Women's Suffrage In The Progressive Era

Elizabeth Cady Stanton was a women’s suffrage reformer in the Progressive era with a radical view in which women not only deserve the right to vote, but they also deserve freedom from all forms of oppression women face. Women lacked freedom in society due to gender norms that were put onto them such as, needing to be dependent on a man, follow the customs of “being a woman”, and having others define who women are without having any right to rebuttal and fight for more. Women in the progressive era lack many freedoms, yet advocates of women’s suffrage in the Progressive period abandoned Stanton’s views. Women suffrage reformers believed that Stanton’s radical views would be too much change for the political climate in the Progressive era, causing …show more content…
Many women had political issues yet were not allowed to have a say in the laws passing in the United States, making it frustrating. Also, choosing one topic to fight for, made it easier for reformers to moderate reform for higher chance of support of others, leading to a higher success rate considering people voting on whether women should have the right to vote were white men. Women’s rights reformists created alliances with racist and anti-immigrant movements in order to enhance their political influence. Bella Kearney, a suffragist, even compared suffrage to white supremacy stating, “To avoid this unspeakable culmination, the enfranchisement of women will have to be effected, and an educational and property qualification for the ballot be made to apply, without discrimination, to both sexes and to both races,”(Majewski, Jacobson, & Razek, 1998). Explain how women and African Americans lack freedom compared to white men. It is important that regardless of sexes and color, both have the right to vote. Domestic ideology was a widely accepted ideology, so incorporating that into the suffrage movement created credibility for American