The Best Protection Any Woman can Have is Courage

The best protection any woman can have is courage. -Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

This is an extremely powerful term that perfectly describes the time of Women’s Suffrage in America. This was when women were pushing to get the right to vote. Because they were considered property then, it was a long, hard, and gruelling time to be a suffragette fighting for rights. Take a look at the pros and cons of women gaining the right to vote in 1920, due to the 19th amendment.

There is an excruciatingly long list of pros of women gaining the right to vote, but here are three of the most evident. The first pro is self-evident. It is that women got the right to vote in America’s elections. I know that this sounds obvious, but at that time in America’s history, women were considered items that were owned by their husbands. This was the the most significant milestone in the fight to win women’s rights. The second pro of women gaining the right to vote is that true feminism rose in the spirits of those women. By true feminism, I mean feminism that is real, practical, and logical. Feminism that says ‘I want equal rights and I want them now!’, not the feminism we see today through which women want to be over men and will be harmful to get there. At that time, women were filled with the American spirit of freedom and pride. The third pro comes from an article in which Alice Stone Blackwell states 16 reasons why women should vote. This article is extremely intellectual, eye-opening, and opinion-altering enough to where one could hope that thousands would see this article and show it to others. That shows how amazing women were at that time, and that they should have had much more power long before 1920.

There are really no true cons to women gaining the right to vote. There are cons that have to do with the subject in one way or another, though. The first ‘con’ of women gaining the right to vote is how long it took them to get that right. Like I mentioned earlier, women should’ve had much more power much sooner. After all, they would clean the house, cook the meals for the family, raise the children, and even tend to the land and animals while the husbands were off fighting in the Revolutionary War. The second ‘con’ is how women were treated before, during, and after 1920. People treated them like property, even though women are worth so much more than anyone could imagine then. But people still treated them as if they didn’t have a voice in society. The thoughts and actions of anti-suffragist men at that time were completely sexist, close-minded, and ignorant. The third ‘con’ of women getting the right to vote came from the same article as the third con in the paragraph above. It is the fact that some of the points in that article could be objected and challenged by anti-suffragist groups. An example would be point 7, which states that if women could vote, criminal and malicious votes would be drowned out even more, because women only make up around 10% of people in prisons at that time. Someone could argue that the criminals voting wouldn’t be bad and that women wanting to vote and not being submissive was as bad as a crime. If someone said that, it would tear the already divided country apart even more.

All in all, Women’s Suffrage was more than women wanting to vote. It inspired others across the world to let their voices be heard and is still doing that today. It defined the spirit of our country at that time. These times were formed by pioneers of Human Rights. Even though it divided America for some time, we are closer than ever now because of it.

Bibliography

Anti-Suffragism. Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 1 Oct. 2018, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-suffragism.

Opposition to Suffrage. History of U.S. Woman’s Suffrage, www.crusadeforthevote.org/naows-opposition/.

Why Women Should Vote – American Memory Timeline- Classroom Presentation | Teacher Resources. Planning D-Day (April 2003) – Library of Congress Information Bulletin, Victor, www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/presentationsandactivities/presentations/timeline/progress/ suffrage/whyvote.html.

Women’s Suffrage. Ancient Greek Gods & Goddesses Facts For Kids, www.historyforkids.net/womens-suffrage.html.