Women's suffrage in the United States

 ( History Of Voting Rights In The United States ) 

Although it was not a suffrage organization, the League made it clear that it stood for political equality for women,Dudden (2011), p. 51 and it indirectly advanced that cause in several ways. Stanton reminded the public that petitioning was the only political tool available to women at a time when only men were allowed to vote.Venet (1991), p. 116 The League's impressive petition drive demonstrated the value of formal organization to the women's movement, which had traditionally resisted organizational structures,Flexner (1959), p. 105 and it marked a continuation of the shift of women's activism from moral suasion to political action. Its 5000 members constituted a widespread network of women activists who gained experience that helped create a pool of talent for future forms of social activism, including suffrage.For membership numbers, see Barry (1988), p. 154. For "pool of talent," see Venet (1991), p. 1.

In addition to Anthony and Stanton, who organized the convention, the leadership of the new organization included such prominent abolitionist and women's rights activists as Lucretia Mott, Lucy Stone and Frederick Douglass. Its drive for universal suffrage, however, was resisted by some abolitionist leaders and their allies in the Republican Party, who wanted women to postpone their campaign for suffrage until it had first been achieved for male African Americans. Horace Greeley, a prominent newspaper editor, told Anthony and Stanton, "This is a critical period for the Republican Party and the life of our Nation... I conjure you to remember that this is 'the negro's hour,' and your first duty now is to go through the State and plead his claims."Stanton, Anthony, Gage, Harper (1881–1922), Vol. 2, p. 270. Greeley was referring to the 1867 AERA campaign in New York State for women's suffrage and the removal of discriminatory property requirements for black voters. They and others, including Lucy Stone, refused to postpone their demands, however, and continued to push for universal suffrage.

In April 1867, Stone and her husband, Henry Blackwell, opened the AERA campaign in Kansas in support of in that state that would suffrage both African Americans and women.Stanton, Anthony, Gage, Harper (1881–1922), Vol. 2, p. 232 Wendell Phillips, an abolitionist leader who opposed mixing those two causes, surprised and angered AERA workers by blocking the funding that the AERA had expected for their campaign.Dudden (2011), p. 105 After an internal struggle, Kansas Republicans decided to support suffrage for black men only and formed an "Anti-Female Suffrage Committee" to oppose the AERA's efforts.Dudden (2011), pp. 124, 127 By the end of summer, the AERA campaign had almost collapsed, and its finances were exhausted. Anthony and Stanton were harshly criticized by Stone and other AERA members for accepting help during the last days of the campaign from George Francis Train, a wealthy businessman who supported women's rights. Train antagonized many activists by attacking the Republican Party, which had won the loyalty of many reform activists, and openly disparaging the integrity and intelligence of African Americans.DuBois (1978), pp. 92–94.

After the Kansas campaign, the AERA increasingly divided into two wings, both advocating universal suffrage but with different approaches. One wing, whose leading figure was Lucy Stone, was willing for black men to achieve suffrage first, if necessary, and wanted to maintain close ties with the Republican Party and the abolitionist movement. The other, whose leading figures were Anthony and Stanton, insisted that women and black men be enfranchised at the same time and worked toward a politically independent women's movement that would no longer be dependent on abolitionists for financial and other resources. The acrimonious annual meeting of the AERA in May 1869 signaled the effective demise of the organization, in the aftermath of which two competing woman suffrage organizations were created.DuBois (1978), pp. 80–81, 189, 196. The AERA held no further annual meetings and went out of existence a year later. See Harper (1899), pp. 348–349

The immediate cause for the split was the proposed Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, a Reconstruction amendment that would prohibit the denial of suffrage because of race. The original language of the amendment included a clause banning voting discrimination on the basis of sex, but was later removed. Stanton and Anthony opposed its passage unless it was accompanied by another amendment that would prohibit the denial of suffrage because of sex.Rakow and Kramarae eds. (2001), p. 47 They said that by effectively suffrage all men while excluding all women, the amendment would create an "aristocracy of sex" by giving constitutional authority to the idea that men were superior to women.DuBois (1978), pp. 174–175, 185 Male power and privilege was at the root of society's ills, Stanton argued, and nothing should be done to strengthen it.Rakow and Kramarae eds. (2001), p. 48 Anthony and Stanton also warned that black men, who would gain voting power under the amendment, were overwhelmingly opposed to women's suffrage.Dudden (2011), p. 184 They were not alone in being unsure of black male support for women's suffrage. Frederick Douglass, a strong supporter of women's suffrage, said, "The race to which I belong have not generally taken the right ground on this question." Quoted in Dudden (2011), p. 149. Douglass, however, strongly supported the amendment, saying it was a matter of life and death for former slaves. Lucy Stone, who became the AWSA's most prominent leader, supported the amendment but said she believed that suffrage for women would be more beneficial to the country than suffrage for black men.Stanton, Anthony, Gage, Harper (1881–1922), Vol. 2, pp. 382–384. Douglass and Stone are speaking here during the final AERA convention in 1869. The AWSA and most AERA members also supported the amendment.Barry (1988), pp. 194, 208. The 1869 AERA annual meeting voted to endorse the Fifteenth Amendment.

Both wings of the movement were strongly associated with opposition to slavery, but their leaders sometimes expressed views that reflected the racial attitudes of that era. Stanton, for example, believed that a long process of education would be needed before what she called the "lower orders" of former slaves and immigrant workers would be able to participate meaningfully as voters. In an article in The Revolution, Stanton wrote, "American women of wealth, education, virtue and refinement, if you do not wish the lower orders of Chinese, Africans, Germans and Irish, with their low ideas of womanhood to make laws for you and your daughters ... demand that women too shall be represented in government."Elizabeth Cady Stanton, "The Sixteenth Amendment," The Revolution, April 29, 1869, p. 266. Quoted in DuBois (1978), p. 178. In another article, she made a similar statement while personifying those four ethnic groups as "Patrick and Sambo and Hans and Yung Tung".Elizabeth Cady Stanton, "Manhood Suffrage," The Revolution, December 24, 1868. Reproduced in Gordon (2000), p. 196 Lucy Stone called a suffrage meeting in New Jersey to consider the question, "Shall women alone be omitted in the reconstruction? Shall they ... be ranked politically below the most ignorant and degraded men?"Quoted in Gordon (2000), p. 190 Henry Blackwell, Stone's husband and an AWSA officer, published an open letter to Southern legislatures assuring them that if they allowed both African Americans and women to vote, "the political supremacy of your white race will remain unchanged" and "the black race would gravitate by the law of nature toward the tropics." Cited in Dudden (2011), p. 93

The AWSA aimed for close ties with the Republican Party, hoping that the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment would lead to a Republican push for women's suffrage.DuBois (1978), pp. 199–200. That did not happen; the high point of Republican support was a non-committal reference to women's suffrage in the 1872 Republican platform. The NWSA, while determined to be politically independent, was critical of the Republicans. Anthony and Stanton wrote a letter to the 1868 Democratic National Convention that criticized Republican sponsorship of the Fourteenth Amendment (which granted citizenship to black men but for the first time introduced the word "male" into the Constitution), saying, "While the dominant party has with one hand lifted up two million black men and crowned them with the honor and dignity of citizenship, with the other it has dethroned fifteen million white womentheir own mothers and sisters, their own wives and daughtersand cast them under the heel of the lowest orders of manhood."Stanton, Anthony, Gage, Harper (1881–1922), Vol. 2, p. 341. This letter was signed by Anthony, who was requesting permission to present their views to the convention in person.DuBois (1978), pp. 109–110, 200 They urged liberal Democrats to convince their party, which did not have a clear direction at that point, to embrace universal suffrage.Dudden (2011), p. 152.

The two organizations had other differences as well. Although each campaigned for suffrage at both the state and national levels, the NWSA tended to work more at the national level and the AWSA more at the state level.Scott and Scott (1982), p. 17 The NWSA initially worked on a wider range of issues than the AWSA, including divorce reform and equal pay for women. The NWSA was led by women only while the AWSA included both men and women among its leadership.DuBois (1978), pp. 192, 196–197

Events soon removed much of the basis for the split in the movement. In 1870 debate about the Fifteenth Amendment was made irrelevant when that amendment was officially ratified. In 1872, disgust with corruption in government led to a mass defection of abolitionists and other social reformers from the Republicans to the short-lived Liberal Republican Party.DuBois (1978), pp. 166, 200 The rivalry between the two women's groups was so bitter, however, that a merger proved to be impossible until 1890.

In 1871, the NWSA officially adopted the New Departure strategy, encouraging women to attempt to vote and to file lawsuits if denied that right. Soon hundreds of women tried to vote in dozens of localities. In some cases, actions like these preceded the New Departure strategy: in 1868 in Vineland, New Jersey, a center for radical spiritualists, nearly 200 women placed their ballots into a separate box and attempted to have them counted, but without success. The AWSA did not officially adopt the New Departure strategy, but Lucy Stone, its leader, attempted to vote in her home town in New Jersey.DuBois (1998), pp. 100, 119–120 In one court case resulting from a lawsuit brought by women who had been prevented from voting, the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., ruled that women did not have an implicit right to vote, declaring that, "The fact that the practical working of the assumed right would be destructive of civilization is decisive that the right does not exist."Stanton, Anthony, Gage, Harper (1881–1922), Vol. 2, p. 599

In 1871, Victoria Woodhull, a stockbroker, was invited to speak before a committee of Congress, the first woman to do so. Although she had little previous connection to the women's movement, she presented a modified version of the New Departure strategy. Instead of asking the courts to declare that women had the right to vote, she asked Congress itself to declare that the Constitution implicitly enfranchised women. The committee rejected her suggestion.DuBois (1998), pp. 100, 122 The NWSA at first reacted enthusiastically to Woodhull's sudden appearance on the scene. Stanton in particular welcomed Woodhull's proposal to assemble a broad-based reform party that would support women's suffrage. Anthony opposed that idea, wanting the NWSA to remain politically independent. The NWSA soon had reason to regret its association with Woodhull. In 1872, she published details of a purported adulterous affair between Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, president of the AWSA, and Elizabeth Tilton, wife of a leading NWSA member.DuBois, ed. (1992), pp. 101–106 Beecher's subsequent trial was reported in newspapers across the country, resulting in what one scholar has called "political theater" that badly damaged the reputation of the suffrage movement.Amanda Frisken, Victoria Woodhull's sexual revolution: Political theater and the popular press in nineteenth-century America (2011).

The Supreme Court, in 1875, put an end to the New Departure strategy by ruling in Minor v. Happersett that "the Constitution of the United States does not confer the right of suffrage upon anyone". This article also points out that Supreme Court rulings did not establish the connection between citizenship and voting rights until the mid-twentieth century. The NWSA decided to pursue the far more difficult strategy of campaigning for a constitutional amendment that would guarantee voting rights for women.

Defeat could lead to allegations of fraud. After the defeat of the referendum for women's suffrage in Michigan in 1912, the governor accused the brewers of complicity in widespread electoral fraud that resulted in its defeat. Evidence of vote stealing was also strong during referendums in Nebraska and Iowa.Flexner (1959), pp. 252, 271

Some other businesses, such as Southern cotton mills, opposed suffrage because they feared that women voters would support the drive to eliminate child labor.Flexner (1959), p. 294 Political machines, such as Tammany Hall in New York City, opposed it because they feared that the addition of female voters would dilute the control they had established over groups of male voters. By the time of the New York State referendum on women's suffrage in 1917, however, some wives and daughters of Tammany Hall leaders were working for suffrage, leading it to take a neutral position that was crucial to the referendum's passage.Flexner (1959), pp. 247, 282, 290Ronald Schaffer, "The New York City Woman Suffrage Party, 1909–1919." New York History (1962): 269–287. in JSTOR Although the Catholic Church did not take an official position on suffrage, very few of its leaders supported it, and some of its leaders, such as Cardinal Gibbons, made their opposition clear.Flexner (1959), pp. 263–264, 290James J. Kenneally, "Catholicism and Woman Suffrage in Massachusetts." Catholic Historical Review (1967): 43–57 in JSTOR

The New York Times after first supporting suffrage reversed itself and issued stern warnings. A 1912 editorial predicted that with suffrage women would make impossible demands, such as, "serving as soldiers and sailors, police patrolmen or firemen...and would serve on juries and elect themselves to executive offices and judgeships." It blamed a lack of masculinity for the failure of men to fight back, warning women would get the vote "if the men are not firm and wise enough and, it may as well be said, masculine enough to prevent them."."The Uprising of the Women," New York Times May 5, 1912, quoted in Sandra Adickes, "Sisters, not demons: The influence of British suffragists on the American Suffrage Movement," Women's History Review (2002) 11#4 pp: 675–690 at p. 681

Middle and upper class anti-suffrage women were conservatives with several motivations. Society women in particular had personal access to powerful politicians, and were reluctant to surrender that advantage. Most often the antis believed that politics was dirty and that women's involvement would surrender the moral high ground that women had claimed, and that partisanship would disrupt local club work for civic betterment, as represented by the General Federation of Women's Clubs.Susan Goodier, No votes for women: the New York state anti-suffrage movement (University of Illinois Press, 2013) pp. 85–86. The best organized movement was the New York State Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage (NYSAOWS). Its credo, as set down by its president Josephine Jewell Dodge, was:

We believe in every possible advancement to women. We believe that this advancement should be along those legitimate lines of work and endeavor for which she is best fitted and for which she has now unlimited opportunities. We believe this advancement will be better achieved through strictly non-partisan effort and without the limitations of the ballot. We believe in Progress, not in Politics for women."A Creed" by Josephine Jewell Dodge, 1915, cited in Susan Goodier, The other woman's movement: Anti-suffrage activism in New York State, 1865–1932 (PhD dissertation, State University of New York at Albany, ProQuest, UMI Dissertations Publishing, 2007) p. 1

The New York State Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage (NYSAOWS) used grass roots mobilization techniques they had learned from watching the suffragists to defeat the 1915 referendum. They were very similar to the suffragists themselves, but used a counter-crusading style warning of the evils that suffrage would bring to women. They rejected leadership by men and stressed the importance of independent women in philanthropy and social betterment. NYSAOWS was narrowly defeated in New York in 1916 and the state voted to give women the vote. The organization moved to Washington to oppose the federal constitutional amendment for suffrage, becoming the "National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage" (NAOWS), where it was taken over by men, and assumed a much harsher rhetorical tone, especially in attacking "red radicalism". After 1919, the antis adjusted smoothly to enfranchisement and became active in party affairs, especially in the Republican Party.Goodier (2013) ch. 6

Mildred Rutherford, president of the Georgia United Daughters of the Confederacy and leader of the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage, made clear the opposition of elite white women to suffrage in a 1914 speech to the Georgia state legislature:

The women who are working for this measure are striking at the principle for which their fathers fought during the Civil War. Woman's suffrage comes from the North and the West and from women who do not believe in state's rights and who wish to see negro women using the ballot. I do not believe the state of Georgia has sunk so low that her good men can not legislate for women. If this time ever comes then it will be time for women to claim the ballot.

Marjorie Spruill Wheeler (1993). 9780195359572, Oxford University Press. . ISBN 9780195359572

Elna Green points out that, "Suffrage rhetoric claimed that enfranchised women would outlaw child labor, pass minimum-wage and maximum-hours laws for women workers, and establish health and safety standards for factory workers." The threat of these reforms united planters, textile mill owners, railroad magnates, city machine bosses, and the liquor interest in a formidable combine against suffrage.Elna C. Green, Southern Strategies: Southern Women and the Woman Suffrage Question (1997) p. 52 Henry Browne Blackwell, an officer of the AWSA before the merger and a prominent figure in the movement afterwards, urged the suffrage movement to follow a strategy of convincing southern political leaders that they could ensure white supremacy in their region without violating the Fifteenth Amendment by enfranchising educated women, who would predominantly be white. Shortly after Blackwell presented his proposal to the Mississippi delegation to the U.S. Congress, his plan was given serious consideration by the Mississippi Constitutional Convention of 1890, whose main purpose was to find legal ways of further curtailing the political power of African Americans. Although the convention adopted other measures instead, the fact that Blackwell's ideas were taken seriously drew the interest of many suffragists.Wheeler (1993), pp. 113–114

Blackwell's ally in this effort was Laura Clay, who convinced the NAWSA to launch a state-by-state campaign in the South based on Blackwell's strategy. Clay was one of several Southern NAWSA members who opposed the idea of a national women's suffrage amendment on the grounds that it would impinge on states' rights. (A generation later Clay campaigned against the pending national amendment during the final battle for its ratification.) Amid predictions by some proponents of this strategy that the South would lead the way in the enfranchisement of women, suffrage organizations were established throughout the region. Anthony, Catt and Blackwell campaigned for suffrage in the South in 1895, with the latter two calling for suffrage only for educated women. With Anthony's reluctant cooperation, the NAWSA maneuvered to accommodate the politics of white supremacy in that region. Anthony asked her old friend Frederick Douglass, a former slave, not to attend the NAWSA convention in Atlanta in 1895, the first to be held in a Southern city. Black NAWSA members were excluded from 1903 convention in the Southern city of New Orleans, which marked the peak of this strategy's influence.Wheeler (1993), pp. 114–118, 177

The leaders of the Southern movement were privileged upper-class belles with a strong position in high society and in church affairs. They tried to use their upscale connections to convince powerful men that suffrage was a good idea to purify society. They also argued that giving white women the vote would more than counterbalance giving the vote to the smaller number of black women.Evelyn A. Kirkley, "'This Work is God's Cause': Religion in the Southern Woman Suffrage Movement, 1880–1920." Church history (1990) 59#4 pp: 507–522 esp p. 508 No Southern state enfranchised women as a result of this strategy, however, and most Southern suffrage societies that were established during this period lapsed into inactivity. The NAWSA leadership afterwards said it would not adopt policies that "advocated the exclusion of any race or class from the right of suffrage."Wheeler (1993), pp. 120–121 Nonetheless, NAWSA reflected its white membership's viewpoint by minimizing the role of black suffragists.

But the Virginia-born Gardener tried to persuade Paul that including black people would be a bad idea because the Southern delegations were threatening to pull out of the march. Paul had attempted to keep news about black marchers out of the press, but when the Howard group announced they intended to participate, the public became aware of the conflict. A newspaper account indicated that Paul told some black suffragists that the NAWSA believed in equal rights for "colored women", but that some Southern women were likely to object to their presence. A source in the organization insisted that the official stance was to "permit negroes to march if they cared to". In a 1974 oral history interview, Paul recalled the "hurdle" of Terrell's plan to march, which upset the Southern delegations. She said the situation was resolved when a Quakers leading the men's section proposed the men march between the Southern groups and the Howard University group.

While in Paul's memory, a compromise was reached to order the parade with Southern women, then the men's section, and finally the Negro women's section, reports in the NAACP paper, The Crisis, depict events unfolding quite differently, with black women protesting the plan to segregate them. What is clear is that some groups attempted, on the day of the parade, to segregate their delegations.Zahniser and Fry (2014). p. 144. For example, a last-minute instruction by the chair of the state delegation section, Genevieve Stone, caused additional uproar when she asked the Illinois delegation's sole black member, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, to march with the segregated black group at the back of the parade. Some historians claim Paul made the request, though this seems unlikely after the official NAWSA decision. Wells-Barnett eventually rejoined the Illinois delegation as the procession moved down the avenue. In the end, black women marched in several state delegations, including New York and Michigan. Some joined in with their co-workers in the professional groups. There were also black men driving many of the floats.Zahniser and Fry (2014). p. 149. The spectators did not treat the black participants any differently.

The move of women into public spaces was expressed in many ways. In the late 1890s, riding bicycles was a newly popular activity that increased women's mobility even as it signaled rejection of traditional teachings about women's weakness and fragility. Susan B. Anthony said bicycles had "done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world". New York World, February 2, 1896, quoted in Harper (1898–1908), Vol. 2. p. 859 Elizabeth Cady Stanton said that "Woman is riding to suffrage on the bicycle.Quoted in Schultz (2013), p. 33

Activists campaigned for suffrage in ways that were still considered by many to be "unladylike," such as marching in parades and giving street corner speeches on soap boxes. In New York in 1912, suffragists organized a twelve-day, 170-mile "Hike to Albany" to deliver suffrage petitions to the new governor. In 1913 the suffragist "Army of the Hudson" marched 250 miles from New York to Washington in sixteen days, gaining national publicity.Schultz (2013), p. 30

(vote only for president)
(vote only in primary elections)
(vote only in city elections)
(vote only in special elections)
     

The suffrage organization NAWSA became the League of Women Voters and Alice Paul's National Woman's Party began lobbying for full equality and the Equal Rights Amendment which would pass Congress during the second wave of the women's movement in 1972 (but it was not ratified and never took effect). The main surge of women voting came in 1928, when the big-city machines realized they needed the support of women to elect Al Smith, while rural drys mobilized women to support Prohibition and vote for Republican Herbert Hoover. Catholic women were reluctant to vote in the early 1920s, but they registered in very large numbers for the 1928 electionthe first in which Catholicism was a major issue.Allan J. Lichtman, Prejudice and the Old Politics: The Presidential Election of 1928 (1979) A few women were elected to office, but none became especially prominent during this time period. Overall, the women's rights movement declined noticeably during the 1920s.

Passage of the Nineteenth Amendment did not in actual practice provide suffrage to all women in the United States. Women's rights to a public identity were restricted by the common law practice of coverture. As women were not citizens in their own right and married women were required to assume the citizenship and residency requirements of their spouses, many women upon marriage had no voting rights. The Naturalization Act of 1790 granted any free white, who met character and residency policies, the right to become a citizen and the 14th Amendment extended citizenship to those born in the United States, including African-Americans. Rulings by the Supreme Court allowed racial limitations to naturalization of people who were neither black nor white. This meant that Latinos, Asians, and Eastern Europeans, among other groups, were at various times barred from becoming citizens. Exclusions based on race also applied to Native American women living on reservations, until the passage in 1924 of the Indian Citizenship Act. As a result, if an American woman married someone who was ineligible for naturalization, until passage of the Cable Act of 1922 and various amendments, she lost her citizenship.

As the US Constitution grants states the ability to determine who is eligible to vote in elections, until the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, legislative variations among the states, led to extremely different civil rights for women within the federal system depending upon their residency. Restrictions on literacy, moral character, and ability to pay poll taxes were used to legally exclude women from voting. Large numbers of African American women, as well as men, continued to be denied suffrage in the southern states. Latinos and non-English speaking women were routinely excluded by literacy requirements in the northern states, and many poor women, regardless of race, had no ability to pay poll taxes. As married women's wages and legal access to money were controlled by their husbands, many married women had no ability to pay poll taxes. In 1940, US women were granted their own legal status as citizens and provisions were made for women who had previously lost their citizenship through marriage to regain it.

Suffragists and their supporters unsuccessfully introduced enfranchisement bills to the insular legislature in Puerto Rico in 1919, 1921, and 1923. In 1924, Milagros Benet de Mewton sued the electoral board for refusing to allow her to register. Her case argued that as a U.S. citizen, she should be allowed to vote in accordance with the U.S. Constitution, because territorial law was not allowed to contravene U.S. law. The Supreme Court of Puerto Rico ruled that the electoral law was not discriminatory because Puerto Ricans were not allowed to vote for federal electors, and that the territory, like U.S. states, retained the right to define who was eligible to vote. Another failed bill, in 1927, led Benet and women involved in the Pan-American Women's Association to press the US Congress to enfranchise Puerto Rican women. When in 1928, the bill passed out of committee and was scheduled for a vote the U. S. House of Representatives, the Puerto Rican legislature realized that if they did not extend suffrage the federal government would. They passed a limited suffrage bill on April 16, 1929, limiting voting rights to literate women. Universal suffrage was finally achieved in Puerto Rico in 1936, when a bill submitted by the Socialist Party the previous year, gained approval in the insular legislature.

In the US Virgin Islands, voting was restricted to men who were literate and owned property. Teachers like Edith L. Williams and Mildred V. Anduze pressed for women to gain the vote. In 1935, the Saint Thomas Teachers' Association filed a lawsuit challenging the applicability of the 19th amendment to Virgin Islanders. In November 1935, the court ruled that the Danish Colonial Law was unconstitutional as it conflicted with the 19th Amendment and that it had not been the intent to limit the franchise to men. To test the law, Williams attempted to register to vote and encouraged other teachers to do so, but their applications were refused. Williams, Eulalie Stevens and Anna M. Vessup, all literate, property owners, petitioned the court to open elections to qualified women. Judge Albert Levitt ruled in favor of the women on December 27, which led to mobilization to register to vote in Saint Croix and Saint John.

Though Guam was acquired by the United States at the same time as Puerto Rico, the 19th Amendment was not extended by the US Congress to Guamanians until 1968. Congress also extended it to the Northern Mariana Islands in 1976 under the Marianas Covenant. Though the US Congress has not verified the applicability of the Nineteenth Amendment to American Samoa the territorial constitution implies its applicability in the jurisdiction.

In 1972, Shirley Chisholm became the first woman to run for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination.

In 1984, Geraldine Ferraro became the first woman vice presidential candidate to be nominated by a major party.

In 2016, Hillary Clinton became the first female presidential candidate to be nominated by a major party.

In 2019, 25 out of 100 senators were women, and 102 out of 435 representatives were women. This resembles the global average; around the world, in 2018, just under a quarter of national-level parliament representatives were women.

In 2021, Vice President Kamala Harris became the highest-ranking female elected official in U.S. history after assuming office alongside President Joe Biden.

Title IX is a federal civil rights law that was passed in 1972 as part (Title IX) of the Education Amendments of 1972. It prohibits sex-based discrimination in any school or other education program that receives federal money.

A 2020 study found that "exposure to suffrage during childhood led to large increases in educational attainment for children from disadvantaged backgrounds, especially black people and Southern white people. We also find that suffrage led to higher earnings alongside education gains, although not for Southern black people." These improvements are largely driven by suffrage-induced growth in education spending.