Woman Suffrage and Politics: The Inner Story of the Suffrage Movement

by Carrie Chapman Catt, Nettie Rogers Shuler

"A political combat memoir like no other, suffrage leader Carrie Chapman Catt takes us to the front lines of the Votes for Women battlefields — in the states and in Congress — as American women fight for the franchise. With candor and flashes of wry humor, Catt offers sharp insights into the social, political, and economic forces arrayed against her cause, revealing the strategies that finally brought the suffragists' seven-decade campaign to dramatic victory. Woman Suffrage and Politics is not only a fascinating firsthand account of a major civil rights struggle, but a valuable guidebook for today’s political activists." — Elaine Weiss, author of The Woman's Hour

Carrie Chapman Catt, founder of the League of Women Voters and the International Alliance of Women, was a leader of the women's suffrage movement and a tireless campaigner for giving women the right to vote. She and suffragist Nettie Rogers Shuler reveal the inside story of the struggle from 1848 to 1922.
Catt and Shuler propose that rather than a lack of public support for woman suffrage, the movement was stymied by certain interests in the U.S. political system that controlled public sentiment and deflected information in order to delay the Nineteenth amendment's passage. They note that 26 other countries gave women the right to vote before the United States, and they offer their own insights as to why.
As 2020 marks the 100th anniversary of the amendment's ratification, this landmark work forms an important aid to understanding how the battle was won and the extensive debt we owe to those who fought it.

Genres: Nonfiction, History

512 pages, Paperback

First published November 28, 2004

About the author

Carrie Chapman Catt (January 9, 1859 – March 9, 1947) was an American women's suffrage leader who campaigned for the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which gave U.S. women the right to vote in 1920. Catt served as president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association and was the founder of the League of Women Voters and the International Alliance of Women. She "led an army of voteless women in 1919 to pressure Congress to pass the constitutional amendment giving them the right to vote and convinced state legislatures to ratify it in 1920" and "was one of the best-known women in the United States in the first half of the twentieth century and was on all lists of famous American women".

Catt was born Carrie Clinton Lane in Ripon, Wisconsin, the daughter of Maria Louisa (Clinton) and Lucius Lane. Catt spent her childhood in Charles City, Iowa. She moved to Iowa at the age of seven where she began school. As a child, Catt was interested in science and wanted to become a doctor. After graduating from high school, she enrolled at Iowa State Agricultural College (now Iowa State University) in Ames, Iowa.

Reviews

[Carina Shephard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Required reading for Social Movements class. An eye-opening and valuable read for understanding the incredible fight that American women went through in gaining suffrage.

Technically did not read this cover to cover, but read enough of it that I'm counting it as a complete read.

[♱⃓ kate ♱⃓ · Rating 2 out of 5]

this was a read hard read for me.... and reading it for school made it even tougher. it wasn't really hard for me to keep all the women and characters straight and understand what was going on