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Start your research on women's suffrage with this guide highlighting the Schlesinger Library's  archival collections as well as periodicals, photographs, posters, and memorabilia. Some materials may also be available in digital format and links are included where available.

Use the navigation menu to view additional material related to this topic. 

To learn more about suffrage at Radcliffe College, please see the Radcliffe College Suffrage research guide .

In the summer of 2020, supported by funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Schlesinger Library launched two new tools: the Long 19th Amendment Project Portal and the Suffrage School . The Portal is an open-access digital portal that facilitates interdisciplinary, transnational scholarship and innovative teaching around the history of gender and voting rights in the United States. The Suffrage School is a platform where a broad array of researchers, writers, and teachers have been invited to create a series of digital teaching modules. Each lesson in the Suffrage School connects in rich and unpredictable ways to the Library’s Long 19th Amendment Project , which tackles the tangled history of gender and American citizenship.

Please Take Note: Many of our collections are stored offsite and/or have access restrictions. Be sure to contact us in advance of your visit.

• Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906) Best known for her lifelong crusade for woman’s suffrage, Susan B. Anthony was first active in the temperance and anti-slavery movements. Discrimination within these movements, along with her friend Elizabeth Cady Stanton, helped to convinced Anthony that women could not fully participate in social action until equal rights were first secured. She helped to organize the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) in 1869 and served as the second president of the National American Women Suffrage Association (NAWSA) from 1891-1900. In 1872, Anthony cast a vote, for which she was arrested and tried. Anthony died in March 1906 at the age of 86, fourteen years before the Nineteenth Amendment gave American women the right to vote. Please visit the Susan B. Anthony research guide for more information and access to the digitized content.
• Blackwell family The most prominent members of the Blackwell family were Elizabeth (1821-1910) and Emily (1826-1910), among the earliest women doctors and founders of the New York Infirmary and College for Women; their brother Henry Browne Blackwell (1825-1909), his wife Lucy Stone (1818-1893), and their daughter Alice Stone Blackwell (1857-1950), known for their leading roles in the abolition, woman suffrage, and prohibition movements; and their sister-in-law Antoinette Louisa (Brown) Blackwell (1825-1921), wife of Samuel Charles Blackwell (1823-1901), the first woman ordained as a minister in the United States and an active speaker on behalf of abolition, women's rights, and prohibition. The Blackwell family collections document the family’s involvement in the suffrage movement and include materials relating to suffragists Alice Stone Blackwell and Lucy Stone, letters to Antoinette Louisa (Brown) Blackwell from Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, photographs of suffrage parades, and articles about suffrage. They also include materials relating to Emma Stone Lawrence Blackwell, who was a niece of Lucy Stone and active in the New Jersey and Massachusetts suffrage movements. Please visit the Blackwell Family research guide for more information about accessing the digitized materials.
• Alice Stone Blackwell (1857-1950) [in Woman’s Rights Collection] Alice Stone Blackwell, self-proclaimed radical socialist and daughter of suffrage leaders Lucy Stone and Henry Browne Blackwell, joined her parents at the Woman's Journal , the woman's rights newspaper they had founded and edited. Over the next 35 years, she played a leading role in writing and editing the Woman's Journal . Blackwell was instrumental in bringing about the reconciliation of the National and American Woman Suffrage associations in 1890, and for almost twenty years served as secretary of the new National American Woman Suffrage Association. Among her other positions were president of the New England and Massachusetts Woman Suffrage associations and honorary president of the Massachusetts League of Women Voters. Please visit the Blackwell Family research guide for related materials. [Digital content can be found in ProQuest's History Vault . This database requires a Harvard ID to access.]
• Olympia Brown (1835-1926) Olympia Brown became the first American woman to be ordained by full denominational authority when she was ordained by the St. Lawrence Association of Universalists in 1863. She was also active in the suffrage movement, primarily in Wisconsin and then on a national level. In 1868 Brown helped found the New England Woman’s Suffrage Association, the first suffrage organization in the United States. She also joined the Congressional Union (later the National Woman’s Party) and distributed suffrage material in front of President Wilson’s White House. After the passage of the School Suffrage Law in Wisconsin in 1885, Brown cast a vote in November of 1887, but her vote was rejected and her case went to court. Brown argued on her own behalf and won, but the decision was repealed by the Wisconsin Supreme Court. [Digital content can be accessed directly through the finding aid and in ProQuest's History Vault . The database requires a Harvard ID to access.]
• Carrie Chapman Catt (1859-1947) Carrie Chapman Catt, an active suffragist and peace leader, joined the Iowa Suffrage Association in 1887 and attended the first convention of the newly organized National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) in 1890 as an Iowa delegate. She became chair of NAWSA's Organization Committee in 1895 and thereafter worked for suffrage both nationally and internationally. She joined Jane Addams in founding the Woman's Peace Party in 1915 and organized the Committee on the Cause and Cure of War (which met annually from 1925 to 1939), serving as its chair until 1932. Material can be found in the Woman's Rights Collection and the Mary Earhart Dillon Collection . [Digital content for both collections can be found in ProQuest's History Vault . This database requires a Harvard ID to access.]
• Mary Jane Whitely Coggeshall In 1870 Mary Jane Coggeshall was a founding member of the Polk County (Iowa) Woman Suffrage Society, and edited The Woman's Hour, which the Society produced between 1877 and 1880. She also held numerous positions in the Iowa Woman Suffrage Association (which became the Iowa Equal Suffrage Association in 1897), including three terms as president. Coggeshall was elected an auditor for the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) in 1902 and 1904, attended several National American Woman Suffrage Association conventions, and was a speaker at those held in Washington, DC (1904), and Chicago (1907). She also served as editor of The Woman's Standard for its first two years of publication (1886-1888) and its last (1911). See also Additional Papers of Mary J. Coggeshall .
• Mary Ware Dennett (1872-1947) Suffragist, pacifist, artisan, and advocate of birth control and sex education, Mary Ware Dennett was a founder of the National Birth Control League, director of the Voluntary Parenthood League and editor of the Birth Control Herald. Attracted to organizations seeking a broader distribution of wealth and power, she worked for women’s suffrage, the single tax, proportional representation, and free trade. [Digital content can be found in ProQuest's History Vault . This database requires a Harvard ID to access.]
• Mary "Molly" Dewson (1874-1962) Mary “Molly” Dewson was particularly active in the Massachusetts woman’s suffrage movement and the campaign of the National Consumers’ League that worked to secure passage of minimum wage laws for women and children. In 1933, thanks to the influence of Eleanor Roosevelt, her political ally and personal friend, Dewson was appointed head of the Women's Division of the Democratic National Committee. She is credited with securing important positions for many women in the Democratic Party and the Roosevelt Administration. Material can be found in the Woman's Rights Collection and the Papers of Mary "Molly" Dewson . [Digital content can for the Woman’s Rights Collection can be found in ProQuest's History Vault . This database requires a Harvard ID to access.]
• Mary Earhart Dillon Mary Earhart Dillon assembled this collection in the early 1940s in the course of writing Frances Willard: From Prayers to Politics (published under the name Mary Earhart by University of Chicago Press in 1944). Due to the difficulty of finding primary source material, Dillon contacted various women in the Midwest (especially the Chicago lawyer and suffragist Catharine Waugh McCulloch) who had been active in temperance, woman's suffrage, and related movements and activities. These women gave Dillon books and papers they had created or accumulated during their work for these causes. [Digital content can be found in ProQuest's History Vault . This database requires a Harvard ID to access.]
• Mary Elisabeth Dreier (1875-1963) Mary Elisabeth Dreier (also known as Mimi, Mietze, and Tolochee) was a labor and social reformer as well as a suffragist. The negative attitudes of male trade unionists towards women workers helped turn Dreier into an ardent supporter of suffrage and women’s rights. Dreier chaired the Industrial Section of the New York State Woman Suffrage Party and was active in the New York Women’s Trade Union League (WTUL) throughout its existence (1903-1950), serving as president from 1906 to 1914. She never married, but shared a home with fellow reformer Frances Kellor from 1905 until the latter’s death in 1952.
• Margaret Foley (1875-1957) Margaret Foley worked as a speaker and manager of organization work for the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association from 1906 to 1915. Foley, along with other young Massachusetts suffragists, was inspired by the militant tactics of suffragists in England and undertook open-air speaking tours in 1909. When she and others trailed Republican candidates through Western Massachusetts publicly questioning their suffrage views, newspapers labeled her a “heckler.” Foley never married and probably lived with her long-time friend and fellow suffragist, Helen Elizabeth Goodnow, for many years. Material can be found in the Woman's Rights Collection and the Papers of Margaret Foley . [Digital content can be found in ProQuest's History Vault . This database requires a Harvard ID to access.]
• Matilda Joslyn Gage (1826-1898) Matilda Joslyn Gage served as the president of the National Woman Suffrage and the New York State Woman Suffrage associations. She also edited the National Woman Suffrage Association periodical National Citizen and Ballot Box . Gage, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony together produced the first three volumes of the History of Woman Suffrage . See also Scrapbooks of Matilda Joslyn Gage . [Digital content can be found in ProQuest's History Vault . This database requires a Harvard ID to access.]
• Helen Hamilton Gardener (1853-1925) [in Woman's Rights Collection] Helen Hamilton Gardener settled in Washington, D.C., and took up the suffrage cause in 1907. In 1913 she was appointed to the Congressional Committee of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). She would go on to become the vice-chair as well as the vice president of NAWSA and served as its chief liaison with the Woodrow Wilson administration. In 1920, Wilson appointed her to the United States Civil Service Commission, making her the first woman to occupy so high a federal position. Gardener also published numerous lectures, articles, and books during the period between 1885 and 1900. [Digital content can be found in ProQuest's History Vault . This database requires a Harvard ID to access.]
• Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935) Charlotte Perkins Gilman was a socialist, deist, independent thinker, and author who was an intellectual leader of the women’s movement from the late 1890s to the 1920s. An advocate of economic independence for women, Gilman considered the ballot of secondary importance. Her interests ranged from sensible dress for women, physical fitness, more rational domestic architecture, and professionalized housework, to birth control, Freud, and immigrants. See also Papers of Charlotte Perkins Gilman (177) . The Schlesinger holds a wide breadth of material related to Gilman, much of which has been digitized. Please see the Charlotte Perkins Gilman research guide for more information about accessing the digitized materials.
• Julia Ward Howe (1819-1910) Julia Ward Howe, perhaps best known as the author of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” was also active in and widely respected for her leadership in a variety of fields, including women's suffrage. After the Civil War, she helped found the New England Woman Suffrage Association (1868). In 1869, along with Lucy Stone, Howe became a leader of the American Woman Suffrage Association. She served as the president of the Massachusetts (1870-1878, 1891-1893) and the New England (1868-1877, 1893-1910) suffrage associations. She was also one of the founders of the Woman's Journal . In addition to her work regarding suffrage, she was also extremely active in the women’s club movement. She was a founder (1868) and president of the New England Woman’s Club and of the Association for the Advancement of Women (1873). [Digital content can be found in ProQuest's History Vault . This database requires a Harvard ID to access.]
• Hazel Hunkins-Hallinan (1890-1982) Hazel Hunkins-Hallinan was born in Aspen, Colorado, in 1890. Denied the opportunity to teach chemistry and physics because she was a woman, she was inspired to join the National Woman’s Party. She became a prominent figure in the picket lines in front of the White House, which led to her arrest and imprisonment in the Occoquan Workhouse, where she and other suffragists participated in a hunger strike. In addition to being a journalist, she was also the author of a children’s book, The Story of America (1942) and the editor of In Her Own Right (1968), a collection of feminist essays.
• Grace A. Johnson (1871-1952) [in Woman's Rights Collection] Grace A. Johnson defined herself as an educator, lecturing and writing on a wide variety of topics, including suffrage, the status of women, prohibition, and aspects of democracy and government structure. During a 1907 trip to Europe with her family, Johnson became interested in woman suffrage and subsequently served as president to the Cambridge Political Equality Association from 1911 to 1915 – the first of a number of similar positions. She advocated for woman suffrage and for the United States’ participation in the League of Nations (and later the United Nations) and World Court. Johnson was one of three Massachusetts women delegates to the 1912 Progressive Party national convention in Chicago. [Digital content can be found in ProQuest's History Vault . This database requires a Harvard ID to access.]
• Florence Ledyard Cross Kitchelt (1874-1961) Florence Ledyard Cross Kitchelt worked as a social worker at a number of settlement houses between 1900 and 1907. By 1915, she had become a proponent of woman’s suffrage. She became the Citizenship Director of the Connecticut League of Women Voters in 1920 and was the director of the Connecticut League of Nations Association from 1924 to 1944. She was once an outspoken opponent of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) but eventually became the chairman of the Connecticut Committee for the ERA in 1943.
• Harriet Burton Laidlaw (1873-1949) Throughout her life, Harriet Burton Laidlaw was a suffragist, social and civic reformer, and internationalist. Her concern with women’s rights blossomed into her remarkably active involvement in a variety of causes and organizations. This life of public service is reflected in her participation with many suffrage organizations including the College Equal Suffrage League, National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), and the New York State Woman Suffrage Association/Party. See also Scrapbooks of Harriet Burton Laidlaw [Digital content can be found in ProQuest's History Vault . This database requires a Harvard ID to access.]
• Rosa Marie Finnochietti Levis (1878-1959) Levis was born on Hull Street in the North End of Boston. Her parents, Giovanni and Theresa Finnochietti, were recent immigrants from Genoa, Italy. Levis was proud of her early advocacy (1910) of woman suffrage, claiming to be the first Italian-American suffragist in Massachusetts. During World War I she participated, with other suffragists, in the sale of Liberty Bonds and in programs for food conservation and for Americanization of Italian immigrants.
• Florence Hope Luscomb (1887-1985) Florence Hope Luscomb, social and political activist, became an executive secretary for the Boston Equal Suffrage Association in 1917. She held positions in the Massachusetts Civic League and other organizations and agencies until 1933, when she became a full-time social and political activist. In the early 1920s, Luscomb began to serve on the boards of civil rights, civil liberties, and other organizations. Luscomb ran unsuccessfully for the Boston City Council, U.S. House of Representatives, and governor of Massachusetts. Material can be found in the Woman's Rights Collection and the Papers of Florence Luscomb .
• Catharine Gouger Waugh McCulloch (1862-1945) Both a suffragist and a lawyer, McCulloch served as the legislative superintendent of the Illinois Equal Suffrage Association (1890-1912). She was also active in the movement for women’s rights, seeking state legislation permitting woman suffrage in presidential and local elections not constitutionally limited to male voters, a bill that passed in 1913. She served as legal adviser (1904-ca.1911) and as first vice president (1910-1911) of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. She was also instrumental in the passage of Illinois legislation granting women equal rights in the guardianship of their children (1901) and raising the legal age of consent for women from fourteen to sixteen (1905). Material can be found in the Mary Earhart Dillon Collection and the Papers of Catharine Gouger Waugh McCulloch . [Digital content for the Mary Earhart Dillon Collection can be found in ProQuest's History Vault . This database requires a Harvard ID to access.]
• Helen Brewster Owens (1881-1968) Helen Brewster Owens was both a mathematician and a suffragist. Her mother, Clara (Linton) Brewster, a teacher, was president of the Linn County Women’s Suffrage Association in Kansas, and as a young girl, Owens would help her mother distribute suffrage literature at the county fair. Owens went on to serve as chair of the Resolution Committee for the New York State Woman Suffrage Association (1910). She also organized the College Equal Suffrage League at Cornell (1911) and was a paid organizer and chair of the Sixth Judicial District for the Empire State Campaign Committee (1913-1916). See also Additional Papers of Helen Brewster Owens . [Digital content can be found in ProQuest's History Vault . This database requires a Harvard ID to access.]
• Mary H. Page (1860-1940) Mary Hutcheson lived in Europe with her family as a child; when her parents both died, she moved to Boston to attend classes in biology and chemistry as a special student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In addition to founding a discussion club that became the Brookline Equal Suffrage Association, being president of the Brookline Association, and serving as chairman of the Executive Board of the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association, Page played a major role in founding the Boston Equal Suffrage Association for Good Government. Chair of BESAGG's Executive Board and later its president, she was known for her fund-raising skills and ability to convince individual women to join the suffrage cause. Her interest in suffrage extended to the campaigns in Europe; in addition to making several trips there, she corresponded with several English suffragists and entertained Emmeline Pankhurst during her 1909 visit to Massachusetts. In 1912, Page and Gertude Halladay Leonard helped organize the suffrage campaign in Ohio. This collection contains organizational records of the Brookline Equal Suffrage Association and the Committee for Work, which was based in Boston and raised money to support the suffrage movement in Oklahoma and elsewhere. Also included are several of Page's suffrage-related writings and speeches, both handwritten and published; and material pertaining to the British suffrage campaign, including letters to Page from Emmeline Pankhurst and photographs of Pankhurst from her 1909 visit to Boston.
• Alice Park (1861-1961) A socialist, vegetarian, pacifist, founder of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, and campaigner for women's rights, Alice Park wrote the California law, passed in 1913, granting women equal rights of guardianship over their children. She was a delegate and speaker at the Congress of the International Women's Suffrage Alliance in Budapest, Hungary, in June 1913, and a delegate to the Tenth Congress of the International Women's Suffrage Alliance, held in Paris in May 1926. Through her connections with many women's rights organizations, Park acquired a library of feminist books, as well as buttons, leaflets, and posters. This collection includes 55 different posters of the women's suffrage movement collected by Alice Park. Most are British, two are from the international congresses she attended, and eleven are American. [All posters in this collection have been digitized and are accessible without a Harvard ID through HOLLIS Images .]
• Maud Wood Park (1871-1955) [in Woman's Rights Collection] Maud Wood Park graduated from Radcliffe College in 1898 and was active in suffrage and civic work in Boston for more than fifteen years. With Inez Haynes Gilmore, she organized the first chapter of the College Equal Suffrage League in 1900 and during the next eight years worked to establish local chapters in Massachusetts, New York, and the Midwest. Following the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, Park served as the first president of the National League of Women Voters (1920-1924). She prepared and donated a large body of material on the suffrage movement and on women after 1920 to Radcliffe College in 1943. This collection, called the Woman’s Rights Collection, formed the nucleus of the Women’s Archives, later the Schlesinger Library. [Digital content can be found in ProQuest's History Vault . This database requires a Harvard ID to access.]
• Alice Paul (1885-1977) Alice Paul was a Quaker, lawyer, and lifelong activist for women’s rights. She was active in the Women’s Social and Political Union in England, where she was arrested and jailed repeatedly as a participant in the campaign for women’s rights led by Emmeline Pankhurst. After returning to the United States in 1910, Paul was appointed chair of the Congressional Committee of the National American Woman Suffrage Association in 1912. In June 1916, Paul founded the National Woman’s Party (NWP), its sole plank a resolution calling for immediate passage of the federal amendment guaranteeing the enfranchisement of women. After the ratification of the suffrage amendment in 1920, the NWP began a long battle to end all legal discrimination against women in the United States and to raise the legal, social, and economic status of women around the world. The Equal Rights Amendment, as written by Paul in 1923, was first introduced in Congress in December of that year. In 1938, Paul founded the World Woman’s Party in Geneva, Switzerland. This collection is digitized and is accessible through the finding aid for the Alice Paul collection (Call#: MC 399). See also Videotape collection of Alice Paul .
• Wenona Osborne Pinkham (1882-1930) Pinkham was a suffragist, reformer, and lobbyist. She taught in the Denver, Colorado, public schools and was a founder and president of the North Side Neighborhood House in Denver. As state chair for the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association (1913-1915), Pinkham spoke to audiences as an example of a woman voter, since Colorado had granted women suffrage years before. In 1917, she became executive secretary of the Boston Equal Suffrage Association for Good Government and remained in this position when the organization became the Boston League of Women Voters. In late 1922 she left the league and became associate executive secretary of the Massachusetts Civic League, which promoted social welfare legislation and such issues as paying prisoners for their work. From 1923 until her sudden death in 1930, Pinkham served as the Massachusetts Civic League's executive secretary.
• Jeannette Rankin (1880-1973) Jeannette Rankin, after briefly working as a social worker in Seattle, campaigned for women’s suffrage in Washington, California, Montana, and other states from 1910 to 1915. The first woman elected to Congress (1916), she voted against United States entry into World War I and worked for women’s rights as well as peace legislation. From 1919 to 1940, Rankin lobbied Congress and lectured for various peace and other humanitarian causes. In the 1920s, she was employed by the National Consumers’ League and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom and founded the Georgia Peace Society. [Digital content can be found in ProQuest's History Vault . This database requires a Harvard ID to access.]
• Rebecca Hourwich Reyher (1897-1987) Reyher was an author, lecturer, suffragist, and traveler. In March 1913, she began her life's work for women's rights by participating in the first national suffrage parade in the United States. She carried her newfound passion to New York City and beyond, organizing street meetings and opening offices for the National Woman's Party. In 1924, Reyher took her first trip to South Africa as a journalist; it opened her eyes to the plight of women in other countries and inspired at least four more trips to the African continent. She wrote many books and articles (some unpublished) regarding women's rights throughout Africa, India, and Sri Lanka. Back in the United States, Reyher continued her work with the National Woman's Party, maintaining close friendships with many of the women and men who fought for equal rights for women.
• Anna Howard Shaw (1847-1919) A minister, physician, lecturer, and suffragist, Anna Howard Shaw became increasingly convinced that the problems she encountered in her ministry and as a physician could not be solved without major political and social reforms, and that obtaining the vote for women was a necessary first step. Shaw’s oratorical skills surrounding the suffrage and temperance movements were legendary. In 1913, the National Anti-Suffrage Association forbade its members to engage in any further debate with her. She served as the vice president (1892-1904) and the president (1904-1915) of the National American Woman Suffrage Association as well as acting as the chair of the Woman’s Committee of the U.S. Council of National Defense (1917-1919). For her extraordinary work and success in the coordination women’s contributions to the war effort, she was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal by the United States government in May 1919. Material can be found in the Woman's Rights Collection and the Mary Earhart Dillon Collection . [Digital content for both collections can be found in ProQuest's History Vault . This database requires a Harvard ID to access.]
• Nellie Nugent Somerville (1863-1952) Nellie Nugent Somerville became active in suffrage and temperance work in the early 1890s, becoming Corresponding Secretary of the Mississippi Woman’s Christian Temperance Union in 1894 and organizing the Mississippi Woman Suffrage Association in 1897. By 1915 she was vice president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. In 1923, she became the first woman elected to the Mississippi legislature, serving until 1927. She is viewed as a pioneer in Mississippi’s work for women’s rights and was the first woman to be elected to the state House of Representatives. See also Additional Papers of Nellie Nugent Somerville . [Digital content can be found in ProQuest's History Vault . This database requires a Harvard ID to access.]
• Edna Lamprey Stantial (1897-1985) Edna Lamprey Stantial was secretary of the Boston Equal Suffrage Association for Good Government from 1916 to 1920 and was reportedly its youngest member. After the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment guaranteeing woman suffrage, she became executive secretary of the Boston League of Women Voters until 1924, when her daughter was born. Stantial continued to work for women’s rights as a volunteer while raising her child. She became close to Maud Wood Park and Alice Stone Blackwell through her political activity. Stantial was extremely organized as well as dedicated to the cause of women’s history. She helped Park gather the papers she gave to Radcliffe College in 1943 that formed the Woman’s Rights Collection, and she was named archivist of the National American Woman Suffrage Association in 1950. Stantial continued throughout her life to assemble and disseminate suffrage-related information and historical documents to a variety of repositories. Materials can be found in the Papers of Edna Lamprey Stantial and the Mary Earhart Dillon Collection . [Digital content can be found in ProQuest's History Vault . This database requires a Harvard ID to access.]
• Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902) In 1840 Elizabeth Cady Stanton was appointed a delegate to the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London. There she met Lucretia Mott, with whom she signed the first call for a women’s rights convention. She was the chief agent in calling the Seneca Falls Convention (1848), and following the Convention she remained one of the leaders of women in America until her death. From 1855 to 1865 she served as the president of the National Committee of the Suffrage Party. She was president of the National Woman Suffrage Association until 1890. She was also the joint author, along with Susan B. Anthony, Matilda Joslyn Gage, and Ida Husted Harper, of The History of Woman Suffrage .
• Doris Stevens (1888-1963) Doris Stevens became active in the suffrage movement in 1913, when the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage, which became the National Woman’s Party, hired her as an organizer. Stevens held this position through 1920, at which time she published her book, Jailed for Freedom , which described the imprisonment of women activists in 1917 during the National Woman’s Party’s radical campaign for suffrage. Stevens was an active member of the National Woman’s Party for thirty years and served the party in various capacities: as vice president, as chair of the Committee on International Action, and as a member of the National Council.
• Lucy Stone (1818-1893) [in Woman's Rights Collection] Lucy Stone, a suffragist and abolitionist, gave her first public address on women’s rights in 1847. In 1850 she called for the first national women’s rights convention and had much to do with arranging later conventions. When the 14th Amendment was pending both she and her husband, Henry Brown Blackwell, tried in vain to strike the word "male" from it and thereby win suffrage for women. When the American Equal Rights Association was organized (1866), she became a member of the executive committee. In 1868, Stone and Blackwell helped organize the New England Woman Suffrage Association. She was a leading figure in the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association, which she helped found in 1870, and in the American and New England Associations. She likewise spent a great deal of time lecturing, drafting bills, and attending legislative hearings in the interest of women's rights. Materials can be found in the Woman’s Rights Collection and the Blackwell family papers. [Digital content for the Woman’s Rights Collection can be found in ProQuest's History Vault . This database requires a Harvard ID to access. Please visit the Blackwell Family research guide for related materials.]
• Betty Gram Swing (1893-1969) Suffragist Betty Gram Swing was born Myrtle Eveline Gram. With her sister Alice, she joined the women's rights movement in 1917 and was part of a group arrested for protesting the treatment of Alice Paul in prison. After her release, she joined the National Woman's Party as a national organizer and worked for the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. Correspondence, speeches, clippings, and printed material show Swing's work with the National Woman's Party, first as a "suffrage picket" who served jail time in 1917, and later as an advocate for the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment. Material documenting Gram Swing's work with international women's groups, such as the Six Point Group, the Inter-American Commission of Women, the World Woman's Party, and the League of Nations Consultative Committee on Nationality, shows the tight social circles of international women's rights activists, as well as the connections between national and international campaigns.
• Woman's Rights Collection Donated by Maud Wood Park in 1943, this collection of papers concerning women and men involved in the woman's rights movement formed the nucleus of the Women's Archives, which is now the Schlesinger Library. The collection contains correspondence, journals, notebooks, speeches, financial documents, reports, minutes, membership lists, agendas, bulletins, pamphlets, manuals, articles, clippings, maps, scrapbooks, photos, posters, memorabilia, plays, books, etc. Highlighting the work done in Massachusetts, the collection primarily documents the suffrage movement and also the gains for women in government participation, protective legislation, and employment opportunities after 1920. It includes papers of and about little-known women, suffrage leaders, and professional women; records of suffrage groups; and information on international peace activities. [Digital content can be found in ProQuest's History Vault . This database requires a Harvard ID to access.]
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Women’s Suffrage

By: History.com Editors

Updated: February 20, 2024 | Original: October 29, 2009

The women’s suffrage movement was a decades-long fight to win the right to vote for women in the United States. It took activists and reformers nearly 100 years to win that right, and the campaign was not easy: Disagreements over strategy threatened to cripple the movement more than once. But on August 18, 1920, the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was finally ratified, enfranchising all American women and declaring for the first time that they, like men, deserve all the rights and responsibilities of citizenship.

Women’s Rights Movement Begins

The campaign for women’s suffrage began in earnest in the decades before the Civil War . During the 1820s and '30s, most states had extended the franchise to all white men, regardless of how much money or property they had.

At the same time, all sorts of reform groups were proliferating across the United States— temperance leagues , religious movements, moral-reform societies, anti- slavery organizations—and in many of these, women played a prominent role.

Meanwhile, many American women were beginning to chafe against what historians have called the “Cult of True Womanhood”: that is, the idea that the only “true” woman was a pious, submissive wife and mother concerned exclusively with home and family.

Put together, all of these contributed to a new way of thinking about what it meant to be a woman and a citizen of the United States.

Seneca Falls Convention

In 1848, a group of abolitionist activists—mostly women, but some men—gathered in Seneca Falls, New York to discuss the problem of women’s rights. They were invited there by the reformers Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott .

Most of the delegates to the Seneca Falls Convention agreed: American women were autonomous individuals who deserved their own political identities.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident,” proclaimed the Declaration of Sentiments that the delegates produced, “that all men and women are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

What this meant, among other things, was that they believed women should have the right to vote.

Civil Rights and Women's Rights During the Civil War

During the 1850s, the women’s rights movement gathered steam, but lost momentum when the Civil War began. Almost immediately after the war ended, the 14th Amendment and the 15th Amendment to the Constitution raised familiar questions of suffrage and citizenship.

The 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, extends the Constitution’s protection to all citizens—and defines “citizens” as “male”; the 15th, ratified in 1870, guarantees Black men the right to vote.

Some women’s suffrage advocates believed that this was their chance to push lawmakers for truly universal suffrage. As a result, they refused to support the 15th Amendment and even allied with racist Southerners who argued that white women’s votes could be used to neutralize those cast by African Americans.

In 1869, a new group called the National Woman Suffrage Association was founded by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. They began to fight for a universal-suffrage amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Others argued that it was unfair to endanger Black enfranchisement by tying it to the markedly less popular campaign for female suffrage. This pro-15th-Amendment faction formed a group called the American Woman Suffrage Association and fought for the franchise on a state-by-state basis.

Gallery: The Progressive Campaign for Suffrage

This animosity eventually faded, and in 1890 the two groups merged to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Elizabeth Cady Stanton was the organization’s first president.

By then, the suffragists’ approach had changed. Instead of arguing that women deserved the same rights and responsibilities as men because women and men were “created equal,” the new generation of activists argued that women deserved the vote because they were different from men.

They could make their domesticity into a political virtue, using the franchise to create a purer, more moral “maternal commonwealth.”

This argument served many political agendas: Temperance advocates, for instance, wanted women to have the vote because they thought it would mobilize an enormous voting bloc on behalf of their cause, and many middle-class white people were swayed once again by the argument that the enfranchisement of white women would “ensure immediate and durable white supremacy, honestly attained.”

Did you know? In 1923, the National Woman'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.

Winning the Vote at Last

Starting in 1910, some states in the West began to extend the vote to women for the first time in almost 20 years. Idaho and Utah had given women the right to vote at the end of the 19th century.

Still, southern and eastern states resisted. In 1916, NAWSA president Carrie Chapman Catt unveiled what she called a “Winning Plan” to get the vote at last: a blitz campaign that mobilized state and local suffrage organizations all over the country, with a special focus on those recalcitrant regions.

Meanwhile, a splinter group called the National Woman’s Party founded by Alice Paul focused on more radical, militant tactics—hunger strikes and White House pickets, for instance—aimed at winning dramatic publicity for their cause.

World War I slowed the suffragists’ campaign but helped them advance their argument nonetheless: Women’s work on behalf of the war effort, activists pointed out, proved that they were just as patriotic and deserving of citizenship as men.

Finally, on August 18, 1920 , the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified. And on November 2 of that year, more than 8 million women across the United States voted in elections for the first time.

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Regions & Countries

A century after women gained the right to vote, majority of americans see work to do on gender equality, about three-in-ten men say women’s gains have come at the expense of men.

Pew Research Center conducted this study to understand Americans’ views of the current state of gender equality and the advancement of women around the 100th anniversary of women getting the right to vote. For this analysis, we surveyed 3,143 U.S. adults in March and April 2020, including an oversample of Black and Hispanic respondents. The adults surveyed are members of the Ipsos Public Affairs KnowledgePanel, an online survey panel that is recruited through national random sampling of residential addresses and landline and cellphone numbers. KnowledgePanel provides internet access for those who do not have it and, if needed, a device to access the internet when they join the panel. To ensure that the results of this survey reflect a balanced cross section of the nation, the data are weighted to match the U.S. adult population by gender, age, education, race and ethnicity and other categories. The survey was conducted in English and Spanish.

Here are the  questions used for this report , along with responses, and the report’s methodology .

References to white and Black adults include only those who are non-Hispanic and identify as only one race. Hispanics are of any race.

All references to party affiliation include those who lean toward that party. Republicans include those who identify as Republicans and independents who say they lean toward the Republican Party. Democrats include those who identify as Democrats and independents who say they lean toward the Democratic Party.

References to college graduates or people with a college degree comprise those with a bachelor’s degree or more. “Some college” includes those with an associate degree and those who attended college but did not obtain a degree.

A hundred years after the 19th Amendment was ratified, about half of Americans say granting women the right to vote has been the most important milestone in advancing the position of women in the country. Still, a majority of U.S. adults say the country hasn’t gone far enough when it comes to giving women equal rights with men, even as a large share thinks there has been progress in the last decade, according to a new Pew Research Center survey.

Among those who think the country still has work to do in achieving gender equality, 77% point to sexual harassment as a major obstacle to women having equal rights with men. Fewer, but still majorities, point to women not having the same legal rights as men (67%), different societal expectations for men and women (66%) and not enough women in positions of power (64%) as major obstacles to gender equality. Women are more likely than men to see each of these as a major obstacle.

Many of those who say it is important for men and women to have equal rights point to aspects of the workplace when asked about what gender equality would look like. Fully 45% volunteer that a society where women have equal rights with men would include equal pay. An additional 19% say there would be no discrimination in hiring, promotion or educational opportunities. About one-in-ten say women would be more equally represented in business or political leadership.

In terms of the groups and institutions that have done the most to advance the rights of women in the U.S., 70% say the feminist movement has done at least a fair amount in this regard. The Democratic Party is viewed as having contributed more to the cause of women’s rights than the Republican Party: 59% say the Democratic Party has done at least a fair amount to advance women’s rights, while 37% say the same about the GOP. About three-in-ten (29%) say President Donald Trump has done at least a fair amount to advance women’s rights, while 69% say Trump has not done much or has done nothing at all. These views vary considerably by party, with Republicans and Republican leaners at least five times as likely as Democrats and those who lean Democratic to say the GOP and Trump have done at least a fair amount and Democrats far more likely than Republicans to say the same about the Democratic Party.

Views of the role the feminist movement has played in advancing gender equality are positive overall, though fewer than half of women say the movement has been beneficial to them personally. About four-in-ten (41%) say feminism has helped them at least a little, while half say it has neither helped nor hurt them. Relatively few (7%) say feminism has hurt them personally. Democratic women, those with a bachelor’s degree or more education and women younger than 50 are among the most likely to say they’ve benefitted personally from feminism.

Views about how much progress the country has made on gender equality differ widely along partisan lines. About three-quarters of Democrats (76%) say the country hasn’t gone far enough when it comes to giving women equal rights with men, while 19% say it’s been about right and 4% say the country has gone too far. Among Republicans, a third say the country hasn’t made enough progress, while 48% say it’s been about right and 17% say the country has gone too far in giving women equal rights with men.

There is also a gender gap in these views, with 64% of women – compared with 49% of men – saying the country hasn’t gone far enough in giving women equal rights with men. Democratic and Republican women are about ten percentage points more likely than their male counterparts to say this (82% of Democratic women vs. 70% of Democratic men and 38% of Republican women vs. 28% of Republican men).

The nationally representative survey of 3,143 U.S. adults was conducted online from March 18-April 1, 2020. 1 Among the other key findings:

More cite women’s suffrage than other milestones as the most important in advancing the position of women in the U.S. About half of Americans (49%) say women gaining the right to vote has been the most important milestone in advancing the position of women in the U.S.; 29% cite the passage of the Equal Pay Act, while smaller shares point to the passage of the Family and Medical Leave Act (12%) or the availability of the birth control pill (8%) as the most important milestone.

A majority of Americans say feminism has had a positive impact on the lives of white, Black and Hispanic women. About six-in-ten or more U.S. adults say feminism has helped the lives of white (64%), Black (61%) and Hispanic (58%) women at least a little. But more say feminism helped white women a lot (32%) than say it’s done the same for Black (21%) or Hispanic (15%) women. About a quarter (24%) say feminism has helped wealthy women a lot; just 10% say it’s been equally helpful to poor women.

About four-in-ten Republican men think women’s gains have come at the expense of men. Most Americans (76%) say the gains women have made in society have not come at the expense of men, but 22% think these gains have come at the expense of men. That view is more common among men (28%) than women (17%). Republican and Democratic men are more likely than their female counterparts to say the gains women have made in society have come at the expense of men. About four-in-ten Republican men (38%) say women’s gains have come at the expense of men, compared with 25% of Republican women, 19% of Democratic men and 12% of Democratic women.

Democrats are more likely than Republicans to say that, when it comes to gender discrimination, the bigger problem is discrimination being overlooked. Two-thirds of U.S. adults say the bigger problem for our country today is people not seeing gender discrimination where it really does exist; 31% say people seeing gender discrimination where it really does not exist is the bigger problem. More than eight-in-ten Democrats (85%) point to people overlooking gender discrimination as the bigger problem; 46% of Republicans say the same.

Most Americans favor adding the ERA to the U.S. Constitution, even as many don’t think this would make much difference for women’s rights. About eight-in-ten U.S. adults (78%), including majorities of men and women and Republicans and Democrats alike, say they at least somewhat favor adding the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the U.S. Constitution. When asked about the impact they think adopting the ERA would have on women’s rights in the U.S., 44% say it would advance women’s rights, while 5% say this would be a setback for women’s rights and 49% say it would not make much of a difference. Even among those who favor adopting the amendment, 44% say doing so wouldn’t have much of an impact on women’s rights (54% say it would advance women’s rights).

A majority of Americans say the country has not gone far enough in giving women equal rights with men

The vast majority of Americans across demographic and partisan groups agree that women should have equal rights with men. More than nine-in-ten U.S. adults say it is very important (79%) or somewhat important (18%) for women to have equal rights with men in this country. Just 3% of Americans say gender equality is not too or not at all important.

Democrats and those who lean to the Democratic Party (86%) are more likely than Republicans and Republican leaners (71%) to say it is very important for women to have equal rights with men. Still, majorities of Republicans and Democrats, including at least two-thirds of men and women in each party, say this is very important.

When it comes to giving women equal rights with men, a majority of adults (57%) think our country has not gone far enough, while 32% say things have been about right; 10% of Americans say the country has gone too far in giving women equal rights with men.

Women (64%) are more likely than men (49%) to say the country hasn’t made enough progress on gender equality. However, there is also a sizable party gap. Roughly three-quarters of Democrats (76%) say the country hasn’t gone far enough when it comes to giving women equal rights with men, compared with 33% of Republicans. Instead, 48% of Republicans – compared with 19% of Democrats – say things are about right when it comes to gender equality and 17% say the country has gone too far; just 4% of Democrats say things have gone too far.

Across parties, women are more likely than men to say the U.S. has not gone far enough in giving women equal rights with men. About four-in-ten Republican women (38%) say that gender equality has not come far enough, compared with 28% of Republican men. Still, about half of Republican men (51%) and 45% of Republican women say things are about right in the country when it comes to gender equality.

Among Democrats, 82% of women, compared with 70% of men, say the country still has work to do on gender equality. About a quarter of Democratic men (24%) say things are about right in the country when it comes to giving women equal rights with men, compared with 14% of Democratic women who say the same.

Among Democrats, those with at least some college education are more likely than those with no college experience to express dissatisfaction with the current state of gender equality. About eight-in-ten Democrats with a bachelor’s degree or more education (82%) and 77% of those with some college education say the country hasn’t gone far enough when it comes to giving women equal rights with men, compared with 71% of Democrats with a high school diploma or less education. Among Republicans, there is generally more agreement across levels of educational attainment.

Overall, Americans express more dissatisfaction with the state of gender equality now than they did in 2017, when this question was last asked. Then, half said the country hadn’t gone far enough in giving women equal rights with men, while 39% said things were about right and 10% said the country had gone too far. Attitudes have shifted among men and women and Republicans and Democrats alike.

Most Democrats and Republicans say the country has made progress in giving women and men equal rights over the last 10 years

While many Americans say there’s still work to be done to achieve gender equality, most say there’s been progress over the past decade. Majorities of men and women say the U.S. has made progress in the last 10 years when it comes to giving women equal rights with men. Still, 25% of Americans say things are the same as they were 10 years ago, and one-in-ten say the country has lost ground when it comes to equal rights for women.

Majorities of Democrats (60%) and Republicans (71%) say that, in the last 10 years, the country has made progress on gender equality. However, Democratic women are the least likely to say this: 58% of Democratic women say this, compared with 63% of Democratic men and 71% of both Republican men and Republican women. Instead, 28% of Democratic women say things are about the same as they were 10 years ago (21% of Republican women say the same).

About three-in-ten U.S. men think women’s gains have come at the expense of men

When it comes to the gains that women have made in society, most Americans (76%) say the gains have not come at the expense of men, but 22% – including 28% of men – think these gains have come at the expense of men.

Republican men (38%) are twice as likely as Democratic men (19%) to say the gains women have made have come at the expense of men. A quarter of Republican women also say this, less than the share of their male counterparts but higher than the shares of Democratic men and women (12%) that hold this view.

Among women, those without a bachelor’s degree are about twice as likely as college graduates to say gains have come at the expense of men (21% vs. 10%); educational differences are less pronounced, though still significant, among men: 30% of men with some college or less education say the gains women have made in society have come at the expense of men, compared with 24% of men with at least a bachelor’s degree.

Most who say the country still has work to do on gender equality say equality is likely in the future

On the whole, the majority of Americans who say that the country has not gone far enough to give women equal rights with men think it is very or somewhat likely that women in our country will eventually have equal rights with men. More than eight-in-ten Americans who say the country hasn’t made enough progress say this is very likely (31%) or somewhat likely (53%); just 16% say they think it is not too likely or not at all likely.

Large majorities of men and women and Republicans and Democrats who say the country has not yet achieved gender equality say it is at least somewhat likely that men and women will eventually have equal rights, but men (37%) are considerably more likely than women (26%)  to say it is very likely.

Among Republicans who say the U.S. has work to do to achieve gender equality, 36% say gender equality is very likely, compared with 29% of Democrats. This difference is driven in part by Democratic women, who are among the least likely to say they expect men and women to eventually have equal rights. Among Democratic women who say the country hasn’t gone far enough to achieve gender equality, 23% say they think it is very likely that there will eventually be gender equality; 38% of Democratic men say the same.

Even among the small share of Americans who say the country has lost ground on gender equality in the last 10 years, 76% say it is very or somewhat likely that women will eventually have equal rights with men.

More cite equality in the workplace than any other example as a sign of a society where men and women are equal

When those who say it is important for women to have equal rights with men are asked what a society with gender equality might look like, about half give examples that focus on equality in the workplace: 45% specifically say equal pay, 19% cite no discrimination in hiring and promotion, 5% say men and women getting equal respect in the workplace, and 2% say better paid leave and paternity and maternity support are things they would expect to see in a society where women have equal rights with men.

About one-in-ten cite more or equal representation of women in leadership, with 6% specifically mentioning political leadership and 5% mentioning business leadership. Relatively few point to reproductive rights (4%) and less traditional gender norms (4%) as markers of a society where women have equal rights with men. (Respondents were asked to answer this question in their own words; for respondents who gave multiple examples, up to three responses were coded.)

For the most part, men and women who say equal rights are important have a similar picture of what a society with gender equality would look like, but a larger share of women than men cite equal pay (51% vs. 40%). Still, the gender pay gap tops the list for both men and women who say gender equality is important.

Among women, references to equal pay differ by age. Women ages 50 and older (56%) are more likely than women under 50 (45%) to mention equal pay when describing a society where men and women have equal rights.

Democrats who say gender equality is important are more likely than their Republican counterparts to cite equal pay when asked about a society with gender equality: 50% of Democrats say this, compared with 41% of Republicans. Democrats are also more likely than Republicans to say that more or equal representation in business and politics is a marker of equality (12% vs. 5%).

Wide party and gender gaps in views of the obstacles women face in achieving gender equality

When Americans who say the country has not gone far enough in giving women equal rights with men are asked about the obstacles to achieving equal rights, sexual harassment tops the list: 77% say this is a major obstacle for women. Roughly two-thirds say women not having the same legal rights as men (67%) and the different expectations that society has for men and women (66%) are major obstacles, and 64% say the same about not enough women in positions of power. Some 43% point to family responsibilities as a major obstacle, while fewer cite men and women having different physical abilities (19%) and women not working as hard as men (13%) as major obstacles. Roughly two-thirds (64%) of those who say the country has work to do on gender equality say women not working as hard as men is not an obstacle to gender equality.

Perceptions of the obstacles to gender equality vary across genders. For example, while 71% of women who say the country hasn’t gone far enough in giving women equal rights with men cite not enough women in positions of power as a major obstacle to gender equality, 55% of men say the same.

A majority of women who say the country hasn’t made enough progress on gender equality also point to women not having the same legal rights as men (73%) and different societal expectations for men and women (72%) as major obstacles to women having equal rights with men. Fewer men who say this see each of these as major obstacles to gender equality (59% and 58%, respectively).

When it comes to the role sexual harassment plays in men and women having equal rights, women who say the country hasn’t gone far enough when it comes to gender equality (82%) are more likely than men who say the same (72%) to cite this as a major obstacle, though large majorities of both groups say this.

Among women who say the country hasn’t made enough progress on gender equality, those with at least a bachelor’s degree are more likely than those who have attended some college or less to say different societal expectations (81% vs. 67%) and not enough women in positions of power (80% vs. 66%) are major obstacles.

Among those who say there’s work to be done on gender equality, a majority of Democrats, but fewer than half of Republicans, see not enough women in power as a major obstacle

Among those who say there’s more work to be done in giving women equal rights with men, Democrats and Republicans differ on the extent to which certain factors are holding women back. A higher share of Democrats than Republicans point to not enough women in positions of power (72% vs. 41%), women not having the same legal rights as men (73% vs. 51%), sexual harassment (81 % vs. 66%) and different societal expectations (69% vs. 57%) as major obstacles to women having equal rights with men.

Republicans who say the country has not gone far enough to give women equal rights (27%) are more likely than similarly minded Democrats (17%) to say differences in the physical abilities of men and women are a major obstacle to women having equal rights with men, although relatively small shares of each group say this is the case. Meanwhile, there are no significant partisan gaps when it comes to views of family responsibilities (44% of Democrats and 40% of Republicans see it as a major obstacle) or women not working as hard as men (13% and 15%, respectively).

Democratic women are particularly likely to see some of these as major obstacles, while Republican men tend to be the least likely to do so. For example, 78% of Democratic women say women not having the same legal rights as men is a major obstacle to equal rights, as do 65% of Democratic men and 58% of Republican women. In contrast, 42% of Republican men say this is a major obstacle.

And while 77% of Democratic women, 65% of Democratic men and 50% of Republican women say not enough women in positions of power is a major obstacle to gender equality, just 31% of Republican men say the same.

Democrats are nearly twice as likely as Republicans to say there are problems with gender discrimination being overlooked

When it comes to gender discrimination, by more than a two-to-one margin Americans say the bigger problem for the country is people not seeing discrimination where it really does exist, rather than people seeing gender discrimination where it really does not exist (67% vs. 31%).

The vast majority of Democrats (85%) say the bigger problem is people not seeing gender discrimination where it really exists. In contrast, more Republicans say the bigger problem is people seeing discrimination where it doesn’t exist (53%) than say the people overlooking discrimination is the bigger problem (46%).

There is a wide gender gap among Republicans. While a majority of Republican men (61%) say the bigger problem is people seeing gender discrimination where it doesn’t exist, fewer than half of Republican women (44%) say the same. Democratic men are also more likely than their female counterparts to say this (19% vs. 11%), but 80% of Democratic men and 89% of Democratic women agree that the bigger problem is people overlooking gender discrimination.

More cite women gaining the right to vote than other milestones as the most important in advancing the position of women

When asked about milestones they see as important in advancing the position of women in the U.S., about half of Americans (49%) point to women gaining the right to vote as the most important milestone, a view that is more common among men (52%) than women (46%). Roughly three-in-ten U.S. adults (29%) cite the passage of the Equal Pay Act, while smaller shares say passage of the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) and the availability of the birth control pill are the most important milestones in advancing the position of women (12% and 8%, respectively).

White adults, as well as those with at least a bachelor’s degree, are more likely than Black and Hispanic adults and those with less education to see women’s suffrage as the most important milestone in advancing the position of women in the U.S. Some 53% of white adults say women getting the right to vote has been a more important milestone than the passage of the Equal Pay Act, passage of the FMLA or the availability of the birth control pill. Black and Hispanic adults are about as likely to cite the passage of the Equal Pay Act as they are to cite women gaining the right to vote.

Among those with at least a bachelor’s degree, 59% see women’s suffrage as the most important milestone, compared with 48% of those with some college education and 41% of those with less education. Even so, across educational attainment, more point to women getting the right to vote than to the other milestones as the most important in advancing women’s rights in the U.S.

These differences by race and ethnicity and educational attainment are also evident when looking separately at the views of men and women. A majority of white men (57%) cite women gaining the right to vote as the most important milestone, compared with 39% of Black men and 43% of Hispanic men. And while white women are less likely than their male counterparts to say this (49% do so), even smaller shares of Black (36%) and Hispanic (38%) women point to women’s suffrage as the most important milestone.

Similarly, men with at least a bachelor’s degree (64%) are more likely than women with the same level of educational attainment (54%) to say women gaining the right to vote was the most important milestone. Both are more likely than their less educated counterparts to say this.

Views on this vary little, if at all, by age or partisanship, but Democrats and those who lean to the Democratic Party are about twice as likely as Republicans and Republican leaners to say the availability of the birth control pill has been the most important milestone in advancing the position of women in the U.S. (11% vs. 5%). Similar shares of Democratic women (12%) and men (11%) say this, compared with 6% of Republican women and an even smaller share of Republican men (3%).

A third of Americans know what year women in the U.S. gained the right to vote

When asked in an open-ended format what year women in the U.S. gained the right to vote, 47% offer a year between 1915 and 1925 (within five years of the correct answer), including 33% who correctly identify 1920 as the year women gained the right to vote. About three-in-ten Americans (31%) say women gained the right to vote in 1926 or later, while just 7% say this happened before 1915. (Some 14% didn’t provide an answer.) Men and women give similar answers.

Those who say women gaining the right to vote has been the most important milestone in advancing women’s rights in the U.S. are not necessarily more knowledgeable about the timing of this milestone. An identical share of those who cite women’s suffrage or the availability of the birth control pill as the most important milestones correctly identify 1920 as the year women gained the right to vote (38% each). Similar shares in these groups offer a year between 1915 and 1925.

Educational attainment is related to knowledge of the year women in the U.S. gained the right to vote. About six-in-ten adults with at least a bachelor’s degree (61%) give a year between 1915 and 1925, with 41% correctly identifying 1920 as the year women gained the right to vote. Smaller shares of those with some college (47%) or with a high school diploma or less education (36%) give an answer within five years of the correct year, and a third and quarter, respectively, give the correct answer.

Adults ages 65 and older are more likely than those who are younger to give an answer within five years of the correct year. More than half of those ages 65 and older (55%) say U.S. women gained the right to vote between 1915 and 1925, compared with 49% of those ages 50 to 64, 42% of those ages 30 to 49 and 47% of adults younger than 30.

Majorities say the feminist movement and the Democratic Party have done at least a fair amount to advance women’s rights in the U.S.

Seven-in-ten Americans say the feminist movement has done a great deal (22%) or a fair amount (48%) to advance women’s rights in the U.S.; 59% say the same about the Democratic Party, including 12% who say it has done a great deal. In contrast, most Americans say the Republican Party (61%) and Donald Trump (69%) have not done much or have done nothing at all to advance women’s rights.

Women (73%) are more likely than men (67%) to say the feminist movement has done at least a fair amount to advance the rights of women in the U.S., but large majorities of each group say this. Meanwhile, a larger share of men (40%) than women (34%) say the GOP has done at least a fair amount in this area.

There are far wider partisan gaps than gender gaps when it comes to these views. About three-quarters of Democrats and those who lean Democratic (73%) say the Democratic Party has done at least a fair amount to advance women’s rights in the U.S.; fewer than half of Republicans and those who lean to the Republican Party (42%) say the same. Conversely, two-thirds of Republicans – but only 13% of Democrats – say the GOP has done a great deal or a fair amount in this area. Similarly, a majority of Republicans (59%) say Donald Trump has done at least a fair amount to advance women’s rights, while just 6% of Democrats say the same.

When it comes to the feminist movement’s impact, majorities of Democrats and Republicans say it has done at least a fair amount. Still, Democrats are far more likely than Republicans to say this (80% vs. 58%).

For the most part, views on this don’t vary considerably by gender within each party. Republican women (62%) are more likely than Republican men (55%) to say the feminist movement has done a great deal or a fair amount to advance women’s rights, but more than half of both say this. And while Democratic men are more likely than their female counterparts to say their party has done at least a fair amount, about seven-in-ten or more of each group share this view (76% of Democratic men and 71% of Democratic women). Republican men and women give similar views when it comes to how much each of the political parties and Donald Trump have done, and there are no significant differences between Democratic men and women in views of the feminist movement, the Republican Party or Trump.

Majorities say feminism has helped white, Black and Hispanic women

In addition to saying the feminist movement has done at least a fair amount to advance women’s rights in the U.S., a majority of Americans think feminism has had a positive impact on the lives of specific groups of women. For example, about six-in-ten or more say feminism has helped the lives of white (64%), Black (61%) and Hispanic (58%) women at least a little, although there are more pronounced differences in the shares saying feminism has helped each of these groups a lot (32% vs. 21% and 15%, respectively). 2  Notably, just 41% of women say the movement has helped them personally.

A majority of Americans (57%) also think feminism has helped lesbian and bisexual women at least a little, including 23% who say it’s helped this group a lot. By comparison, 41% say feminism has helped transgender women, with just 11% saying this group has been helped a lot. About one-in-five (21%) say feminism has hurt transgender women, and 17% say the same about its impact on lesbian and bisexual women.

When asked about the impact of feminism on the lives of wealthy and poor women, 49% say it has helped each of these groups at least a little, but while 24% say feminism has helped wealthy women a lot , just one-in-ten say the same about the impact it’s had on the lives of poor women.

Opinions about how feminism has impacted each of these groups of women don’t differ significantly between men and women. In fact, the shares of men and women saying feminism has helped each of these groups at least a little vary only by 3 percentage points or less.

Majorities of white and Hispanic adults say feminism has helped white, Black and Hispanic women at least a little. Some 64% of Black adults also say feminism has helped white women, more than the shares who say it’s helped Black (49%) or Hispanic (48%) women. Black adults are the most likely to say feminism has helped white women a lot: 42% say this, compared with 34% of Hispanics and an even smaller share of white adults (29%).

Consistent with the difference in the shares of Republicans and Democrats who say the feminist movement has done at least a fair amount to advance women’s rights, Democrats are far more likely than Republicans to say feminism has helped each of these groups of women.

About four-in-ten women say feminism has helped them personally

Some 55% of women with at least a bachelor’s degree say feminism has helped them personally, compared with 41% of women with some college education and an even smaller share of those with a high school diploma or less education (30%). In turn, six-in-ten of those with no college experience and half of those with some college say feminism has neither helped nor hurt them; 36% of women with a bachelor’s degree or more education say the same.

Hispanic women (46%) are more likely than Black women (36%) to say feminism has helped them personally; white women fall somewhere in the middle (41% say feminism has helped them). There are also differences by age, with 47% of women younger than 50 saying feminism has helped at least a little, compared with 35% of those ages 50 and older.

Among Democratic women, half say feminism has helped them personally, while just 5% say it has hurt them and 43% say it has neither helped nor hurt. By comparison, 28% of Republican women say feminism has helped them, while a majority (60%) say it’s neither helped nor hurt; 9% of Republican women say feminism has hurt them.

Most Americans favor adding the ERA to the U.S. Constitution

In January 2020, Virginia became the 38th state to pass the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) , nearly half a century after it passed the Senate in 1972. While the ERA has now been ratified by three-fourths of the states, the number required for amending the U.S. Constitution, it is likely to face legal challenges as the deadline for ratification has passed.

The survey finds widespread support for adding the ERA to the U.S. Constitution: About eight-in-ten Americans (78%) say they favor it, including 35% who strongly favor it being added to the Constitution. Women are more likely than men to say they strongly favor adding the ERA to the Constitution (39% vs. 31%), but about three-quarters or more in each group say they favor it at least somewhat.

Democrats overwhelmingly favor adding the ERA to the U.S. Constitution, with roughly nine-in-ten saying they favor it strongly (51%) or somewhat (37%). There’s less support among Republicans: 66% say they favor adopting the ERA, with 16% expressing strong support for this. Republican women (75%) are far more likely than Republican men (58%) to say they favor adding the ERA to the Constitution. Views on this do not differ by gender among Democrats, but they do vary across other dimensions, including educational attainment, race and ethnicity, and age.

Large majorities of Democrats across levels of educational attainment say they favor adding the ERA to the Constitution, but those with at least a bachelor’s degree are the most likely to express strong support: 62% say they strongly favor adopting the ERA, compared with 55% of Democrats with some college and a smaller share of those of those with a high school diploma or less education (37%).

Among white Democrats, 58% say they strongly favor adding the ERA to the U.S. Constitution. About four-in-ten Black and Hispanic Democrats say the same (42% each). These gaps remain when taking differences in educational attainment into account.

And while more than eight-in-ten Democrats across age groups support adopting the ERA, those ages 65 and older are more likely than those who are younger to express strong support. About six-in-ten Democrats ages 65 and older (63%) say they strongly favor adding the ERA to the Constitution, compared with 46% of Democrats ages 18 to 29 and ages 30 to 49 and 52% of those 50 to 64.

These differences by age, educational attainment and race and ethnicity are present among Democratic men and women. Among Republicans, the only notable demographic split on views of adopting the ERA is along gender lines.

Many say adding the ERA to the Constitution wouldn’t make much difference for women’s rights

Despite widespread support for adding the ERA to the U.S. Constitution, 49% of Americans say this would not make much of a difference when it comes to women’s rights in the country; 44% say this would advance women’s rights and 5% think this would be a setback for women’s rights.

Even among those who favor adding the ERA to the Constitution, a sizable share (44%) is skeptical that this would have much of an impact, while 54% say it would advance women’s rights and just 2% see it as a potential setback. Democratic supporters of the ERA are far more likely than their Republican counterparts to say this would advance women’s rights in our country (63% vs. 38%). A majority of Republican ERA supporters (59%) say adding it to the Constitution wouldn’t make much difference.

Overall, male and female supporters of the ERA offer similar assessments of the impact adding the amendment to the Constitution would have on women’s rights; 54% of women and 53% of men who favor adopting the ERA say this would advance women’s rights in the U.S. Women ages 18 to 29 are more optimistic than women in older age groups to say adding the ERA to the Constitution would advance women’s rights. About six-in-ten women younger than 30 who support the ERA (63%) say adopting the amendment would advance women’s rights, compared with about half of older women who favor the ERA.

For the most part, adults who oppose adding the ERA to the U.S. Constitution say doing so wouldn’t make much difference for women’s rights (69% say this), while 20% think this would be a setback for women’s rights and 10% say it would advance women’s rights.

• For more details, see the Methodology section of the report. ↩
• The shares who say feminism has helped each group of women at least a little may not add to the shares who say “a lot” and “a little” as shown in the chart due to rounding. ↩
• The shares of women who say feminism has helped them personally at least a little may not add to the shares who say “a lot” and “a little” as shown in the chart due to rounding. ↩

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Table of contents, for women’s history month, a look at gender gains – and gaps – in the u.s., key takeaways on americans’ views on gender equality a century after u.s. women gained the right to vote, most americans support gender equality, even if they don’t identify as feminists, activism on gender equality differs widely by education among democratic women, most popular.

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History of the Women’s Rights Movement

Living the Legacy: The Women’s Rights Movement (1848-1998)

“ Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has. ” That was Margaret Mead’s conclusion after a lifetime of observing very diverse cultures around the world. Her insight has been borne out time and again throughout the development of this country of ours. Being allowed to live life in an atmosphere of religious freedom, having a voice in the government you support with your taxes, living free of lifelong enslavement by another person. These beliefs about how life should and must be lived were once considered outlandish by many. But these beliefs were fervently held by visionaries whose steadfast work brought about changed minds and attitudes. Now these beliefs are commonly shared across U.S. society.

Another initially outlandish idea that has come to pass: United States citizenship for women. 1998 marked the 150th Anniversary of a movement by women to achieve full civil rights in this country. Over the past seven generations, dramatic social and legal changes have been accomplished that are now so accepted that they go unnoticed by people whose lives they have utterly changed. Many people who have lived through the recent decades of this process have come to accept blithely what has transpired. And younger people, for the most part, can hardly believe life was ever otherwise. They take the changes completely in stride, as how life has always been.

The staggering changes for women that have come about over those seven generations in family life, in religion, in government, in employment, in education – these changes did not just happen spontaneously. Women themselves made these changes happen, very deliberately. Women have not been the passive recipients of miraculous changes in laws and human nature. Seven generations of women have come together to affect these changes in the most democratic ways: through meetings, petition drives, lobbying, public speaking, and nonviolent resistance. They have worked very deliberately to create a better world, and they have succeeded hugely.

Throughout 1998, the 150th anniversary of the Women’s Rights Movement is being celebrated across the nation with programs and events taking every form imaginable. Like many amazing stories, the history of the Women’s Rights Movement began with a small group of people questioning why human lives were being unfairly constricted.

A Tea Launches a Revolution The Women’s Rights Movement marks July 13, 1848 as its beginning. On that sweltering summer day in upstate New York, a young housewife and mother, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, was invited to tea with four women friends. When the course of their conversation turned to the situation of women, Stanton poured out her discontent with the limitations placed on her own situation under America’s new democracy. Hadn’t the American Revolution had been fought just 70 years earlier to win the patriots freedom from tyranny? But women had not gained freedom even though they’d taken equally tremendous risks through those dangerous years. Surely the new republic would benefit from having its women play more active roles throughout society. Stanton’s friends agreed with her, passionately. This was definitely not the first small group of women to have such a conversation, but it was the first to plan and carry out a specific, large-scale program.

Today we are living the legacy of this afternoon conversation among women friends. Throughout 1998, events celebrating the 150th Anniversary of the Women’s Rights Movement are looking at the massive changes these women set in motion when they daringly agreed to convene the world’s first Women’s Rights Convention.

Within two days of their afternoon tea together, this small group had picked a date for their convention, found a suitable location, and placed a small announcement in the Seneca County Courier. They called “A convention to discuss the social, civil, and religious condition and rights of woman.” The gathering would take place at the Wesleyan Chapel in Seneca Falls on July 19 and 20, 1848.

In the history of western civilization, no similar public meeting had ever been called.

A “Declaration of Sentiments” is Drafted These were patriotic women, sharing the ideal of improving the new republic. They saw their mission as helping the republic keep its promise of better, more egalitarian lives for its citizens. As the women set about preparing for the event, Elizabeth Cady Stanton used the Declaration of Independence as the framework for writing what she titled a “Declaration of Sentiments.” In what proved to be a brilliant move, Stanton connected the nascent campaign for women’s rights directly to that powerful American symbol of liberty. The same familiar words framed their arguments: “We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

In this Declaration of Sentiments, Stanton carefully enumerated areas of life where women were treated unjustly. Eighteen was precisely the number of grievances America’s revolutionary forefathers had listed in their Declaration of Independence from England.

Stanton’s version read, “The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.” Then it went into specifics:

• Married women were legally dead in the eyes of the law
• Women were not allowed to vote
• Women had to submit to laws when they had no voice in their formation
• Married women had no property rights
• Husbands had legal power over and responsibility for their wives to the extent that they could imprison or beat them with impunity
• Divorce and child custody laws favored men, giving no rights to women
• Women had to pay property taxes although they had no representation in the levying of these taxes
• Most occupations were closed to women and when women did work they were paid only a fraction of what men earned
• Women were not allowed to enter professions such as medicine or law
• Women had no means to gain an education since no college or university would accept women students
• With only a few exceptions, women were not allowed to participate in the affairs of the church
• Women were robbed of their self-confidence and self-respect, and were made totally dependent on men

Strong words… Large grievances… And remember: This was just seventy years after the Revolutionary War. Doesn’t it seem surprising to you that this unfair treatment of women was the norm in this new, very idealistic democracy? But this Declaration of Sentiments spelled out what was the status quo for European-American women in 1848 America, while it was even worse for enslaved Black women.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s draft continued: “Now, in view of this entire disenfranchisement of one-half the people of this country, their social and religious degradation, — in view of the unjust laws above mentioned, and because women do feel themselves aggrieved, oppressed, and fraudulently deprived of their most sacred rights, we insist that they have immediate admission to all the rights and privileges which belong to them as citizens of these United States.”

That summer, change was in the air and Elizabeth Cady Stanton was full of hope that the future could and would be brighter for women.

The First Women’s Rights Convention The convention was convened as planned, and over the two-days of discussion, the Declaration of Sentiments and 12 resolutions received unanimous endorsement, one by one, with a few amendments. The only resolution that did not pass unanimously was the call for women’s enfranchisement. That women should be allowed to vote in elections was almost inconceivable to many. Lucretia Mott, Stanton’s longtime friend, had been shocked when Stanton had first suggested such an idea. And at the convention, heated debate over the woman’s vote filled the air.

Today, it’s hard for us to imagine this, isn’t it? Even the heartfelt pleas of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a refined and educated woman of the time, did not move the assembly. Not until Frederick Douglass, the noted Black abolitionist and rich orator, started to speak, did the uproar subside. Woman, like the slave, he argued, had the right to liberty. “Suffrage,” he asserted, “is the power to choose rulers and make laws, and the right by which all others are secured.” In the end, the resolution won enough votes to carry, but by a bare majority.

The Declaration of Sentiments ended on a note of complete realism: “In entering upon the great work before us, we anticipate no small amount of misconception, misrepresentation, and ridicule; but we shall use every instrumentality within our power to effect our object. We shall employ agents, circulate tracts, petition the State and national Legislatures, and endeavor to enlist the pulpit and the press in our behalf. We hope this Convention will be followed by a series of Conventions, embracing every part of the country.”

The Backlash Begins Stanton was certainly on the mark when she anticipated “misconception, misrepresentation, and ridicule.” Newspaper editors were so scandalized by the shameless audacity of the Declaration of Sentiments, and particularly of the ninth resolution — women demanding the vote!– that they attacked the women with all the vitriol they could muster. The women’s rights movement was only one day old and the backlash had already begun!

In ridicule, the entire text of the Declaration of Sentiments was often published, with the names of the signers frequently included. Just as ridicule today often has a squelching effect on new ideas, this attack in the press caused many people from the Convention to rethink their positions. Many of the women who had attended the convention were so embarrassed by the publicity that they actually withdrew their signatures from the Declaration. But most stood firm. And something the editors had not anticipated happened: Their negative articles about the women’s call for expanded rights were so livid and widespread that they actually had a positive impact far beyond anything the organizers could have hoped for. People in cities and isolated towns alike were now alerted to the issues, and joined this heated discussion of women’s rights in great numbers!

The Movement Expands The Seneca Falls women had optimistically hoped for “a series of conventions embracing every part of the country.” And that’s just what did happen. Women’s Rights Conventions were held regularly from 1850 until the start of the Civil War. Some drew such large crowds that people actually had to be turned away for lack of sufficient meeting space!

The women’s rights movement of the late 19th century went on to address the wide range of issues spelled out at the Seneca Falls Convention. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and women like Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, and Sojourner Truth traveled the country lecturing and organizing for the next forty years. Eventually, winning the right to vote emerged as the central issue, since the vote would provide the means to achieve the other reforms. All told, the campaign for woman suffrage met such staunch opposition that it took 72 years for the women and their male supporters to be successful.

As you might imagine, any 72-year campaign includes thousands of political strategists, capable organizers, administrators, activists and lobbyists. The story of diligent women’s rights activism is a litany of achievements against tremendous odds, of ingenious strategies and outrageous tactics used to outwit opponents and make the most of limited resources. It’s a dramatic tale, filled with remarkable women facing down incredible obstacles to win that most basic American civil right – the vote.

Among these women are several activists whose names and and accomplishments should become as familiar to Americans as those of Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr.

• Elizabeth Cady Stanton, of course. And Susan B. Anthony. Matilda Joslyn Gage. Lucy Stone. They were pioneer theoreticians of the 19th-century women’s rights movement.
• Esther Morris, the first woman to hold a judicial position, who led the first successful state campaign for woman suffrage, in Wyoming in 1869. Abigail Scott Duniway, the leader of the successful fight in Oregon and Washington in the early 1900s.
• Ida B. Wells-Barnett and Mary Church Terrell, organizers of thousands of African-American women who worked for suffrage for all women.
• Harriot Stanton Blatch, daughter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Alice Stone Blackwell, Lucy Stone’s daughter, who carried on their mothers’ legacy through the next generation.
• Anna Howard Shaw and Carrie Chapman Catt, leaders of the National American Woman Suffrage Association in the early years of the 20th century, who brought the campaign to its final success.
• Alice Paul, founder and leader of the National Woman’s Party, considered the radical wing of the movement.
• Ruth Bader Ginsburg, now a Supreme Court Justice, learned the story of the Women’s Rights Movement. Today she says, “I think about how much we owe to the women who went before us – legions of women, some known but many more unknown. I applaud the bravery and resilience of those who helped all of us – you and me – to be here today.”

After the Vote was Won After the vote was finally won in 1920, the organized Women’s Rights Movement continued on in several directions. While the majority of women who had marched, petitioned and lobbied for woman suffrage looked no further, a minority – like Alice Paul – understood that the quest for women’s rights would be an ongoing struggle that was only advanced, not satisfied, by the vote.

In 1919, as the suffrage victory drew near, the National American Woman Suffrage Association reconfigured itself into the League of Women Voters to ensure that women would take their hard-won vote seriously and use it wisely.

In 1920, the Women’s Bureau of the Department of Labor was established to gather information about the situation of women at work, and to advocate for changes it found were needed. Many suffragists became actively involved with lobbying for legislation to protect women workers from abuse and unsafe conditions.

In 1923, Alice Paul, the leader of the National Woman’s Party, took the next obvious step. She drafted an Equal Rights Amendment for the United States Constitution. Such a federal law, it was argued, would ensure that “Men and women have equal rights throughout the United States.” A constitutional amendment would apply uniformly, regardless of where a person lived.

The second wing of the post-suffrage movement was one that had not been explicitly anticipated in the Seneca Falls “Declaration of Sentiments.” It was the birth control movement, initiated by a public health nurse, Margaret Sanger, just as the suffrage drive was nearing its victory. The idea of woman’s right to control her own body, and especially to control her own reproduction and sexuality, added a visionary new dimension to the ideas of women’s emancipation. This movement not only endorsed educating women about existing birth control methods. It also spread the conviction that meaningful freedom for modern women meant they must be able to decide for themselves whether they would become mothers, and when. For decades, Margaret Sanger and her supporters faced down at every turn the zealously enforced laws denying women this right. In 1936, a Supreme Court decision declassified birth control information as obscene. Still, it was not until 1965 that married couples in all states could obtain contraceptives legally.

The Second Wave So it’s clear that, contrary to common misconception, the Women’s Rights Movement did not begin in the 1960s. What occurred in the 1960s was actually a second wave of activism that washed into the public consciousness, fueled by several seemingly independent events of that turbulent decade. Each of these events brought a different segment of the population into the movement.

First: Esther Peterson was the director of the Women’s Bureau of the Dept. of Labor in 1961. She considered it to be the government’s responsibility to take an active role in addressing discrimination against women. With her encouragement, President Kennedy convened a Commission on the Status of Women, naming Eleanor Roosevelt as its chair. The report issued by that commission in 1963 documented discrimination against women in virtually every area of American life. State and local governments quickly followed suit and established their own commissions for women, to research conditions and recommend changes that could be initiated.

Then: In 1963, Betty Friedan published a landmark book, The Feminine Mystique. The Feminine Mystique evolved out of a survey she had conducted for her 20-year college reunion. In it she documented the emotional and intellectual oppression that middle-class educated women were experiencing because of limited life options. The book became an immediate bestseller, and inspired thousands of women to look for fulfillment beyond the role of homemaker.

Next: Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act was passed, prohibiting employment discrimination on the basis of sex as well as race, religion, and national origin. The category “sex” was included as a last-ditch effort to kill the bill. But it passed, nevertheless. With its passage, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission was established to investigate discrimination complaints. Within the commission’s first five years, it received 50,000 sex discrimination complaints. But it was quickly obvious that the commission was not very interested in pursuing these complaints. Betty Friedan, the chairs of the various state Commissions on the Status of Women, and other feminists agreed to form a civil rights organization for women similar to the NAACP. In 1966, the National Organization for Women was organized, soon to be followed by an array of other mass-membership organizations addressing the needs of specific groups of women, including Blacks, Latinas, Asians-Americans, lesbians, welfare recipients, business owners, aspiring politicians, and tradeswomen and professional women of every sort.

During this same time, thousands of young women on college campuses were playing active roles within the anti-war and civil rights movement. At least,that was their intention. Many were finding their efforts blocked by men who felt leadership of these movements was their own province, and that women’s roles should be limited to fixing food and running mimeograph machines. It wasn’t long before these young women began forming their own “women’s liberation” organizations to address their role and status within these progressive movements and within society at large.

New Issues Come to the Fore These various elements of the re-emerging Women’s Rights Movement worked together and separately on a wide range of issues. Small groups of women in hundreds of communities worked on grassroots projects like establishing women’s newspapers, bookstores and cafes. They created battered women’s shelters and rape crisis hotlines to care for victims of sexual abuse and domestic violence. They came together to form child care centers so women could work outside their homes for pay. Women health care professionals opened women’s clinics to provide birth control and family planning counseling — and to offer abortion services — for low-income women. These clinics provided a safe place to discuss a wide range of health concerns and experiment with alternative forms of treatment.

With the inclusion of Title IX in the Education Codes of 1972, equal access to higher education and to professional schools became the law. The long-range effect of that one straightforward legal passage beginning “Equal access to education programs…,” has been simply phenomenal. The number of women doctors, lawyers, engineers, architects and other professionals has doubled and doubled again as quotas actually limiting women’s enrollment in graduate schools were outlawed. Athletics has probably been the most hotly contested area of Title IX, and it’s been one of the hottest areas of improvement, too. The rise in girls’ and women’s participation in athletics tells the story: One in twenty-seven high school girls played sports 25 years ago; one in three do today. The whole world saw how much American women athletes could achieve during the last few Olympic Games, measured in their astonishing numbers of gold, silver, and bronze medals. This was another very visible result of Title IX.

In society at large, the Women’s Rights Movement has brought about measurable changes, too. In 1972, 26% of men and women said they would not vote for a woman for president. In 1996, that sentiment had plummeted to just over 5% for women and to 8% for men. The average age of women when they first marry has moved from twenty to twenty-four during that same period.

But perhaps the most dramatic impact of the women’s rights movement of the past few decades has been women’s financial liberation. Do you realize that just 25 years ago married women were not issued credit cards in their own name? That most women could not get a bank loan without a male co-signer? That women working full time earned fifty-nine cents to every dollar earned by men?

Help-wanted ads in newspapers were segregated into “Help wanted – women” and “Help wanted- men.” Pages and pages of jobs were announced for which women could not even apply. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ruled this illegal in 1968, but since the EEOC had little enforcement power, most newspapers ignored the requirement for years. The National Organization for Women (NOW), had to argue the issue all the way to the Supreme Court to make it possible for a woman today to hold any job for which she is qualified. And so now we see women in literally thousands of occupations which would have been almost unthinkable just one generation ago: dentist, bus driver, veterinarian, airline pilot, and phone installer, just to name a few.

Many of these changes came about because of legislation and court cases pushed by women’s organizations. But many of the advances women achieved in the 1960s and ’70s were personal: getting husbands to help with the housework or regularly take responsibility for family meals; getting a long-deserved promotion at work; gaining the financial and emotional strength to leave an abusive partner.

The Equal Rights Amendment Is Re-Introduced Then, in 1972, the Equal Rights Amendment, which had languished in Congress for almost fifty years, was finally passed and sent to the states for ratification. The wording of the ERA was simple: “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.” To many women’s rights activists, its ratification by the required thirty-eight states seemed almost a shoo-in.

The campaign for state ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment provided the opportunity for millions of women across the nation to become actively involved in the Women’s Rights Movement in their own communities. Unlike so many other issues which were battled-out in Congress or through the courts, this issue came to each state to decide individually. Women’s organizations of every stripe organized their members to help raise money and generate public support for the ERA. Marches were staged in key states that brought out hundreds of thousands of supporters. House meetings, walk-a-thons, door-to-door canvassing, and events of every imaginable kind were held by ordinary women, many of whom had never done anything political in their lives before. Generous checks and single dollar bills poured into the campaign headquarters, and the ranks of NOW and other women’s rights organizations swelled to historic sizes. Every women’s magazine and most general interest publications had stories on the implications of the ERA, and the progress of the ratification campaign.

But Elizabeth Cady Stanton proved prophetic once again. Remember her prediction that the movement should “anticipate no small amount of misconception, misrepresentation, and ridicule”? Opponents of the Equal Rights Amendment, organized by Phyllis Schlafly, feared that a statement like the ERA in the Constitution would give the government too much control over our personal lives. They charged that passage of the ERA would lead to men abandoning their families, unisex toilets, gay marriages, and women being drafted. And the media, purportedly in the interest of balanced reporting, gave equal weight to these deceptive arguments just as they had when the possibility of women winning voting rights was being debated. And, just like had happened with woman suffrage, there were still very few women in state legislatures to vote their support, so male legislators once again had it in their power to decide if women should have equal rights. When the deadline for ratification came in 1982, the ERA was just three states short of the 38 needed to write it into the U.S. constitution. Seventy-five percent of the women legislators in those three pivotal states supported the ERA, but only 46% of the men voted to ratify.

Despite polls consistently showing a large majority of the population supporting the ERA, it was considered by many politicians to be just too controversial. Historically speaking, most if not all the issues of the women’s rights movement have been highly controversial when they were first voiced. Allowing women to go to college? That would shrink their reproductive organs! Employ women in jobs for pay outside their homes? That would destroy families! Cast votes in national elections? Why should they bother themselves with such matters? Participate in sports? No lady would ever want to perspire! These and other issues that were once considered scandalous and unthinkable are now almost universally accepted in this country.

More Complex Issues Surface Significant progress has been made regarding the topics discussed at the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848. The people attending that landmark discussion would not even have imagined the issues of the Women’s Rights Movement in the 1990s. Much of the discussion has moved beyond the issue of equal rights and into territory that is controversial, even among feminists. To name a few:

• Women’s reproductive rights. Whether or not women can terminate pregnancies is still controversial twenty-five years after the Supreme Court ruling in Roe v. Wade affirmed women’s choice during the first two trimesters.
• Women’s enrollment in military academies and service in active combat. Are these desirable?
• Women in leadership roles in religious worship. Controversial for some, natural for others.
• Affirmative action. Is help in making up for past discrimination appropriate? Do qualified women now face a level playing field?
• The mommy track. Should businesses accommodate women’s family responsibilities, or should women compete evenly for advancement with men, most of whom still assume fewer family obligations?
• Pornography. Is it degrading, even dangerous, to women, or is it simply a free speech issue?
• Sexual harassment. Just where does flirting leave off and harassment begin?
• Surrogate motherhood. Is it simply the free right of a woman to hire out her womb for this service?
• Social Security benefits allocated equally for homemakers and their working spouses, to keep surviving wives from poverty as widows.

Today, young women proudly calling themselves “the third wave” are confronting these and other thorny issues. While many women may still be hesitant to call themselves “feminist” because of the ever-present backlash, few would give up the legacy of personal freedoms and expanded opportunities women have won over the last 150 years. Whatever choices we make for our own lives, most of us envision a world for our daughters, nieces and granddaughters where all girls and women will have the opportunity to develop their unique skills and talents and pursue their dreams.

1998: Living the Legacy In the 150 years since that first, landmark Women’s Rights Convention, women have made clear progress in the areas addressed by Elizabeth Cady Stanton in her revolutionary Declaration of Sentiments. Not only have women won the right to vote; we are being elected to public office at all levels of government. Jeannette Rankin was the first woman elected to Congress, in 1916. By 1971, three generations later, women were still less than three percent of our congressional representatives. Today women hold only 11% of the seats in Congress, and 21% of the state legislative seats. Yet, in the face of such small numbers, women have successfully changed thousands of local, state, and federal laws that had limited women’s legal status and social roles.

In the world of work, large numbers of women have entered the professions, the trades, and businesses of every kind. We have opened the ranks of the clergy, the military, the newsroom. More than three million women now work in occupations considered “nontraditional” until very recently.

We’ve accomplished so much, yet a lot still remains to be done. Substantial barriers to the full equality of America’s women still remain before our freedom as a Nation can be called complete. But the Women’s Rights Movement has clearly been successful in irrevocably changing the circumstances and hopes of women. The remaining injustices are being tackled daily in the courts and conference rooms, the homes and organizations, workplaces and playing fields of America.

Women and girls today are living the legacy of women’s rights that seven generations of women before us have given their best to achieve. Alice Paul, that intrepid organizer who first wrote out the Equal Rights Amendment in 1923, said, “I always feel the movement is sort of a mosaic. Each of us puts in one little stone, and then you get a great mosaic at the end.” Women, acting together, adding their small stones to the grand mosaic, have increased their rights against all odds, nonviolently, from an initial position of powerlessness. We have a lot to be proud of in this heroic legacy, and a great deal to celebrate on the occasion of the 150th Anniversary of the founding of the Women’s Rights Movement.

© By Bonnie Eisenberg and Mary Ruthsdotter, the National Women’s History Alliance. 1998

Every 65 seconds, a new brain develops Alzheimer’s. 2/3 of them belong to women.

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The 2023 WAM Research Grants were announced on April 25 in Washington, DC

WAM at Cleveland Clinic is dedicated to closing the gap in knowledge about women's brain health by funding gender-based Alzheimer's research.

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Educate Your Brain. Empower Your Life.  News You Can Use About Women, Alzheimer’s, and Brain Health.

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We are a community of determined people committed to changing the story of women and alzheimer’s once and for all. we do this by  funding women-based alzheimer’s research , supporting those impacted by the disease, and educating people about their brain health. wam at cleveland clinic is also the home of the nation’s first and only alzheimer’s prevention center designed just for women., wam at a glance, who we help, we help women impacted by alzheimer’s, the families who love them, and the researchers working for a cure., why we do it, there is a knowledge gap about women and alzheimer's -- and wam is dedicated to filling it., we focus on 4 areas: research, education, prevention, and advocacy..

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There are over 6.7 million Americans living with Alzheimer's disease, a disease that can begin to develop 20-30 years before symptoms occur.

There are 11.2 million Americans providing unpaid care to someone with Alzheimer's or dementia. Two-thirds of them are women.

African Americans are twice as likely as whites to develop Alzheimer's; Latinos 1.5 times.

One-third of Alzheimer's cases may be preventable by addressing lifestyle factors. It's never too early to start.

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Women’s Movement in India: All you need to Know

This paper will discuss the cultural and gender implications of the women’s movement in India, examine the role of reformers like Jotibha Phule in the movement, touch upon the current scenario of the movement and status of women in the 21st Century as well as discuss the legal framework of the movement.

Introduction: As of the 21st Century, much debate has been going on about the position of women in society. In a country like India, the status of women has always been regrettable. One can barely remember a time when Indian women enjoyed equal power as men. The structure of the culture and society in India is far more complex than most societies and therefore, tackling women’s issues is slightly more complicated owing to the country’s rich history of traditions. India has a historically traditional society and ancient texts like the manusmriti greatly influenced the way our society works. The controversial text had many inconsistent views on women and portrayed women as incomplete and incapable without men. It was through the help of such texts that male supremacy thrived in the Indian context.  Reformers like Rajaram Mohan Roy, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Ishwarchandra Vidya Sagar, Annie Besant, M.G. Ranade and Jotibha Savithribai Phule fought for change in the nineteenth century. They fought for reforms with regard to social practises like sati, purdah system, enforced widowhood and child marriage which highlighted and encouraged the oppression of women. The women’s movement in India took various forms in different parts of the nation. Despite facing severe resistance and several hurdles, a lot of good came off the movement. This paper will discuss the cultural and gender implications of the women’s movement in India, examine the role of reformers like Jotibha Phule in the movement, touch upon the current scenario of the movement and status of women in the 21st Century as well as discuss the legal framework of the movement.

Gender and Cultural implications

Questions related to women’s issues and their status arose in the nineteenth century in a ‘modern India’ and thus a reform movement came about. Increased differences between men and women became one of the major causes for the birth of women’s movement in India. These differences led to more gender-defined roles which in turn led to increased oppression of women in society. Due to the division of sexes and increased differentiation in their roles and functions, men and women were brought up differently as well as treated differently; with men being considered the superior sex. Reformers protested that this separation in the duties and roles need not translate into the oppression of women in society.  Indian women were influenced by ideas from the west and protests on violence against women. The women’s empowerment movement can be defined as a “bottom-up process of transferring gender power relations, through individuals or groups developing awareness of women’s subordination and building their capacity to challenge it” (Gandhi, 2019).

The Indian women’s movement was influenced by western ideals and the main focus areas of women’s movements in India as well as the west largely remained the same. While the ultimate goal which is the upliftment of women is the same for feminists from both parts, the obstacles faced by the Indian reformers and the issues that needed their attention differed. Aspects like education and equal rights were common to both, however; Indian reformers paid special attention to local issues like sati and dowry related harassment. The basic message of this movement was to prevent the ill-treatment of women, maintain dignity and raise the status of women (Gandhi, 2019). By the 1920’s however, the movement had gained impetus and different rationales were being expressed. Reformers argued that “women’s rights should be recognized because of women’s socially useful role as mothers.” They also said that “women have the same needs, desires and capacities as men and were thus entitled to the same rights” (Gandhi, 2019). This was one of the first movements that saw a large number of women coming together and fighting for their rights. It saw women from all strata of society participate and included the participation of rich, poor, young, old, tribal women among others. This period also saw the emergence of a number of local women’s organizations like the Women’s Indian Association (WIA), the National Council of Women in India (NCWI) and the All India Women’s Conference (AIWC). Organisations like these worked towards the welfare of women and played an important role in the movement. The social reformers focused on issues like eradication of Sati, promotion of widow remarriage, ending polygamy, abolishing child marriage among others. They also focused on promoting women’s education (Gandhi, 2019). Post-independence however, the campaign for women’s rights and issues took a back seat. The women had to go through heavy trauma and were left with tragic experiences from the independence struggle. It was also assumed that independence and development would automatically lead to changes in the social order of the nation and women’s issues would be tackled. Women’s groups were divided and it was mainly the middle-class and elite educated women doing most of the activism. It was only after the 1970’s that the movement was considered a legitimate one. The women’s movement in India is therefore commonly divided into three phases- the first phase (1850–1915), the second phase (1915-1947) and the Post-independence phase.

It was only in the Post-Independence phase that the movement was taken seriously and was given due importance. Due to the efforts of the reformers, the Constitution of India made provisions for equality of women and freedom from discrimination based on gender. The women’s movement in India had a significant impact in education , employment and the globalisation process in the country.

Women in India did not enjoy access to education as their main role was to take care of the household. They were oftentimes married off at a young age and their domestic responsibilities posed as a hindrance to them receiving any sort of training. The Indian government created the National Policy on Education (NPE) in 1986 and consequently launched the Mahila Samakhya in order to empower women. The main aim of the programme is to “create a learning environment for women to realize their potential, learn to demand information and find the knowledge to take charge of their own lives” (Anantha Raman, 2009). The movement also led to an increase in the number of teachers available and in turn led the increase in enrolment numbers of girls in schools. Female literacy rates however are stiller lower than that of males and efforts are being taken by the Indian government to increase these dismal rates.

Indian women were considered an economic burden to society especially in rural areas in the country. They were not seen as economically productive or useful due to their lack of education and training. Their contributions in the household were not considered. This lack of training ensured that they could not make any productive contributions and were hence side-lined. High illiteracy rates among them prevented them from taking up any technical jobs and restricted them to lower-paying jobs which did not require high skills levels and provided little to no job security. In fact, the discrimination between female and male labour was so high that women doing the same job as a man commanded a lower price. For example, the work in the agricultural sector was more or less standardised, but a woman still earned lesser than a man even after clocking in the same number of hours and doing the same amount of work. The government of India is actively working towards eliminating these inequalities, directly and indirectly, due to pressure from women activists. When Cine Costume Make-Up Artist & Hair Dressers’ Association (CCMAA) came up with a rule which did not allow women to obtain memberships as makeup artists’ in 155, the government overturned it citing the right to equality and a number of women are now a part of CCMAA.

We cannot ignore the impact of globalization on women in India . Most women’s activists are in the opinion that globalization has indirectly created more hurdles for women in the workplace. Globalization has paved way for the entry of multiple multinational corporations that have been accused of “exploiting the labour of young underpaid and disadvantaged women’ in free trade zones and sweatshops, and use “Young lower middle class, educated women,” in call centres (Gangoli, 2007). These multinational companies are also responsible for commodifying women and creating the image of an ‘ideal woman.’

Role of Reformers

Towards the end of the 1800’s, a number of women leaders emerged from all parts of the country that took part in public gatherings and highlighted the issues faced by women. These women took on professions like teaching and nursing in order to bring about change and expressed themselves through writings (Gandhi, 2019). Rassundari Devi, a Bengali housewife wrote ‘Amar Jibon’ which translates in ‘My Life’ in Bengali. The book described the pitiful condition of women back then and was a plea to women to stand up and fight against the unjust social practices and customs. Rabindranath Tagore’s sister Swarnakumari Devi launched the Theosophical Society of India. Tarabai Shinde published ‘Stree-Purush Tulna’ in 1882. Her texts echoed the struggles faced by women due to patriarchy and spoke about the subordination of Brahmin and Non-Brahmin women. With the aim of educating women, the Begum of Bhopal founded the All India Muslim Women’s conference in 1916. In the 20th century, women like Sarojini Naidu and Annie Besant headlined women’s participation and played a role in legitimizing it. The Rashtriya Stree Sabha was founded at the same time and focused on national activities. Apart from these icons, there were a number of women that came together from all walks of life in order to fight for their rights. The Dandi March witnessed thousands of women participating. The women’s movement also saw a number of men lead the way for women’s rights and equality. Pandita Rama Bai began making changes within the four walls of his home by educating his wife who taught their daughter. He also founded the Arya Mahila Samaj which took care of distressed women (Gandhi, 2019).

Savitribai Phule is popularly seen as the “lady who changed the face of women’s rights in India” and her contribution to the women’s movement in our country is unparalleled. The Maharashtrian attempted to educate women from depressed castes while educating herself (Gandhi, 2019). Born in 1831, the educationalist, poet and social reformer is oftentimes referred to as the “first female teacher of India.” With help from her husband Jyotirao Phule, she played a key role in improving the plight of women’s rights in India during the British Raj. They founded the first Indian girl’s school in Bhide Wada, Pune in 1848. She tirelessly worked towards ending the ill-treatment and discrimination felt by people based on their gender and caste. Along with her son, Savitribai opened a clinic in Pune to provide treatment for those affected by the Bubonic Plague epidemic in 1897. Unfortunately, Phule and her husband faced heavy resistance consistently as a result of their caste. They were Shudras- a lower and marginalized caste and hence people were not as accepting of them or their work. Despite constant resistance, Savitribai and her husband never gave up and continued to champion women’s rights until their last breath.

Legal framework and contemporary data

Legal reforms for women were always a priority in the movement. Due to the efforts of reformists, Government agencies, Political parties, academic establishments and institutions and the media have been forced to take the women’s movement seriously and accept its existence. They have been forced to consider the practicality and the need for some of their demands and bring about change, even if it is on a small scale. Since 1947, seven 5-year plans have focused on women’s issues. The planning commission of India has made conscious efforts to bridge the gap of inequality between men and women and have come up with various schemes to provide better health, employment, education for women. They have allocated resources especially for the welfare of women. The 2001 census report showed a growth of literary rates among women by 50%. These numbers however are still dismal compared to the rest of the world and there is still much left to work on. Unjust Family laws have been abolished in order to provide more rights to women. For example, the practise of Sati was made illegal and the Triple Talaq bill was recently passed . A number of legislative reforms were made as a result of the movement. India enacted the Family courts Act in 1984 and introduced the Domestic violence Bill in 2002 in order to provide women protection within the four walls of her home. The Rape law and Dowry prohibition Act were passed in 1980. Heavy campaigning for the protection of women from domestic violence led to the act being passed in 2005. Furthermore, the prevention of sexual harassment at the workplace act was passed in 1997 among others. Over the last decade, a number of organizations pursuing women’s rights have emerged and have led to further changes being made in society. All of these reforms would not be possible without the efforts of the social reformers and it was because of the women’s movement that the government was pressurised into making changes. All these acts are very much in practise in contemporary India and affect the way our society functions today.

As of today, 21st-century Indian women enjoy much more freedom than they did in the ’90s; however, there is still a long way to go in terms of reaching an ideal situation of equality. In a complex society like ours where factors such as religion, caste and race hold so much importance, gender rights become far more complicated. Because our country gives so much importance to tradition, people are adverse to change and do not welcome it easily. Affectively implementing change, therefore, will take time and is not something that can be seen overnight. Women like Sarojini Naidu and Savitribai will forever be remembered for their contributions for the empowerment of India, but we must not forget the countless number of unnamed women who fought for women’s rights and the selfless sacrifices that have gone into bringing about change. The women’s movement brought to light the fact that violence against women comes from a place of unequal relations of power between men and women. Only if women are empowered by society will there be some balance in these relations, thus ridding our society of such discrimination. Until then, women’s autonomy will continue to be a battle for cry.

References:

• Anantha Raman, S. (2009). Women in India. Santa Barbara, Calif.: Praeger.
• Mazumdar, V. (1994).
• SM2-Gender: LESSON 6 WOMEN’S MOVEMENT IN INDIA. (2019). Retrieved 18 September 2019, from https://sol.du.ac.in/mod/book/view.php?id=1474&chapterid=1388
• Women’s Struggles & Women’s Movement in India – Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières. (2019). Retrieved 18 September 2019, from https://www.europe-solidaire.org/spip.php?article27410
• Women’s’ Movements in India: Forms and Main National Organisations. (2019). Retrieved 18 September 2019, from http://www.historydiscussion.net/essay/womens-movements-in-india-forms-and-main-national-organisations/1801
• Gandhi, P. (2019). Women’s Movement in India. Lecture, FLAME University.

Mehak Neel is a Sociology and Journalism at FLAME University. Her undying love for travel is rooted in her curiosity to learn about various cultures. She considers the knowledge of current world affairs a vital asset and is often found passionately discussing the same. Her hobbies include football, athletics and painting.

2024 Student Research Day to Showcase Curiosity, Creativity, Culture and More

From the history and impact of the natural hair movement among African-American women to the possibilities of reversing neuropathological changes due to lead poisoning, preparing students for the AI era to dissecting toxic and discriminatory behavior among “League of Legends” players, research and discovery from the student perspective will be the focus of the day when the State University of New York at Old Westbury holds its “2024 Student Research Day” on Tuesday, April 16, 2024.

The 2024 theme for the event, “Gaining Momentum,” has attracted nearly 80 student participants who will present their work through oral presentations, poster exhibits, and artistic displays. A complete copy of the event program is available for download .

While much of the day’s activity surrounds the work of student-researchers enrolled in courses in the University’s schools of Arts and Sciences, Business, Education and Professional Studies, a highlight of the program will be the 12:30 p.m. keynote panel featured Old Westbury faculty members Dr. Svetlana Jović, assistant professor of Psychology, Dr. Nicole Sieben, associate professor of Secondary English Education, and Dr. Sara Williamson, assistant professor of Management, Marketing and Finance.

SUNY Old Westbury’s Student Research Day takes place in the Multipurpose Rooms of the University’s Student Union from 9:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. Complete information on the day can be found on the 2024 Student Research Day event page . 

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