4.05 Women Get the Vote

Three suffragists voting in New York City (circa 1917). The original caption read, Calm about it...the women voters showed no ignorance or trepidation, but cast thier ballots in a businesslike way that bespoke study of suffrage.

During the Progressive Era (1890-1920), women played more active roles in the larger economic, cultural, and political transformation of American society. This growth in women's public roles allowed suffragists to be more aggressive in support of their cause as they developed stronger bases of support in the settlement houses, temperance organizations, labor unions, and reform movements that now sprang up across the country. The National American Women's Suffrage Association, led by Carrie Chapman Catt, fought for suffrage using parades, street speakers, petitions, and rallies.

Wonder Women for President Wonder Women 1000 Years in the Future! (1943)

Sixteen states, including New York, had given women the right to vote by 1917, but the U.S. Constitution was not amended to enfranchise women until after World War I. Alice Paul, a founder of the National Woman's Party, led daily marches in front of the White House during the war, using President Woodrow Wilson's rhetoric of democracy and self-government to support the cause. As more and more states endorsed suffrage, so did their representatives in Congress. In 1918 Wilson reluctantly approved a constitutional change, and in 1920 the Nineteenth Amendment made women's suffrage the law of the land.

Headquarters of the National Women's Anti-Suffrage Association, circa 1911.