Women’s right to vote is a case study in the strategic use of democracy’s working tools. Today marks 100 years since that day in 1920, when the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified by Tennessee, the last of the required 36 states to do so.

Crossing such a finish line is surely a proud event to celebrate. However, women’s right to vote has much more to offer for our time than a hundredth anniversary. In the lengthy struggle, suffragettes ran field tests on a wide range of political strategies and noted the results of each. Today, people again want to know which routes to reform are most useful. 

Suffragettes had to overcome nearly every obstacle that is faced today when changing public policy. One difference was that gunfire was nearly absent from stands taken either for or against women’s voting rights. Guns are now the tool of lonely campaigners.

The early focus of suffragettes was in states and territories. The earliest success came in Western territories of the U.S. The first place in the entire world where women permanently won the right to vote by the vote of an all-male governing body was the territory of Wyoming in 1869. Some supposed the vote for women might attract more women, who were scarce in the region. Not until 1913 did Illinois become the first state east of the Mississippi to grant women the right to vote.

The going was slow. The significant course of women’s suffrage dates roughly from the Seneca Falls Convention held in 1848 in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York. The sole African American to attend was Frederick Douglass, who spoke eloquently for women’s suffrage. To set the scene, the Civil War would begin 13 years later in 1861. 

The history of women’s suffrage is also the story of forming, building, splintering, and merging of women’s organizations. The patterns of forming and re-forming followed leaders with differing styles. Leaders working toward the same goal always have more than enough matters at hand to show many styles. 

Think of the endless choices to be made:

• How much to engage at the state level vs. the federal level?
• How much gradualism to tolerate vs. how much immediacy to demand?
• How many allied issues to include vs. how much single mindedness to show?
• How much spreading of patriotism vs. how much vilifying of patriotism?
  
• How much order to maintain vs. how much disorder to foment?
• How much to demonize wavering foes vs. devising ways to win them over?
• How to adjust tactics to deal with coincident events?
• Endless optics.
  

The few years between the victory in Illinois in 1913 and victory in the 19th Amendment in 1920 brought a renewed whirl of strategies and leaders’ styles. Coincidentally, the U.S. formally entered WWI (1917), was hit with the infamous Spanish Flu (1918), and celebrated the Armistice (1918). Women from all walks of life took jobs in war plants and hospitals. Women’s marches and protests continued. The combined effects of these new events and images altered strategies and optics. 

President Woodrow Wilson was a royally “wavering foe.” Wilson believed in women’s rights. At the same time, he saw women as a core strength in families, which led to concerns for sturdy households. Two leaders of the time dealt with President Wilson very differently.

Alice Paul, a young leader about 32 years old, routinely picketed the White House making personal attacks on President Wilson, which was considered “disloyal” after the U.S. entered the war. Carrie Chapman Catt, roughly the same age as Wilson, led another group with a different style. She wrote personal appeals to Wilson and received written replies. 

Pulling from all these reasons, President Wilson was persuaded to change his position. He fully supported the suffragettes for the first time in a 1918 speech to Congress. The 19th Amendment passed Congress on June 4, 1919, and the action moved to the states for ratification. 

Thus was confirmed how democracy works to gather sturdy strategies from differing viewpoints, which has led the U.S. to better policies. The new task for voters groups, women and men alike, is to reinclude in our democracy the venerable value of differing viewpoints.