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- Up until
And, you know, we hear that women 'got the right to vote.'
Well, by the way, nobody ever just gets anything
from somebody who's in a position of power.
You have to fight for that,
and a lot of women fought very, very hard for that right.
- The 19th Amendment passed in 1920.
Today,
to American policy and politics.
- Georgia has passed one of the most restrictive
abortion policies in the country.
- When it comes to paid parental leave,
our country's policies are some of the worst in the world.
- I want to focus on a milestone for gender equality
that we haven't actually achieved yet,
the Equal Rights Amendment.
- Issues of women's reproductive rights, pay equity,
and family leave policies are important,
so why did it take so long for women
to have a voice in America's democracy?
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The U.S. Constitution was written in 1787.
The nation's founding document didn't give many specifics
on who could and could not vote,
so the rules were largely left to the states,
over the age of 21,
who made up as little as 6% of the population.
- Men thought women should be governed by their husbands,
that their husbands represented their interests
at the ballot box.
- The framers of the Constitution
and many of those that set the laws thereafter
in essence considered women to be childlike,
incapable of independent thought,
and therefore not worthy of making the tough decision
of which white man was elected to office.
Fast-forward to the early 1800s, and women began speaking up
about how inequitable restricting the right to vote was.
In 1848, a few Quaker women,
outspoken in the movement to abolish slavery
and involved in various movements, met up for tea
and bonded over the trials and tribulations
of being a woman in 19th-century America.
Months later, two of those early suffragettes,
and hundreds of people showed up.
There, they created the Declaration of Sentiments,
based on the Declaration of Independence,
which listed their agenda for
But it wasn't all agreement and tea time.
- After this war, it would be racism that would cause
one of the biggest divisions in the movement.
- introduced in 1869,
would give African American men the right to vote,
regardless of race, color, or previous condition
of servitude, though
- And Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony,
two of the most famous suffragists of the 19th century,
famous oppose the amendment,
say unspeakably racist things against it,
clearly displaying a kind of elitist and racial hierarchy,
whereas Lucy Stone organizes a rival organization
to support Black men's voting and fight for women's vote
called the American Woman Suffrage Association.
And a lot of those women of color just said,
this white women's organizing doesn't speak to our needs,
and we're gonna go organize on our own.
- Still, the movement continued,
and in the next 40 to 50 years,
some suffragettes pushed their agenda
by attempting to vote and then filing lawsuits
when they were denied the right.
In 1872, Susan B. Anthony voted
in the presidential election,
was later arrested, tried, and fined $100.
She refused to pay the fine.
Other women also ran for local and national office
on campaigns pushing for equality,
a subtle nod to the irony of a woman
being able to run for office but not vote.
By 1878,
made it to the U.S. Senate but with little momentum.
and unite as one by 1890.
In the years leading up to the 19th Amendment,
the movement for suffrage heated up,
with marches, protests at the White House,
and a prison hunger strike after long-time suffragette
Alice Paul was arrested and tortured
for demanding the right to vote.
The early 1900s also marked the beginnings
of early suffragettes wearing all white
as a symbol of women's suffrage, as well as purple
and yellow, which stood for loyalty, purity, and hope.
- In the 1910s, a bunch of states,
particularly all the Western states,
strike the word 'male' from the voter clauses
in their constitutions so that women begin voting
in massive numbers all across the American West.
And that leads people to realize that voting's
not gonna be the huge, cataclysmic disaster
that a lot of people think.
- One of the biggest turning points
for the women's suffrage movement was
An estimated
some on the front lines
and others working as ambulance drivers,
medical suppliers, and more.
- Woodrow Wilson eventually comes around
to supporting women's suffrage,
partly because of the war service that women offered,
the way that he got embarrassed constantly
by Alice Paul and the militants.
- Then, all that was left was Congress' approval,
which didn't come easily.
in the House in 1918
and Senate in 1919.
A year later, the necessary 36 states
had ratified the amendment,
and women were granted the right to vote by law.
And so began politicians' attempts
to appeal to women for their votes.
In 1923, Alice Paul authored the
an amendment that's still awaiting ratification today.
- We think of 1920 as the end of the suffrage movement,
but that's because we let white women
define our vision of activism.
But a voting fight continues well after 1920
by women of color, who will organize alongside Black men.
- And it would take until the 1960s,
a full 45 years after the 19th Amendment,
for many Black women to be able
to secure their real right to vote in this country.
- Since then, the American public has elected
a wave of women to public office,
heard women boldly advocate for pay equity,
and participate in a worldwide rebuke of sexual misconduct
through the #MeToo and TIME'S UP movements.
- For too long, women have not been heard or believed
if they dared to speak their truth
to the power of those men.
But their time is up.
- Women want to be equal and we want it in the Constitution.
- We're underrepresented in everything
from state legislatures to foreign governments
to corporate boards.
We can't just look back and say,
'We have the right to vote. We're good.'
No.
There's so much work still to be done.
- As we look back at women's suffrage, we remember
it is a movement of 'diverse origins and many mothers.'
And voting isn't something we should take for granted.
- If we had a federal law
that said that people had a right to vote,
then the states wouldn't be able to interfere
with that voting right as robustly as they are right now.
- Stating the most obvious, vote.
Vote, vote, vote.
Vote like your life depends on it
because it probably does.
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