VCE History: Area of Study 2: Social & Cultural Change: Women & the vote

The Women's Suffrage Movement opened many doors for the women of American and allowed them to achieve a greater role in the society.

Women’s suffrage is sometimes portrayed as the triumphant end of a movement, the hard-won reward for decades of marches, protests, hunger strikes, feeding tubes. Really, it was a beginning. One of many times America has transformed itself to make the government more accountable to more of its citizens, at least in theory.

The Nineteenth Amendment to the US Constitution was ratified on August 18, 1920. It declares that “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.” The amendment, which granted women the right to vote, represented the pinnacle of the women’s suffrage movement, which was led by the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). In their decades-long struggle for female enfranchisement, women’s rights advocates met with strong opposition from anti-suffrage activists.

Primary documents from the United States National Archives.

Martin L. Calhoun, of the Alabama Male Association Opposed to Woman's Suffrage, sent this letter to Senator Duncan U. Fletcher opposing the proposed Susan B. Anthony Suffrage Amendment. He wrote that each state should "be permitted to solve the issue for itself," and asks "in all seriousness – what will become of white supremacy in the grand old South?"

The Nineteenth Amendment officially eliminated sex as a barrier to voting throughout the United States. It expanded voting rights to more people than any other single measure in American history. And yet, the legacy of the Nineteenth Amendment, in the short term and over the next century, turned out to be complicated. It advanced equality between the sexes but left intersecting inequalities of class, race, and ethnicity intact. It stimulated important policy changes but left many reform goals unachieved. It helped women, above all white women, find new footings in government agencies, political parties, and elected offices—and, in time, even run for president—and yet left most outside the halls of power. Hardly the end of the struggle for diverse women's equality, the Nineteenth Amendment became a crucial step, but only a step, in the continuing quest for more representative democracy.