The 19th Amendment and the Fight for Women's Equal Rights

Introduction: The Impact of the 19th Amendment

The enactment of the 19th Amendment empowered women on many fronts. They were allowed to vote and consequently seized the opportunity to influence political decisions. The enactment also saw the legalization of contraception and, eventually, abortion. There was economic empowerment too in the process. With reproductive services becoming more widely available and education doors increasingly opening, more women enrolled in institutions of higher learning. These developments ushered in an era in which women began to occupy sensitive professional positions in society.

The amendment aimed at giving hope to all women. African-American women sought to link suffrage to race and gender across the country, so as to ensure that the benefits were not merely paper-based policies but practical processes for actual empowerment. Indeed, African-American women believed that taking part in the political process — specifically voting — was the best way to empower themselves, and that it was a functional mechanism for protecting their rights as citizens and bolstering societal equality.¹ As they had feared, however, the amendment proved to be a paper policy that did not transform the social, economic, and political standing of the African-American woman in the ways she had hoped. Nevertheless, she did not give up.

The 50th anniversary of the March on Washington provided an occasion to honor the contributions of women in promoting equality in society. Their fight bore fruit after the enactment of voting rights in 1965. After the passing of the 19th Amendment in 1920, the women's movement evolved into new organizations. NAWSA was converted into the League of Women Voters by Carrie Chapman Catt. The organization sought to make women's votes effective within existing political systems. Alice Paul had separately formed the National Women's Party and introduced the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), aimed at illegalizing any discrimination on the basis of sex. It is through such efforts that the fight to grant women equal social, political, and economic rights was sustained.² Southern Black women only gained a full chance to participate in political and economic life as equals in the 1960s. The passing of the 19th Amendment was nevertheless a great milestone that stirred political custodians to respond to the call for the recognition of women's rights in America.

The 19th Amendment was the legal instrument that assisted millions of women across the United States to achieve greater equal rights, albeit in varied measures. Women called for equal job opportunities, education, fair wages, birth control, and sex education. Following women's enfranchisement, many candidates seeking political office paid greater attention to women voters. Women seized the opportunity to advocate for laws that would address their longstanding concerns, including favorable divorce and inheritance laws that would give them greater security. Women proceeded to vote not just to improve governance but to add value to their individual lives.

The amendment helped women to vote into office progressive policymakers who enacted measures that benefited women. The policies enacted between 1920 and 1965 improved both the reproductive and economic conditions of women across the United States. Birth control services were made cheaper and more accessible. The entry of women into lucrative careers after attending higher education meant greater economic empowerment. Available research shows that there is a direct link between delayed childbearing and women attending higher education, and that higher education for women is linked to longer employment and subsequently higher retirement benefits.³

Origins of the Women's Suffrage Movement

Women's empowerment at the national level did not begin to take organized shape until 1848. In July of that year, reformists Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton arranged the first-ever women's rights convention, held at Seneca Falls in New York. Over 300 men and women attended. Among the luminaries present was Frederick Douglass (1818–95).⁴ The delegates at Seneca Falls agreed on a range of issues, including that American women had the right to autonomy and to their own political identities. Stanton led a group that produced a Declaration of Sentiments, modeled on the Declaration of Independence. It asserted that men and women were created equal, that they possessed specific inalienable rights, and that life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness were among them.⁵ In short, the delegates argued that women should be granted the right to vote.

After the Seneca Falls 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, however. They proceeded to organize other similar conferences and were later joined by fiery activists such as Susan B. Anthony and others.⁶

Key Organizations and the Road to Ratification

The beginning of the American Civil War in 1861 negatively affected the momentum of the women's movement. The movement continued after the war ended in 1865 but encountered another serious setback: a division over voting rights for Black men. Stanton and like-minded activists did not favor the proposed 15th Amendment, which would grant Black men the right to vote without extending the same right to any American women, regardless of their race. Anthony and Stanton created the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) in 1869, focused on a federal constitutional amendment allowing women to vote. Meanwhile, the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA), formed by abolitionists Lucy Stone and Henry Blackwell, supported the 15th Amendment and believed that women's voting rights could be achieved through subsequent state-level amendments.⁷ Although conflicts between the groups were common, both received a boost when Wyoming granted women aged over 21 years the right to vote — a right that remained part of Wyoming's constitution when it was admitted to the Union in 1890.⁸

Despite significant support, when a proposal to amend the constitution to allow women to vote arrived on the floor of the House in 1886, it was defeated.⁹ The two movements merged in 1890 into the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), which adopted a new strategy focused on winning women's voting rights state by state. Early successes came from Colorado, Idaho, and Utah, which amended their state constitutions to allow women to vote. With the aging of original leaders Stanton and Anthony, Carrie Chapman Catt (1859–1947) emerged to lead NAWSA.

The deaths of Stanton and Anthony in 1902 and 1906, respectively, were feared to be setbacks, but NAWSA under Catt achieved several milestones at the state level. Arizona, Alaska, California, Indiana, and others extended voting rights to women.¹⁰ The Equality League of Self-Supporting Women marshaled supporters to join parades, marches, and pickets to draw attention to their cause. Intense demonstrations were held in Washington, DC on the eve of President Woodrow Wilson's inauguration in 1913, during which many women were reported injured.¹¹ Alice Paul (1885–1977) formed the National Women's Party in 1913 — initially called the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage — which orchestrated numerous demonstrations and pickets around the White House. Several of its leaders were arrested and jailed.¹²

Catt eventually persuaded President Wilson to support women's voting rights by linking the issue to women's vital contributions during World War I. Wilson addressed the Senate on the importance of passing the amendment. The suffrage campaign bore fruit when Illinois Senator James R. Mann, chairman of the suffrage committee, proposed a House resolution to approve the suffrage amendment. It passed by 49 votes above the required two-thirds minimum (56 to 25).¹³ The Senate then passed the amendment by a margin of two votes above its required two-thirds. Wisconsin, Michigan, and Illinois ratified the amendment within six days of its passage in the Senate; Ohio, Kansas, and New York followed shortly after. By March of the following year, 35 states had ratified the amendment — only one short of the two-thirds required for federal ratification. The southern states largely opposed the amendment, having rejected earlier suffrage appeals.

References

"Appeal for a Sixteenth Amendment" from the National Woman Suffrage Association; 11/10/1876; Records of the U.S. House of Representatives, Record Group 233. Accessed February 21, 2017. https://catalog.archives.gov/id/306647

Buechler, Steven M. Women's Movements in the United States: Woman Suffrage, Equal Rights, and Beyond. New Brunswick and London: Rutgers University Press, 1990.

Graham, Sara Hunter. Woman Suffrage and the New Democracy. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996.

Knupfer, Anne M., 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.

Lumsden, Linda J. Rampant Women: Suffragists and the Right of Assembly. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1997.

McDonagh, Eileen L., 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.

Madsen, Carol Cornwall. "Battle for the Ballot: Essays on Woman Suffrage in Utah, 1870–1896" (1997). All USU Press Publications. 176. Accessed February 21, 2017. http://digitalcommons.usu.edu/usupress_pubs/176