Reasons Why Women Couldn't Vote Before 1914 Essay

During the 1900s, many women were beginning to stand up for themselves and no longer wanted to be inferior to men. Prior to 1918, women were disrespected and under - valued in society. There was a change in attitudes towards women as the image of the "New Women" began to arise. They were becoming involved in various different jobs, having the ability to be better educated and get involved in politics. However, this view that the "New Women" was the only factor that contributed to women getting the vote is untrue. Women began their own campaigns in order to get the vote. This included

Women’s rights were not always a part of society as it may seem in today’s world. Suffrage can date all the way back to 1776. Women had to fight for their rights and privileges, hard and for many years. In the late 1800’s women were seen as much less than a male and had no voice. Women were arrested, prosecuted and put down for wanting more freedom and power for their gender. As you see in many suffrage ads, women were desperate and wanted so badly the same equality as men. A few women in particular stood up for what they believed was right and fought hard. Although it took far too long and over 100 years, in 1920 women were finally given the opportunity to share the same voting rights as men. History had been made.

Before the Suffragettes, women were not able to vote and the move for women to have the right to vote really started in 1897 when Millicent Fawcett founded the National Union of Women’s Suffrage. Fawcett strongly believed that women should have the right to vote but also believed in peaceful protests, patience and logical arguments. She felt that if any violence occurred then men would believe that women could not be trusted and therefore should not have the right to vote. She also made the argument that if women were made responsible for sitting on school boards and paying taxes that they should be part of the process to make the laws and should have the same rights as men. A main argument of hers was that even though some women who were wealthy mistresses of large manors and estates employed gardeners, workmen and labourers who were able to vote but women still could not, regardless of their wealth and social class. However, the progress of Fawcett was very slow and although she converted some of the members of the Labour Representation Committee (The Labour Party) but the majority of men felt that women would not understand how parliament functioned and therefore should not take part in the electoral

In 1905, the Suffragists held meetings in run up to elections. In 1910 the NUWSS raised a petition and managed to get a staggering 280,000 signatures. Before World War I there were another group called the Suffragettes, they were known for their violence and destruction. In October 1903, a woman called Emmeline Panhurst set up a new society called WSPU, which stood for 'Women's Social and Political Union'. Also known as the Suffragettes.

We know that women did not have the right to vote in the United States from the time they were granted freedom from Great Britain in 1776, all the way up until 1920, but why did they not have the right to vote? Women during that 144 year span had virtually no rights at all. Many people had the mindset that since women could not fight for their country, they did not deserve the right to vote. Men viewed women as their weaknesses, not someone who is equal to

Back in the 1900s there were limits on what women were able to do. The life of a wife and a mother back then was to clean, cook, and tend to the every need of the husband and/or children. There was very little say in the matter of what women could do especially in the government or community. At this point in the United States Women Suffrage was knocking on the door of Washington D.C by Susan B. Anthony in 1871 but little was really accomplished on paper until later in the 1900s around 1915 or so, (Stevenson).

“women’s Declaration of Independence” was the goal of the right to vote, but that was

It was Theodore Roosevelt, who stated that, “Nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care”, conveying the idea that with no voice comes no change. In the morning of August 26, 1920, the 19th amendment was ratified, which centralized mainly on the enfranchisement of women. Today, they have the legal right to vote, and the ability to speak openly for themselves, but most of all they are now free and equal citizens. However this victorious triumph in American history would not have been achieved without the strong voices of determined women, risking their lives to show the world how much they truly cared. Women suffragists in the 19th century had a strong passion to change their lifestyle, their jobs around the

This reform started about 100 years before this and was a very long and hard fought fight for the women of America. Later in America we would grow up hearing the names of Susan Anthony and Elizabeth Stanton, and how they would lead the fight for women's suffrage. But we never learned how they got there. In 1869 they began the National Women's Suffrage Movement. There was also a second women's association named American Woman Suffrage Association. But in 1890 they both merged together for one cause, to bring about women's suffrage. In 1910 the reform was finally considered and some states had started to allow women to vote in their states. But this did not become national until the year of

The timeline of women’s suffrage is a one that spans from 1848 to 1920. The women’s rights movement in the United States started in the year 1848 with the first women’s rights convention held in Seneca Falls, New York. During this convention the ‘Declaration of sentiments’ was signed by 68 women who agreed that women deserved their own political identities. This document set forward the agenda for the women’s rights movement. In the year 1869, Susan B Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton formed the National Women’s suffrage Association which demanded that the 15th amendment be changed to include women right to vote. In the year 1890, The National Women Suffrage Association and the American Women Suffrage Association merged to form National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). Colorado was the first state to grant women the right to vote in the year 1893, followed by Utah, Idaho, Washington, California, Oregon, Kansas, Arizona, Alaska, Illinois, Montana, Nevada, New York, Michigan, South Dakota and Oklahoma. The National Association of Colored Women was formed in the year 1896 to promote the civil rights of colored women. The National Women’s Trade Union League was established in the year 1903 in order to improve the working condition for women and also to bring their wages in par with that of men.

Women’s suffrage, or the crusade to achieve the equal right for women to vote and run for political office, was a difficult fight that took activists in the United States almost 100 years to win. On August 26, 1920 the 19th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States was ratified, declaring all women be empowered with the same rights and responsibilities of citizenship as men, and on Election Day, 1920 millions of women exercised their right to vote for the very first time.

women over 30 the vote at the end of the war cannot have been as a

The NUWSS had wide-ranging support, from both men and women from working and middle-class backgrounds. The approaches of different regional branches of the NUWSS varied, from passive to fairly militant, and the lack of specific location attached to the source also suggests that this could have been publicised cross-country. By softening their approach with the language of motherhood, the NUWSS could increase their audience and avoid alienation of their diverse audience, appealing to both moderates and those who were more radical. The form of the source may lend some support to this, as leaflets could achieve large circulation and reach a large audience. It is clear that the suffragists sought to create some form of cohesion and unity in their organisation, perhaps seen in this source by the “us versus them” mentality. The suffragists frequently address the reader as "you" and refer to "we", uniting the reader with the movement and pulling the entire suffrage movement into a single group. Though this level of unity was not actually a reality, with multiple suffrage organisations existing such as WSPU and Women's Freedom League, their presentation of the movement as such suggests a desire, and perhaps a need in the face of opposition, to appear

Women’s reactions to the war were divided among themselves. Though there were women championing the cause of WWI, there were others who opposed to the idea of a war. Right up to the outbreak of World War I, feminists on both sides pledged themselves to peace, in international women's solidarity. Within months of the war's outbreak, however, all the major feminist groups of the belligerents had given a new pledge - to “support their respective governments.” Campaigners for women's suffrage quickly became avid patriots and organizers of women in support of the war effort. National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS), a leader in women’s right in Britain, championed the cause of WWI; through their collective efforts, NUWSS pressed for political

The Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) was an organization found by Emmeline Pankhurst their purpose was to campaign women’s suffrage in the United Kingdom as this lasted from 1903 to 1917. The Women’s Social and Political Union was