Despite the VRA, voter suppression efforts persist and disproportionately target voters of color, immigrant voters, LGBTQ voters, and disabled voters, and, as a result, many women living at the intersection of any of these identities. Such efforts include, but are not limited to, voter ID laws, inaccessible polling places, voter roll purges, voter intimidation efforts, limited access to early voting, and disinformation campaigns.
The persistence of this discrimination is in large part due to the weakening of the VRA, particularly in light of recent events such as the U. Supreme Court decision Shelby County v.
Holder — gutting key VRA voter protection provisions—and the lifting of a consent decree on the Republican National Committee in , which voting rights advocates fear may result in more frequent instances of voter intimidation and suppression. Moreover, people residing in Washington, D. People living in D. House of Representatives. Although D. Felony disenfranchisement laws around the U. These laws disproportionately disenfranchise Black and Latinx people.
Partisan gerrymandering is also effectively disenfranchising millions of U. Finally, the coronavirus crisis has created new obstacles to safe and equitable access to voting for many voters in addition to existing barriers.
Lawmakers must enact robust policies to combat voter suppression to ensure that all eligible Americans can vote. Partisan gerrymandering, which devalues votes, must also come to an end. In addition, it is essential that any and all voting reforms aim to make voting more convenient, safer , and more accessible for every eligible voter. Then it needed to be ratified by the legislatures in three-fourths of the states.
By March , 35 states had ratified the amendment, but that left suffragists one short. In August, Tennessee put the amendment over the top, paving the way for women to vote in the presidential election. Once the 19th Amendment passed, suffragists claimed a new moniker—that of women citizens. In many ways the suffrage movement was an anomaly, the rare time when a broad coalition of women came together under one banner.
In the post-suffrage era, politically engaged women embraced a wide variety of causes rather than remaining united around a single goal.
Throughout American history, women have been dedicated political actors even without the vote. When thinking about the larger implications of the suffrage victory, we also need to remember that many women, especially those in Western states, were already voting in the years before the passage of the 19th Amendment.
In addition, many women across the country enjoyed the right to vote on the local level in municipal elections and for school committees. Celebrating the passage of the 19th Amendment also slights the plight of African American voters, for whom the 19th Amendment was at most a hollow victory.
In , the vast majority of African Americans still lived in the South, where their voting rights were effectively eliminated by devices such as whites-only primaries, poll taxes, and literacy tests. For Black Americans, it was the Voting Rights Act of , not the 14th, 15th, or 19th Amendments, that finally removed the structural barriers to voting.
In a parallel disfranchisement, few Native American women gained the vote through the 19th Amendment. Not until did Congress pass legislation declaring that all Native Americans born in the United States were citizens, which cleared the way for tribal women to vote. But Native American women still faced ongoing barriers to voting on the state and local levels, especially in the West, as did Mexican Americans.
Puerto Rican women did not gain the vote until and Chinese American women not until Most of the delegates to the Seneca Falls Convention agreed: American women were autonomous individuals who deserved their own political identities.
Almost immediately after the war ended, the 14th Amendment and the 15th Amendment to the Constitution raised familiar questions of suffrage and citizenship. They began to fight for a universal-suffrage amendment to the U. Others argued that it was unfair to endanger Black enfranchisement by tying it to the markedly less popular campaign for female suffrage.
This proth-Amendment faction formed a group called the American Woman Suffrage Association and fought for the franchise on a state-by-state basis. This animosity eventually faded, and in the two groups merged to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Starting in , some states in the West began to extend the vote to women for the first time in almost 20 years. Idaho and Utah had given women the right to vote at the end of the 19th century.
Still, southern and eastern states resisted. Finally, on August 18, , the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified. This viewpoint reflected a widespread ideology of "separate spheres" for men and women; the many people who adopted this perspective argued that the place for women was at home and not in the affairs of the government Robb With so few rights, many women drew parallels between their social and political state and that of slaves.
This comparison won support of greater numbers of women and men to their cause, among them were the famous suffragettes attributed with founding the woman suffrage movement, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott Porter Dedicated abolitionists, Stanton and Mott returned to the United States in June of highly indignant that they had been denied the right to participate in the World's Anti-Slavery Convention in London because they were women Harper Determined to overcome the social, civil, and religious disabilities that crippled women of their day, Stanton and Mott organized the first woman's rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York, on 19 July It drew over persons Weatherford ; Harper ; Coolidge Stanton drafted the "Declaration of Sentiments," a document declaring that "men and women are created equal" Woman's Rights Conventions, Modeled on the U.
Declaration of Independence, it outlined several resolutions regarding higher education, property rights, and woman's suffrage Graham ; Carter Susan B. Anthony, a Quaker and rising leader in the woman's suffrage movement, made nationwide suffrage a goal and recruited many supporters Carter ; Weatherford Anthony was convinced that women would not obtain the rights listed in the Declaration of Sentiments or be effective in implementing social reforms until they had voting power.
However, despite the close cooperation between abolitionists and advocates of woman's rights following the Seneca Falls Convention, arguments over the Fifteenth Amendment led to a split in the movement in Graham ; Porter ; Weatherford The Fifteenth Amendment provided black males the right to vote, building upon language in the previous amendment in which "any male inhabitants" were granted voting privileges.
But many viewed the Amendment as an insult to women because the language did not even bother to exclude them Weatherford Some persons sought to postpone woman's suffrage in order to focus efforts on securing enfranchisement for blacks freed following the Civil War, a move that Stanton and Anthony felt "compromised a betrayal of the ideal of universal suffrage" Graham , 5; Kraditor Over the course of the next three decades, efforts on the part of both associations resulted in gains for woman's suffrage in several states, including Wyoming, the territory of Utah, and Washington.
These two associations remained separate entities until , when they merged to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Headed by Stanton, the consolidated organization marked a new era in the history of woman's suffrage Weatherford ; Harper Despite the growing support for women's right to vote, there were many who were opposed to the idea.
Many anti-suffragists were men who argued that a woman's place was in the home and that voting rights would compromise those characteristics that made women distinctly feminine Porter ; Kraditor According to Kraditor, "This 'separate but equal' doctrine of the respective spheres of man and woman was a central part of the sociological argument against woman suffrage, which declared that social peace and the welfare of the human race depended upon woman's staying home, having children, and keeping out of politics" , Some opponents of woman's suffrage also argued that women lacked the political experience and competency necessary to vote Kraditor Women's commitment to prohibition and close ties with the Women's Christian Temperance Union also produced many opponents to the woman suffrage movement Weatherford The liquor industry feared that if women voted, prohibition laws would be passed, which would make it illegal to make or sell alcoholic beverages Hossel Immigrants also opposed woman's suffrage for similar reasons.
According to The History of Woman Suffrage, as cited by Weatherford , "In suffrage for women [German immigrants] saw rigid Sunday laws and the suppression of their beer gardens" Irish immigrants were also reportedly fearful that American women's vote would end their pub habits Weatherford Other industries were opposed to woman's suffrage.
In the late s, as the woman suffrage movement gained momentum, women became more attentive to social issues, such as food and drug safety, worker safety, and child labor. Factory and business owners fought against women's right to vote because they were worried that women would pass laws requiring changes in procedures and make it more expensive to operate their businesses Hossell Moreover, clerics and other laypersons relied on scriptural interpretations to debate the validity of woman's suffrage.
Along with anti-suffragist clerics, many women spoke against suffrage, arguing that marriage was a sacred unity in which the family was represented by the man; thus, women need not vote Weatherford In , anti-suffragists came together to form the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage, which voiced the opinions of the conservatives until women gained the right to vote in Nevertheless, by so many women had gained voting rights within their individual states that presidential candidates began to court the female vote for the first time.
Additionally, the tireless efforts of women in support of the country during World War I gained the attention and respect of many persons who had initially questioned woman's suffrage. In , President Wilson issued a statement supporting the federal amendment to grant woman's suffrage, publicly departing from his initial preference for state-by-state suffrage Ibid. The woman's movement rose to its climactic victory following the conclusion of the war.
Anthony Amendment. In August of it was ratified by Tennessee, the last of the thirty-six state approvals necessary for the Amendment to become binding. The woman's suffrage movement is important because it resulted in passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the U. Constitution, which finally allowed women the right to vote. However, as Lucinda Desha Robb suggests, "one of the most important lessons of the woman suffrage movement may be the relative unimportance of suffrage all by itself" , The early suffragists did not see voting privileges as their primary goal; rather they saw suffrage as an opportunity to participate more fully in the public affairs of society through political engagement and civic action Kraditor In the Declaration of Sentiments, Stanton proposed twelve resolutions, of which woman's enfranchisement was just one.
While many of her contemporaries initially felt that woman's suffrage was inconceivable, Stanton and Anthony soon saw that achievement of their other goals regarding women's rights was only possible through suffrage and the political advances and allies they would make along the way Carter ; Weatherford Though they faced obstacles and hardships, Robb points out,.
The years of hard work women put into making suffrage a reality taught them the full potential of democracy and how to employ that potential. They learned grassroots skills and gained the political credentials that made them more effective and laid the groundwork for their increasing participation in government. The ripple effect of the woman's suffrage movement on subsequent generations is evident in a range of educational, civil rights, and health care reforms, as well as in the growing number of women elected to governmental positions Hossell The woman suffrage movement has promoted human welfare in numerous ways.
It has stimulated social and political reform through individual and group civil action.
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