Women's Suffrage and Feminism
Gustafson (1997) shows that women vigorously define their role in political parties from the 1880s to 1920. Traditionally viewed as nonpartisan, women generally formed auxiliaries to the Republican and Democratic parties. The formation of the Progressive Party in 1912 offered women a chance for equality. Progressive party supporter Jane Addams openly advocated women's partisanship. After the Progressive Party loss in 1912, partisan women continued to form auxiliaries in the major parties. After 1920, inclusion and power in political parties persisted as issues for partisan women. Suffragists shifted from an emphasis on their right to vote to a new emphasis on the need for women to purify politics and guide policy toward education. The suffrage movement gained strength during the World War, and at the end women received the vote, in a major change in the rules of the game.
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Famous quotes containing the words women, suffrage and/or feminism:
“I consider women a great deal superior to men. Men are physically strong, but women are morally better.... It is woman who keeps the world in balance.”
—Mrs. Chalkstone, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 2, ch. 16, by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage (1882)
“I would rather be known as an advocate of equal suffrage than to speak every night on the best-paying platforms in the United States and ignore it.”
—Anna Howard Shaw (1847–1919)
“I ... have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is. I only know that people call me a feminist when I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat, or a prostitute.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)