Discussing the role of the American women in the history of the United States of America, it would be relevant to refer to the book by Nancy Woloch “Women and the American Experience,” particularly to one of its chapters concerning the issues of feminism and suffrage through the period in the world history from 1860 till1920. It is important to note that the key sharp issues discussed in this chapter are: a finding of the independent women suffrage movement, the role of the constituency in this process, the role of war in the formation of the women party, and the debate over the women’s right to vote.
From the late nineteenth century until 1920, the problem of whether or not to give the right to vote for women had stand quite sharply, but it was resolved by the adoption and ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, as the campaigns to pass this just were raised in all states of the country. Numerous women and, sympathetic with their view, men made posters, broadsides, various pamphlets, which expressed the wide range of arguments for giving the vote right to women.
I refer to Nancy Woloch: “These broadsides indicate that women’s suffrage had a concrete basis in nineteenth-century ideas regarding domesticity. Periodicals and literature intended for middle-class women [Godey’s Lady’s Book, the Ladies Magazine, Mother’s Book, Harper’s Magazine] conveyed notions of the traditionally male public and traditionally female private domains” (Woloch, 2006, p. 333). Therefore, one may suggest that such publications emphasized the duty of women to keep up the purity of their homes. The movement of suffragists studied those ideas with the aim to show that having voted, women would be enabled to perform their unique abilities, which would certainly help to cope with the ills of the urban society.
Such expressions of the suffragists were made not by mistake; they indeed underlined the importance of the health and family factor in order to improve the social situation as a whole. They suggested that the moral purity of the women could help in the transformation of public behavior. This propaganda was also aimed to assure the voting men of the many ways and advantages in which the votes of women could be used.
According to the author of the book, such propaganda “… also sought to persuade society of the benefits these votes offered the state and nation. Women had been active in abolition, moral reform, and temperance movements during the latter half of the 1800s” (Woloch, 2006, p.125). There were also pointed out the facts of women’s participation in the administration of medicine and sanitation during the period of the Civil War, of women’s initiative in the creation of social programs for the poor people organization of the prison reform. It should be noted that such informational representation of themselves was immediately proved by the results of the public men’s polls.
Women also tried to convince the men of the necessity of the right of voting for them by such claims, as if they would not get it, their social and family responsibility would deteriorate. This statement was firmly supported by the ‘National American Woman Suffrage Association. Although with the presidency of Woodrow Wilson, there were created favorable conditions for the women’s, feminism, and the suffrage movement, it would be wrong to assert that they achieved the main goal only because of that. No one can deny the fact of those women’s skills, strong will, and leadership ability.
Works Cited
Woloch, Nancy. Women and the American Experience, 4th edition. Boston: McGraw Hill, 2006.