Women’s History

Women suffrage in the United States was achieved in a gradual manner, at both the state and the local stage, in the 19th and the 20 the century due to the passing of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution that stated "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." Women suffrage is one of the greatest social movements in the history of the United States. The struggle for the right of women to be engaged in the voting process was one of the longest and the most essential challenges ever created to the American systems of electoral politics. (Howard 45). The Seneca Falls Convention of the year 1848 created the demand for women's suffrage in the United States and subsequent to the American Civil War of the year 1861 to1865 that agitated for the grounds to turn out to be more important.

In 1869, the proposed Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, that gave the right to vote to black men, caused a debate as women's suffrage activist such as Susan Anthony and Elizabeth Stanton declined to approve the amendment, due to reason that it did not give the right to vote to women. Others human right activists such as such as Lucy Stone argued that if black men got enfranchised, women would accomplish their goal. The disagreement caused the following two organizations to surface, namely, the National Woman Suffrage Association that was campaigning for women’s suffrage at a federal stage and for married women to be granted the property rights and the American Woman Suffrage Association, that, aim main was to secure women's suffrage via the state legislation(Howard 55). The issue of the struggle of the woman’s political freedom was of long standing, in 1848, Elizabeth Stanton and other women organized the world’s first women’s rights convention in New York.

In the meeting, declarations of principles were drafted “it was the duty of the woman of this country to secure to themselves their sacred right to the elective franchise”. These women achieved some success especially in convincing the lawmakers to adjust the laws that had discrimination against the female gender but failed to modify the laws that limited voting to men, the nineteenth century saw an increase in the number of women who took part in the women suffrage movement in the United States via reform movements. The National Women Suffrage Association (NWSA) was formed in 1869 and membership was only open to women. This association aimed at an amendment to the federal constitution as the only sure path the woman suffrage in the United States; they created alliances with the other reforms and radical associations that worked to improve the social and political state of the woman. (Howard 90). For more than one century, the millions of human right activists were engaged unending battle of the right to vote for women, in fact most of the pioneers of the women suffrage movement never lived to see their success that was hard won.

The right of women to vote had been denied due to the prevailing notions of their personalities and the capacities that they possessed. In most aspects regarding women in the 19th century, tradition notions about men’s and women’s respective natures and responsibilities were far more difficult to challenge and dislodge that any plot fomented by determined enemies. In fact, among the firsts challenges that the suffragists needed to overcome was the information about the proper place of women that they had acknowledged almost as a birth right. There were notions in the United States society that the woman belonged to the domestic sphere, a place whereby they only exercised the important responsibility of caring for the family members. This view of women in the society was one of the main reasons as to why the women suffrage movement was faced by a lot of challenge and to a very long time to reach its goals (Howard 95).