Get Geography Application Movement

The suffrage movement seemed stalled by the first decade of the 20th century. But World War I changed the dynamic and ultimately strengthened the suffrage movement. The industrial demands of modern war meant that women moved into the labor force and contributed to the war effort on the home front.

During the debates on the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, women's rights advocates lobbied—unsuccessfully—to enshrine woman suffrage in the Constitution. As attention then turned to the states, many supporters saw the West, with its young governments, as fertile territory for experiments with political reforms.

The campaign to win passage of the 19th Amendment guaranteeing women the right to vote stands as one of the most significant and wide-ranging moments of political mobilization in all of American history. Among other outcomes, it produced the largest one-time increase in voters ever.

In 1913 suffragists opened a new chapter in their battle to amend the Constitution. They believed that the results of the 1912 election presented new political opportunities. Party control in the Senate changed for the first time in 20 years, and voters sent Democrat Woodrow Wilson to the White House.

Women in 1912 were treated very differently to how they are treated now. They were not allowed to vote and were portrayed as gentle and demure. As a result, they were often treated as children. Upper class women lived their lives by following the rules of etiquette.

On March 3, 1913, the day before Woodrow Wilson's presidential inauguration, thousands of women marched along Pennsylvania Avenue--the same route that the inaugural parade would take the next day--in a procession organized by the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA).

Beginning in the mid-19th century, several generations of woman suffrage supporters lectured, wrote, marched, lobbied, and practiced civil disobedience to achieve what many Americans considered a radical change in the Constitution – guaranteeing women the right to vote.