Women's Suffrage Research Articles

"Just as Capable": Pro Suffragio, the Egyptian Feminist Union, and the International Woman Suffrage Alliance Congress in Rome, 1923”

"Just as Capable": Pro Suffragio, the Egyptian Feminist Union, and the International Woman Suffrage Alliance Congress in Rome, 1923”

Votes for college women: Alumni, students, and the Woman Suffrage campaign

Votes for college women: Alumni, students, and the Woman Suffrage campaign

Waves of Feminism in Literature and their Literary Reflections

This research paper explores the evolution of feminist thought across four waves. The first wave, in the 19th and early 20th centuries, focused on women's suffrage and legal rights. The second wave, from the 1960s to the 1980s, addressed reproductive rights and systemic patriarchy. The third wave, beginning in the 1990s, emphasized intersectionality, recognizing diverse identities. The fourth wave, marked by digital activism, confronts issues like sexual harassment and body shaming, reflecting the ongoing evolution of feminist movements

Feminism in 18 Century

The 18th century marked a pivotal era for the early stirrings of feminism, laying the groundwork for future movements seeking gender equality. During this period, societal roles were rigidly defined, with women predominantly relegated to domestic spheres. However, the Enlightenment, with its emphasis on reason and individual rights, began to challenge these traditional norms. This intellectual movement inspired a reevaluation of women's roles and their capabilities. ioneering voices emerged, advocating for women's education and rights. One of the most influential figures was Mary Wollstonecraft, whose seminal work, "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman" (1792), argued for women's rationality and the importance of education. Wollstonecraft's treatise challenged the prevailing notion that women were inherently inferior to men, advocating instead for equal opportunities in education as a means to achieve true equality.Other women, such as Catherine Macaulay and Olympe de Gouges, contributed to the discourse, with de Gouges penning the "Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen" in 1791, a bold statement calling for women's rights during the French Revolution. These early feminists laid the intellectual and philosophical foundation for future generations to build upon.Despite their efforts, the impact of 18th-century feminism was limited by cultural and institutional barriers. The movement did not result in immediate societal change; however, it ignited a conversation about gender equality that would gain momentum in the centuries to follow. The ideas and writings from this era inspired later activists in the 19th and 20th centuries, who continued to fight for women's suffrage, legal rights, and social reforms.

Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi (1842-1906): The Pioneer of Women's Medical Education.

Mary Putnam Jacobi (1842-1906) was an integral figure in the fight for women's rights to medical education and a pioneer in the debunking of prevailing menstruation myths. Her experiences being denied adequate medical education in the United States led her to pursue medical education in Paris, where she learned the importance of laboratory experimentation and was first introduced to the political discourse surrounding women's rights. She founded the Women's Medical Association and created a medical curriculum for women that paralleled the standards of Harvard Medical School. Her research publications proved that women could conduct work with the same rigor as men and advocated for women's integration into workplaces and educational spaces exclusive to men. Mary Putnam Jacobi's contributions to the women's suffrage movement created new opportunities for women to attain high levels of education that otherwise would not exist today and continue to inspire women to push the limits placed on them solely due to their gender.

Women's political participation in the United States after women's suffrage: women's representation in the legislature of the house of representatives and the senate

Historically, women have confronted formidable barriers to political participation, entrenched by patriarchal norms. Despite the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in the United States, which granted women voting rights, substantive representation remains elusive. This study investigates the persistent gender gap in political representation, focusing on the 113th congressional elections. Employing liberal feminist theory and democratic principles, it aims to elucidate the urgency of addressing women's underrepresentation in legislative bodies. Through literature review and quantitative analysis of electoral data, this research seeks to uncover the impact of electoral systems on women's political engagement. Results reveal stark contrasts between countries like the US and Rwanda, emphasizing the critical role of electoral mechanisms in fostering gender parity. By illuminating these disparities, this study underscores the imperative for policy interventions to ensure equitable political participation for women, thereby advancing democratic ideals and societal progress.

The Determinants of Early Investments in Urban School Systems in the United States

Abstract Growth in per pupil education spending in the United States was mostly flat until 1918, after which it increased by almost 100 percent in a brief six-year period. This is the fastest documented increase in per pupil education spending in U.S. history. Using newly digitized biennial data on 386 of the largest urban school systems in the United States from 1900 to 1930, I investigate the origins of this spending increase. I first document that there was significant expansion in all spending and revenue categories with particularly large increases in capital expenditures, which were likely financed through borrowing. My results suggest that state education policies were largely ineffective in increasing school resources, as laws increasing state aid to local districts crowded out local receipts while compulsory schooling and English-only laws were not accompanied by increases in receipts or expenditures per pupil. Rather, I find that substantial increases in educational spending per pupil were linked to women's suffrage. Providing women with the right to vote can explain about 20 percent of the increase in per pupil spending.

Fair Chances: World's Fairs and American Woman Suffrage

Abstract: For over sixty years, American pro-suffrage women consistently viewed world's fairs as the single most important and indispensable of cultural venues for their suffrage work. Despite being actively excluded from fair administrations, their unsanctioned interventions at expositions permitted suffragists to attach women's right to the franchise to the nationalist celebrations of modernity and democracy that lay at the ideological center of every world's fair. Equally significant, with few other opportunities to travel to meet with one another, activist women used expositions as crucial sites and occasions for building their movement's national and international infrastructure. Starting with the first American world's fair in New York in 1853 and ending with the last fairs held prior to the US entry into World War I, no other cultural format provided suffragists with a bigger megaphone, more relevance and legitimacy, or more regular opportunities to coordinate their efforts than world's fairs.

The Other Fight: Women's Suffrage and Iran's Oil Nationalization

Iran handed the world a surprise in 1951. That spring, its parliament voted to nationalize the country's lucrative petroleum industry. Euphoria spread as young Iranians tore down Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) signs and watched mighty Britain cower (temporarily) before the hero of Iran's oil nationalization, Mohammad Mosaddeq. Stunned by this brazenness, an American summary posed the question on the minds of many diplomats: “How did nine Persian politicians win sufficient power to destroy the concession of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company?” For the next two years the West tried to figure out how to confine this enormous shock to the petroleum market by focusing on the man it held responsible for the crisis. An aristocrat and seasoned politician, Mohammad Mosaddeq garnered the support he needed to break through the monopoly of the AIOC. With the world's attention on Mosaddeq and oil at the time, it was unclear to many (although not to Mosaddeq himself) that another monumental battle for the future of Iran was taking shape: the fight for women's suffrage.

The formation of women`s suffrage in the USA in the XIX-XX centuries

In the scientific article, the author analyzed the issue of the formation of women’s suffrage in the United States of America. The meaning of the “conference to discuss the social, civil and religious condition and rights of women” held in Seneca Falls in 1848 is revealed. The role of suffragettes, their complex international connections and strategies for the development of women’s rights are outlined. The achievements of Mary Wollstonecraft, Maria Stuart, Francisca Anneke, Sarah Parker Remond, Stanton, Anthony, Ida Wells, Frances Harper, Churchy Terrell, Alice Paul and the social movement of abolitionists in the process of securing women’s rights, including women’s suffrage, are revealed. The importance of the founding of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, the International Women’s League, the World Women’s Christian Temperance Union, the International Council of Women, the National Association of Colored Women, the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage, and the Inter-American Commission on Women is characterized. The emergence of the internationalism of women’s suffrage, the spread of feminism is analyzed. The events and consequences of the struggle for women’s suffrage in the USA are summarized. In particular, it notes that the transnational legacy of the suffrage movement is evident in the ongoing aspirations of US women for full citizenship today. Then, as now, the struggle for women’s rights is linked to global movements for human rights – for immigrant, racial, labor and feminist justice. The internationalism of the women’s suffrage movement shows us that activists and movements outside the USA, as well as a wide range of diverse international causes, were crucial to the organization of what was considered such a quintessentially American right to vote. The emergence of women’s suffrage reminds us how much we have to learn from feminist struggles around the world. We see the prospects for further scientific research in the study of women’s suffrage in the states of the EU and other countries of the world and in their comparison. A scientific article can be useful for experts, historians and students.

Women's Suffrage and Men's Voting Patterns

Women's Suffrage and Men's Voting Patterns

Comparison of the Beginnings of Feminism in Spain and China

This comparative study aims to explores the origins of feminism in Spain and China. After examining the early stages of feminism in both countries, common aspects and differences emerge as a result of distinct social, political, and cultural conditions that shape the identity of each nation. To understand the beginnings of feminism, it is necessary to delve into the past when the concept of feminism did not yet exist, but there were voices that began to demand a different way of considering and treating women. In the case of Spain, notable pioneers such as María de Zayas Sotomayor have been selected, and also two key aspects, female education and women's suffrage, to comprehend the beginnings and their chronological evolution. Likewise, when considering China, apart from examining thinkers like Li Zhi in the 16th century, attention should be directed to the late 19th century to observe the development of feminism in areas that align with the Spanish context, such as women's education, as well as other initial feminist movements shaped by the unique circumstances faced by women in China. Overall, this study sheds light on the historical trajectories of feminism in Spain and China, offering insights into their shared and distinctive characteristics.

"Style that leaves nothing to be desired": Whanganui's Ladies Club of 1897

In 1897, a new, purpose-built institution made national headlines when it opened in the colony's fifth-largest centre. The Wanganui Ladies' Club was marketed as the first and only club of its kind, and was based on a Gentlemen's Club model catering to the upper classes of town and country. Designed by local architect William Pinches, a public tea room allowed non-members access to part of the building and much was made of its points of difference. In the immediate wake of women's suffrage being granted, proprietor Harriet Cameron was riding the crest of a wave of local women leading new, public-oriented lives. Described as artistic and luxurious, the interior was perhaps the most lavishly decorated in town. Photographs of it were widely published and the Ladies' Club seemed poised to become a fashionable social and political hub of the district. Yet within five years the club had dissolved, and the building would be lost only twenty-five years later. Its demolition reflected a wider shift in values and aesthetics, and the declining influence of the British-modelled established gentry over the region's cultural life.
 This paper will visit the interior of the lost Ladies' Club through sharing recent research on the building. It will examine a few contemporary local 1890s interiors which have survived, and look at high society club culture which has survived in the town against the odds.

Modernizacja gospodarcza i społeczna II Rzeczypospolitej

The aim of the article is to present, based on the results of the latest research, the basic phenomena in the field of economic and social modernization taking place in Poland in the interwar period. An introduction to the analysis is the opening balance, which discusses the conditions present in Poland in 1918. The following sections present the processes of economic and social modernization taking place in it. Within the framework of economic modernization, the basic limitations were the negative impact of the legacy of the partitions, war damage and the Great Depression. The currency reform of Władysław Grabski, the period of prosperity in the second half of the 1920s, and the modernization policy of Eugeniusz Kwiatkowski in the second half of the 1930s were favorable phenomena. In the case of social modernization, the state played an important role, introducing important institutional solutions from the very beginning, including equality of citizens before the law, compulsory schooling, women's suffrage. A special role was played by the social policy of the state, thanks to which hundreds of thousands of citizens entered modernity, who could take advantage of social security, modern labor legislation, employment policy, and health care. At the same time, there were visible processes of disseminating the achievements of modernity, including mass and popular culture. The conclusions of the analysis indicate that, despite many examples, modernization in interwar Poland had an island character. The processes related to it have only just begun, and the implementation of many projects undertaken in the second half of the 1930s, such as the construction of the Central Industrial District or the public health service, was interrupted by the outbreak of World War II.

The theory and practise of legal feminism: examining its impact on the representation of women in Indonesia

This paper examines Indonesian legal feminist theory on public sector women representation. Data is collected and analyzed by observation in this sociological legal research. According to the findings, gender inequality underpins a variety of attitudes and activities that promote equal rights. Elizabeth Cady Stanton's feminism was founded on the conflict. The pursuit of rights requires active lobbying, which has sparked social change, mostly through new laws passed by governments. Feminist legal consciousness shapes legislation. However, legal culture appears to affect activists' different methods of communicating their goals. As pre-18th-century nations, Britain and America have faced political turbulence caused by feminists campaigning for women's suffrage. The UK addressed the matter by legislation, while the US changed the constitution. Contrary to Indonesia, where women's political rights were recognized later, equality was achieved by affirmative action laws to increase women's political representation. However, following socioeconomic shift also limited affirmative action implementation, hindering democratic progress.

Women's Suffrage in Indonesia: A Structural Analysis of Women's Representation in Parliament

This study aims to analyze the meaning of women's suffrage through the representation of women in parliament in Indonesia. The Research method used is A Structural Analysis of the Historical Research Method. The study results show that the meaning of women's suffrage in Indonesia, especially in the political field, means the right to vote and be elected. Every woman who has the right to vote can use her right to vote freely, but women who have been successfully elected "to sit in parliament" have not been equal and balanced in number compared to men. The lowest gender empowerment index is the involvement of women in parliament; nevertheless, in the period 2019-2022, there has been an increase. This condition will certainly affect the next period if political parties can consistently carry out affirmative action and other interventions based on gender equality. There is a need to strengthen a gender-responsive political paradigm through various training forums on gender mainstreaming for leaders and members of political parties continually.

‘My how I have walked and worked to get those names’: Petitioning and the Women's Suffrage Movement in the United States, 1908–1920.

ABSTRACT This article analyses the evolution of mass petitioning within the woman suffrage movement in the United States, with a focus on the decade leading up to the ratification of the 19th Amendment (1920). Its central argument is that suffrage activists skilfully and imaginatively refashioned what was a venerable form of mobilization. In their hands, the petition served a range of purposes beyond enacting legislative change. It was a fulcrum for public parades and pilgrimages that grabbed public and press attention. In the form of the initiative petition, it was a tool to put the question of woman suffrage directly before voters. When aimed at individual lawmakers, and even in the face of a deadly pandemic, petition campaigns served to swing crucial votes. Focussing on the petition helps us to rethink certain aspects of the suffrage movement. It draws our attention to the role of rank-and-file activists on the ground. Furthermore, while reinforcing the importance of racial division, it challenges the notion of a movement split into radical and conservative wings. Whatever their differences, both sides understood the value of petitioning in an era of mass democracy.

Speech-Giving and the Woman Suffrage Movement: Exploring Government Databases for Women’s Voices

This article addresses the Woman Suffrage Movement of the 19th century and its continued significance through the exploration of primary source government documents that largely focus on speeches delivered by women, such as Isabella Beecher Hooker, to Congress and current documents that inform these speeches through relevant historical contexts, such as the Equal Rights Amendment. The goal of engaging with these government documents in this way is to encourage increased accessibility of government information relevant to the Woman Suffrage Movement in teaching and learning within libraries and the US K-12 education system.The Woman Suffrage Movement in the United States was a major milestone in women’s fight for political, social, and economic equality.1 The movement can be traced back to the mid-19th century when a small group of women began advocating for women’s rights. In 1848, a group of women, including Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, organized the first women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York. At the convention, they issued a “Declaration of Sentiments,” modeled after the Declaration of Independence, that demanded women’s right to vote and women’s equality with men.2 The document asserted that women had the same rights as men and called for the end of woman’s oppression.

Clara Zetkin and the Socialist Women’s International

This article focuses on the political activities of women within German Social Democracy and the Socialist Women's International. The leader of both organisations, Clara Zetkin, wrote texts that provided the theoretical foundations for the Marxist perspective on the ‘woman question’ and paved the way for the incorporation of working women into the proletarian struggle for socialism. Based on the proceedings and reports of the socialist women’s conferences, we reconstruct the main discussions and resolutions of these organisations until their dissolution in 1915, such as the relationship with bourgeois feminists, protective legislation for female workers, women's suffrage, and International Women’s Day.

Life in Every Breath: Ester Blenda: Reporter, Adventurer, Pioneer by Fatima Bremmer

Reviewed by: Life in Every Breath: Ester Blenda: Reporter, Adventurer, Pioneer by Fatima Bremmer Rosie Clarke FATIMA BREMMER Life in Every Breath: Ester Blenda: Reporter, Adventurer, Pioneer Trans. Gloria Nneoma Onwuneme. Seattle. Amazon Crossing. 2022. 452 pages. EXTENSIVELY RESEARCHED and written with clear respect and affection for its subject, Fatima Bremmer's biography of Sweden's first investigative journalist details the full, tumultuous life of Ester Blenda or "Bansai." Bremmer uses letters, diaries, interviews, and a mass of archival content to vividly depict a brave and reckless woman trying to carve out space in a hostile world. Thanks to parental support and an obvious talent for writing, in 1911 Blenda was made Stockholms Dagblad's youngest reporter at twenty years old, quickly establishing herself [End Page 89] as an innovative voice. Working during a significant time in the women's suffrage movement, journalism provided an opportunity for adventure and life beyond the gender and class expectations she struggled against from childhood. Throughout her career, Blenda's reportage brought important attention to those suffering exploitation and oppression, whether rural farm maids, indigenous Sami people, or new immigrants to America. But while her fame and prosperity grew, she seemed to favor the challenge of the story over real benefit to its subjects. Despite undeniable compassion and solidarity, Blenda's radicalism often missed the mark. Bremmer doesn't shy away from this, and her generous exploration of Blenda's character captures the good and the bad. A significant thread in Blenda's life story was her relationship with Carin Frisell. Due to Swedish law criminalizing homosexuality, they could never live their truth, but evidence shows a deep, powerful love confined to secrecy. Bremmer carefully explores how lifelong sexual repression may have contributed to Blenda's poor mental health and lifelong use of alcohol to quiet her "anxiety, restlessness and buzzing thoughts." Later, Bremmer sensitively details Blenda's gradual descent into alcoholism and illness. Despite earlier allusions, this sudden derailment is disturbing after so much time adventuring. Blenda's later years are lived in relative solitude and hardship, giving her story a somber end, but one comfort is that Blenda and Carin reunite with familial support for their relationship. This is a well-written, entertaining, and superbly translated work, depicting a thrilling and tumultuous life. Bremmer does occasionally digress into tangential and boring exposition and could have spared detail without sacrificing quality. Regardless, she does justice to such an exciting, complex, and inspiring figure with her skilled and seamless weaving together of facts with a tender exploration of that which lies between certainty and speculation. Rosie Clarke London Copyright © 2023 World Literature Today and the Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma