The Women's Suffrage Movement in the United States

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women’s suffrage

Britannica Note:

Information about this topic is available in the section "The United States."

also called woman suffrage, the right of women by law to vote in national or local elections.

Suffragettes holding signs in London, c. 1912.

George Grantham Bain Collection/Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (reproduction no. LC-DIG-ggbain-00111)

A history of women's suffrage around the world.

Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

Overview

Women voters in Tahakopa, New Zealand, after the country became the first to grant women's suffrage, …

Women vote at their first election, Tahakopa. McWhannell, Rhoda Leslie (Mrs), 1898-1996: Photographs of forestry and farming at Ohaupo. Ref:

PA1-o-550-34-1. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. http://natlib.govt.nz/records/22311886

Women voting for the first time in a Queensland state election, Australia, 1907.

State Library of Queensland

Women were excluded from voting in ancient Greece and republican Rome, as well as in the few democracies that had emerged in Europe by the end of the 18th century. When the franchise was widened, as it was in the United Kingdom in 1832, women continued to be denied all voting rights. The question of women’s voting rights finally became an issue in the 19th century, and the struggle was particularly intense in Great Britain and the United States, but those countries were not the first to grant women the right to vote, at least not on a national basis. By the early years of the 20th century, women had won the right to vote in national elections in New Zealand (1893), Australia (1902), Finland (1906), and Norway (1913). In Sweden and the United States they had voting rights in some local elections.

World War I and its aftermath speeded up the enfranchisement of women in the countries of Europe and elsewhere. In the period 1914–39, women in 28 additional countries acquired either equal voting rights with men or the right to vote in national elections. Those countries included Soviet Russia (1917); Canada, Germany, Austria, and Poland (1918); Czechoslovakia (1919); the United States and Hungary (1920); Great Britain (1918 and 1928); Burma (Myanmar; 1922); Ecuador (1929); South Africa (1930); Brazil, Uruguay, and Thailand (1932); Turkey and Cuba (1934); and the Philippines (1937). In a number of those countries, women were initially granted the right to vote in municipal or other local elections or perhaps in provincial elections; only later were they granted the right to vote in national elections.

Learn about some of the strange justifications that used to be made for not allowing women the right …

Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

Immediately after World War II, France, Italy, Romania, Yugoslavia, and China were added to the group. Full suffrage for women was introduced in India by the constitution in 1949; in Pakistan women received full voting rights in national elections in 1956. In another decade the total number of countries that had given women the right to vote reached more than 100, partly because nearly all countries that gained independence after World War II guaranteed equal voting rights to men and women in their constitutions. By 1971 Switzerland allowed women to vote in federal and most cantonal elections, and in 1973 women were granted full voting rights in Syria. The United Nations Convention on the Political Rights of Women, adopted in 1952, provides that “women shall be entitled to vote in all elections on equal terms with men, without any discrimination.”

Historically, the United Kingdom and the United States provide characteristic examples of the struggle for women’s suffrage in the 19th and 20th centuries. Great Britain

British suffragists marching on the Houses of Parliament, London, followed by jeering spectators, c. …

Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (digital file no. 3a45273)

From Britain's first mass-suffrage petition (1866) to the passage of the 1918 Representation of the…

Title page of the 1792 American edition of Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of…

Library of Congress Rare Book and Special Collections Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA

In Great Britain woman suffrage was first advocated by Mary Wollstonecraft in her book A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) and was demanded by the Chartist movement of the 1840s. The demand for woman suffrage was increasingly taken up by prominent liberal intellectuals in England from the 1850s on, notably by John Stuart Mill and his wife, Harriet. The first woman suffrage committee was formed in Manchester in 1865, and in 1867 Mill presented to Parliament this society’s petition, which demanded the vote for women and contained about 1,550 signatures. The Reform Bill of 1867 contained no provision for woman suffrage, but meanwhile woman suffrage societies were forming in most of the major cities of Britain, and in the 1870s these organizations submitted to Parliament petitions demanding the franchise for women and containing a total of almost three million signatures.

Dame Christabel Harriette Pankhurst (left) and her mother, Emmeline Pankhurst.

British suffragette under arrest after participating in an attack on Buckingham Palace, London, in…

BBC Hutton Picture Library

The struggle for women's right to vote in British parliamentary elections, part 1.

The struggle for women's right to vote in British parliamentary elections, part 2.

The succeeding years saw the defeat of every major suffrage bill brought before Parliament. This was chiefly because neither of the leading politicians of the day, William Gladstone and Benjamin Disraeli, cared to affront Queen Victoria’s implacable opposition to the women’s movement. In 1869, however, Parliament did grant women taxpayers the right to vote in municipal elections, and in the ensuing decades women became eligible to sit on county and city councils. The right to vote in parliamentary elections was still denied to women, however, despite the considerable support that existed in Parliament for legislation to that effect. In 1897 the various suffragist societies united into one National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, thus bringing a greater degree of coherence and organization to the movement. Out of frustration at the lack of governmental action, however, a segment of the woman suffrage movement became more militant under the leadership of Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughter Christabel. After the return to power of the Liberal Party in 1906, the succeeding years saw the defeat of seven suffrage bills in Parliament. As a consequence, many suffragists became involved in increasingly violent actions as time went on. These women militants, or suffragettes, as they were known, were sent to prison and continued their protests there by engaging in hunger strikes.

Meanwhile, public support of the woman suffrage movement grew in volume, and public demonstrations, exhibitions, and processions were organized in support of women’s right to vote. When World War I began, the woman suffrage organizations shifted their energies to aiding the war effort, and their effectiveness did much to win the public wholeheartedly to the cause of woman suffrage. The need for the enfranchisement of women was finally recognized by most members of Parliament from all three major parties, and the resulting Representation of the People Act was passed by the House of Commons in June 1917 and by the House of Lords in February 1918. Under this act, all women age 30 or over received the complete franchise. An act to enable women to sit in the House of Commons was enacted shortly afterward. In 1928 the voting age for women was lowered to 21 to place women voters on an equal footing with male voters.

The United States

Women's suffragists at their organization's headquarters in Philadelphia, 1917.

Harris and Ewing Collection/Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (neg. no. LC-H261-8200)

From the founding of the United States, women were almost universally excluded from voting. Only when women began to chafe at this restriction, however, was their exclusion made explicit. The movement for woman suffrage started in the early 19th century during the agitation against slavery. Women such as Lucretia Mott showed a keen interest in the antislavery movement and proved to be admirable public speakers. When Elizabeth Cady Stanton joined the antislavery forces, she and Mott agreed that the rights of women, as well as those of slaves, needed redress. In July 1848 they issued a call for a convention to discuss the issue of women’s rights; this convention met in Stanton’s hometown, Seneca Falls, New York, on July 19–20, 1848, and issued a declaration that called for woman suffrage and for the right of women to educational and employment opportunities. (SeeSeneca Falls Convention.) It was followed in 1850 by the first national convention of the women’s movement, held in Worcester, Massachusetts, by Lucy Stone and a group of prominent Eastern suffragists. Another convention, held in Syracuse, New York, in 1852, was the occasion of the first joint venture between Stanton and the dynamic suffragist leader Susan B. Anthony; together these two figures led the American suffragist movement for the next 50 years.

Victoria Woodhull arguing for women's suffrage before the Judiciary Committee of the U.S. House of…

Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (digital file no. 3a05761u)

Headquarters of an anti-suffrage group, New York City.

Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

Other woman suffrage conventions were held as the movement gained its first mass strength, but at first no way of extending the vote to women was known except by amendments to the constitutions of the various states. Several attempts were made in this regard after the American Civil War (1861–65), but even though the Territory of Wyoming granted women the right to vote in all elections in 1869, it soon became apparent that an amendment of the federal Constitution would be a preferable plan. Accordingly, the National Woman Suffrage Association was formed in 1869 with the declared object of securing the ballot for women by an amendment to the Constitution. Anthony and Stanton were the leaders of this organization, which held a convention every year for 50 years after its founding. In 1869 another organization, the American Woman Suffrage Association, was founded by Lucy Stone with the aim of securing woman suffrage by obtaining amendments to that effect in the constitutions of the various states. In 1890 the two organizations united under the name National American Woman Suffrage Association and worked together for almost 30 years.

The program cover of the National American Woman Suffrage Association's march on Washington, D.C.,…

Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (reproduction no. LC-DIG-ppmsca-12512)

International gathering of woman suffrage advocates in Washington, D.C., 1888; seated (from left)…

Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

When Wyoming entered the Union in 1890, it became the first state whose constitution accorded women the right to vote. Subsequently, vigorous campaigns were conducted to persuade state legislatures to submit to their voters amendments to state constitutions conferring full suffrage to women in state affairs. Efforts were also made to give women the right to vote in presidential elections and, in some states, the right to vote in municipal and local elections. In the next 25 years various individual states yielded to the movement’s demands and enfranchised their women; each such state increased the members of Congress elected partly by women. These members were thus at least partly obliged by the nature of their constituency to vote for a woman suffrage amendment to the United States Constitution. By 1918 women had acquired equal suffrage with men in 15 states.

The Nineteenth Amendment, which granted women the right to vote in the United States.

National Archives and Records Administration

Women casting their votes in New York City, c. 1920s.

Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (digital file no. 00037)

Questions and answers about women's suffrage.

Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

World War I, and the major role played in it by women in various capacities, broke down most of the remaining opposition to woman suffrage in the United States. Amendments to the federal Constitution concerning woman suffrage had been introduced into Congress in 1878 and 1914, but the 1878 amendment had been overwhelmingly defeated, and the 1914 amendment had narrowly failed to gain even a simple majority of the votes in the House of Representatives and the Senate (a two-thirds majority vote in Congress was needed for the amendment to be sent to the state legislatures for ratification). By 1918, however, both major political parties were committed to woman suffrage, and the amendment was carried by the necessary two-thirds majorities in both the House and Senate in January 1918 and June 1919, respectively. Vigorous campaigns were then waged to secure ratification of the amendment by two-thirds of the state legislatures, and on August 18, 1920, Tennessee became the 36th state to ratify the amendment. On August 26 the Nineteenth Amendment was proclaimed by the secretary of state as being part of the Constitution of the United States. Women in the United States were enfranchised on an equal basis with men. The text reads as follows:

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

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Alice Paul

Britannica Note:

Alice Paul introduced the first equal rights amendment campaign in the United States.

(born January 11, 1885, Mount Laurel, New Jersey, U.S.—died July 9, 1977, Moorestown, New Jersey), American women’s suffrage leader who first proposed an equal rights amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Alice Paul.

Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; neg. no. LC USZ 62 64243

Paul was reared in a Quaker home. She graduated from Swarthmore College (1905) and pursued postgraduate studies at the New York School of Social Work. She then went to England to do settlement work (1906–09), and during her stay there she was jailed three times for suffragist agitation. She also continued to do postgraduate work at the Universities of Birmingham and London and received degrees from the University of Pennsylvania (M.A., 1907, in absentia; Ph.D., 1912). Returning to the United States, she advocated the use of militant tactics to publicize the need for a federal women’s suffrage amendment to the U.S. Constitution. In 1912 she became chairman of the congressional committee of the National American Woman Suffrage Association but soon differed with what she considered its timid policies; in 1913 Paul

and a group of like-minded militants withdrew to found the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage, which in 1917 merged with the Woman’s Party to form the National Woman’s Party.

Prominent women's suffrage advocates c. 1910–15, parading in an open car to support ratification of…

George Grantham Bain Collection/Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (digital file no. 19032)

Paul organized marches, White House protests, and rallies. Her militancy in the fight for women’s suffrage led to her imprisonment on three more occasions before the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. Thereafter Paul took a law degree from the Washington College of Law (1922) and master’s and doctor’s degrees from American University (1927 and 1928); she also continued her activities on behalf of equal rights for women. She drafted and had introduced into Congress in 1923 the first equal rights amendment to the Constitution. When it failed to pass, Paul turned her attention to an international forum, concentrating with considerable success during the 1920s and ’30s on obtaining support for her crusade from the League of Nations. She was chairman of the Woman’s Research Foundation (1927–37), and in 1938 she founded and represented at League headquarters in Geneva the World Party for Equal Rights for Women, known as the World Women’s Party. Paul insisted that many of the troubles of the world resulted from women’s lack of political power, and she reiterated this view when World War II broke out: it need not have occurred, she declared, and probably would not have if women had been able to have their say at the Paris Peace Conference at the end of World War I.

Elected chairman of the National Woman’s Party in 1942, Paul continued thereafter to work for women’s rights in general and for an equal rights amendment to the Constitution in particular. In the interim she successfully lobbied for references to gender equality in the preamble to the United Nations charter and in the 1964 U.S. Civil Rights Act. Paul was long considered the elder stateswoman of the feminist movement.

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Declaration of Sentiments

document, outlining the rights that American women should be entitled to as citizens, that emerged from the Seneca Falls Convention in New York in July 1848. Three days before the convention, feministsLucretia Mott, Martha C. Wright, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Mary Ann McClintock met to assemble the agenda for the meeting along with the speeches that would be made. The Declaration of Sentiments, written primarily by Stanton, was based on the Declaration of Independence to parallel the struggles of the Founding Fathers with those of the women’s movement. As one of the first statements of the political and social repression of American women, the Declaration of Sentiments met with significant hostility upon its publication and, with the Seneca Falls Convention, marked the start of the women’s rights movement in the United States.

The Declaration of Sentiments begins by asserting the equality of all men and women and reiterates that both genders are endowed with unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It argues that women are oppressed by the government and the patriarchal society of which they are a part. The text then lists 16 facts illustrating the extent of this oppression, including the lack of women’s suffrage, participation, and representation in the government; women’s lack of property rights in marriage; inequality in divorce law; and inequality in education and employment opportunities. The document insists that women be viewed as full citizens of the United States and be granted all the same rights and privileges that were granted to men.

The Declaration of Sentiments was read by Stanton at the Seneca Falls Convention on July 20 and was followed by the passage of 12 resolutions relating to women’s rights. Interestingly, the only resolution that did not pass unanimously was that which called for women’s suffrage, as some were concerned that the issue was too controversial and would hurt their efforts for equality in other arenas. Sixty-eight women and 32 men, including abolitionistFrederick Douglass, signed the Declaration of Sentiments, although many eventually withdrew their names because of the intense ridicule and criticism they received after the document was made public.

Carrie L. Cokely

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Elizabeth Cady Stanton

née Elizabeth Cady, (born November 12, 1815, Johnstown, New York, U.S.—died October 26, 1902, New York, New York), American leader in the women’s rights movement who in 1848 formulated the first organized demand for woman suffrage in the United States.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (LC-USZ62-28195)

Elizabeth Cady received a superior education at home, at the Johnstown Academy, and at Emma Willard’s Troy Female Seminary, from which she graduated in 1832. While studying law in the office of her father, Daniel Cady, a U.S. congressman and later a New York Supreme Court judge, she learned of the discriminatory laws under which women lived and determined to win equal rights for her sex. In 1840 she married Henry Brewster Stanton, a lawyer and abolitionist (she insisted that the word “obey” be dropped from the wedding ceremony). Later that year they attended the World’s Anti- Slavery Convention in London, and she was outraged at the denial of official recognition to several women delegates, notably Lucretia C. Mott, because of their sex. She became a frequent speaker on the subject of women’s rights and circulated petitions that helped secure passage by the New York legislature in 1848 of a bill granting married women’s property rights.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton (seated) and Susan B. Anthony.

Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (neg. no. LC USZ 62 37938)

In 1848 she and Mott issued a call for a women’s rights convention to meet in Seneca Falls, New York (where Stanton lived), on July 19–20 and in Rochester, New York, on subsequent days. At the meeting Stanton introduced her Declaration of Sentiments, modeled on the Declaration of Independence, that detailed the inferior status of women and that, in calling for extensive reforms, effectively launched the American women’s rights movement. She also introduced a resolution calling for woman suffrage that was adopted after considerable debate. From 1851 she worked closely with Susan B. Anthony; together they remained active for 50 years after the first convention, planning campaigns, speaking before legislative bodies, and addressing gatherings in conventions, in lyceums, and in the streets. Stanton, the better orator and writer, was perfectly complemented by Anthony, the organizer and tactician. She wrote not only her own and many of Anthony’s addresses but also countless letters and pamphlets, as well as articles and essays for numerous periodicals, including Amelia Bloomer’s Lily, Paulina Wright Davis’s Una, and Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune. (To read Stanton’s 1892 address to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, seeElizabeth Cady Stanton: The Solitude of Self.)

Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

From Eighty Years and More (1815-1897) Reminiscences of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, 1898

In 1854 Stanton received an unprecedented invitation to address the New York legislature; her speech resulted in new legislation in 1860 granting married women the rights to their wages and to equal guardianship of their children. During her presidency in 1852–53 of the short-lived Woman’s State Temperance Society, which she and Anthony had founded, she scandalized many of her most ardent supporters by suggesting that drunkenness be made sufficient cause for divorce. Liberalized divorce laws continued to be one of her principal issues.

During the Civil War, Stanton again worked for abolitionism. In 1863 she and Anthony organized the Women’s National Loyal League, which gathered more than 300,000 signatures on petitions calling for immediate emancipation. The movement to extend the franchise to African American men after the war, however, caused her bitterness and outrage, reemphasized the disenfranchisement of women, and led her and her colleagues to redouble their efforts for woman suffrage.

Stanton and Anthony made several exhausting speaking and organizing tours on behalf of woman suffrage. In 1868 Stanton became coeditor (with Parker Pillsbury) of the newly established weekly The Revolution, a newspaper devoted to women’s rights. She continued to write fiery editorials until the paper’s demise in 1870. She helped organize the National Woman Suffrage Association in 1869 and was named its president, a post she retained until 1890, when the organization merged with the rival American Woman Suffrage Association. She was then elected president of the new National American Woman Suffrage Association and held that position until 1892.

International gathering of woman suffrage advocates in Washington, D.C., 1888; seated (from left)…

Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

Stanton continued to write and lecture tirelessly. She was the principal author of the Declaration of Rights for Women presented at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876. In 1878 she drafted a federal suffrage amendment that was introduced in every Congress thereafter until women were granted the right to vote in 1920. With Susan B. Anthony and Matilda Joslyn Gage she compiled the first three volumes of the six-volume History of Woman Suffrage. She also published The Woman’s Bible, 2 vol. (1895–98), and an autobiography, Eighty Years and More (1898). The Elizabeth Cady Stanton–Susan B. Anthony Reader (1992), edited by Ellen Carol DuBois, collects essays and letters on a variety of topics. Additional documents are available in The Selected Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony (1997– ), edited by Ann D. Gordon.

EB Editors Additional Reading

Lois W. Banner, Elizabeth Cady Stanton: A Radical for Women’s Rights (1980); and Elisabeth Griffith, In Her Own Right: The Life of Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1984), portray her private life and her development as a leader.

Citation (MLA style):

"Elizabeth Cady Stanton." Britannica LaunchPacks: The Women's Suffrage Movement in the United States, Encyclopædia Britannica, 24 May. 2018. packs.eb.com. Accessed 14 Oct. 2020.

While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions.

feminism

the belief in social, economic, and political equality of the sexes. Although largely originating in the West, feminism is manifested worldwide and is represented by various institutions committed to activity on behalf of women’s rights and interests.

Title page of the 1792 American edition of Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of…

Library of Congress Rare Book and Special Collections Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA

Throughout most of Western history, women were confined to the domestic sphere, while public life was reserved for men. In medieval Europe, women were denied the right to own property, to study, or to participate in public life. At the end of the 19th century in France, they were still compelled to cover their heads in public, and, in parts of Germany, a husband still had the right to sell his wife. Even as late as the early 20th century, women could neither vote nor hold elective office in Europe and in most of the United States (where several territories and states granted women’s suffrage long before the federal government did so). Women were prevented from conducting business without a male representative, be it father, brother, husband, legal agent, or even son. Married women could not exercise control over their own children without the permission of their husbands. Moreover, women had little or no access to education and were barred from most professions. In some parts of the world, such restrictions on women continue today. History of feminism

The ancient world

There is scant evidence of early organized protest against such circumscribed status. In the 3rd century bce, Roman women filled the Capitoline Hill and blocked every entrance to the Forum when consul Marcus Porcius Cato resisted attempts to repeal laws limiting women’s use of expensive goods. “If they are victorious now, what will they not attempt?” Cato cried. “As soon as they begin to be your equals, they will have become your superiors.”

Christine de Pisan.

The Print Collector/Heritage-Images

That rebellion proved exceptional, however. For most of recorded history, only isolated voices spoke out against the inferior status of women, presaging the arguments to come. In late 14th- and early 15th-century France, the first feminist philosopher, Christine de Pisan, challenged prevailing attitudes toward women with a bold call for female education. Her mantle was taken up later in the century by Laura Cereta, a 15th-century Venetian woman who published Epistolae familiares (1488; “Personal Letters”; Eng. trans. Collected Letters of a Renaissance Feminist), a volume of letters dealing with a panoply of women’s complaints, from denial of education and marital oppression to the frivolity of women’s attire.

The defense of women had become a literary subgenre by the end of the 16th century, when Il merito delle donne (1600; The Worth of Women), a feminist broadside by another Venetian author, Moderata Fonte, was published posthumously. Defenders of the status quo painted women as superficial and inherently immoral, while the emerging feminists produced long lists of women of courage and accomplishment and proclaimed that women would be the intellectual equals of men if they were given equal access to education.

The so-called “debate about women” did not reach England until the late 16th century, when pamphleteers and polemicists joined battle over the true nature of womanhood. After a series of satiric pieces mocking women was published, the first feminist pamphleteer in England, writing as Jane Anger, responded with Jane Anger, Her Protection for Women (1589). This volley of opinion continued for more than a century, until another English author, Mary Astell, issued a more reasoned rejoinder in A Serious Proposal to the Ladies (1694, 1697). The two-volume work suggested that women inclined neither toward marriage nor a religious vocation should set up secular convents where they might live, study, and teach.

Influence of the Enlightenment

The feminist voices of the Renaissance never coalesced into a coherent philosophy or movement. This happened only with the Enlightenment, when women began to demand that the new reformist rhetoric about liberty, equality, and natural rights be applied to both sexes.

Initially, Enlightenment philosophers focused on the inequities of social class and caste to the exclusion of gender. Swiss- born French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, for example, portrayed women as silly and frivolous creatures, born to be subordinate to men. In addition, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, which defined French citizenship after the revolution of 1789, pointedly failed to address the legal status of women.

Mary Wollstonecraft, oil on canvas by John Opie, c. 1797; in the National Portrait Gallery, London.

Female intellectuals of the Enlightenment were quick to point out this lack of inclusivity and the limited scope of reformist rhetoric. Olympe de Gouges, a noted playwright, published Déclaration des droits de la femme et de la citoyenne (1791; “Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the [Female] Citizen”), declaring women to be not only man’s equal but his partner. The following year Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), the seminal English- language feminist work, was published in England. Challenging the notion that women exist only to please men, she proposed that women and men be given equal opportunities in education, work, and politics. Women, she wrote, are as naturally rational as men. If they are silly, it is only because society trains them to be irrelevant.

The Age of Enlightenment turned into an era of political ferment marked by revolutions in France, Germany, and Italy and the rise of abolitionism. In the United States, feminist activism took root when female abolitionists sought to apply the concepts of freedom and equality to their own social and political situations. Their work brought them in contact with female abolitionists in England who were reaching the same conclusions. By the mid-19th century, issues surrounding feminism had added to the tumult of social change, with ideas being exchanged across Europe and North America.

In the first feminist article she dared sign with her own name, Louise Otto, a German, built on the work of Charles Fourier, a French social theorist, quoting his dictum that “by the position which women hold in a land, you can see whether the air of a state is thick with dirty fog or free and clear.” And after Parisian feminists began publishing a daily newspaper entitled La Voix des femmes (“The Voice of Women”) in 1848, Luise Dittmar, a German writer, followed suit one year later with her journal, Soziale Reform.

The suffrage movement

Lucretia Mott.

Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (reproduction no. LC-USZ62-42559)

Elizabeth Cady Stanton (seated) with Susan B. Anthony.

Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (neg. no. LC USZ 62 37938)

These debates and discussions culminated in the first women’s rights convention, held in July 1848 in the small town of Seneca Falls, New York. It was a spur-of-the-moment idea that sprang up during a social gathering of Lucretia Mott, a Quaker preacher and veteran social activist, Martha Wright (Mott’s sister), Mary Ann McClintock, Jane Hunt, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the wife of an abolitionist and the only non-Quaker in the group. The convention was planned with five days’ notice, publicized only by a small unsigned advertisement in a local newspaper.

Stanton drew up the “Declaration of Sentiments” that guided the Seneca Falls Convention. Using the Declaration of Independence as her guide to proclaim that “all men and women [had been] created equal,” she drafted 11 resolutions, including the most radical demand—the right to the vote. With Frederick Douglass, a former slave, arguing eloquently on their behalf, all 11 resolutions passed, and Mott even won approval of a final declaration “for the overthrowing of the monopoly of the pulpit, and for the securing to woman equal participation with men in the various trades, professions and commerce.”

Sojourner Truth.

Courtesy of the Burton Historical Collection, Detroit Public Library

Yet by emphasizing education and political rights that were the privileges of the upper classes, the embryonic feminist movement had little connection with ordinary women cleaning houses in Liverpool or picking cotton in Georgia. The single nonwhite woman’s voice heard at this time—that of Sojourner Truth, a former slave—symbolized the distance between the ordinary and the elite. Her famous “Ain’t I a Woman” speech was delivered in 1851 before the Women’s Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio, but Truth did not dedicate her life to women’s rights. Instead, she promoted abolitionism and a land-distribution program for other former slaves. In the speech, Truth remarked, “That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain’t I a woman?”

A history of women's suffrage around the world.

Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

Although Seneca Falls was followed by women’s rights conventions in other states, the interest spurred by those first moments of organizing quickly faded. Concern in the United States turned to the pending Civil War, while in Europe the reformism of the 1840s gave way to the repression of the late 1850s. When the feminist movement rebounded, it became focused on a single issue, women’s suffrage, a goal that would dominate international feminism for almost 70 years.

Susan B. Anthony.

Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

After the American Civil War, feminists assumed that women’s suffrage would be included in the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which prohibited disfranchisement on the basis of race. Yet leading abolitionists refused to support such inclusion, which prompted Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, a temperance activist, to form the National Woman Suffrage Association in 1869. At first they based their demand for the vote on the Enlightenment principle of natural law, regularly invoking the concept of inalienable rights granted to all Americans by the Declaration of Independence. By 1900, however, the American passion for such principles as equality had been dampened by a flood of Eastern European immigrants and the growth of urban slums. Suffragist leaders, reflecting that shift in attitude, began appealing for the vote

not on the principle of justice or on the common humanity of men and women but on racist and nativist grounds. As early as 1894, Carrie Chapman Catt declared that the votes of literate, American-born, middle-class women would balance the votes of foreigners: “[C]ut off the vote of the slums and give to woman…the ballot.”

National convention of the Women's Trade Union League, 1913.

Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (LC-USZ62-63378)

This elitist inclination widened the divide between feminist organizers and the masses of American women who lived in those slums or spoke with foreign accents. As a result, working-class women—already more concerned with wages, hours, and protective legislation than with either the vote or issues such as women’s property rights—threw themselves into the trade union movement rather than the feminists’ ranks. Anthony, however, ceded no ground. In the 1890s she asked for labour’s support for women’s suffrage but insisted that she and her movement would do nothing about the demands made by working women until her own battle had been won. Similarly, when asked to support the fight against Jim Crow segregation on the nation’s railroads, she refused.

Emma Goldman.

Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (digital file no. LC-DIG-ggbain-21014)

Radical feminists challenged the single-minded focus on suffrage as the sine qua non of women’s liberation. Emma Goldman, the nation’s leading anarchist, mocked the notion that the ballot could secure equality for women, since it hardly accomplished that for the majority of American men. Women would gain their freedom, she said, only “by refusing the right to anyone over her body…by refusing to be a servant to God, the state, society, the husband, the family, etc., by making her life simpler but deeper and richer.” Likewise, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, in Women and Economics (1898),

insisted that women would not be liberated until they were freed from the “domestic mythology” of home and family that kept them dependent on men.

Alice Paul, 1920.

Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (neg. no. LC-USZ62-20176)

Emmeline Pankhurst in prison clothes, 1908

BBC Hulton Picture Library

Mainstream feminist leaders such as Stanton succeeded in marginalizing more extreme demands such as Goldman’s and Gilman’s, but they failed to secure the vote for women. It was not until a different kind of radical, Alice Paul, reignited the women’s suffrage movement in the United States by copying English activists. Like the Americans, British suffragists, led by the National Union of Woman Suffrage Societies, had initially approached their struggle politely, with ladylike lobbying. But in 1903 a dissident faction led by Emmeline Pankhurst began a series of boycotts, bombings, and pickets. Their tactics ignited the nation, and in 1918 the British Parliament extended the vote to women householders, householders’ wives, and female university graduates over the age of 30.

The Nineteenth Amendment, which granted women the right to vote in the United States.

National Archives and Records Administration

Following the British lead, Paul’s forces, the “shock troops” of the American suffrage crusade, organized mass demonstrations, parades, and confrontations with the police. In 1920 American feminism claimed its first major triumph with the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution.

The post-suffrage era

Once the crucial goal of suffrage had been achieved, the feminist movement virtually collapsed in both Europe and the United States. Lacking an ideology beyond the achievement of the vote, feminism fractured into a dozen splinter groups: the Women’s Joint Congressional Committee, a lobbying group, fought for legislation to promote education and maternal and infant health care; the League of Women Voters organized voter registration and education drives; and the Women’s Trade Union League launched a campaign for protective labour legislation for women.

Each of these groups offered some civic contribution, but none was specifically feminist in nature. Filling the vacuum, the National Woman’s Party, led by Paul, proposed a new initiative meant to remove discrimination from American laws and move women closer to equality through an Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) that would ban any government-sanctioned discrimination based on sex. Infighting began because many feminists were not looking for strict equality; they were fighting for laws that would directly benefit women. Paul, however, argued that protective legislation—such as laws mandating maximum eight-hour shifts for female factory workers—actually closed the door of opportunity on women by imposing costly rules on employers, who would then be inclined to hire fewer women.

Questions abounded. Could women be freed from discrimination without damaging the welfare and protective apparatus so many needed? What was the goal of the feminist movement—to create full equality, or to respond to the needs of women? And if the price of equality was the absence of protection, how many women really wanted equality? The debate was not limited to the United States. Some proponents of women’s rights, such as Aletta Jacobs of the Netherlands or Beatrice Webb of England, agreed with Paul’s demand for equality and opposed protective legislation for women. Women members of trade unions, however, defended the need for laws that would help them.

This philosophical dispute was confined to relatively rarefied circles. Throughout the United States, as across Europe, Americans believed that women had achieved their liberation. Women were voting, although in small numbers and almost exactly like their male counterparts. Even Suzanne LaFollette, a radical feminist, concluded in 1926 that women’s struggle “is very largely won.” Before any flaws in that pronouncement could be probed, the nation—and the world—plunged into the Great Depression. Next, World War II largely obliterated feminist activism on any continent. The war did open employment opportunities for women—from working in factories (“Rosie the Riveter” became an American icon) to playing professional baseball—but these doors of opportunity were largely closed after the war, when women routinely lost their jobs to men discharged from military service. This turn of events angered many women, but few were willing to mount any organized protest.

In the United States the difficulties of the preceding 15 years were followed by a new culture of domesticity. Women began marrying younger and having more children than they had in the 1920s. Such television programs as Father Knows Best and Ozzie and Harriet reflected what many observers called an idyllic suburban life. By 1960 the percentage of employed female professionals was down compared with figures for 1930. The second wave of feminism

The women’s movement of the 1960s and ’70s, the so-called “second wave” of feminism, represented a seemingly abrupt break with the tranquil suburban life pictured in American popular culture. Yet the roots of the new rebellion were buried in the frustrations of college-educated mothers whose discontent impelled their daughters in a new direction. If first-wave feminists were inspired by the abolition movement, their great-granddaughters were swept into feminism by the civil rights movement, the attendant discussion of principles such as equality and justice, and the revolutionary ferment caused by protests against the Vietnam War.

Women’s concerns were on Pres. John F. Kennedy’s agenda even before this public discussion began. In 1961 he created the President’s Commission on the Status of Women and appointed Eleanor Roosevelt to lead it. Its report, issued in 1963, firmly supported the nuclear family and preparing women for motherhood. But it also documented a national pattern of employment discrimination, unequal pay, legal inequality, and meagre support services for working women that needed to be corrected through legislative guarantees of equal pay for equal work, equal job opportunities, and expanded child- care services. The Equal Pay Act of 1963 offered the first guarantee, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was amended to bar employers from discriminating on the basis of sex.

Some deemed these measures insufficient in a country where classified advertisements still segregated job openings by sex, where state laws restricted women’s access to contraception, and where incidences of rape and domestic violence

remained undisclosed. In the late 1960s, then, the notion of a women’s rights movement took root at the same time as the civil rights movement, and women of all ages and circumstances were swept up in debates about gender, discrimination, and the nature of equality.

Dissension and debate

Mainstream groups such as the National Organization for Women (NOW) launched a campaign for legal equity, while ad hoc groups staged sit-ins and marches for any number of reasons—from assailing college curricula that lacked female authors to promoting the use of the word Ms. as a neutral form of address—that is, one that did not refer to marital status. Health collectives and rape crisis centres were established. Children’s books were rewritten to obviate sexual stereotypes. Women’s studies departments were founded at colleges and universities. Protective labour laws were overturned. Employers found to have discriminated against female workers were required to compensate with back pay. Excluded from male-dominated occupations for decades, women began finding jobs as pilots, construction workers, soldiers, bankers, and bus drivers.

Unlike the first wave, second-wave feminism provoked extensive theoretical discussion about the origins of women’s oppression, the nature of gender, and the role of the family. Kate Millett’s Sexual Politics made the best-seller list in 1970, and in it she broadened the term politics to include all “power-structured relationships” and posited that the personal was actually political. Shulamith Firestone, a founder of the New York Radical Feminists, published The Dialectic of Sex in the same year, insisting that love disadvantaged women by creating intimate shackles between them and the men they loved—men who were also their oppressors. One year later, Germaine Greer, an Australian living in London, published The Female Eunuch, in which she argued that the sexual repression of women cuts them off from the creative energy they need to be independent and self-fulfilled.

Any attempt to create a coherent, all-encompassing feminist ideology was doomed. While most could agree on the questions that needed to be asked about the origins of gender distinctions, the nature of power, or the roots of sexual violence, the answers to those questions were bogged down by ideological hairsplitting, name-calling, and mutual recrimination. Even the term liberation could mean different things to different people.

Feminism became a river of competing eddies and currents. “Anarcho-feminists,” who found a larger audience in Europe than in the United States, resurrected Emma Goldman and said that women could not be liberated without dismantling such institutions as the family, private property, and state power. Individualist feminists, calling on libertarian principles of minimal government, broke with most other feminists over the issue of turning to government for solutions to women’s problems. “Amazon feminists” celebrated the mythical female heroine and advocated liberation through physical strength. And separatist feminists, including many lesbian feminists, preached that women could not possibly liberate themselves without at least a period of separation from men.

Ultimately, three major streams of thought surfaced. The first was liberal, or mainstream, feminism, which focused its energy on concrete and pragmatic change at an institutional and governmental level. Its goal was to integrate women more thoroughly into the power structure and to give women equal access to positions men had traditionally dominated. While aiming for strict equality (to be evidenced by such measures as an equal number of women and men in positions of power, or an equal amount of money spent on male and female student athletes), these liberal feminist groups nonetheless supported the modern equivalent of protective legislation such as special workplace benefits for mothers.

In contrast to the pragmatic approach taken by liberal feminism, radical feminism aimed to reshape society and restructure its institutions, which they saw as inherently patriarchal. Providing the core theory for modern feminism, radicals argued that women’s subservient role in society was too closely woven into the social fabric to be unraveled

without a revolutionary revamping of society itself. They strove to supplant hierarchical and traditional power relationships they saw as reflecting a male bias, and they sought to develop nonhierarchical and antiauthoritarian approaches to politics and organization.

Finally, cultural or “difference” feminism, the last of the three currents, rejected the notion that men and women are intrinsically the same and advocated celebrating the qualities they associated with women, such as their greater concern for affective relationships and their nurturing preoccupation with others. Inherent in its message was a critique of mainstream feminism’s attempt to enter traditionally male spheres. This was seen as denigrating women’s natural inclinations by attempting to make women more like men.

The race factor

Alice Walker, 1992.

AP Images

Like first-wave feminism, the second wave was largely defined and led by educated middle-class white women who built the movement primarily around their own concerns. This created an ambivalent, if not contentious, relationship with women of other classes and races. The campaign against employment and wage discrimination helped bridge the gap between the movement and white labour union women. But the relationship of feminism to African American women always posed greater challenges. White feminists defined gender as the principal source of their exclusion from full participation in American life; Black women were forced to confront the interplay between racism and sexism and to figure out how to make Black men think about gender issues while making white women think about racial issues. Such issues were addressed by Black feminists including Michele Wallace, Mary Ann Weathers, bell hooks, Alice Walker, and Bettina Aptheker.

The call by white feminists for unity and solidarity was based on their assumption that women constituted a gender-based class or caste that was unified by common oppression. Many Black women had difficulty seeing white women as their feminist sisters; in the eyes of many African Americans, after all, white women were as much the oppressor as white men. “How relevant are the truths, the experiences, the findings of White women to Black women?” asked Toni Cade Bambara in The Black Woman: An Anthology (1970). “I don’t know that our priorities are the same, that our concerns and methods are the same.” As far back as Sojourner Truth, Black feminists had seen white feminists as incapable of understanding their concerns.

Yet some Black women, especially middle-class Black women, also insisted that it was fundamentally different to be Black and female than to be Black and male. During the first conference of the National Black Feminist Organization, held in New York City in 1973, Black women activists acknowledged that many of the goals central to the mainstream feminist movement—day care, abortion, maternity leave, violence—were critical to African American women as well. On specific issues, then, African American feminists and white feminists built an effective working relationship.

The globalization of feminism

By the end of the 20th century, European and American feminists had begun to interact with the nascent feminist movements of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. As this happened, women in developed countries, especially intellectuals, were horrified to discover that women in some countries were required to wear veils in public or to endure forced marriage, female infanticide, widow burning, or female genital cutting (FGC). Many Western feminists soon perceived themselves as saviours of Third World women, little realizing that their perceptions of and solutions to social problems were often at odds with the real lives and concerns of women in these regions. In many parts of Africa, for example, the status of women had begun to erode significantly only with the arrival of European colonialism. In those regions, then, the notion that patriarchy was the chief problem—rather than European imperialism—seemed absurd.

A woman displaced by Syria's civil war carrying her infant and a bucket of clothes at a refugee camp …

Mohammad Hannon/AP

The conflicts between women in developed and developing nations played out most vividly at international conferences. After the 1980 World Conference of the United Nations Decade for Women: Equality, Development and Peace, in Copenhagen, women from less-developed nations complained that the veil and FGC had been chosen as conference priorities without consulting the women most concerned. It seemed that their counterparts in the West were not listening to them. During the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development, in Cairo, women from the Third World protested outside because they believed the agenda had been hijacked by Europeans and Americans. The protesters had expected to talk about ways that underdevelopment was holding women back. Instead, conference organizers chose to focus on contraception and abortion. “[Third World women] noted that they could not very well worry about other matters when their children were dying from thirst, hunger or war,” wrote Azizah al-Hibri, a law professor and scholar of Muslim women’s rights. “The conference instead centred around reducing the number of Third World babies in

order to preserve the earth’s resources, despite (or is it ‘because of’) the fact that the First World consumes much of these resources.” In Beijing, at the Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995, Third World women again criticized the priority American and European women put on reproductive rights language and issues of discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and their disinterest in the platform proposal that was most important to less-developed nations—that of restructuring international debt.

Still, the close of the 20th century saw women around the world advancing their interests, although often in fits and starts. Feminism was derailed in countries such as Afghanistan, where the staunchly reactionary and antifeminist Taliban banned even the education of girls. Elsewhere, however, feminism achieved significant gains for women, as seen in the eradication of FGC in many African countries or government efforts to end widow burning in India. More generally, and especially in the West, feminism had influenced every aspect of contemporary life, communication, and debate, from the heightened concern over sexist language to the rise of academic fields such as women’s studies and ecofeminism. Sports, divorce laws, sexual mores, organized religion—all had been affected, in many parts of the world, by feminism.

Yet questions remained: How would Western feminism deal with the dissension of women who believed the movement had gone too far and grown too radical? How uniform and successful could feminism be at the global level? Could the problems confronting women in the mountains of Pakistan or the deserts of the Middle East be addressed in isolation, or must such issues be pursued through international forums? Given the unique economic, political, and cultural situations that obtained across the globe, the answers to these questions looked quite different in Nairobi than in New York.

Elinor Burkett The third wave of feminism

The third wave of feminism emerged in the mid-1990s. It was led by so-called Generation Xers who, born in the 1960s and ’ 70s in the developed world, came of age in a media-saturated and culturally and economically diverse milieu. Although they benefitted significantly from the legal rights and protections that had been obtained by first- and second-wave feminists, they also critiqued the positions and what they felt was unfinished work of second-wave feminism.

Foundations

The third wave was made possible by the greater economic and professional power and status achieved by women of the second wave, the massive expansion in opportunities for the dissemination of ideas created by the information revolution of the late 20th century, and the coming of age of Generation X scholars and activists.

Some early adherents of the new approach were literally daughters of the second wave. Third Wave Direct Action Corporation (organized in 1992) became in 1997 the Third Wave Foundation, dedicated to supporting “groups and individuals working towards gender, racial, economic, and social justice”; both were founded by (among others) Rebecca Walker, the daughter of the novelist and second-waver Alice Walker. Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards, authors of Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future (2000), were both born in 1970 and raised by second wavers who had belonged to organized feminist groups, questioned the sexual division of labour in their households, and raised their daughters to be self-aware, empowered, articulate, high-achieving women.

These women and others like them grew up with the expectation of achievement and examples of female success as well as an awareness of the barriers presented by sexism, racism, and classism. They chose to battle such obstacles by inverting sexist, racist, and classist symbols, fighting patriarchy with irony, answering violence with stories of survival, and combating continued exclusion with grassroots activism and radical democracy. Rather than becoming part of the “machine,” third wavers began both sabotaging and rebuilding the machine itself.

Influenced by the postmodernist movement in the academy, third-wave feminists sought to question, reclaim, and redefine the ideas, words, and media that have transmitted ideas about womanhood, gender, beauty, sexuality, femininity, and masculinity, among other things. There was a decided shift in perceptions of gender, with the notion that there are some characteristics that are strictly male and others that are strictly female giving way to the concept of a gender continuum. From this perspective each person is seen as possessing, expressing, and suppressing the full range of traits that had previously been associated with one gender or the other. For third-wave feminists, therefore, “sexual liberation,” a major goal of second-wave feminism, was expanded to mean a process of first becoming conscious of the ways one’s gender identity and sexuality have been shaped by society and then intentionally constructing (and becoming free to express) one’s authentic gender identity.

Manifestations

Third wavers inherited a foothold of institutional power created by second wavers, including women’s studies programs at universities, long-standing feminist organizations, and well-established publishing outlets such as Ms. magazine and several academic journals. These outlets became a less important part of the culture of the third wave than they had been for the second wave.

Two Guerrilla Girls before the start of their exhibition “The Art of Behaving Badly” at the Kestner…

dpa picture alliance/Alamy

In expressing their concerns, third-wave feminists actively subverted, co-opted, and played on seemingly sexist images and symbols. This was evident in the double entendre and irony of the language commonly adopted by people in their self- presentations. Slang used derogatorily in most earlier contexts became proud and defiant labels. The spirit and intent of the third wave shone through the raw honesty, humour, and horror of Eve Ensler’s play (and later book) The Vagina Monologues, an exploration of women’s feelings about sexuality that included vagina-centred topics as diverse as orgasm, birth, and rape; the righteous anger of punk rock’s riot grrrls movement; and the playfulness, seriousness, and subversion of the Guerrilla Girls, a group of women artists who donned gorilla masks in an effort to expose female stereotypes and fight discrimination against female artists.

Queen Latifah, 2003.

PRNewsFoto/VH1/AP Images

The third wave was much more inclusive of women and girls of colour than the first or second waves had been. In reaction and opposition to stereotypical images of women as passive, weak, virginal, and faithful, or alternatively as domineering, demanding, slutty, and emasculating, the third wave redefined women and girls as assertive, powerful, and in control of their own sexuality. In popular culture this redefinition gave rise to icons of powerful women that included the singers Madonna, Queen Latifah, and Mary J. Blige, among others, and the women depicted in television series such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997–2003), Sex and the City (1998–2004), and Girlfriends (2000–08). Media programming for children increasingly depicted smart, independent girls and women in lead roles, including Disney heroines such as Mulan (1998) and Helen Parr and her daughter, Violet (The Incredibles, 2006), and television characters such as Dora (Dora the Explorer, 1999–2006), Carly and Sam (iCarly, 2007–12), and Sesame Street’s first female lead, Abby Cadabby, who debuted in 2006. The sassy self-expression of “Girl Power” merchandise also proved popular.

The increasing ease of publishing on the Internet meant that e-zines (electronic magazines) and blogs became ubiquitous. Many serious independent writers, not to mention organizations, found that the Internet offered a forum for the exchange of information and the publication of essays and videos that made their point to a potentially huge audience. The Internet radically democratized the content of the feminist movement with respect to participants, aesthetics, and issues.

Controversies

Predictably, third wavers faced critics. Even as the third wave found its voice, some writers were declaring themselves postfeminist and arguing that the movement had lived beyond its usefulness. Meanwhile, established feminists of the earlier generation argued that the issues had not really changed and that the younger women were not adding anything of substance. By about 2000, some writers from inside and outside the movement rushed to declare that the wave had broken. In addition, questions of sexualized behaviour raised debate on whether such things as revealing clothing,

designer-label stiletto heels, and amateur pole dancing represented true sexual liberation and gender equality or old oppressions in disguise.

As with any other social or political movement, fissures and disagreements were present in each wave of feminism. The third wave, to an extent almost unimaginable to the members of the first and second waves before it, was plural and multifaceted, comprising people of many gender, ethnic, and class identities, experiences, and interests. As such, its greatest strength, multivocality, was attacked by some as its greatest weakness. Third-wavers countered this criticism by stating that the creation of a unified agenda or philosophy—or at least, one that was unified beyond the very general statements offered by groups such as the Third Wave Foundation noted above (“groups and individuals working towards gender, racial, economic, and social justice”)—was a goal that was not only unrealistic but undesirable.

Laura BrunellEB Editors The fourth wave of feminism

Although debated by some, many claim that a fourth wave of feminism began about 2012, with a focus on sexual harassment, body shaming, and rape culture, among other issues. A key component was the use of social media to highlight and address these concerns. The new wave arose amid a number of high-profile incidents. In December 2012 a young woman was brutally gang-raped in India and subsequently died, sparking local protests and international outrage. That was followed two years later by the Gamergate campaign, a manifestation of the so-called “men’s rights movement” that had its origins on the Web site 4chan. GamerGate ostensibly sought to promote ethics in video-game journalism, but it was in reality a harassment campaign against “social justice warriors.” The latter were often women who objected to female stereotypes in video games and were subsequently inundated with death threats and rape threats.

The Women's March in Washington, D.C., 2017.

Against this background came Donald Trump’s defeat of Hillary Clinton in the U.S. presidential election in 2016. Trump had made a number of inflammatory remarks about women, and the day after the election a grandmother went on Facebook to propose a march on Washington, D.C. The suggestion quickly gained traction and became a call for social change, especially in regard to gender equality. Known as the Women’s March, it grew to include demonstrations across the United States and around the world. The protests took place on January 21, 2017, the day after Trump’s inauguration, and as many as 4.6 million people attended the various events in the United States, making the Women’s March perhaps the largest single-day demonstration in that country’s history.

Arguably even more significant was the Me Too movement, which was launched in 2006 in the United States to assist survivors of sexual violence, especially females of colour. The campaign gained widespread attention beginning in 2017, after it was revealed that film mogul Harvey Weinstein had for years sexually harassed and assaulted women in the industry with impunity. Victims of sexual harassment or assault around the world—and of all ethnicities—began sharing

their experiences on social media, using the hashtag #MeToo. The movement grew over the coming months to bring condemnation to dozens of powerful men in politics, business, entertainment, and the news media.

EB Editors Additional Reading

Alice S. Rossi (ed.), The Feminist Papers: From Adams to de Beauvoir (1973, reprinted 1988), collects some of the key works of the last 200 years of feminism. Rosemarie Putnam Tong, Feminist Thought: A More Comprehensive Introduction, 2nd ed. (1998), provides a comprehensive map of 20th-century feminist thinking that includes liberal, radical, Marxist-socialist, postmodern, and multicultural feminism.

Karen Offen, European Feminisms, 1700–1950: A Political History (2000), looks at the development of European feminism from the Enlightenment through the mid-20th century. Marlene LeGates, Making Waves: A History of Feminism in Western Society (1996), is a comprehensive survey of feminism in Europe, the United States, Canada, and Latin America dating from early Christian times to the present. Texts focusing on feminism in the United States include Jane Rendall, The Origins of Modern Feminism: Women in Britain, France, and the United States, 1780–1860 (1984, reissued 1990), which examines the political and social position of women in a comparative context in order to locate the sources of women’s rebellion; while Eleanor Flexner and Ellen Fitzpatrick, Century of Struggle: The Woman’s Rights Movement in the United States, enlarged ed. (1996), is the classic history of the complex social and political problems that confronted 19th- and early 20th-century American suffragists.

Perspectives from around the world are portrayed in Eugenia C. DeLamotte, Natania Meeker, and Jean F. O’Barr (eds.), Women Imagine Change: A Global Anthology of Women’s Resistance from 600 B.C.E. to Present (1997), a representation of women from 30 countries. Questions of class and culture are treated in M. Jacqui Alexander and Chandra Talpade Mohanty (eds.), Feminist Genealogies, Colonial Legacies, Democratic Futures (1997), which challenges mainstream notions of global feminism and embeds the struggles of women in the Third World in the struggle against neocolonialism; while Uma Narayan, Dislocating Cultures: Identities, Traditions, and Third-World Feminism (1997), shows how both Western and Third World scholars have misrepresented Third World cultures and feminist agendas.

Foundational readings in Black feminism are compiled in Henry Louis Gates (ed.), Reading Black, Reading Feminist: A Critical Anthology (1990). Early Black feminist books include Olive Gilbert and Sojourner Truth, The Narrative of Sojourner Truth (1850, reprinted 2007); and Mary Church Terrell, A Colored Woman in a White World (1940, reprinted 2005). Black feminists and women of colour continued to deconstruct the interactions of race, gender, and class during the second wave. Important works from this period include Michele Wallace, Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman (1979); Cherrie Moraga and Gloria Anzaldua (eds.), This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color (1981); Gloria T. Hull, Patricia Bell-Scott, and Barbara Smith (eds.), All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, but Some of Us Are Brave: Black Women’s Studies (1982); and Bettina Aptheker, Woman’s Legacy: Essays on Race, Sex, and Class in American History (1982), and Tapestries of Life: Women’s Work, Women’s Consciousness and the Meaning of Daily Life (1989).

Perhaps the most important Black feminist scholar of the late 20th and early 21st centuries is the prolific bell hooks, whose more than 25 books include Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism (1981); Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics (1990); Killing Rage: Ending Racism (1995); and Where We Stand: Class Matters (2000).

Third-wave feminist texts include Rebecca Walker, To Be Real: Telling the Truth and Changing the Face of Feminism (1995); Rebecca Walker (ed.), What Makes a Man: 22 Writers Imagine the Future (2004); Leslie Heywood and Jennifer Drake (eds.), Third Wave Agenda: Being Feminist, Doing Feminism (1997); Daisy Hernández and Bushra Rehman (eds.), Colonize This!: Young Women of Color on Today’s Feminism (2002); Leslie Heywood (ed.), The Women’s Movement Today: An Encyclopaedia of Third-wave Feminism (2006); and Deborah Siegel, Sisterhood, Interrupted: From Radical Women to Grrls

Gone Wild (2007). Third-wave feminism is also represented in periodicals such as Bitch: A Feminist Response to Pop Culture and Bust.

Citation (MLA style):

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Lucy Stone

(1818–93). One of the first feminists in the United States, Lucy Stone was a pioneer in the woman suffrage movement, which sought to give women the right to vote. She helped organize the first truly national women’s rights convention in 1850.

Lucy Stone.

Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (neg. no. LC-USZ62-29701)

Stone was born on Aug. 13, 1818, in West Brookfield, Mass. While still a child, she began to object to the restrictions placed on women, vowing to learn Hebrew and Greek to determine if passages in the Bible that seemed to give man dominion over woman had been properly translated. (She later did so and decided that the passages had not been rendered correctly.) After graduating from Oberlin College in 1847, she became a lecturer for the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. She soon began speaking on women’s rights as well. In the 1850s she organized several women’s rights conventions.

Stone married the Ohio abolitionistHenry Blackwell (brother of Emily and Elizabeth Blackwell) in 1855. She kept her own name as a protest against the unequal laws that restricted married women. By the 1890s the term Lucy Stoner was used for any female crusader in the women’s rights movement—particularly for a married woman who kept her own name as her surname.

After 10 years devoted to the cause in New Jersey, Stone and her husband moved to Boston, Mass. In 1869 she helped organize the American Woman Suffrage Association, an organization that sought to gain the right to vote for women state by state. At about the same time, the rival National Woman Suffrage Association was pressing instead for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The two groups disagreed over both goals and tactics, with Stone’s group considered the more conservative one. The organizations merged in 1890 to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association.

In 1870 Stone helped to found a weekly woman-suffrage publication known as the Woman’s Journal, which she and Blackwell edited from 1872. She died on Oct. 18, 1893, in Boston. Blackwell continued to edit the periodical after her death, and their daughter, Alice Stone Blackwell, succeeded him as editor.

Citation (MLA style):

"Lucy Stone." Britannica LaunchPacks: The Women's Suffrage Movement in the United States, Encyclopædia Britannica, 8 Aug. 2020. packs.eb.com. Accessed 14 Oct. 2020.

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Nineteenth Amendment

amendment (1920) to the Constitution of the United States that officially extended the right to vote to women.

Women casting their votes in New York City, c. 1920s.

Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (digital file no. 00037)

Opposition to woman suffrage in the United States predated the Constitutional Convention (1787), which drafted and adopted the Constitution. The prevailing view within society was that women should be precluded from holding office and voting—indeed, it was generally accepted (among men) that women should be protected from the evils of politics. Still, there was opposition to such patriarchal views from the beginning, as when Abigail Adams, wife of John Adams, asked her

husband in 1776, as he went to the Continental Congress to adopt the Declaration of Independence, to “remember the ladies and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors.” In the scattered places where women could vote in some types of local elections, they began to lose this right in the late 18th century.

From the founding of the United States, women were almost universally excluded from voting and their voices largely suppressed from the political sphere. Beginning in the early 19th century, as women chafed at these restrictions, the movement for woman suffrage began and was tied in large part to agitation against slavery. In July 1848 in Seneca Falls, New York, then the hometown of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the Seneca Falls Convention launched the women’s rights movement and also called for woman suffrage. The American Civil War (1861–65) resulted in the end of the institution of slavery, and in its aftermath many women abolitionists put on hold their desire for universal suffrage in favour of ensuring suffrage for newly freed male slaves.

Gradually throughout the second half of the 19th century, certain states and territories extended often limited voting rights to women. Wyoming Territory granted women the right to vote in all elections in 1869. But it soon became apparent that an amendment to the federal Constitution would be a preferable plan for suffragists. Two organizations were formed in 1869: the National Woman Suffrage Association, which sought to achieve a federal constitutional amendment that would secure the ballot for women; and the American Woman Suffrage Association, which focused on obtaining amendments to that effect in the constitutions of the various states. The two organizations worked together closely and would merge in 1890.

Learn more about the women's suffrage movement in this interview with Dr. Colleen Shogan, vice chair …

Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

In 1878 a constitutional amendment was introduced in Congress that would enshrine woman suffrage for all elections. It would be reintroduced in every Congress thereafter. In 1890 Wyoming became a state and thus also became the first state whose constitution guaranteed women the right to vote. Over the next decade several other states—all in the western part of the country—joined Wyoming. In 1912, when Theodore Roosevelt ran (unsuccessfully) as a third-party candidate for president, his party became the first national party to adopt a plank supporting a constitutional amendment.

In January 1918, with momentum clearly behind the suffragists—15 states had extended equal voting rights to women, and the amendment was formally supported by both parties and by the president, Woodrow Wilson—the amendment passed with the bare minimum two-thirds support in the House of Representatives, but it failed narrowly in the U.S. Senate. This galvanized the National Woman’s Party, which led a campaign seeking to oust senators who had voted against it.

The Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, ratified in 1920.

NARA

A subsequent attempt to pass the amendment came in 1919, and this time it passed both chambers with the requisite two-thirds majority—304–89 in the House of Representatives on May 21, and 56–25 in the Senate on June 4. Although the amendment’s fate seemed in doubt, because of opposition throughout much of the South, on August 18, 1920, Tennessee—by one vote—became the 36th state to ratify the amendment, thereby ensuring its adoption. On August 26 the Nineteenth Amendment was proclaimed by the secretary of state as being part of the Constitution of the United States.

The full text of the amendment is:

Brian P. SmentkowskiMichael Levy

Citation (MLA style):

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Susan B. Anthony

in full Susan Brownell Anthony, (born February 15, 1820, Adams, Massachusetts, U.S.—died March 13, 1906, Rochester, New York), American activist who was a pioneer crusader for the women’s suffrage movement in the United States and was president (1892–1900) of the National Woman Suffrage Association. Her work helped pave the way for the Nineteenth Amendment (1920) to the Constitution, giving women the right to vote.

Susan B. Anthony.

Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Early life

Anthony was reared in the Quaker tradition in a home pervaded by a tone of independence and moral zeal. She was a precocious child and learned to read and write at the age of three. After the family moved from Massachusetts to Battensville, New York, in 1826, she attended a district school, then a school set up by her father, and finally a boarding school near Philadelphia. In 1839 she took a position in a Quaker seminary in New Rochelle, New York. From 1846 to 1849 she taught at a female academy in upstate New York. Abolition, temperance, and women’s suffrage

Anthony subsequently settled in her family home, now near Rochester, New York. There she met many leading abolitionists, including Frederick Douglass, Parker Pillsbury, Wendell Phillips, William Henry Channing, and William Lloyd Garrison. Soon the temperance movement enlisted her sympathy and then, after meeting Amelia Bloomer and through her Elizabeth Cady Stanton, so did that of women’s suffrage.

Susan B. Anthony.

History of Woman Suffrage Volume 1 edited by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Matilda Joslyn Gage, 1887

The rebuff of Anthony’s attempt to speak at a temperance meeting in Albany in 1852 prompted her to organize the Woman’s New York State Temperance Society, of which Stanton became president, and pushed Anthony farther in the direction of women’s rights advocacy. In a short time she became known as one of the cause’s most zealous, serious advocates, a dogged and tireless worker whose personality contrasted sharply with that of her friend and coworker Stanton. She was also a prime target of public and newspaper abuse. While campaigning for a liberalization of New York’s laws regarding married women’s property rights, an end attained in 1860, Anthony served from 1856 as chief New York agent of Garrison’s American Anti-Slavery Society. During the early phase of the Civil War she helped organize the Women’ s National Loyal League, which urged the case for emancipation. After the war she campaigned unsuccessfully to have the language of the Fourteenth Amendment altered to allow for woman as well as African American suffrage, and in 1866 she became corresponding secretary of the newly formed American Equal Rights Association. Her exhausting speaking and organizing tour of Kansas in 1867 failed to win passage of a state enfranchisement law.

Susan B. Anthony (left) and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (neg. no. LC USZ 62 37938)

In 1868 Anthony became publisher, and Stanton editor, of a new periodical, The Revolution, originally financed by the eccentric George Francis Train. The same year, she represented the Working Women’s Association of New York, which she had recently organized, at the National Labor Union convention. In January 1869 she organized a women’s suffrage convention in Washington, D.C., and in May she and Stanton formed the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA). A portion of the organization deserted later in the year to join Lucy Stone’s more conservative American Woman Suffrage Association, but the NWSA remained a large and powerful group, and Anthony continued to serve as its principal leader and spokeswoman.

In 1870 she relinquished her position at The Revolution and embarked on a series of lecture tours to pay off the paper’s accumulated debts. As a test of the legality of the suffrage provision of the Fourteenth Amendment, she cast a vote in the 1872 presidential election in Rochester, New York. She was arrested, convicted (the judge’s directed verdict of guilty had been written before the trial began), and fined, and although she refused to pay the fine, the case was carried no farther. She traveled constantly, often with Stanton, in support of efforts in various states to win the franchise for women: California in 1871, Michigan in 1874, Colorado in 1877, and elsewhere. In 1890, after lengthy discussions, the rival suffrage associations were merged into the National American Woman Suffrage Association, and after Stanton resigned in 1892, Anthony became president. Her principal lieutenant in later years was Carrie Chapman Catt.

Susan B. Anthony, a founder of the International Council of Women.

MPI/Stringer/Getty Images

International gathering of woman suffrage advocates in Washington, D.C., 1888. Seated (left to…

Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

By the 1890s Anthony had largely outlived the abuse and sarcasm that had attended her early efforts, and she emerged as a national heroine. Her visits to the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893 and to the Lewis and Clark Exposition in Portland, Oregon, in 1905 were warmly received, as were her trips to London in 1899 and Berlin in 1904 as head of the U.S. delegation to the International Council of Women (which she helped found in 1888). In 1900, at age 80, she retired from the presidency of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, passing it on to Catt. Anthony died in 1906, 14 years before the Nineteenth Amendment was passed.

Writings, dollar coin, and museum

Susan B. Anthony.

Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

Susan B. Anthony dollar coin.

Principal among Anthony’s written works are the first four volumes of the six-volume History of Woman Suffrage, written with Stanton and Matilda J. Gage. Various of her writings are collected in The Elizabeth Cady Stanton–Susan B. Anthony Reader (1992), edited by Ellen Carol DuBois, and The Selected Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony (1997), edited by Ann D. Gordon. With the issue of a new dollar coin in 1979, Anthony became the first woman to be depicted on United States currency, although the honour was somewhat mitigated by popular rejection of the coin because its size was so similar to that of the 25-cent coin.

The opening in 2010 of the Susan B. Anthony Birthplace Museum in Adams, Massachusetts, on the occasion of the 190th anniversary of Anthony’s birth, stirred controversy when the owner of the property and president of the museum led with an exhibit presenting Anthony as an antiabortion feminist in 21st-century terms.

EB Editors Additional Reading

Katharine Anthony, Susan B. Anthony: Her Personal History and Her Era (1954, reprinted 1975); Alma Lutz, Susan B. Anthony: Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian (1959, reprinted 1975); Kathleen Barry, Susan B. Anthony: A Biography of a Singular Feminist (1988); Lynn Sherr, Failure Is Impossible: Susan B. Anthony in Her Own Words (1995).

Citation (MLA style):

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The Seneca Falls Declaration

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

1. Declaration of Sentiments 2. Resolutions

1. Declaration of Sentiments

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one portion of the family of man to assume among the people of the earth a position different from that which they have hitherto occupied, but one to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankindrequires that they should declare the causes that impel them to such a course.

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights governments are instituted, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of those who suffer from it to refuse allegiance to it, and to insist upon the institution of a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer. while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their duty to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of the women under this government, and such is now the necessity which constrains them to demand the equal station to which they are entitled. The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has never permitted her to exercise her inalienable right to the elective franchise.

He has compelled her to submit to laws, in the formation of which she had no voice.

He has withheld from her rights which are given to the most ignorant and degraded men — both natives and foreigners.

Having deprived her of this first right of a citizen, the elective franchise. thereby leaving her without representation in the halls of legislation, he has oppressed her on all sides.

He has made her, if married, in the eye of the law, civilly dead. He has taken from her all right in property. even to the wages she earns.

He has made her, morally. an irresponsible being. as she can commit many crimes with impunity, provided they be done in the presence of her husband.

In the covenant of marriage, she is compelled to promise obedience to her husband, he becoming, to all intents and purposes, her master — the law giving him power to deprive her of her liberty. and to administer chastisement.

He has so framed the laws of divorce, as to what shall be the proper causes, and in case of separation, to whom the guardianship of the children shall be given, as to be wholly regardless of the happiness of women — the law, in all cases, going upon a false supposition of the supremacy of man, and giving all power into his hands.

After depriving her of all rights as a married woman, if single, and the owner of property, he has taxed her to support a government which recognizes her only when her property can be made profitable to it.

He has monopolized nearly all the profitable employments, and from those she is permitted to follow, she receives but a scanty remuneration. He closes against her all the avenues to wealth and distinction which he considers most honorable to himself. As a teacher of theology, medicine, or law, she is not known.

He has denied her the facilities for obtaining a thorough education, all colleges being closed against her.

He allows her in Church, as well as State, but a subordinate position, claiming Apostolic authority for her exclusion from the ministry, and. with some exceptions, from any public participation in the affairs of the Church.

He has created a false public sentiment by giving to the world a different code of morals for men and women, by which moral delinquencies which exclude women from society, are not only tolerated, but deemed of little account in man.

He has usurped the prerogative of Jehovah himself, claiming it as his right to assign for her a sphere of action, when that belongs to her conscience and to her God.

He has endeavored, in every way that he could, to destroy her confidence in her own powers, to lessen her self-respect and to make her willing to lead a dependent and abject life.

Now, in view of this entire disfranchisement of one-half the people of this country, their social and religious degradation — in view of the unjust laws above mentioned, and because women do feel themselves aggrieved, oppressed, and fraudulently deprived of their most sacred rights, we insist that they have immediate admission to all the rights and privileges which belong to them as citizens of the United States.

In entering upon the great work before us. we anticipate no small amount of misconception, misrepresentation, and ridicule; but we shall use every instrumentality within our power to effect our object. We shall employ agents, circulate tracts, petition the State and National legislatures, and endeavor to enlist the pulpit and the press in our behalf. We hope this Convention will be followed by a series of Conventions embracing every part of the country.

2. Resolutions

WHEREAS, The great precept of nature is conceded to be, that ' man shall pursue his own true and substantial happiness." Blackstone in his Commentaries remarks, that this law of Nature being coeval with mankind, and dictated by God himself, is of course superior in obligation to any other. It is binding over all the globe, in all countries and at all times; no human laws are of any validity if contrary to this. and such of them as are valid, derive all their force. and all their validity, and all their authority, mediately and immediately, from this original; therefore,

Resolved, That such laws as conflict, in any way with the true and substantial happiness of woman, are contrary to the great precept of nature and of no validity, for this is "superior in obligation to any other."

Resolved, That all laws which prevent woman from occupying such a station in society as her conscience shall dictate, or which place her in a position inferior to that of man, are contrary to the great precept of nature, and therefore of no force or authority.

Resolved, That woman is man's equal — was intended to be so by the Creator, and the highest good of the race demands that she should be recognized as such.

Resolved, That the women of this country ought to be enlightened in regard to the laws under which they live, that they may no longer publish their degradation by declaring themselves satisfied with their present position, nor their ignorance. by asserting that they have all the rights they want.

Resolved. That inasmuch as man, while claiming for himself intellectual superiority. does accord to woman moral superionty. it is pre-eminently his duty to encourage her to speak and teach. as she has an opportunity, in all religious assemblies.

Resolved, That the same amount of virtue, delicacy, and refinement of behavior that is required of woman in the social state, should also be required of man, and the same transgressions should be visited with equal severity on both man and woman.

Resolved, That the objection of indelicacy and impropriety, which is so often brought against woman when she addresses a public audience, comes with a very ill-grace from those who encourage, by their attendance, her appearance on the stage, in the concert. Or in feats of the circus.

Resolved, That woman has too long rested satisfied in the circumscribed limits which corrupt customs and a perverted application of the Scriptures have marked out for her, and that it is time she should move in the enlarged sphere which her great Creator has assigned her.

Resolved, That it is the duty of the women of this country to secure to themselves their sacred right to the elective franchise.

Resolved, That the equality of human rights results necessarily from the fact of the identity of the race in capabilities and responsibilities.

Resolved, therefore. That. being invested by the creator with the same capabilities. and the same consciousness of responsibility for their exercise, it is demonstrably the right and duty of woman, equally with man, to promote every righteous cause by every righteous means; and especially in regard to the great subjects of morals and religion, it is self- evidently her right to participate with her brother in teaching them, both in private and in public, by writing and by speaking. by any instrumentalities proper to be used. and in any assemblies proper to be held; and this being a self evident truth growing out of the divinely implanted principles of human nature, any custom or authority adverse to it. whether modern or wearing the hoary sanction of antiquity, is to be regarded as a self- evident falsehood, and at war with mankind.

Resolved, That the speedy success of our cause depends upon the zealous and untiring efforts of both men and women, for the overthrow of the monopoly of the pulpit. and for the securing to women an equal participation with men in the various trades. professions. and commerce.

The End.

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Constitution of the United States

Britannica Note:

The ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment on August 18, 1920, extended voting rights to all American women.

Original copy of the Constitution of the United States of America, housed in the National Archives… Original copy of the Constitution of the United States of America, housed in the National Archives…

National Archives, Washington, D.C. [1787]{1}

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Article I

Section 1--All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.

Section 2--1 The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States, and the Electors in each State shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature.

2 No person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the Age of twenty five Years, and been seven Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State in which he shall be chosen.

3 [Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.]{2} The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct. The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand, but each State shall have at Least one Representative; and until such enumeration shall be made, the State of New Hampshire shall be entitled to chuse three, Massachusetts eight, Rhode- Island and Providence Plantations one, Connecticut five, New-York six, New Jersey four, Pennsylvania eight, Delaware one, Maryland six, Virginia ten, North Carolina five, South Carolina five, and Georgia three.

4 When vacancies happen in the Representation from any State, the Executive Authority thereof shall issue Writs of Election to fill such Vacancies.

5 The House of Representatives shall chuse their Speaker and other Officers; and shall have the sole Power of Impeachment.

Section 3--1 The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, [chosen by the Legislature thereof,]{3} for six Years; and each Senator shall have one Vote.

2 Immediately after they shall be assembled in Consequence of the first Election, they shall be divided as equally as may be into three Classes. The Seats of the Senators of the first Class shall be vacated at the Expiration of the second Year, of the second Class at the Expiration of the fourth Year, and of the third Class at the Expiration of the sixth Year, so that one third may be chosen every second Year; [and if Vacancies happen by Resignation, or otherwise, during the Recess of the Legislature of any State, the Executive thereof may make temporary Appointments until the next Meeting of the Legislature, which shall then fill such Vacancies].{4}

3 No Person shall be a Senator who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty Years, and been nine Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State for which he shall be chosen.

4 The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no Vote, unless they be equally divided.

5 The Senate shall chuse their other Officers, and also a President pro tempore, in the Absence of the Vice President, or when he shall exercise the Office of President of the United States.

6 The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments. When sitting for that Purpose, they shall be on Oath or Affirmation. When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside: And no Person shall be convicted without the Concurrence of two thirds of the Members present.

7 Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States: but the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law.

Section 4--1 The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.

2 The Congress shall assemble at least once in every Year, and such Meeting shall [be on the first Monday in December,] {5} unless they shall by Law appoint a different Day.

Section 5--1 Each House shall be the Judge of the Elections, Returns and Qualifications of its own Members, and a Majority of each shall constitute a Quorum to do Business; but a smaller Number may adjourn from day to day, and may be authorized to compel the Attendance of absent Members, in such Manner, and under such Penalties as each House may provide.

2 Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings, punish its Members for disorderly Behaviour, and, with the Concurrence of two thirds, expel a Member.

3 Each House shall keep a Journal of its Proceedings, and from time to time publish the same, excepting such Parts as may in their Judgment require Secrecy; and the Yeas and Nays of the Members of either House on any question shall, at the Desire of one fifth of those Present, be entered on the Journal.

4 Neither House, during the Session of Congress, shall, without the Consent of the other, adjourn for more than three days, nor to any other Place than that in which the two Houses shall be sitting.

Section 6--1 The Senators and Representatives shall receive a Compensation for their Services, to be ascertained by Law, and paid out of the Treasury of the United States. They shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place.

2 No Senator or Representative shall, during the Time for which he was elected, be appointed to any civil Office under the Authority of the United States, which shall have been created, or the Emoluments whereof shall have been encreased during such time; and no Person holding any Office under the United States, shall be a Member of either House during his Continuance in Office.

Section 7--1 All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills.

2 Every Bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it become a Law, be presented to the President of the United States; If he approve he shall sign it, but if not he shall return it, with his Objections to that House in which it shall have originated, who shall enter the Objections at large on their Journal, and proceed to reconsider it. If after such Reconsideration two thirds of that House shall agree to pass the Bill, it shall be sent, together with the Objections, to the other House, by which it shall likewise be reconsidered, and if approved by two thirds of that House, it shall become a Law. But in all such Cases the Votes of both Houses shall be determined by yeas and Nays, and the Names of the Persons voting for and against the Bill shall be entered on the Journal of each House respectively. If any Bill shall not be returned by the President within ten Days (Sundays excepted) after it shall have been presented to him, the Same shall be a Law, in like Manner as if he had signed it, unless the Congress by their Adjournment prevent its Return, in which Case it shall not be a Law.

3 Every Order, Resolution, or Vote to which the Concurrence of the Senate and House of Representatives may be necessary (except on a question of Adjournment) shall be presented to the President of the United States; and before the Same shall take Effect, shall be approved by him, or being disapproved by him, shall be repassed by two thirds of the Senate and House of Representatives, according to the Rules and Limitations prescribed in the Case of a Bill.

Section 8--1 The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

2 To borrow Money on the credit of the United States;

3 To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;

4 To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States;

5 To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;

6 To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States;

7 To establish Post Offices and post Roads;

8 To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;

9 To constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court;

10 To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offences against the Law of Nations;

11 To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;

12 To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;

13 To provide and maintain a Navy;

14 To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;

15 To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;

16 To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;

17 To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings;--And

18 To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.

Section 9--1 The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a Tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person.

2 The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.

3 No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.

4 No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or Enumeration herein before directed to be taken.{6}

5 No Tax or Duty shall be laid on Articles exported from any State.

6 No Preference shall be given by any Regulation of Commerce or Revenue to the Ports of one State over those of another: nor shall Vessels bound to, or from, one State, be obliged to enter, clear, or pay Duties in another.

7 No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time.

8 No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.

Section 10--1 No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.

2 No State shall, without the Consent of the Congress, lay any Imposts or Duties on Imports or Exports, except what may be absolutely necessary for executing it's inspection Laws: and the net Produce of all Duties and Imposts, laid by any State on Imports or Exports, shall be for the Use of the Treasury of the United States; and all such Laws shall be subject to the Revision and Controul of the Congress.

3 No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any Duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.

Article II

Section I--1 The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. He shall hold his Office during the Term of four Years, and, together with the Vice President, chosen for the same Term, be elected, as follows

2 Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.

[The Electors shall meet in their respective States, and vote by Ballot for two Persons, of whom one at least shall not be an Inhabitant of the same State with themselves. And they shall make a List of all the Persons voted for, and of the Number of Votes for each; which List they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the Seat of the Government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate. The President of the Senate shall, in the Presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the Certificates, and the Votes shall then be counted. The Person having the greatest Number of Votes shall be the President, if such Number be a Majority of the whole Number of Electors appointed; and if there be more than one who have such Majority, and have an equal Number of Votes, then the House of Representatives shall immediately chuse by Ballot one of them for President; and if no Person have a Majority, then from the five highest on the List the said House shall in like Manner chuse the President. But in chusing the President, the Votes shall be taken by States, the Representation from each State having one Vote; A quorum for this Purpose shall consist of a Member or Members from two thirds of the States, and a Majority of all the States shall be necessary to a Choice. In every Case, after the Choice of the President, the Person having the greatest Number of Votes of the Electors shall be the Vice President. But if there should remain two or more who have equal Votes, the Senate shall chuse from them by Ballot the Vice President.]{7}

3 The Congress may determine the Time of chusing the Electors, and the Day on which they shall give their Votes; which Day shall be the same throughout the United States.

4 No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.

5 In Case of the Removal of the President from Office, or of his Death, Resignation, or Inability to discharge the Powers and Duties of the said Office,{8} the Same shall devolve on the Vice President, and the Congress may by Law provide for the Case of Removal, Death, Resignation or Inability, both of the President and Vice President, declaring what Officer shall then act as President, and such Officer shall act accordingly, until the Disability be removed, or a President shall be elected.

6 The President shall, at stated Times, receive for his Services, a Compensation, which shall neither be encreased nor diminished during the Period for which he shall have been elected, and he shall not receive within that Period any other Emolument from the United States, or any of them.

7 Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation:--"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

Section 2--1 The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States; he may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any Subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices, and he shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.

2 He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.

3 The President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session.

Section 3--He shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient; he may, on extraordinary Occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in Case of Disagreement between them, with Respect to the Time of Adjournment, he may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper; he shall receive Ambassadors and other public Ministers; he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed, and shall Commission all the Officers of the United States.

Section 4-- The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.

Article III

Section 1-- The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour, and shall, at stated Times, receive for their Services, a Compensation, which shall not be diminished during their Continuance in Office.

Section 2--1 The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority;--to all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls;--to all Cases of admiralty and maritime Jurisdiction;--to Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party;--to Controversies between two or more States;--between a State and Citizens of another State;{9}--between Citizens of different States,--between Citizens of the same State claiming Lands under Grants of different States, and between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects.

2 In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction. In all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.

3 The Trial of all Crimes, except in Cases of Impeachment, shall be by Jury; and such Trial shall be held in the State where the said Crimes shall have been committed; but when not committed within any State, the Trial shall be at such Place or Places as the Congress may by Law have directed.

Section 3--1 Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.

2 The Congress shall have Power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.

Article IV

Section 1-- Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State. And the Congress may by general Laws prescribe the Manner in which such Acts, Records and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof.

Section 2--1 The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States.

2 A Person charged in any State with Treason, Felony, or other Crime, who shall flee from Justice, and be found in another State, shall on Demand of the executive Authority of the State from which he fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the State having Jurisdiction of the Crime.

3 [No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.]{10}

Section 3--1 New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new State shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or Parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress.

2 The Congress shall have Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States; and nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed as to Prejudice any Claims of the United States, or of any particular State.

Section 4-- The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence.

Article V

The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; Provided [that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article; and]{11} that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.

Article VI

1 All Debts contracted and Engagements entered into, before the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be as valid against the United States under this Constitution, as under the Confederation.

2 This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.

3 The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.

Article VII

The Ratification of the Conventions of nine States, shall be sufficient for the Establishment of this Constitution between the States so ratifying the Same.

Done in Convention by the Unanimous Consent of the States present the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven and of the Independence of the United States of America the Twelfth

IN WITNESS whereof We have hereunto subscribed our Names,

Go. WASHINGTON--

Presidt. and deputy from Virginia

New Hampshire

John Langdon

Nicholas Gilman

Massachusetts

Nathaniel Gorham

Rufus King

Connecticut

Wm. Saml. Johnson

Roger Sherman

New York

Alexander Hamilton

New Jersey

Wil: Livingston

David Brearley

Wm. Paterson

Jona: Dayton

Pennsylvania

B Franklin

Thomas Mifflin

Robt Morris

Geo. Clymer

Thos. FitzSimons

Jared Ingersoll

James Wilson

Gouv Morris

Delaware

Geo: Read

Gunning Bedford jun

John Dickinson

Richard Bassett

Jaco: Broom

Maryland

James McHenry

Dan of St Thos. Jenifer

Danl Carroll

Virginia

John Blair--

James Madison Jr.

North Carolina

Wm. Blount

Rich'd Dobbs Spaight

Hu Williamson

South Carolina

J. Rutledge

Charles Cotesworth Pinckney

Charles Pinckney

Pierce Butler

Georgia

William Few

Abr Baldwin

Attest:

William Jackson, Secretary

Articles in addition to, and amendment of, The Constitution of the United States of America, proposed by Congress, and ratified by the legislatures of the several states pursuant to the fifth article of the original Constitution.

The first 10 amendments to the Constitution were proposed by the Congress on Sept. 25, 1789. They were ratified by the following states, and the notifications of the ratification by the governors thereof were successively communicated by the President to the Congress: New Jersey, Nov. 20, 1789; Maryland, Dec. 19, 1789; North Carolina, Dec. 22, 1789; South Carolina, Jan. 19, 1790; New Hampshire, Jan. 25, 1790; Delaware, Jan. 28, 1790; New York, Feb. 4, 1790; Pennsylvania, March 10, 1790; Rhode Island, June 7, 1790; Vermont, Nov. 3, 1791; and Virginia, Dec. 15, 1791. Ratification was completed on Dec. 15, 1791.

The amendments were subsequently ratified by Massachusetts, March 2, 1939; Georgia, March 18, 1939; and Connecticut, April 19, 1939.

Two other amendments were concurrently proposed in 1789. One failed of ratification. The other (Amendment XXVII) was not ratified until May 7, 1992, when the Michigan legislature gave it the required number of state approvals.

Amendment [I]{12} Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Amendment [II] A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Amendment [III] No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

Amendment [IV] The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Amendment [V] No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation.

Amendment [VI] In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining Witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defence.

Amendment [VII] In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise reexamined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.

Amendment [VIII] Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

Amendment [IX] The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Amendment [X] The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Amendment [XI] [1795] The Judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted against one of the United States by Citizens of another State, or by Citizens or Subjects of any Foreign State.

Amendment [XII] [1804] The electors shall meet in their respective states and vote by ballot for President and Vice President, one of whom, at least, shall not be an inhabitant of the same state with themselves; they shall name in their ballots the person voted for as President, and in distinct ballots the person voted for as Vice President, and they shall make distinct lists of all persons voted for as President, and of all persons voted for as Vice President, and of the number of votes for each, which lists they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the seat of the government of the United

States, directed to the President of the Senate;--The President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates and the votes shall then be counted;--The person having the greatest number of votes for President, shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed; and if no person have such majority, then from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as President, the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President. But in choosing the President, the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote; a quorum for this purpose shall consist of a member or members from two-thirds of the states, and a majority of all the states shall be necessary to a choice. [And if the House of Representatives shall not choose a President whenever the right of choice shall devolve upon them, before the fourth day of March next following, then the Vice President shall act as President, as in the case of the death or other constitutional disability of the President.]{13} The person having the greatest number of votes as Vice President, shall be the Vice President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed, and if no person have a majority, then from the two highest numbers on the list, the Senate shall choose the Vice President; a quorum for the purpose shall consist of two-thirds of the whole number of Senators, and a majority of the whole number shall be necessary to a choice. But no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice President of the United States.

Amendment XIII [1865] Section 1--Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Section 2--Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Amendment XIV [1868] Section 1--All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Section 2--Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age,{14} and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

Section 3--No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

Section 4--The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.

Section 5--The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

Amendment XV [1870] Section 1--The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

Section 2--The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Amendment XVI [1913] The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.

Amendment [XVII] [1913] The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, elected by the people thereof, for six years; and each Senator shall have one vote. The electors in each State shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the State legislatures.

When vacancies happen in the representation of any State in the Senate, the executive authority of such State shall issue writs of election to fill such vacancies: Provided, That the legislature of any State may empower the executive thereof to make temporary appointments until the people fill the vacancies by election as the legislature may direct.

This amendment shall not be so construed as to affect the election or term of any Senator chosen before it becomes valid as part of the Constitution.

Amendment [XVIII] [1919]{15} Section 1--After one year from the ratification of this article the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited.

Section 2--The Congress and the several States shall have concurrent power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Section 3--This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of the several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the Congress.

Amendment [XIX] [1920] The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Amendment [XX] [1933] Section 1--The terms of the President and Vice President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January, and the terms of Senators and Representatives at noon on the 3d day of January, of the years in which such terms would have ended if this article had not been ratified; and the terms of their successors shall then begin.

Section 2--The Congress shall assemble at least once in every year, and such meeting shall begin at noon on the 3d day of January, unless they shall by law appoint a different day.

Section 3--{16}If, at the time fixed for the beginning of the term of the President, the President elect shall have died, the Vice President elect shall become President. If a President shall not have been chosen before the time fixed for the beginning of his term, or if the President elect shall have failed to qualify, then the Vice President elect shall act as President until a President shall have qualified; and the Congress may by law provide for the case wherein neither a President elect nor a Vice President elect shall have qualified, declaring who shall then act as President, or the manner in which one who is to act shall be selected, and such person shall act accordingly until a President or Vice President shall have qualified.

Section 4--The Congress may by law provide for the case of the death of any of the persons from whom the House of Representatives may choose a President whenever the right of choice shall have devolved upon them, and for the case of

the death of any of the persons from whom the Senate may choose a Vice President whenever the right of choice shall have devolved upon them.

Section 5--Sections 1 and 2 shall take effect on the 15th day of October following the ratification of this article.

Section 6--This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years from the date of its submission.

Amendment [XXI] [1933] Section 1--The eighteenth article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed.

Section 2--The transportation or importation into any State, Territory, or possession of the United States for delivery or use therein of intoxicating liquors, in violation of the laws thereof, is hereby prohibited.

Section 3--This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by conventions in the several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the Congress.

Amendment [XXII] [1951] Section 1--No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once. But this Article shall not apply to any person holding the office of President when this Article was proposed by the Congress, and shall not prevent any person who may be holding the office of President, or acting as President, during the term within which this Article becomes operative from holding the office of President or acting as President during the remainder of such term.

Section 2--This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years from the date of its submission to the States by the Congress.

Amendment [XXIII] [1961] Section 1--The District constituting the seat of Government of the United States shall appoint in such manner as the Congress may direct:

A number of electors of President and Vice President equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives in Congress to which the District would be entitled if it were a State, but in no event more than the least populous State; they shall be in addition to those appointed by the States, but they shall be considered, for the purposes of the election of President and Vice President, to be electors appointed by a State; and they shall meet in the District and perform such duties as provided by the twelfth article of amendment.

Section 2--The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Amendment [XXIV] [1964] Section 1--The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President, for electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State by reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax.

Section 2--The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Amendment [XXV] [1967] Section 1--In case of the removal of the President from office or of his death or resignation, the Vice President shall become President.

Section 2--Whenever there is a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, the President shall nominate a Vice President who shall take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both Houses of Congress.

Section 3--Whenever the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that he is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, and until he transmits to them a written declaration to the contrary, such powers and duties shall be discharged by the Vice President as Acting President.

Section 4--Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.

Thereafter, when the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive department or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit within four days to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Thereupon Congress shall decide the issue, assembling within forty-eight hours for that purpose if not in session. If the Congress, within twenty-one days after receipt of the latter written declaration, or, if Congress is not in session, within twenty-one days after Congress is required to assemble, determines by two-thirds vote of both Houses that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall continue to discharge the same as Acting President; otherwise, the President shall resume the powers and duties of his office.

Amendment [XXVI] [1971] Section 1--The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age.

Section 2--The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Amendment [XXVII] [1992] No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened.

Notes

{1} This text of the Constitution follows the engrossed copy signed by General Washington and the deputies from 12 states. The superior number preceding the paragraphs designates the number of the clause; it was not in the original.

{2} The part included in brackets was changed by section 2 of the 14th amendment.

{3} The part included in brackets was changed by section 1 of the 17th amendment.

{4} The part included in brackets was changed by clause 2 of the 17th amendment.

{5} The part included in brackets was changed by section 2 of the 20th amendment.

{6} See also the 16th amendment.

{7} This paragraph has been superseded by the 12th amendment.

{8} This provision has been affected by the 25th amendment.

{9} This clause has been affected by the 11th amendment.

{10} This paragraph has been superseded by the 13th amendment.

{11} Obsolete.

{12} Only Amendments XIII, XIV, XV, and XVI had numbers assigned to them at the time of ratification.

{13} The part included in brackets has been superseded by section 3 of Amendment XX.

{14} See Amendment XXVI.

{15} Repealed by section 1 of Amendment XXI.

{16} See Amendment XXV.

Citation: No citation is available for this resource

woman suffrage

A U.S. woman suffrage organization demonstrates outside its headquarters in Philadelphia in 1917.

Harris and Ewing Collection/Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (neg. no. LC-H261-8200)

Citation (MLA style):

Woman suffrage. Image. Britannica LaunchPacks: The Women's Suffrage Movement in the United States, Encyclopædia Britannica, 8 Aug. 2020. packs.eb.com. Accessed 14 Oct. 2020.

While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions.

woman suffrage

American woman suffrage advocates speak before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee in 1871.

Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

Citation (MLA style):

Woman suffrage. Image. Britannica LaunchPacks: The Women's Suffrage Movement in the United States, Encyclopædia Britannica, 8 Aug. 2020. packs.eb.com. Accessed 14 Oct. 2020.

While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions.

Follow feminists' footsteps as women achieved the right to vote in countries around the world

Video Transcript

Women could not participate in elections for much of human history, dating back to the ancient Greeks and Romans. In the 1800s women began fighting for the right to vote, petitioning their governments and rallying fellow citizens to the cause. In 1893 New Zealand became the first country to allow women to vote, after almost 25 percent of the country's women of European descent signed petitions. All New Zealand women—including Maori women—gained the right to vote. Australia followed suit in 1902. Enfranchisement did not extend to all Australian women, however. Aboriginal women and men could not vote for another 60 years. In Europe and North America suffrage supporters submitted petitions, gave speeches, and held rallies. Some women were arrested and engaged in hunger strikes while in jail. One advocate, the American Alice Paul, served six prison terms. Other leaders of the suffrage movement included Millicent Garrett Fawcett and Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst in the United Kingdom and Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Matilda J. Gage in the United States. When World War I spread across Europe, many women suffrage organizations shifted their energies to aiding the war effort. The role that women played during that war helped sway public support behind enfranchisement. In 1918 women in the United Kingdom, Germany, Poland, and Canada—among other countries—gained the right to vote. In Canada, however, First Nations women and men had to wait over 40 more years until they could vote. In 1920 women in the United States won their battle. Native Americans were barred from voting for four more years on the federal level, while some states withheld their voting rights even longer. Ecuador became the first South American country to enfranchise women, granting full voting rights to all women in 1929. The next year, South Africa began enfranchisement of women—but only those of European descent. This was due to apartheid, the white government's policy of segregation and discrimination against the country's nonwhite majority. Voting rights did not extend to all South Africans until 1994. In 1931 women in Spain gained the right to vote, but this lasted only five years—until Francisco Franco came to power in 1936. The end of World War II brought liberation to many European and Asian countries and with that, enfranchisement of women. In 1947 India and Pakistan gained independence from Britain, and both of their constitutions granted women the right to vote. Chinese women gained voting rights in 1949, after a new government took power following a civil war. During the late 1940s and 1950s, women across Latin America gained the right to vote. The end of World War II brought decolonization in Africa. As African countries gained independence, voting rights for women followed. By the end of the 1960s, women across most of Africa could participate in elections. As the 1970s began, there were still a few European countries that did not allow women to vote. Over the course of the decade, Switzerland,

Portugal, Spain, and Moldova all enfranchised women. Liechtenstein followed in 1984. Some conservative Middle Eastern countries did not enfranchise women until the 21st century. In Bahrain women won the right to vote in 2002; in Qatar, 2003; and in Kuwait, 2005. In late 2015 women in Saudi Arabia voted in local elections for the first time, leaving Vatican City the last country to deny women the right to vote because of their sex.

A history of women's suffrage around the world.

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Follow feminists' footsteps as women achieved the right to vote in countries around the world. Video. Britannica LaunchPacks: The Women's Suffrage Movement in the United States, Encyclopædia Britannica, 8 Aug. 2020. packs.eb.com. Accessed 14 Oct. 2020.

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PBS LearningMedia - Elizabeth Cady Stanton

http://illinois.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/americon-vid-elizabeth-cady-stanton /elizabeth-cady-stanton/

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Watch a film about the life and achievements of Elizabeth Cady Stanton by visiting this Web site.

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