page_title: History of women in the United States
section_title: Suffrage
hierarchical_section_title: History of women in the United States / Progressive era: 1900–1940 / Suffrage
caption_attribution_description: Suffragists picketing the White House, January 1917
context_page_description: This is a piece on history of women in the United States since 1776, and of the Thirteen Colonies before that. The study of women's history has been a major scholarly and popular field, with many scholarly books and articles, museum exhibits, and courses in schools and universities. The roles of women were long ignored in textbooks and popular histories. By the 1960s, women were being presented as successful as male roles. An early feminist approach underscored their victimization and inferior status at the hands of men. In the 21st century writers have emphasized the distinctive strengths displayed inside the community of women, with special concern for minorities among women.
context_section_description: The campaign for women's suffrage picked up speed in the 1910s as the established women's groups won in the western states and moved east, leaving the conservative South for last. Parades were favorite publicity devices. In 1916, Jeannette Rankin, a Republican from Montana, was elected to Congress and became the first woman to serve in any high federal office.  A lifelong pacifist, she was one of fifty members of Congress who voted against entry into World War I in 1917, and the only member of Congress who voted against declaring war on Japan after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. Alice Paul was the leader of a small militant faction that courted arrest to publicized the injustice of denying women the vote. After 1920, Paul spent a half century as leader of the National Woman's Party, which fought for her Equal Rights Amendment to secure constitutional equality for women.  It never passed, but she won a large degree of success with the inclusion of women as a group protected against discrimination by the Civil Rights Act of 1964. She insisted that her National Woman's Party focus exclusively on the legal status of all women and resisted calls to address issues like birth control.
caption: Suffragists calling themselves the Silent Sentinels picketing in front of the White House.
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