Carrie Chapman Catt Essay

The Ideal of Equality was altered progressively by Carrie Chapman Catt’s involvement in the Women’s Rights movement. She founded the League of Women’s voters and the International National Woman Suffrage Alliance, was the president of the National American Women Suffrage Association, and she ultimately helped get women the right to vote in 1920. Carrie Chapman Catt was born on January 9th, in Wisconsin. Her family moved to Iowa when she was seven. As a teenager, Catt realized that her mother did not have the same voting rights as her father did. This is where her interest in women’s rights came from. Her mother did not have equal rights as her father. Catt was the only woman and was one of the top students in her graduating class at Iowa

Catt in 1980, and he supported her suffrage work financially and personally. He felt that his role was to earn a living so she could reform society. She had a comfortable income so she focused all her time and money on Women’s suffrage to gain the right to vote and have equal rights with men. Carrie Chapman Catt directed NAWSA, the National American Women Suffrage Association. Catt served as President of NAWSA from 1900-1904, preparing speeches, planning campaigns, and organizing women to join. She became the successor to Susan B. Anthony which gave her political expertise. Catt had to briefly retire to care for her dying husband in 1904. Her husband died in October 1905, Susan B. Anthony died in February 1906, her brother died in September 1907, and her mother died in December 1907. Consumed with grief, Catt’s friends and the doctor urged her to travel abroad to help with her grief. This is where she went on to become the president of ISWA (The National International Woman Suffrage Alliance) during her several years working abroad worldwide. Catt resumed her NAWSA presidency from 1915-1920 when the suffrage movement became a part of the US

When women got the right to vote for president, she led a national drive to get both political parties to have a suffrage plank in their election platforms. She was carefully prepared with her actions, so she had already asked her Congressional Committee to create the planks for the appropriate party and send them to the Republicans or Democrats in Congress. Catt organized a parade of 25,000 women to walk through Chicago to the hall where the convention was being held. It was a rainy day, and the women got credit for being so determined to keep the parade going through the rain even when the fireman’s parade was canceled. They walked through the doors right as someone was saying “Women do not want the vote”, (Coolidge, 134-159). Right before this, a subcommittee on women had rejected the plank. Catt’s political committee of women had been watching all the events. This made the women delegates appeal the decision. Absentees demanded the vote be reconsidered, and there was a compromise reached after a lot of negotiation. “The Republican Party went on record as favoring the extension of woman suffrage but decided that this ought to be done by the states,” (Coolidge 134-159). Despite this being a defeat, it was a start for the parties to even acknowledge suffrage in any way. “It favored the suffrage but left the action to the states,” (Coolidge, 134-159).