Women’s Suffrage Artifacts

• Collections tag

• Post Date: 03/25/2024
• Author: Beth Watkins, Manager of Visitor Interpretation, and Dr. Nathan Tye, curator of Debates, Decisions, Demands: Objects of Campaigns and Activism
• Reading Time: 5 minute read

Voting is never a straightforward act. It carries the complexity of our political system into the voting booth. The fight to participate in American politics was long, and the right to vote is repeatedly threatened. The Civil War and Reconstruction brought suffrage for Black men, and new voices echoed in city halls, state houses, and the Capitol. The following decades of restrictions and violence all but ended these freedoms. Women’s right to vote in local, state, and eventually national elections expanded political participation.

The United States

The American women’s suffrage movement was heavily underscored by racism and classism. Wealthy and middle-class white women’s concerns dominated agendas at the expense of those of other Americans. The Nineteenth Amendment (external link) allowed some women to vote but excluded many others based on “moral character,” literacy, ability to pay poll taxes, and their husbands’ citizenship status. To learn more about the Nineteenth Amendment, visit the Constitution Annotated (external link) site run by Congress and the National Archives (external link).

The United Kingdom

In Britain, the suffrage movement significantly reflected the structures of Britain’s global empire and stratified society, largely ignoring the inequalities of race and class. Activists achieved partial suffrage in 1918, for women over 30 years old who met certain property requirements.

Emmeline Pankhurst founded the Women’s Social and Political Union in Britain, the first women to be called “suffragettes.” To make their points heard, they demonstrated, confronted politicians, burned and bombed property, and went on hunger strikes—and were tortured in prison.

The suffragettes shocked British society. They notoriously used “unladylike” behavior, and official reaction to them was severe. To some conservative minds, the very idea of women voting was a threat to social conventions of home and womanhood. The mix of domestic items with scenes of police hauling away protesters conveys this contrast between stereotypes and current events.

The Holloway Prison brooch is a medal awarded to WSPU members who had been imprisoned. Its background is shaped like the gate of the House of Commons at Parliament, and on top is a broad arrow shape found on prison uniforms, here in the suffragette colors.

The scowling inkwell shows a negative stereotype of suffragettes. An old, lumpy, and grumpy woman who wants to participate in politics is the opposite of the demure, attractive, home-focused concept of what women should be. This was a popular item at the time of the Women’s National Anti-Suffrage League, founded to oppose support for the suffrage cause.

Debates, Decisions, Demands

Take a mini tour of our 2020–21 Debates, Decisions, Demands exhibit of political artifacts with curator Dr. Tye. Other videos from the exhibit (external link) are available in a YouTube playlist.