Suffragettes

Suffragettes were activists who fought for the rights of women to vote. The suffragettes protested using peaceful measures and militant actions to gain these rights for women and to make their voices heard. The United States was not the only front in the women's suffrage movement—similar protests were also occurring in the early twentieth century in a number of European countries and around the world. As a result, many countries did extend voting rights to women in the early 1900s, in particular Australia and the Scandinavian nations, and by the 1910s and 1920s, more widely across Europe. Women in the United States gained the right to vote with ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution on August 26, 1920.

For some critics, however, the term suffragette itself is offensive, as the -ette suffix is used to imply smallness and inconsequentiality, and historically was used as an offensive term to disparage and minimize the efforts of these women. The term suffragist was more commonly used by the activists themselves—both men and women—although both terms are still used today to describe this group of activists.

Brief History

The fight for women's suffrage began decades before the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in the United States, even before the Civil War (1861–1865), when all white men were granted the right to vote regardless of whether they owned land, which had historically been the avenue through which men were given voting rights. At this time in the nation's history, many other reform groups were forming—in particular, abolitionist groups in which women were often involved. The first gathering to discuss women's rights, led by suffragettes Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, occurred in 1848 in Seneca Falls, New York. Similarly, in the United Kingdom, the Sheffield Female Political Association was formed in 1851 and inspired the formation of other groups and even a magazine, the English Woman's Journal. In Ireland, the first meeting was held in Dublin in 1870 and, a few years later, the Dublin Women's Suffrage Association was established. Women in the United States, the United Kingdom, Scotland, and Ireland all faced similar restrictions at that time, beyond their disenfranchisement. This included limits on their education, the inability to own property, and the lack of rights to their children. Women were truly seen as second-class citizens to men. The suffragettes in the United States and around the world were determined to change this perception and the laws that supported it.

During the Civil War, the women's suffrage movement was briefly derailed, but returned with renewed fervor when the Fifteenth Amendment granted voting rights to black men. The amendment marked a significant division in the women's suffrage movement between the women who chose to oppose the amendment until voting rights were granted to all people, and those who chose to continue their support of the amendment while still fighting for their own rights. The former, led by Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, called themselves the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA). The latter group called themselves the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA). The two groups worked separately until 1890, when they merged and became the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), led by Stanton. Some states began individually granting women the right to vote—beginning with Idaho and Utah—but the battle continued on the national stage for decades to come before the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified.

Overview

In 1916, the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) launched a plan designed to spur action from suffrage organizations across the country. This led to the splintering of the group again and the formation of the National Woman's Party (NWP), which favored more militant protest styles. The NWP drew international attention in 1917, when party members Lucy Burns and Dora Lewis picketed in front of the White House. Their signs read, in essence, that America could not truly call itself a democracy when twenty million women in the country were being denied the right to vote. The women were arrested, making them the first activists to be imprisoned in the battle for women's rights. The NAWSA, led by Carrie Chapman Catt at the time, criticized their actions of civil disobedience, fearing these militant approaches would do more harm than good to their cause. Many suffragettes were inspired by the Russian Revolution (1917), however, and the women's issues that were being addressed in that country—and this type of international attention forced the American administration to take the protestors seriously. Of note, World War I (1914–1918) was also helpful to the women's suffrage cause, as many women joined the workforce at this time, demonstrating their patriotism and capability alongside men.

The same type of militant protest was occurring in the United Kingdom in the early twentieth century. One woman, Emily Wilding Davison, died when she stepped out onto a racetrack during a horse race in 1913 in which King George V was present. Carrying a suffrage flag, she was trampled to death by the king's horse. This was not the first time Davison had gone to extremes in the fight for women's suffrage. She had been imprisoned repeatedly, and once threw herself down the stairs in prison to protest the force-feeding of the other imprisoned suffragettes.

Peaceful and militant protests continued over the next few years before the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, as it was called, was proposed to and passed in the House of Representatives and the Senate in 1919 and sent to the states to ratify. Two-thirds of the states were needed to ratify the amendment to make it law; Tennessee was the thirty-sixth state to vote to approve and ratify the amendment.

Ultimately, the suffragettes were successful in gaining the right to vote, although it took a number of years for the remaining fourteen states in the union to officially ratify the Nineteenth Amendment—Mississippi, in fact, did not ratify it until 1984. Although this did not prevent women from voting in the state or across the country after 1920, it indicates the ongoing reluctance to grant women the true equality for which the suffragettes were fighting.

Bibliography

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Bristow, Jennie. "Suffragettes: Women in Public." DocPlayer.net, docplayer.net/37701436-Suffragettes-women-in-public-paper-given-to-the-academy-conference-st-neots-20-july-2015-dr-jennie-bristow-introduction-more-both.html. Accessed 20 Oct. 2017.

Cochrane, Kira. "Nine Inspiring Lessons the Suffragettes Can Teach Feminists Today." Guardian, 29 May 2013, www.theguardian.com/world/2013/may/29/nine-lessons-suffragettes-feminists. Accessed 20 Oct. 2017.

"The Fight for Women's Suffrage." History.com, 2009, www.history.com/topics/womens-history/the-fight-for-womens-suffrage. Accessed 20 Oct. 2017.

Lewis, Jone Johnson. "International Woman Suffrage Timeline: Winning the Vote for Women around the World." ThoughtCo., www.thoughtco.com/international-woman-suffrage-timeline-3530479. Accessed 20 Oct. 2017.

Meeres, Frank. Suffragettes: How Britain's Women Fought and Died for the Right to Vote. Amberley Publishing, 2013.

Mickenberg, Julia L. "Suffragettes and Soviets: American Feminists and the Specter of Revolutionary Russia." Journal of American History, Mar. 2014, pp. 1021–51.

Pedersen, Sarah. The Scottish Suffragettes and the Press. Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.

Watkins, Sarah-Beth. Ireland's Suffragettes: The Women Who Fought for the Vote. History Press, 2014.