia Citation

• Slide 1 http//www.americaslibrary.gov/assets/jb
  /jazz/jb_jazz_19tham_1_e.jpg
• Slide 2 http//clarke.cmich.edu/detroit/images/t
  ocqueville.jpg
• Slide 3 http//odur.let.rug.nl/usa/images/2003/
  ElizabethCadyStanton.jpg
• Slide 4 http//teachpol.tcnj.edu/amer_pol_hist/
  fi/00000113.htm
• Slide 5 http//www.kentlaw.edu/ilhs/images/hall/
  nestor.jpg
• Slide 6 http//lcweb2.loc.gov/pnp/cph/3b30000/3b3
  9000/3b39700/3b39726r.jpg
• Slide 7 http//www.constitutioncenter.org/timelin
  e/html/cw08_12159.html
• Slide 8 http//womenshistory.about.com/library/pi
  c/bl_p_opposed_suffrage_hq.htm
• Slide 9 http//www.jwa.org/teach/primarysources/o
  rgrec_08.pdf
• Slide 10 http//www.asu.edu/pipercwcenter/how2jou
  rnal/current/miller_feature/intro_mainframe.htm
• Slide 11 http//www.archives.gov/global-pages/lar
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• Slide 12 http//www.brynmawr.edu/library/exhibits
  /suffrage/CCCatt.jpg
• Slide 13 http//users.erols.com/mwhite28/fem-vote
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• Slide 14 http//www.americaslibrary.gov/assets/jb
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• Slide 15 http//www.archives.gov/exhibits/feature
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