The Fight For Women 's Suffrage Movement

Did you know that women in the United States did not have the right to vote until the year 1920? Exactly 144 years after the United States was granted freedom from Great Britain. The women’s suffrage movement, however, did not actually start until 1848, and lasted up until they were granted the right to vote in 1920. Women all over the country were fighting for their right to vote in hopes of bettering their lives. The women’s suffrage movement was a long fought process by many people all over the world, over all different races, religions, even gender. (Cooney 1)

Dolly Parton once quoted, “If you want the rainbow, you have to put up with the rain.” This quote helps understand the impact the Women’s Suffrage Movement makes on the present day. In 1848 the battle for women’s privileges started with the first Women 's Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, New York. On August 26, 1920, the 19th Amendment, which provided full voting rights for women nationally, was ratified in the United States Constitution when Tennessee became the 36th state to approve it (Burkhalter). Freya Johnson Ross and Ceri Goddard stated a quite valid argument in a secondary source Unequal Nation saying, “Since the ratification of the 19th Amendment, major social changes have transformed the lives of women and men in many ways but the United States has not noticed how far away our nation is from the gender equal future” (5). When women were finally granted the right to vote, barriers were broken which would allow an increasing chance to make progressive steps to a more equal nation, but our nation has yet to realize our full potential.

The right to vote, the right to go to college, the right to own property. Some people take it as a right that they had all along. That is far from the truth. Suffragists fought long and hard for many years to gain women suffrage. Before the suffrage movement began, women did not have the right to vote, child custody rights, property rights, and more (Rynder). The American Women Suffrage Movement was going to change that. People known as suffragists spoke up, and joined the effort to get women their rights. Without them, things would be very different today. The American Suffrage Movement lasted over the course of many years and changed the lives of American women forever.

The woman suffrage movement, which succeeded in 1920 with the adoption of the Nineteenth Amendment, coincided with major national reform movements seeking to improve public education, create public health programs, regulate business and industrial practices, and establish standards agencies to ensure pure food and public water supplies. In 1870, the first attempt that Virginia women, as a campaign, fought for the right to vote in New Jersey when native Anna Whitehead Bodeker invited several men and women sympathetic to the cause to a meeting that launched the first Virginia State Woman Suffrage Association in Richmond. Though it is not the same concept as fight for the right to vote, women have been fighting an invisible fight for along time in the terms of rape culture on college campuses. According to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, one in five women are sexually assaulted while in college. The fight women take to get help on college campuses is a hard battle when many times put through victim blaming and rejection by the police. Those who chose to stand up for their rights against the injustice, often placed upon them by societal and cultural expectations, make progress towards

The fight for women's right was sparked by the Second Great Awakening. This Christian awakening encouraged the beginnings of many new movements such as the abolitionists, temperance, and women's rights movements. The fight for women's rights greatest success came with the nineteenth amendment, granting women the right to vote when previously they had no voice.

The nineteenth amendment was passed by congress on June 4, 1919, and ratified on August 18, 1920. The nineteenth amendment succeeded in giving women in the United States of America the right to vote.

In 1914, World War I, men went off to fight in the war. During that time, women had to handle all the work that the men would do. In this period of time, women had moments of realization that they can be independent and can live on their own without men. Women have been fighting for equality for a while, since before the Civil War. Multiple women began to go against the typical women.

As a woman, I am grateful to all the strong female activists that have paved the way that has allowed all United States female citizen’s the rights we have today.

Over the past century, Virginia and the United States have encountered a number of drastic historical changes. As both men and women had the right to cast a vote in the most recent election, a little less than a century ago women did not have to right to vote. It was not until women throughout the United States came together to spark a suffrage movement that lead to congress passing the Nineteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution which provided women with the right to vote.

Some scholars like Ellen DuBois, in The Radicalism of the Woman Suffrage Movement, argue that the vote was a complete necessity in order for women to assert their own foothold in the public sphere, defined by DuBois as “operating in the public world of work and politics.” Opposing this position, William O’Neill argued that the vote would provide no advance in the woman condition and that when the vote was gained, “feminists were in the same place they were before the movement even began.” Heidi Williamson does not necessarily take a side in this argument but she does proclaim that “voting ensures women’s reproductive and economic progress” because it causes candidates running for office to “cater” to the women condition in order to gain more support. As Williamson is simply observing what the vote did for women, and she does not speak to what the Women’s Movement hoped to attain, she does not intervene in the discussion between DuBois and O’Neill; however, using the premise of Williamson’s observations it is clear that women of the early twentieth century were motivated by the discrimination in the workplace to gain their right to ballot so that they could use the vote to strive for pay equality, a better environment in the workplace, and gain the possibility to advance their position in said environment.

On the other hand, women started to fight for their rights at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twenty century “the changes came in part because of practical problems of maintaining property, inheritance, and settlement in new states and territories” (Lowi 109) since women at that time could not own property. The women suffrage movement was created and with this many women and men contribute to the “National Women Suffrage Association (NWSA) [which] was formed in New York, and it immediately began an effort to amend the U.S. Constitution to allow women to vote” (Lowi 109). It wasn’t until 1919 that “Congress ratified the Nineteenth Amendment granting women the right to vote… the amendment was ratified by the states,

The women 's suffrage movement, the time when women fought for their rights, began in the year 1848 and continued on all the way through the 1860s. Although women in the new republic had important roles in the family, the house, and other obligations, they were excluded from most rights. These rights included political and legal rights. Due to their gender, they have been held back because they did not have as much opportunities as the men did. The new republic made alterations in the roles of women by disparaging them in society. During this era, men received a higher status than women. Because women were forced to follow laws without being allowed to state their opinions, they tried to resist laws, fight for their freedom and strive to gain equality with men. This leads to feminism, the belief in political, social, and economic equality between men and women. It is the feminist efforts that have successfully tried to give rights that men had, to women who have been denied those rights. Upon the deprivation of those rights, the Seneca Falls convention and the Declaration of Sentiments helped women gain the privileges and opportunities to accomplish the task of equality that they have been striving for.

One of the first major civil rights movements in the United States began with the women’s suffrage movement in the 1848 with the first women’s rights convention at Seneca Falls (1). It was organized by women who had been active in pursuing temperance and abolition, and called attention to the way women were treated as less than full citizens. Suffrage was pursued for decades, not gaining much influence until 1917 when the National Women’s Party picketed the White House and gained national attention.(2). They endured abuse, imprisonment, and force feeding during their hunger strikes. Ultimately their efforts culminated in the Nineteenth Amendment being ratified in 1920, allowing women the right to vote (3).

Throughout the semester we have discussed how various social movements in the 20th and 21st centuries have used popular culture to fight gender discrimination, however, they have often ignored or even reinforced other forms of discrimination, such as; classism, ableism, and racism. This is clear through the readings of; Donkin, Rebick, Stowell, and Lees. Even though these social movements that used popular culture were what seemed to be a step in the right direction they still unintentionally included other forms of discrimination.

The fight for women’s rights is one of the most pressing issues of our time. Women have won the vote, the right to obtain equal employment, and the right to pursue higher education just like men. However, the struggle still continues to solve various issues such as equal pay regardless of gender and maternity leave. Many women feel like they are fighting an uphill battle, and many women feel like they are being oppressed by the opposite gender. Sylvia Plath was one of these women who felt like she was oppressed by men and even her own father, who died early in her life. Sylvia Path turned to using imagery in her poem “Daddy” such as comparing her father and men to ghastly statues, Nazis, and even vampires; meanwhile she compares herself, and to a larger extent all women to the Jews in concentration camps. Plath’s use of imagery relays her feelings of enslavement by men expertly to the reader.