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Women 's Suffrage Of Women

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In the photo to the left you see a group of about ten women standing around a box. The women closest are reaching toward the box to put a slip of paper in it. The women are a mix of races and ages, some are smiling, some are not. The Photo is in black and white and the women appear to be wearing old-fashioned clothing and hairstyles. This photo captures American women voting for the first time after the 19th Amendment was passed on August 26, 1920. Women were always thought of less than man and were expected to stay home and take care of the children. They lacked important rights such as voting, being able to own property, and having legal claim to any money they might earn. But after about seventy years women proved that they, like men, deserve all the rights and responsibilities of citizenship. Gaining the right to vote was a historical step for women in America that was achieved through hard work and perseverance. The campaign for women’s suffrage began in earnest in the decades before the Civil War. During the 1820s and 30s. American women were beginning to question what historians called the “Cult of True Womanhood.” Historians believed that the only “true” woman was a pious, submissive wife and mother concerned exclusively with home and family ("The Fight for Women’s Suffrage." par 2). An important motivator to opposing this way of thinking was The Seneca Falls Convention in 1848. A group of activist, manly women, gathered in New York to discuss the problems of

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