What Is The Women's Suffrage Movement?

The Women’s Suffrage Movement was the seventy two year fight and movement leading up to the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment that granted women the right to vote. Before the nineteenth century, women were seen as property of their father or husband, and it was not until the mid-1800’s that women began to gain rights similar to men. Women had sought to obtain additional rights held already by men. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Susan B. Anthony, and Alice Paul were among the many women that led and fought for equal rights and the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. Women in the United States had little to no rights in comparison to men until 1920 when the Nineteenth Amendment was signed, giving women their deserved rights that allowed

The discrimination due to their gender outraged them and gave them the idea to start a women’s rights movement in the United States. In Seneca Falls, New York in the summer of 1848, the women’s group began. A dissimilarity is the fact that “In many history textbooks, the entire movement is summed up in one sentence: "In 1920, Congress gave women the right to vote.’" (Cooney), but in reality the movement began in 1848 with the start of Stanton and Mott’s womens group. Lucretia Mott’s women’s rights movement promoted equal economic opportunity and political, including suffrage, rights. They were concerned with the fact that our Constitution declared all men equal, but they believed that it should focus on the equality of all citizens, not just the white male. Women’s Rights groups had finally started to gain their popularity, but once they did, the Civil War began. The Civil War had distracted the future passage of women’s rights and shifted its focus on rights of African Americans. The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments extended the right to vote to black men. While many women suffrage advocates believed that this was their opportunity to fight for suffrage for all citizens of the United States, others sided with racist southerners who argued that women votes could be used to neutralize the African American

The gender gap is “the differences between women and men, especially as reflected in social, political, intellectual, cultural, or economic attainments or attitudes.” (Gender Gap). A gender gap in politics refers to women typically being more liberal while men are typically more conservative. “In every presidential election since 1980, a gender gap has been apparent, with a greater proportion of women than men preferring the Democrat in each case.” (CAWP) The most recent election in 2016 had a very evident gender gap with a percentage of 11. 41% of women and 52% of men that voted for Donald Trump, whereas 54% of women and 41% of men voted for Hillary Clinton. Similar to the gender gap with voting, there is also a gender gap within the roles of the government. Women made up 19.4% of the 535 seats in the 114th Congress. “If we progress at our current rate, we can expect women to be equally represented in Congress in 500 years, according to Representation 2020.” (Moss). Women taking on roles within the government are not seen as strong as a man. Sexism was alive in our most recent election, the election of 2016. Terri Vescio, a psychology professor at Penn State, said “The more female politicians are seen as striving for power, the less they’re trusted and the more moral outrage gets directed at them.” (Hidden