August 26th is Women’s Equality Day! Although celebrated since 1971, it was actually 95 years ago on this day in 1920 that the 19th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States guaranteed women the right to vote. The women’s suffrage movement labored for decades before Tennessee became the 36th state to ratify the amendment, finally meeting the required ratification by three-fourths of the states. The Secretary of State certified the ratification on August 26th. How will you celebrate?
You can learn more online, from websites such as the National Women’s History Museum, National Women’s History Project, the Library of Congress American Memory site “Votes for women: Selections from the American Woman Suffrage Association, 1848-1921,” the National Park Service’s site “Signers of the Declaration of sentiments” (which also links to the document’s text), or the National Archives and Records Administration’s Treasures of Congress page “Progressive reform: Votes for women.” But Andersen Library has resources too!
Search the “Books, Media and more (UW Whitewater)” section of Research@UWW and find titles such as Votes for women: The struggle for suffrage revisited (3rd-floor Main Collection, JK1896 .V67 2002, or online), Harriot Stanton Blatch and the winning of woman suffrage (3rd-floor Main Collection, HQ1413.B545 D83 1997) about Elizabeth Cady Stanton‘s daughter, One woman one vote: Rediscovering the woman suffrage movement (3rd-floor Main Collection, JK1896 .O54 1995) which accompanies a PBS documentary (2nd-floor Browsing DVDs, Academic, JK1896 .O641 2005), and many more book titles.
Search Films on Demand for suffrage to find streaming videos, such as The story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony: Failure is impossible and The oratory of women’s suffrage.
Search other databases provided by Andersen Library, e.g., America: History and Life, to find articles including “The Wisconsin press and woman suffrage, 1911-1919: An analysis of factors affecting coverage by ten diverse newspapers” (Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 1996, vol.73:no.3, pp.620-634) and “Adversaries and allies: Rival national suffrage groups and the 1882 Nebraska Woman Suffrage Campaign” (Great Plains Quarterly, 2005, vol.25:no.2, pp.87-103).
Considering how long women have now had the right to vote, you may also be interested in research on related topics, such as how women are represented in political offices? For example, the Wisconsin Legislative Reference Bureau periodically updates Wisconsin women legislators – A historical list, which in the one dated January 2015 says that 132 women have served in the Wisconsin Legislature since 1925, including 33 in the 2015 Legislature. (There are 33 members of the Senate and 99 members of the Assembly.) According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s quick facts for Wisconsin, female person represented 50.3% of the state’s population in 2013. And according to the Congressional Research Service’s Membership of the 114th Congress: A profile dated June 2015, “one hundred eight women (a record number) are serving in the 114th Congress.” The total number of members of the House and Senate? 541.
Please ask a librarian (chat, email, stop at the Reference Desk, or call 262.472.1032) if you’d like help with finding resources.
Andersen Library is a federal and Wisconsin depository library with federal and state government documents on a variety of current and relevant issues available to you in various formats (print, DVD/CD-ROM, online). Check out your government at Andersen Library!
