National+Womens+Suffrage+Association

National Womens Suffrage Association


==== Founded in 1890, the National American Woman Suffrage Association united two suffragist organizations that had pursued opposite policies in the years following the Civil War — the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA), founded in 1869 by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, and the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA), organized the same year by Julia Ward Howe and Lucy Stone, one of the first women to be awarded an academic degree. Those two organizations differed about whether a woman's right to vote should come from a federal Constitutional amendment, or through state legislatures. The NWSA condemned the 14th and 15th amendments, which defined "citizens" and "voters" as "male," as blatant injustices to women. The organization also advocated easier divorce procedures and an end to discrimination in pay and employment. The AWSA was more conservative, and was only concerned with obtaining the vote. The two groups united in 1890 to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association. ====

==== Women's Suffrage the right of women to vote in political elections. Women's suffrage (long called woman suffrage) represents the first stage in the demand for political equality. It generally comes prior to women running and being elected to national political office and holding major appointive posts. Individual women demanded suffrage for themselves as early as the 1600s. An organized movement on behalf of woman suffrage, led by women but open to men, first emerged in the United States in 1848. Woman suffragists often met hostility and sometimes violence. In 1893 New Zealand became the first country to grant women the right to vote in national elections. Most adult women throughout the world today can vote. After the Civil War, women who were involved in the Sanitary Commission, Soldier's Aid Societies, or employed by the government as clerks used their work experiences to find jobs that were previously closed to them. Some, however, expected more opportunities for women based on their wartime achievements, but were disappointed; many later became activists for women's rights. ====  ==== Between 1890 and 1896, Wyoming and Utah entered the Union with woman suffrage in their constitutions, and Idaho and Colorado approved it by referenda. Over the next 14 years, suffragists launched nearly 500 campaigns to get the question on other state ballots. They achieved only a handful of referenda, and won none of them. The situation began to change in 1910, when NAWSA aggressively organized state campaigns that reached beyond the traditional middle-class base of college-educated, privileged, and politically influential members, to include immigrant and working-class women. Between 1910 and 1912, six states gave women the vote, and more followed each year. At the same time, the suffrage movement was garnering more support from national reform groups. In 1915, NAWSA's "Winning Plan" was proposed, which was based on the principle that each state that gave women the right to vote could be pressed to support the effort on the federal level. ====

__Sources:__ http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1594.html http://www.history.com/content/womenhist/the-history-of-women-s-suffrage America Past and Present (Eighth Edition)

