
Who were the leaders of the anti-suffrage movement?
US Anti-suffrage leaders, Mrs. George Phillips, Mrs. K.B. Lapham, Miss Burham, Mrs. Evertt P. Wheeler and Mrs. John A. Church at an anti-suffrage event on the Hudson River, May 30, 1913.
Who were the anti-suffragists?
Anti-Suffragists: Women's Suffrage A group of men browsing through materials provided by the National Association Opposed to Women's Suffrage. Courtesy of the Library of Congress. Public domain. Both women and men participated in anti-suffrage campaigns in America.
What was the anti-suffrage movement?
The anti-suffrage movement was a counter movement opposing the social movement of women's suffrage in various countries. It could also be considered a counterpublic that espoused a democratic defense of the status quo for women and men in society.
Who was the most famous woman who promoted women's suffrage?
Susan B. Anthony was the best-known women's suffrage proponent of her time, and her fame led to her image gracing a U.S. dollar coin in the late 20th century. She wasn't involved in the 1848 Seneca Falls Women's Rights Convention that first proposed the idea of suffrage as a goal for the women's rights movement, but she joined soon after.
Who were the leaders of the anti-suffrage movement?
What was the anti-suffragist movement?
What was the Women's National Anti-Suffrage League?
How did anti-suffrage groups help women?
What is an anti-suffrage postcard?
Why did nationalists oppose women's rights in Ireland?
How did women writers promote anti-suffragism?
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About this website

Who started the anti-suffrage movement?
One of the most important anti-suffragist activists was Josephine Jewell Dodge, a founder and president of the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage.
What was the anti-suffrage movement?
The Anti-Suffragist, American periodical, from 1908 to 1912 the voice of a movement whose proponents opposed giving women the vote because they believed it contrary to nature.
What happened to the anti-suffrage movement?
While anti-suffragists eventually lost their battle, their opposition delayed woman suffrage for decades and transformed family-based republicanism from a patrician opposition to democratization into a popular defense of tradition and family against feminism and the social welfare state.
Who was involved in the suffrage movement?
The leaders of this campaign—women like Susan B. Anthony, Alice Paul, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone and Ida B. Wells—did not always agree with one another, but each was committed to the enfranchisement of all American women.
What groups opposed women's suffrage?
The National Association Opposed to Women Suffrage (NAOWS) was founded in the United States by women opposed to the suffrage movement in 1911. It was the most popular anti-suffrage organization in northeastern cities.
Why did people oppose the suffrage?
Anti-suffragists argued that most women did not want the vote. Because they took care of the home and children, they said women did not have time to vote or stay updated on politics. Some argued women lacked the expertise or mental capacity to offer a useful opinion about political issues.
When was the Anti Suffrage Party founded?
1870. The Anti-Suffrage Party is founded. Many people, including prominent women, such as Ellen Sherman, wife of General William Tecumseh Sherman, challenged the notion of suffrage as a “natural right,” and opposed its extension to women.
Did men support the suffragettes?
Some men actively played a part in militant suffragette activity. One man who played a leading role was Frederick Pethick Lawrence, joint editor of the publication 'Votes for Women' with his wife Emmeline. Frederick Pethick Lawrence was imprisoned, went on hunger-strike and was forcibly fed on many occasions.
Why did anti suffragists oppose woman suffrage quizlet?
Anti suffrage movement: Opposed or went against the suffrage movement in that they believed granting women voting rights would lead to a moral decline with the neglect of children and an increase in divorce. This resistance came from mostly the South and Eastern regions of the U.S. 1.
Who did not support the 19th amendment?
Southern states were adamantly opposed to the amendment, however, and seven of them—Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, South Carolina and Virginia—had already rejected it before Tennessee's vote on August 18, 1920.
What was the first woman right?
10, 1869: The legislature of the territory of Wyoming passes America's first woman suffrage law, granting women the right to vote and hold office.
Who was the first woman to vote in the US?
Nineteen states or territories granted women the right to vote between 1869 (when women could vote in the Territory of Wyoming) and ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920. In 1917, Jeannette Rankin became the first woman in Congress after Montana elected her to a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.
What were 3 major events in the women's rights movement?
Here are just some of the many important events that happened as women gained the right to vote.1848. First Women's Rights Convention. ... 1849. The First National Women's Rights Convention. ... 1851. “Ain't I a woman?” ... 1861-1865. The Civil War. ... 1866. Formation of the American Equal Rights Association. ... 1867. ... 1868. ... 1870.
Did men participate in the women's suffrage movement?
Surprising to some, many of the suffragists' strongest supporters were their husbands, fathers, brothers, uncles, and other men. There were men throughout the country who were themselves suffragists and who lent their support to advancing the women's cause.
Who was the most important person in the women's rights movement?
For over 50 years, Susan B. Anthony was the leader of the American woman suffrage movement. Born in Adams, Massachusetts on February 15, 1820, Anthony lived for many years in Rochester. In 1872 Anthony was arrested for voting.
Who were the suffragettes and suffragists?
Suffragists believed in peaceful, constitutional campaign methods. In the early 20th century, after the suffragists failed to make significant progress, a new generation of activists emerged. These women became known as the suffragettes, and they were willing to take direct, militant action for the cause.
The Anti-Suffragists | National Women's History Museum
Following Seneca Falls there were significant divisions amongst suffragists, notably over the 15 th Amendment which excluded women from voting and the use of racially divisive tactics by the National Woman Suffrage Association. In addition, there were multifaceted and nuanced ways in which suffragists were challenged, both by men and women, in their efforts to win the ballot.
Women's Anti-Suffrage Movement - The Ultimate History Project
By then, Jane Addams was well-known for her social activism and for establishing Hull House in the slums of Chicago. She was also Vice President of the National American Woman’s Suffrage Association.
Anti-Suffragism in the United States - National Park Service
Figure 2. In 1890, the Massachusetts Association Opposed to the Further Extension of Suffrage to Women launched the Remonstrance as a digest of local, national, and international anti-suffrage news and strategic planning.
Who opposed women's suffrage?
Calling themselves “remonstrants” or anti-suffragists, which suffragists shortened to “Antis,” they persuaded legislators and the electorate to vote against woman suffrage repeatedly. Anti-suffrage men opposed woman suffrage as clergy, public intellectuals, legislators, and sometimes in organizations; however, many were the silent partners or agents of women’s organizations. For a useful introduction, see Manuela Thurner, “‘Better Citizens without the Ballot’: American AntiSuffrage Women and Their Rationale during the Progressive Era,” Journal of Women's History 5, no. 1 (Spring 1993): 33–60.
What did the anti-suffragists do to the women's right to vote?
Suffragists’ belief in individual representation inspired decades of battles over the right to vote and other reforms that supplemented or supplanted traditional family-based government with laws that gave women—and others once assumed to be “naturally” unequal—civil and political rights.
What did the Massachusetts remonstrants do to New York?
The seasoned Massachusetts remonstrants helped New York remonstrants defeat an attempt to add woman suffrage to the state constitution in 1894. The threat led New York women to organize the first formal state anti-suffrage organization.
What did the suffragists oppose?
Suffragists opposed the inclusion of the word “male” in the amendment’s protection of voting rights, arguing instead for citizen suffrage. After its ratification, some suffragists tested this provision by attempting to vote (and sometimes succeeding), hoping the ensuing litigation would produce a judicial decision that women’s citizenship conferred suffrage. Others petitioned for a woman suffrage amendment, particularly after their failure to secure universal suffrage in the Fifteenth Amendment, which prohibited denial of the vote on the basis of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
What did the 1880s women's suffrage amendment mean?
In the 1880s, anti-suffrage congressmen highlighted woman suffrage as a threat to local self-government and sectional peace, quoting northern remonstrants such as Chicago’s Caroline Corbin, whose Letters from a Chimney-Corner, which linked domesticity with “home rule,” belied her patrician status.[14] As southern states restricted African American male suffrage, their congressmen argued that a proposed woman suffrage amendment threatened not only male authority in the family, but also states’ rights and “local self-government,” a polite term that connoted government by propertied white men, regardless of African American federal citizenship rights.[15] As Alabama Senator John Tyler Morgan explained, a woman suffrage amendment would draw a “line of political demarcation through a man’s household” and “open to the intrusion of politics and politicians that sacred circle of the family where no man should be permitted to intrude.”[16] In defending local self-government, anti-suffragists evoked memories of federal troops supervising southern polls and the alliance of abolitionists and suffragists, and they warned against any northern interference with southern Jim Crow laws—while also appealing to northerners who were leading their own antidemocratic movements.[17] By the mid-1880s, congressional Democrats’ success in stalling legislation and northern anti-suffragists’ remonstrances against extending the vote led to the suffrage movement’s congressional “doldrums.”[18]
What were the issues of the 1855 Reform Party?
Northerners had ridiculed the 1855 campaign of the “Republican Reform Party” (Figure 1) for encouraging African Americans’ and women’s egalitarian aspirations, but these aspirations became contentious political issues during postwar Reconstruction. In particular, the Fourteenth Amendment’s declaration of birthright citizenship and its provision of equal rights protections at once invalidated Dred Scott and unsettled antebellum republicanism’s conferral of rights based on one’s status within the polity.[8] Suffragists opposed the inclusion of the word “male” in the amendment’s protection of voting rights, arguing instead for citizen suffrage. After its ratification, some suffragists tested this provision by attempting to vote (and sometimes succeeding), hoping the ensuing litigation would produce a judicial decision that women’s citizenship conferred suffrage. Others petitioned for a woman suffrage amendment, particularly after their failure to secure universal suffrage in the Fifteenth Amendment, which prohibited denial of the vote on the basis of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.[9] Anti-suffragists noted the apparent racism of suffragists’ opposition to the Fifteenth Amendment.[10]
What were the suffragists' beliefs about women?
Anti-suffragists, conversely, fought to maintain the male-headed family, rather than the individual citizen, as the representative unit of republican government.[2] While anti-suffragists eventually lost their battle, their opposition delayed woman suffrage for decades and transformed family-based republicanism from a patrician opposition to democratization into a popular defense of tradition and family against feminism and the social welfare state. Suffragists’ belief in individual representation inspired decades of battles over the right to vote and other reforms that supplemented or supplanted traditional family-based government with laws that gave women—and others once assumed to be “naturally” unequal—civil and political rights.[3] For anti-suffragists, the franchise meant more than just the right to enter a voting booth and cast a ballot: the vote was an affirmation of the fundamental political equality of all persons holding it, in both the private and public spheres—a radical interpretation of the founding ideals that anti-suffragists were eager to extinguish wherever it threatened the republic.
Pro-Suffrage
Who supported women’s suffrage? How did they help to pass the 19th Amendment?
Anti-Suffrage
Who was against women’s suffrage? Why did they want to prevent the passage of the 19th Amendment?
Who was the most important anti-suffragist activist?
(Harris & Ewing/Library of Congress) One of the most important anti-suffragist activists was Josephine Jewell Dodge, a founder and president of the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage.
What was the role of women in the suffrage movement?
But as the suffragists would soon learn, women would play a crucial role in attempting to prevent women from gaining the right to vote. As the suffragist movement gained momentum, women mobilized committees, circulated petitions, and created associations ...
Why did women oppose suffrage?
Many of the women in the anti-suffrage movement felt that the political system was a corrupt space, and if women joined it, they would inevitably become just as corrupt as the men , said Anya Jabour, a history professor at the University of Montana.
Why shouldn't women vote?
The National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage, founded in 1911, distributed a pamphlet explaining why women shouldn’t be allowed to vote: “Because it means competition of women with men instead of co-operation.
Where did anti-suffragist women come from?
The anti-suffragist women generally came from elite, White families on the East Coast , and tended to be married to, or related to, men in politics or law. But they were also often influential leaders in social activism and philanthropy. In many ways, anti-suffragist women were similar in status to suffragist leaders, Goodier said. “They would move in a lot of the same circles.”
When did the No Votes for Women movement take place?
She had little reason to believe otherwise, as recounted in Susan Goodier’s book, “ No Votes for Women: The New York State Anti-Suffrage Movement .”. It was 1893, and suffragists were traveling across New York to build support ahead of a constitutional convention, when lawmakers would decide if the word “male” should be removed from the wording ...
Who was the woman who asked if women wanted to vote?
Susan B. Anthony stood on a stage in Upstate New York, asking a crowd to support the suffragist cause, when someone in the audience asked a question: Do women actually want the right to vote? Her answer was hardly unequivocal. “They do not oppose it,” Anthony replied vaguely.
Who were the women who led the anti-suffrage movement?
The female leaders of the U.S. anti-suffrage campaign "were generally women of wealth, privilege, social status and even political power ," NPR learns from Corrine McConnaughy, who teaches political science at George Washington University and is author of the 2013 The Woman Suffrage Movement in America: A Reassessment. "In short, they were women who were doing, comparatively, quite well under the existing system, with incentives to hang onto a system that privileged them."
What were anti-suffrage leaders in the North?
Anti-suffrage leaders in the North, she says, "were generally urban, often the daughters and-or wives of well-to-do men of business, banking or politics. They were also quite likely to be involved in philanthropic or 'reform' work that hewed to traditional gender norms."
What were anti-suffragists concerned with?
Anti-suffragists everywhere were concerned with societal disruptions. "What women anti-suffragists produced to appeal to 'ordinary' women more broadly," McConnaughy adds, "was a logic of suffrage as a threat to femininity ... to the protection of the value of domestic life — most notably to the vocation of motherhood, ...
What is the movie Suffragette about?
With the new movie about the British suffrage movement, Suffragette, scheduled to be released this week, recollections of protest and debate concerning a woman's right to vote in the U.S. are inevitable. As the 19th century ended and the 20th began, the American wave of women pushing for access to the ballot box gathered momentum.
Who was Josephine Jewell Dodge?
Josephine Jewell Dodge. For a while, she was the president of the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage. According to a biography compiled by her alma mater, Vassar College, she was the daughter of Marshall Jewell, the U.S. minister to Russia and then the U.S. postmaster general in the 1870s. In 1875, she married Arthur Dodge, who was from a prominent New York family. "Mrs. Dodge was both an outspoken anti-suffragist and a central actor in the reform campaign that worked toward the establishment of child care programs — 'day nurseries' — for the children of poor and working-class women who worked because of financial necessity," McConnaughy says. "Her message really was about the damage to the reform potential of women that she believed woman suffrage would bring — through women's integration into the 'corrupt' world of party politics."
When did women get voting rights?
But it wasn't until the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified in 1920 that voting rights were guaranteed for all women. Hard as it is to imagine today, there were certain women — mostly forgotten — during ...
Who did not believe women deserved the right to vote?
Some called these naysayers "anti-suffragettes" or "anti-suffragists." Some called them "remonstrants" or " governmentalists ." Some called them just plain "antis."
Who were the leaders of the British suffrage movement?
Emmeline Pankhurst. (Museum of London/Heritage Images/Getty Images) Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughters, Christabel Pankhurst and Sylvia Pankhurst , were leaders of the more confrontational and radical wing of the British suffrage movement. Emmeline, Christabel, and Sylvia Pankhurst were major figures in the founding of ...
Who were the founders of the Women's Social and Political Union?
Emmeline, Christabel, and Sylvia Pankhurst were major figures in the founding of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) and are often used to represent the British history of women's suffrage.
Why did Catt leave the presidency?
She left the presidency to care for her dying husband and was elected president again in 1915. She represented the more conservative, less confrontational wing that Paul, Lucy Burns, and others split from. Catt also helped found the Women's Peace Party and the International Woman Suffrage Association.
Who was Alice Paul?
Alice Paul. (MPI/Getty Images) Alice Paul became active in the women's suffrage movement in the 20th century. Born well after Stanton and Anthony, Paul visited England and brought back a more radical, confrontational approach to winning the vote.
Who was at the World's Anti-Slavery Convention in London in 1840?
Lucretia Mott was at a meeting of the World's Anti-Slavery Convention in London in 1840 when she and Stanton were relegated to a segregated women's section though they had been elected as delegates.
Who is Jone Johnson Lewis?
Jone Johnson Lewis is a women's history writer who has been involved with the women's movement since the late 1960s. She is a former faculty member of the Humanist Institute. our editorial process. Jone Johnson Lewis. Updated December 12, 2019.
Who was Elizabeth Cady Stanton?
Elizabeth Cady Stanton. PhotoQuest/Getty Images. Elizabeth Cady Stanton worked closely with Anthony, lending her skills as a writer and theorist . Stanton was married, with two daughters and five sons, which limited the time she could spend traveling and speaking.
Who were the leaders of the anti-suffrage movement?
US Anti-suffrage leaders, Mrs. George Phillips, Mrs. K.B. Lapham, Miss Burham, Mrs. Evertt P. Wheeler and Mrs. John A. Church at an anti-suffrage event on the Hudson River, May 30, 1913. Anti-suffragism was a political movement composed of both men and women that began in the late 19th century in order to campaign against women's suffrage in ...
What was the anti-suffragist movement?
Anti-suffragism was a largely Classical Conservative movement that sought to keep the status quo for women and which opposed the idea of giving women equal suffrage rights. It was closely associated with "domestic feminism," the belief that women had the right to complete freedom within the home.
What was the Women's National Anti-Suffrage League?
The Anti-Suffrage Review also used shame as a tool to fight against the suffrage movement.
How did anti-suffrage groups help women?
Many anti-suffrage groups highlighted their charitable efforts, painting themselves as "self-sacrificing." They wanted the country to see that women could make a difference without the vote, however, it was partly the efforts of women aiding the war that helped women gain the vote in the end.
What is an anti-suffrage postcard?
Anti-suffrage postcard- "While in the act of voting". Anti-suffrage postcard- For a Suffragette the Ducking-Stool.jpg. Organized campaigns against women's suffrage began in earnest in 1905, around the same time that suffragettes were turning to militant tactics.
Why did nationalists oppose women's rights in Ireland?
Because of the nationalistic movements going on in Ireland, both men and women nationalists opposed giving women the vote because they were prioritizing Irish Home Rule. A nationalist paper, Bean na hÉireann, which was published by the Inghinidhe na hÉirann (Daughters of Ireland), took a very anti-suffrage stance.
How did women writers promote anti-suffragism?
Women writers promoted anti-suffragism through their wide readerships by raising questions of what ideal women were to be like.

Overview
United States
While men were involved in the anti-suffrage movement in the United States, most anti-suffrage groups were led and supported by women. While these groups openly stated that they wanted politics to be left to men, it was more often women addressing political bodies with anti-suffrage arguments. The first women-led anti-suffrage group in the United States was the Anti-Sixteenth Am…
Background
The anti-suffrage movement was a counter movement opposing the social movement of women's suffrage in various countries. It could also be considered a counterpublic that espoused a democratic defense of the status quo for women and men in society. As a counter movement, the anti-suffrage movement did not gain traction or start to organize until the women's suffrage began to challenge the current social order.
Australia
Anti-suffrage movements were present in Australia through the 1880s and 1890s. Anti-suffrage organisations in Australia were "closely associated with the Conservative Party , manufacturing interests and anti-socialist forces." The Australian media took part in the anti-suffrage movement, and depicted women as being "weak and unintelligent," emotional and too involved in domestic and trivial matters.
Canada
Canadian men and women both became involved in debating the women's suffrage movement in the late 19th century. Women's suffrage was debated in the Legislative Assembly in New Brunswick starting in 1885, and anti-suffrage "testimonies" began to appear in the newspapers around that time.
Great Britain
Organized campaigns against women's suffrage began in earnest in 1905, around the same time that suffragettes were turning to militant tactics. In general, most ordinary women had prioritized domestic and family life over paid employment and political activism when it came to the issue of suffrage. Most historical evidence shows that ordinary women did not have much interest in t…
Ireland
Women's suffrage movements had been going on in Ireland since the 1870s. However, as Suffragettes in Ireland became more militant, more organized anti-suffrage campaigns emerged. An Irish branch of the Women's National Anti-Suffrage League was started in 1909 in Dublin. This branch of the League also opposed suffrage in Britain as well.
Irish opposition to the women's vote was both religious and cultural. Both Catholic and Protestant churches …
Criticism
There was contemporary criticism of the anti-suffrage movement in the United States. One criticism was that anti-suffragists did not present a consistent argument against suffrage. Other arguments were seen as inconsistent, such as Antis claiming that voting meant women must hold office, when members of anti-suffrage groups were already holding offices such as being on the school …