Women Suffrage
Mr. Williams
10th Grade U.S. History
New Opportunities for Women
• By 1900, more than one-third of
college students were women
• Started out engaging in reform
movements: Example Jane
Addams and the Settlement
Houses
• Women worked as teachers
and nurses, but also as
bookkeepers, typists,
secretaries, shop clerks, and
journalists
• Working class women worked
in the garment industry
•Educated women blocked
from medicine, law, and
the clergy
• Fewer than 1500 women
practiced law in 1900, only 6%
of women practiced medicine
“This is the women’s
age. At last…women
are coming into the
labor and festival of
life on equal terms
with men.”
Why Organize?
• Sense of Christian Mission
• Fear of social upheaval because of
political tensions
• Concern about power of wealthy
individuals and corporations
• Wanting to Americanize immigrants
and fight for rights of others who
needed help
Women’s Trade Union League
(WTUL)
• Middle class women workers
• Wanted to limit hours
• Regulate working conditions
• 1908 Muller v. Oregon : Limited
work day for women to 10 hours a
day
Jane Addams
• Opened the Hull House in Chicago
in 1889
• Practiced Idea of Social Gospeladvocates worked to better
conditions of the city through
philanthropy and social work
Social Gospel
• Woman’s Christian Temperance
Union (WCTU)
• Attacks on alcohol as part of push
for social purity
• Drinking was linked to
prostitution, wife and child abuse,
unemployment and work
accidents
th
18
Amendment (Prohibition)
• Ratified in 1919, this banned the
manufacturing, sale and
distribution of alcohol
• Using state by state approach,
suffragists had achieved success
• 1869 Wyoming became first
territory to grant women the right
to vote
• In New York, suffragists waged
massive door-to-door referendum
campaign but was defeated
NAWSA
• National American Woman’s
Suffrage Association
• Campaigned for a
constitutional amendment to
give women the vote
• Also supported organized
labor
Susan B. Anthony
• Wrote pamphlets, gave speeches,
also testified before every
Congress between 1869 and 1906
• Registered to vote, and on
Election Day she voted in New
York and was arrested fined $100
• This is an example of Civil
Disobedience
NWP
• National Woman’s Party
• Militant Suffragist Movement
led by Alice Paul
• Continuously picketed the
White House and went on
hunger strikes in prison
• “Every day that the
Government sends women to
prison for holding harmless
banners…makes the position
of the Government more
indefensible and therefore
strengthens our position.”
-Alice Paul 1917
th
19
Amendment
• Passed by Congress in 1919
• Granted Women Right to Vote
(Suffrage)
• Ratified by states in 1920
Anti-Suffrage Arguments
• Voting would interfere with
women’s duties at home or
destroy family
• Women did not have education or
experience to be competent
voters
• Women did not want to vote