Women\'s Suffrage the Suffrage Question

Women's Suffrage

The Suffrage Question

Women faced tremendous problems in 1846 when the first convention for Women's Rights convened. First, they had no right to speak out publicly and demand their rights. Deeply imbedded in the collective consciousness was the idea of "True Womanhood," the idea that women were very different from men who were supposed to be ambitious, amoral, aggressive, and worldly. Women, on the other hand, were pure, pious, and domestic creatures. If a woman stepped into the public arena to speak up for her rights, she was judged no longer feminine or pure. To be persuasive and believable to audiences, they had be competent, rational, and authoritative; however, if they were, they were judged masculine and aggressive, and therefore, no longer womanly; thus, it took courage to get involved.

Two arguments which justified the demand for women's suffrage were (1) the "natural rights" argument that women were persons, and justice was a natural right of personhood; and (2) the "expediency" argument that women could carry out their roles more efficiently if they had the vote because their effect on the country would be to purify and lift up society into a more moral state (Woloch 233). This second argument, which came later in the movement, aroused less hostility by seeming to support the myth that a woman was naturally more pure, unselfish, and moral than a man. The Natural Rights argument, that women were persons with natural rights was perceived as less feminine because women were supposed to be unselfish. As Elizabeth Cady Stanton put it, "...where she dares to demand rights and privileges for herself, her motives...and character are subjects for ridicule and detraction" (Woloch 219).

So the expediency argument made it seem less like self-interest and more like altruism (233). Rather than stress the equality of men and women, it stressed the differences:

The woman's vote, said suffragists, would...make a difference. It would purify politics, effect reforms, and outweigh the votes of less desirable and less competent voters (Woloch 233)

Anti-suffragists argued that changing women's roles was a danger to society and to the stability of the family. They argued that because the family was the basic unit of society, women didn't need to vote because their husbands cast a vote for the whole family, a household vote.

If women had the vote, they might vote against their husbands. This would destroy home and family and create anarchy. Women were not emotionally or mentally suited to the responsibilities of voting. They were sentimental and childlike and prone to hysteria. Women should be excused from the vote because it might ruin their purity and moral superiority. Later in the campaign the anti-suffragists claimed that giving the vote to women would increase the pool of undesirable voters, like black men and immigrants, "giving the 'unfit' a potential majority" (Woloch 232). They argued that women would not have any reforming effect on the country because they would vote with their husbands (opposite of what they argued earlier). In states where they already had the vote, they had made no difference. Finally, they argued that women didn't really want the vote, anyway. This last charge had some truth to it. Susan B. Anthony observed that the apathy of most women about the vote was the biggest obstacle for the movement. President Theodore Roosevelt in 1912 said that women would get the vote when "women as a whole show any special interest in the matter" (Woloch 242).

Terborg-Penn (113) points out that between 1910 and 1920 middle-class black women became active in the cause. She states that black feminists could never overlook the issue of racism; for them, it wasn't just a matter of being women; their color was a major cause of oppression. They wrote articles, held rallies, and gave speeches to persuade passage of an amendment. Despite their activities on behalf of the cause, they were not accepted by white women suffragists who discriminated against them. Carrie Chapman Catt, for example, urged Southern white delegates not to attend the conference in Chicago in 1916 because she said "the Chicago delegation would be mostly black" (115). By endorsing racism, she hoped to keep southern white women happy. Fear of the black woman's vote in the South was a major impediment, and getting Southern support meant excluding black women whose suffrage activities were channeled through their social clubs. Black suffragists became very disillusioned because of constant discrimination against them.