Women's Suffrage: United States Women’s Rights

Are women less important, less intelligent or in general less than men? Nowadays there is not that much difference between women and men but in the past it was, woman’s had to fight a lot to get were we are in the present. Before the declaration of rights of the women of the United States, women were very undervalued, Female suffragism was one of the most momentous protest movements in the history of recent centuries. Many women saw the right to male vote as something discriminatory towards them, citizens who should have the same rights. Throughout the nineteenth and part of the twentieth centuries, many people in different parts of the world decided to organize to obtain the right to vote. One of them was the American Susan Brownell, a woman of Quaker origin who dedicated her whole life to claim women's rights. Although she died fourteen years before her dream was fulfilled, Susan's work, like that of many of her companions, was not in vain.

Shortly after starting the movement, Susan met Elisabeth Cady Stanton, one of the most prominent feminist figures of the moment. Since then, Susan and Elisabeth became inseparable in the struggle for women's suffrage and the civil and social rights of women. Susan did not forget the abolitionist demands she had known in her own family. Thus, in 1863 he founded the League of Loyal Women that defended the liberation of the slaves during the terrible Civil War that began in 1861. In 1868, Susan and Elisabeth began a new path of protest with the publication of a feminist weekly magazine entitled The Revolution. For two years, the weekly became the point of reflection on various issues related to women's rights. When black men were granted the right to vote in 1872, Susan began a protest campaign claiming the same rights for women. Susan was arrested when she led a women's demonstration demanding her right to vote at the polls. The presidential elections were held and Susan did not hesitate to vote against the laws of the state. His arrest was an exponential increase in popularity that took full advantage. While waiting to be judged, Susan traveled throughout the country making her demands known. The trial against her resulted in a fine for violation of the electoral law that she refused to pay.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, American feminists began an active campaign for suffrage. Directed by Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906), Lucy Stone (1818-1893), and Elisabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902) and framed since 1890 in the American National Association for the Suffrage of Women (National American Woman Suffrage Association), they directed their efforts to obtain the vote in the different states and to force a change in the North American constitution.

'Now that, as a result of the struggle for equal opportunities and due to the use of machinery, a great revolution has taken place in the world of the economy, so that where a man can go to earn a dollar honestly he can also go a woman, there is no way to refute the conclusion that it must be vested with equal power to be able to protect itself. And that power is the vote, the symbol of freedom and equality, without which no citizen can be sure to keep what he has and, therefore, much less to acquire what he does not have. '

The women's vote was approved through popular consultations in various states: Wyoming (1869), Utah (1870), Colorado (1893), Idaho (1896), Washington (1910), and California (1911), Oregon, Arizona, and Kansas (1912). ) and Nevada and Montana (1914). In 1917 the first congresswoman of the United States, Jeanette Rankin, was elected in Montana. Finally, in 1919, President Wilson, of the Democratic Party, personally announced his support for women's suffrage. In 1920, the 19th Amendment to the Constitution granting the right to vote to women was approved. 'The right of United States citizens to vote shall not be denied or limited by the United States or by any state on the basis of sex.'

In conclusion, the struggle for women's suffrage in the United States was determined during the nineteenth century by a series of circumstances that varied in different regions of the country. In the first decades of that century, suffragism sought to obtain success by invoking individual rights, which in Eastern conservative societies were perceived as a threat to the family and to the community as a whole. Likewise, if on the one hand suffragism did not offer solutions to the problems afflicting women in industrial workers who wanted more labor reforms, employment opportunities, and other measures, for their counterparts of the urban middle class the Cult to the domesticity exalted traditional activities for women, preventing women from considering themselves as an individual with inalienable rights, but as an indispensable piece that contributed to the functioning of the home environment and the stability of society.

The failure of the collaboration between suffragettes and abolitionists - when the demands of the former were ignored in the fifteenth amendment announced during the Reconstruction - promoted the search for new scenarios and audiences for the suffrage speech. The process of colonization of the West offered the movement the possibility of interference in the consolidation of institutional structures and in the preparation of legislatures. The male sector of these regions perceived women's suffrage as a favorable measure for the development of these zones; however, success in the West had no immediate impact on the East.

At the beginning of the 20th century -and thanks to the transformation of the suffrage speech that failed to emphasize the importance of women's individual rights and chose to emphasize the need to regulate and legitimize through the vote their contribution to society- the Suffrage stopped being rejected by various sectors of society, including some made up of women themselves. A broader interpretation of the intrinsic values ​​of the liberal doctrine also contributed to this, as a result of the need to incorporate new elements to the electorate. Thus, it is evident that the nineteenth amendment was more the result of a less restrictive application of liberal values, which resulted from the pressure of the organizations of the women themselves or from the fact that the West had set a precedent.

In 1919, the United States had already participated in a large-scale international struggle that had irreversibly changed the position of women. On the verge of entering a decade of profound transformations, depriving them of their suffrage was incompatible with a political discourse that extolled the importance of their contribution to national welfare and to society as a whole.

CITATION

1. Ann D. Gordon. Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions, Seneca Falls: Stanton and Anthony Papers Online. 2003. Accessed January 31, 2019. http://ecssba.rutgers.edu/docs/decl.html.
2. Twentieth-Century America: Women & Gender.' Yale University Library Research Guides. Accessed March 21, 2019. https://guides.library.yale.edu/twentiethcenturyus/womenandgender.
3. WOW Museum: Western Women's Suffrage. Accessed March 21, 2019. http://web.archive.org/web/20070627080045/http://www.museumoftheamericanwest.org/explore/exhibits/suffrage/index.html
4. Anthony, Susan B. 'The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.' Susan B. Anthony on Suffrage and Equal Rights, 1901 | Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. Accessed March 21, 2019. https://www.gilderlehrman.org/content/susan-b-anthony-suffrage-and-equal-rights-1901
5. Susan B. Anthony.' National Women's History Museum. Accessed March 21, 2019. https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/susan-b-anthony
6. 'Susan B. Anthony | .' Biography Online. Accessed March 21, 2019. https://www.biographyonline.net/women/susan-b-anthony.html