Women and the vote
In the general elections of 1920 nearly all states had the mechanisms in place to support voting by women, but the turnout among eligible women voters was low, and remained so for many years. In the first election following certification of the Nineteenth Amendment, in the fall of 1920, only about 36% of eligible women voters chose to exercise the franchise, compared to about 68% of eligible men. The reasons for the lack of participation are unclear and speculation ranges from simple lack of interest to the social stigma still attached by some to women entering into what was considered to be the business of men.
Several prominent politicians had expected the emergence of large voting blocs composed of women and altered their political agenda to accommodate them. This too did not occur for a considerable period, even during the war years of World War II, when more women were in the work force than ever before in American history. Not until the post-war baby boom years did substantial women’s voting blocs become a feature of the American electorate. Numerous efforts to shift the suffragist movement to one of uniting women to vote as a bloc were thwarted to a large degree by the two party system.
The NAWSA held its final convention in February 1920, where confident in the outcome of the Nineteenth Amendment they dissolved themselves and created in their stead the League of Women’s voters. The League was created expressly to help women exercise their right to vote by merging the NAWSA and the National Council of Women Voters. In its initial charter men were prohibited from joining the League. The ban was lifted in 1973. The League was established as a non-partisan organization, officially not endorsing either candidates or parties, though it does support various issues and policies.
In 1918 in England, Parliament granted the right to vote to women over the age of 30, or to wives of householders or householders themselves. In 1928 the minimum age requirement was lowered to 21, and the property requirements lifted. France did not allow women to vote until the waning days of World War 2, and the first opportunity for women to do so were the municipal and parliamentary elections of 1945. Despite it taking decades for the United States to enfranchise women, it was largely part of a global shift in the notions of the role of women in society, the home, commerce, and of course politics.
In 1965, in part in response to the laws in the South which prevented many Black women from voting, President Johnson pushed through Congress the Voting Rights Act. Literacy tests as a prerequisite to voter registration were outlawed by the act, as were other devices designed to limit the access of voters to the polls, and despite numerous efforts to evade the purpose of the act by some states it has been called the most effective single piece of civil rights legislation in the history of the United States. Access to polls based on sexual discrimination are history in the United States, despite the misguided efforts of some to re-establish policies restricting the right to vote.
Where do we find this stuff? Here are our sources:
“Susan B. Anthony: A Biography of a Singular Feminist”, by Kathleen Barry, 1988
“Century of Struggle”, by Eleanor Flexner, 1959
“Women’s Suffrage in America”, by Elizabeth Frost Knappman and Kathryn Cullen-DuPont, 2004
“Women’s Suffrage”, entry and documents from the Library of Congress, selected collections, online
“Senators to Vote on Suffrage Today: Fate of Susan B. Anthony Amendment Hangs in Balance on Eve of Final Test”, by The New York Times, September 26, 1918
“Carrie Chapman Catt: A Public Life” by Jacqueline Van Voris, 1996