womens suffrage essay
Women faced many obstacles during the late 1800’s while struggling to gain the right to vote. Women vote today because of the women’s suffrage movement, a courageous and persistent political campaign which lasted over 72 years, and involved thousands of women around America. The women’s suffrage campaign is of enormous political and social significance yet it is virtually unacknowledged in the chronicles of American history. Maybe if the suffrage movement had not been so ignored by historians, women like Alice Paul, Lucretia Mott, and Susan B. Anthony would be as familiar to most Americans as Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, or Martin Luther King Jr. Perhaps more Americans would know the story of how women were betrayed after the civil war, defeated and often cheated in election after election, denied the right to vote despite the words of the constitution, and how they were forced to fight for their rights with virtually no financial, legal, or political power. If the history of the women’s suffrage movement was better known, we would understand that democracy for the first 150 years in America included only half of the population. This allows us to realize that this situation changed only after the enormous efforts of women in America in what remains one of the most remarkable and successful nonviolent efforts to change social attitudes and peoples perspective on women’s suffrage. When women won the vote they were not given it, granted it, or anything else. They fought for it and won it as truly as any campaign is won or loss, by the slimmest of margins, which only underscores the difficulty and magnitude of their victory. Women were poor, un-armed, and a disenfranchised class when they first organized to gain political power in the mid 1800’s. The struggle for the ballot took over 70 years of consistent, determined campaigning, yet it didn’t take a single life, and its achievement has lasted. Now compare that to male-led independence movements and you