Silent Sentinels begin White House picketing

The Women’s Social and Political Union organized a major rally attended by tens of thousands. Public spectacle and collective action made suffrage a mass political question and tested the limits of...

The NAACP created a national institution for legal advocacy, research and public campaigning against racial discrimination. Its strategy combined litigation, journalism and grassroots pressure.

Socialist women’s organizations coordinated public demonstrations in several European cities. The day connected suffrage demands to labor conditions and international solidarity rather than treating...

Alice Paul and Lucy Burns formed a new organization that used marches, lobbying and civil disobedience to demand a federal suffrage amendment. Its strategies expanded movement pressure while revealing...

More than a thousand delegates from countries at war and neutral states met to press for peace and women’s participation in international decision-making. The gathering established the International...

The act enfranchised most men over 21 and some women over 30 who met property qualifications. It expanded the electorate but preserved gender and class distinctions that campaigners continued to...

The ILO was created in the postwar settlement with worker, employer and government representation. It made labor conditions an international concern, while migrant, domestic and informal workers...

The Marchant amendment to the Electoral Act gave women the right to vote. Women’s organizations had campaigned for decades; the first election in which women could actually cast ballots followed in...

Suffrage organizers created a civic organization to help women participate in public affairs after the constitutional victory. It institutionalized voter education and reform advocacy, though...

The amendment prohibited denying the vote because of sex after a long suffrage struggle. Many Black, Indigenous and Asian American women still faced racialized barriers to voting, and equal...