After Suffrage

Abstract

After gaining the vote in 1920, suffragists faced a new quandary—to attempt to enter the existing male power structure or focus on the broader cause of advancing women by upholding traditional femininity while still exercising the ballot. Efforts to deal with this dilemma can be seen by examining the contents of contemporary periodicals, particularly three from women’s organizations: Equal Rights, the voice of the National Woman Party; the Woman Citizen, produced by the League of Women Voters, and Independent Woman, the bulletin of the National Federation of Business and Professional Women. These publications illustrated the fracturing of the idealism of the suffrage movement when women actually went to the polls and were forced to deal with political realities as well as conflicting ideas of their proper roles.