When Alice Paul first became involved with suffrage, society was still biased against women having the right to vote.
“Voting, it was argued, would distract women from their sacred domestic roles. They would indulge in politics to the exclusion of motherhood and wifely duties” |
"Manufacturing interests thought it likely that females armed with ballots would battle on behalf of women workers... Above all, powerful liquor establishments stuffed the pockets of politicians with cash and advertised heavily in state after state when the issue arose, certain that the distaff half of the species would overwhelmingly favor prohibition"
-Mary Walton, author of A Women's Crusade: Alice Paul and the Battle for the Ballot
In some cases, women themselves didn't want to vote.
"Women homemakers found it necessary to defend their life styles by opposing suffrage. Their arguments were various... Most popular was that politics was a man’s business, the responsibility of the head of the household. It would distract women from their essential roles" |
"Historians have traditionally argued that Woodrow Wilson's attitude toward the woman suffrage movement was one of benign neglect. Since the president believed that the extension of suffrage to women was the prerogative of the individual states, he refused to recommend a federal constitutional amendment to Congress throughout his first term in office" |