The Women's Suffrage Movement

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Most people think that women voting now a days is normal but it was only not too long ago, on August 18, 1920, that women first gained the right to vote. Securing the right to vote for women was not easy and took many years for the 19th Amendment to finally be ratified. The 19th Amendment granted American women the right to vote and states that the right of citizens shall not be denied by the United States or by any state because of ones’ gender (“19th Amendment”). Many different groups and conventions were formed to help spread the word that women should be able to have the right to vote. Within these groups were many different suffragettes that helped win the vote at last. Even though the outcome of the movement had good effects on the society, …show more content…

The event that really kick started the movement was in 1903 when Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughter founded the Women’s Social and Political Union, also known as the WSPU (“The Women’s Suffrage Movement”). With this, many other groups started to form and branched out throughout the whole country. At this time women in America were going against ‘The Cult of True Womanhood’, which was the idea that you were a “true” woman only if you were a helpful wife, did chores around the house and other family related things (“The Fight for Women’s Suffrage”). Lastly, with different groups forming and women going against ‘The Cult of True Womanhood’, it put together a new outlook of what it meant to be a woman in the United …show more content…

The setbacks began during the American Civil War. The movement had lost momentum due to women turning their attention to help in any way they could with conflicts between the states due to the war. After the war was over there was yet another setback for women. At this time the issue of voting rights for black men was arising and became the focus of the society. This came in between the women’s rights movement. Due to many issues of voting rights being discussed people had thought that this was the chance to push lawmakers for voting equality but instead, the opposite happened and the lawmakers refused to support the 15th Amendment, which guarantees black men the right to vote (“The Fight for Women’s Suffrage”). One of the reasons the lawmakers had refused to support the 15th Amendment was because they believed white women’s votes could be used to balance the votes casted by African Americans (“The Fight for Women’s Suffrage”). Alongside with the issue of the 15th Amendment, violent protests had begun which continued to setback the movement. Many years later in 1910, a protest in Parliament Square turned violent and even caused police to beat suffragettes. The WSPU lost many of its supporters when it became more violent (“The Women’s Suffrage