Iron Jawed Angels: Women in politics

In the film and in the women’s suffrage movement, the overarching goal was to win women the right to vote. The goal, for both NAWSA and the NWP, was to achieve women’s suffrage, whether through the states or through a constitutional amendment. After Alice Paul helped get the 19th amendment passed, she also fought to pass the Equal Rights Amendment, but it never happened. Alice Paul and the NWP had a vision that within a century all Americans would be equal regardless of sex. The very end of the film, with all the women celebrating the 19th amendment, was happy because it was such a momentous accomplishment, but it was also a bit depressing, knowing that their hope for full equal rights for women would not be achieved with the 19th amendment, as they believed. The ideas presented in the articles prove how in many ways the lack of equality in politics for women has not changed from the 1900s to now.  

As girls grow up, they learn that politics is still a male-dominated profession—a fact that was very true in the 1900s. As The Conversation article mentioned, even though women make up about 50% of the US population, only a little more than a quarter of the members of Congress are female. This is clearly unequal representation, and especially in the law-making body of the US, it is proof that all laws, including laws impacting women’s rights, are decided by men, which is a challenge that has never changed in America—women still do not have equal rights. However, even though politics are still male dominated, at least it means that there are women in strong political positions, trying slowly but surely to equalize women’s political equality. NAWSA and the NWP won the 19th amendment, but today there are women doing every single job men have done (except the presidency). It’s not crazy to see women in politics, and 4 out of the 5 current supreme court justices are female. That is a huge improvement to the early 1900s. The goal of the women’s suffrage movement was to win the vote for women: now, the movement is for women’s equal rights and women’s equal political power.




Comments

  1. David BernellFebruary 10, 2023 at 5:05 PM

    This post points out both accomplishments and work to be done -- and the photo is a very clear demonstration of the point being made. One theme, largely unstated (and that I'd be interested to read more about in this post), is that in spite of the progress made, gender equality delayed for so long (much longer than Alice Paul would have expected), is ultimately equality denied and the continued pervasiveness of unequal rights and roles.

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