Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Home

Turning Rights into Ballots: The Uneven Integration of Women into Electoral Politics after Suffrage

  • Christina Wolbrecht (a1) and J. Kevin Corder (a2)

Extract

After a more than seven-decade battle, American women secured the right to vote in August 1920. The struggle for women to have a voice in elections was not over, however. The Nineteenth Amendment states that “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” The amendment gives Congress the power to enforce the law by appropriate legislation. It does not, however, empower or charge any government office or actor with ensuring that women can and do cast ballots. This article argues that this reality, often taken for granted, has serious implications for both the incorporation of women into the electorate and the representation of their political interests.

Copyright

References

Hide All
Andersen, Kristi. 1996. After Suffrage: Women in Partisan and Electoral Politics before the New Deal. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Blakey, Gladys C. 1928. A Handy Digest of Election Laws. Washington, DC: League of Women Voters.
Board of Election Commissioners (Boston). 1921. “Annual Report of the Election Department for the Year 1920.” Boston Public Library: City Document No. 10.
Brown, Nadia E. 2014. “Political Participation of Women of Color: An Intersectional Analysis.” Journal of Women, Politics & Policy 35:315–48.10.1080/1554477X.2014.955406
Cascio, Elizabeth U., and Shenhav, Na’ama. 2020. “A Century of the American Women Voter: Sex Gaps in Political Participation, Preferences, and Partisanship Since Women’s Enfranchisement.” Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper No. 26709.
Corder, J. Kevin, and Wolbrecht, Christina. 2016. Counting Women’s Ballots: Female Voters from Suffrage to the New Deal. New York: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9781316492673
Freeman, Jo. 2000. A Room at a Time: How Women Entered Party Politics. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Gosnell, Harold F. 1930. Why Europe Votes. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Guinier, Lani. 2009. “No Affirmative Right to Vote.” New York Times Room for Debate blog, June 23. Available at https://today.law.harvard.edu/guinier-in-nyt-no-affirmative-right-to-vote.
Harvey, Anna L. 1998. Votes Without Leverage: Women in Electoral Politics, 1920–1970. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lebsock, Suzanne. 1993. “Woman Suffrage and White Supremacy: A Virginia Case Study.” In Visible Women: New Essays on American Activism, ed., and Suzanne Lebsock, 61100. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Piven, Frances Fox, and Cloward, Richard A.. 1989. Why Americans Don’t Vote. Updated edition. New York: Pantheon Books.
Smooth, Wendy G. 2018. “African American Women and Electoral Politics: The Core of the New American Electorate.” In Gender and Elections: Shaping the Future of American Politics, 4th edition, ed., and Richard L. Fox, 171–97. New York: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/9781108277792.007
Wilkerson-Freeman, Sarah. 2002. “The Second Battle for Woman Suffrage: Alabama White Women, the Poll Tax, and V. O. Key’s Master Narrative of Southern Politics.” Journal of Southern History 68 (May): 333–74.10.2307/3069935
Wolbrecht, Christina, and Corder, J. Kevin. 2020. A Century of Votes for Women: American Elections Since Suffrage. New York: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/9781316941331
Young, Louise M. 1989. In the Public Interest: The League of Women Voters, 1920–1970. New York: Greenwood Press.

Turning Rights into Ballots: The Uneven Integration of Women into Electoral Politics after Suffrage

  • Christina Wolbrecht (a1) and J. Kevin Corder (a2)

Metrics

Altmetric attention score

Full text views

Total number of HTML views: 0
Total number of PDF views: 0 *
Loading metrics...

Abstract views

Total abstract views: 0 *
Loading metrics...

* Views captured on Cambridge Core between <date>. This data will be updated every 24 hours.

Usage data cannot currently be displayed.