Surprising as it may be ... it always hasn't been that way ...
History of Women's Suffrage -- 19th Amendment
From Grolier
[...]
The United States
The demand for the enfranchisement of American women was first seriously formulated at the Seneca Falls Convention (1848). After the Civil War, agitation by women for the ballot became increasingly vociferous. In 1869, however, a rift developed among feminists over the proposed 15th Amendment, which gave the vote to black men. Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and others refused to endorse the amendment because it did not give women the ballot. Other suffragists, however, including Lucy Stone and Julia Ward Howe, argued that once the black man was enfranchised, women would achieve their goal. As a result of the conflict, two organizations emerged. Stanton and Anthony formed the National Woman Suffrage Association to work for suffrage on the federal level and to press for more extensive institutional changes, such as the granting of property rights to married women. [...]
In fact some women made it
their issue in life,
to STOP other women from getting equal rights, equal recognition -- including the EQUAL right to vote.
Suffrage Movement
by Elizabeth Smiltneek -- Graduate Student, Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University
[...]
The National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage: Headed by Mrs. Arthur M. Dodge, the association was organized in 1911 in New York. This organization sought to "increase general interest in the opposition to universal woman suffrage and to educate the public in the belief that women can be more useful to the community without the ballot than if affiliated with and influenced by party politics" (Harper 1969, 679).
Progress always has its critics, it seems ...
Of course, those Anti-women traditionalists would make a few exceptions with respect to their Just Say No agendas ... those minor concessions really didn't amount to very much however:
The Project Gutenberg eBook, The History of Woman Suffrage,
Volume V, Edited by Ida Husted Harper
[Pg 477]
[...] The Judiciary Committee was in an argumentative mood [in 1914] and began with Mrs. Dodge as follows:
Mr. Dyer (Mo.). What is the position of your organization with reference to the question of whether or not women should have the right to vote at all? Are you in favor of women voting?
Mrs. Dodge. We are in opposition to woman suffrage generally. We have never opposed women voting in school matters; we think that is a perfectly legitimate line for them to vote upon. The only trouble is they do not vote upon those questions where authorized; only two percent of them do so.
Mr. Dyer. That is as far as you want them to go?
Mrs. Dodge. Yes; that is a perfectly legitimate line for them, we have always taken that position from the first, but that does not mean that women are to be drawn into politics and government and we only draw the line at their taking part in politics and government.
[...]
According to those traditionalists, Moms everywhere deserve 'the right to be free' -- as long as that freedom was
within the confines of the home.
Anti-suffragism was a political movement composed mainly of women, begun in the late 19th century in order to campaign against women's suffrage in the United States and United Kingdom. It was closely associated with "domestic feminism", the belief that women had the right to complete freedom within the home.
Of course, those old-school family-values stalwarts
had their reasons, for keeping Moms everywhere, firmly ensconced in their traditional social place. Here are just a few of them:
[Arguments ] Against Women Suffrage
[...]
-- Because women are not capable of full citizenship, for the simple reason that they are not available for purposes of national and Imperial defence. All government rests ultimately on force, to which women, owing to physical, moral and social reasons, are not capable of contributing.
-- Because there is little doubt that the vast majority of women have no desire for the vote.
[...]
-- Because Woman Suffrage is based on the idea of the equality of the sexes, and tends to establish those competitive relations which will destroy chivalrous consideration.
[...]
-- Because the physical nature of women unfits them for direct competition with men.
-- Grace Saxon Mills, writing in the years before 1914
Luckily for Mom, more rational minds eventually prevailed --
American Women finally gained their equal status under the law ...
History of Women's Suffrage -- 19th Amendment
From Grolier
[... Alice] Paul organized the National Woman's Party, which used such strategies as mass marches and hunger strikes. Perseverance on the part of both organizations eventually led to victory. On August 26, 1920, the 19th Amendment granted the ballot to American women.
Something so obvious,
took 72 years from urgent necessity,
to actual protection under Law, and under the Constitution.
The fight for Equality, for equal protection under the Law, takes time.
Much more time than it ought to. Ask your grandmothers, about the "good old days."
The founders really should have said "All People are created equal" ... instead of "all men" ...
Maybe then the traditionalists would not remain so stubbornly self-righteous, in the face of over-whelming voices to the contrary.
Happy Mothers Day -- to all wonderful Moms everywhere!
We're glad you can vote. We value your opinions. We support your efforts to govern.
And FINALLY the American Constitution does too, even if backwater holdouts, would still like to send us all to a much more "confining time," in our not so distant "man's world" past ...