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Women's Suffrage

In March 1980, President Jimmy Carter issued a presidential message to the American people encouraging the celebration of the week of March 8 as Women's History Week. In 1981, a Joint Congressional Resolution declared the week of March 8, 1981, National Women's History Week. In 1987, a National Women's History Month Resolution was approved. In March 2005, the theme of Women's History Month is "Women Change America." Learn more about some of the women who have inspired change. Included: Sites about and for women of the past, the present, and the future.

In July 1848, at the Seneca Falls Convention for women's rights, Elizabeth Cady Stanton presented to the 300 conference attendees a Declaration of Sentiments, in which she asserted women's equality with men.

Using the Declaration of Independence as her guide, Stanton declared that all men and women had been created equal, and she demanded that the rights of women be acknowledged and respected. Stanton's Declaration of Sentiments presented 11 resolutions detailing women's right to equality -- including the right to vote. Sixty-eight women and 32 men signed the Declaration.

In August 1920, the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, guaranteeing the right to vote to all women in the United States, was ratified. Only one woman who had attended the Seneca Falls Convention lived to cast her ballot in the election of 1920.

The sites below will help you explore with your students the 72 years between those two historical events, and help them understand the difficult history of the women's suffrage movement.

Votes for Women
The Library of Congress offers these selections from the National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection, 1848 to 1921. The American Memory Collection's NAWSA Collection includes167 books, pamphlets, speeches, and other primary documents related to the suffrage campaign. The site also provides a women's suffrage timeline, photographs, and links to related resources. The Library also offers Women: Their Rights and Nothing Less, a unit on the women's suffrage movement for high school students, that makes use of many of those resources and more.

Living the Legacy: The Women's Rights Movement
The National Women's History Project provides this overview of the Women's Rights Movement that only begins with the suffrage campaign -- and then continues to 1998, the 150th anniversary of the Seneca Falls Convention. The site includes a brief history of those 150 years, a detailed timeline of significant events in the women's rights movement, as well as a look at some of the issues facing women today.

Woman Suffrage and the 19th Amendment
The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration Digital Classroom provides this Teaching With Documents Lesson Plan that provides a number of resources about women's suffrage and the 19th Amendment. Those resources include such primary source documents as petitions, memorials, resolutions, and photographs, as well as related activities, links, and worksheets.

Women's Suffrage in Political Cartoons
The political cartoons at this site appeared primarily in weekly or monthly magazines between 1906 and 1920. Some are sympathetic to the women's movement, others are not, but all provide a fascinating look into the political and social tenor of the times.

Suffrage Songs and Verses
The 25 verses at this site were written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935), the great-niece of Henry Ward Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe. A prolific feminist writer, Gilman wrote extensively on women's suffrage and women's financial independence. Her verses provide thought provoking (sometimes humorous) insight into the feminist movement at the turn of the century.

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