“The extension of women’s rights is the basic

principle of all social progress”

–Charles Fourier

The movement for women’s suffrage began before the American Civil War under the leadership of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony. These suffragists circulated appeals and lobbied Congress to pass a Constitutional Amendment to empower women. Although conversely, many legislators were unwilling to listen to this marginalized group. Consequently, over time women began to fathom that in order to achieve equal standing in a machismo culture, they needed to win the right to vote. For aforementioned reasons, the woman suffrage movement became a mass society. Also during this time, all kinds of developmental groups were proliferating throughout the United States such as religious groups, moral-reform societies, anti-slavery associations, in many of these, women played an important role.

In the 1920’s elections, American women exercised their right to vote for the first time. It took campaigners and activists almost 100 years to win that right, and the movement was not easy as differences over strategy threatened to cripple the movement but in 1920, the 19th Amendment in the Constitution was finally ratified, emancipating all American women and declaring for the first time that they deserve all the rights and responsibilities of citizenship.