The recent USA elections were a hot topic of discussion for a long time. The candidates were the primary reason as to why the elections got so much coverage all over the world. While one was the most infamous person to ever run for the position of the President and had given out scandalous and derogatory statements in the past, the other was a woman.
Surprisingly, Donald Trump won the elections, and Hilary Clinton lost. Despite the advancements made in the society, the idea of a woman running for such a prestigious position is still not widely accepted. Though women’s right to vote is no longer a debatable topic, the present scenario only makes one wonder how bad it was in the past for the fairer sex.
When Did Women Get The Right To Vote?
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The word feminism was not conjured up from midair; it was long back the essence of a movement that started to help women win their fundamental rights. One of them was the right to vote. It took a complete seven years for women activists to be able to cast their vote during the elections. Only after the 19th Amendment was ratified in 1920, the women finally got the right to cast their vote.
In the early America, women were denied the to vote that the men had. If a female was not married, she could not own property nor legally claim any money they might earn. The right to vote was not accessible to females as they were not considered at par with men and society as whole felt women should not participate in political matters.
What started as the women’s right movement to win the right to vote, eventually turned into a national fight in 1848. It lost some steam after the American Civil War broke out but later it picked up momentum again.
The 15th Amendment gave black men the right to vote, but it withheld that right from the female section of the society. The reformers fighting to bring changes in this repressive Amendment finally got a breakthrough when Wyoming Territory gave all the female residents who are above the age of 21, the right to vote. Within 6 years, several other states joined Wyoming to bring a change in the voting rights all due to the efforts of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. These states were Colorado, Utah, and Idaho.
The change created a domino effect, and soon a lot of states had joined in the change. They were Alaska Territory, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New York, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota and Washington. This happened between the years 1910 to 1918
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It was in the year 1918 that the then President Woodrow Wilson showed his support for the movement after seeing the crucial role that women played in the US participation in World War 1. A year later on June 4, 1919, the Senate passed the 19th Amendment. The bill was then sent out to all the states for ratification, and by March the following year, almost 35 states had approved the amendment.
The only ones not happy with this change were the southern states and 7 of them, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, South Carolina and Virginia rejected it. Only after the approval of the representative from Tennessee that the scale tipped in favor of females. The 19th Amendment was certified by U.S. Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby on August 26, 1920. Subsequently, 8 million women across the US voted for the first time.
Do you think that the society still does not feel women should involve themselves with politics? Share your feedback using the comment box below.
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