2. Women's suffrage in the United
States….
Was achieved gradually, at state and local levels,
during the late 19th century and early 20th century
3. NINETEENTH-CENTURY
EFFORTS
Before the Civil War, the idea of women voting was a
radical concept that threatened the traditional male role
as head of the household.
In 1848, Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote "The Declaration
of Rights and Sentiments," women laid claim to the need
for judicial, religious, and civil equality with men.
In 1848 Stanton and Mott decided the time was right to
hold the first women's rights convention, where they
would discuss not only rights but also social conditions
of the day.
4. In 1890: National American Woman Suffrage
Association (NAWSA).
5. By the 1910s woman suffrage had become a mass
movement. A parallel and much more radical
movement was being carried out in Britain. Led by
Emmaline Pankhurst, British suffragettes resorted to
violence, riots, and arson to effect their aims. Their
burning of buildings, blowing up of mailboxes, and
hunger strikes gained critical publicity for the
suffragists' cause.
6. TWENTIETH-CENTURY
MOVEMENTS
In the twentieth century, the focus turned to a
crusade by the National American Woman's
Suffrage Association to pass a national amendment,
the Susan B. Anthony Amendment authorizing
suffrage, which had been presented to Congress
annually from 1870 on, but until 1914 the resolution
never had sufficient support for an affirmative vote,
much less the requisite two-thirds majority.
7.
8. OTHER COUNTRIES
European countries such as Finland (1906), Norway
(1913), and Denmark and Iceland (1915) granted
women the vote early in the 20th century. Other
continental powers were quick to accord women the
right to vote at the end of World War I.
9. DID YOU KNOW?
In 1923, the National Women's Party proposed
an amendment to the Constitution that
prohibited all discrimination on the basis of
sex. The so-called Equal Rights Amendment
has never been ratified.
