Available research shows that there is a direct link between delayed child bearing and women attending higher education. The reports also show that higher education for women is linked to longer employment seasons and subsequent higher retirement benefits[footnoteRef:3]. [3: Steven M. Buechler, Women's movements in the United States: woman suffrage, equal rights, and beyond (New Brunswick and London: Rutgers University Press, 1990), 1-258]
Is it possible the suffrage movement's progress decelerated as they believed they had finally triumphed?
Women's empowerment at national level did not see the light of day until 1848. In the seventh month of the same year, reformists Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton arranged for the first ever women's rights convention held at Seneca Falls in New York. Over 300 men and women attended the convention. Some luminaries in the activist movement that attended the convention include Frederick Douglas (1818-95)[footnoteRef:4]. The delegates at Seneca Falls agreed on a raft of issues including that the American women had a right to be autonomous and that they had their political identities. Stanton led a group that made a declaration of sentiments in a document name as such. It was designed in a similar fashion to the Declaration of Independence. It mentioned that men and women were created equal, that they had specific inalienable rights, and that life liberty and pursuit of happiness were among them[footnoteRef:5]. In short, the delegates were saying that women should be granted the right to vote. [4: Eileen L. McDonagh, and H. Douglas Price. "Woman suffrage in the Progressive Era: Patterns of opposition and support in referenda voting, 1910-1918." American Political Science Review 79, no. 02 (1985): 415-435.] [5: Ibid]
After the Seneca Convention, the subject of women's right to vote was widely mocked in the press. As a consequence, a number of delegates who had supported the convention withdrew their support. Stanton and Mott never gave up though. They proceeded to organize other similar conferences. They were later joined by fiery activists such as Susan B. Antony and others[footnoteRef:6]. [6: Supra note 1]
The beginning of the American Civil War in 1861 negatively affected the momentum of the women's movement. It however continued after the end of the war in 1865 but encountered another serious setback. The movement became divided over the matter of voting rights for black men. Stanton and other like-minded activists did not favor the proposed 15th U.S. constitution Amendment[footnoteRef:7]. The amendment, if effected, would grant black men the right to participate in voting but would not give the same rights to any American women; irrespective of their skin color. Antony and Stanton created the national Women Suffrage Association commonly known as NWSA in 1869. They focused on a federal amendment of the constitution that would allow American women to vote. The American Women Suffrage Association was formed by the famous abolitionists: Lucy Stone and Henry Blackwell. The leaders were in favor of the 15th Amendment. They were afraid that it would not see the light of day if they insisted on pushing for inclusion of the rights of women to vote. AWSA was of the opinion that women's rights to vote could be achieved through later amendments in various states by their constitutions[footnoteRef:8]. Although conflicts between the groups were rife at this point, they were given a jab in the arm when Wyoming granted women aged over 21 years the right to vote. The right to vote for women remained part of the Wyoming state's constitution when it was admitted to the Union in 1890. [7: Anne M. Knupfer and Leonard Silk, eds. Toward a tenderer humanity and a nobler womanhood: African-American women's clubs in turn-of-the-century Chicago (New York: NYU Press, 1997), 1-209] [8: Linda J. Lumsden, Rampant Women: Suffragists and the Right of Assembly (Knoxville: Univ. of Tennessee Press, 1997) 1-324]
There was enough clout and support for both the NWSA and the collective Suffrage Movement to rally congress to amend the constitution to allow women to vote. Unfortunately for them, when the proposal arrived on the floor of the house in 1886, it…
Foundation An extensive period in US history has witnessed specific segments of the nation's population (such as females, Blacks, etc.) deprived of voting rights. The female suffrage movement or struggle for winning voting rights for females continued throughout the major part of the 1800s and into the early 1900s[footnoteRef:1]. While a few states allowed female participation in elections, both as contesters and voters, before the 19th Amendment's enforcement, its ratification on