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The Political Consequences of Suffrage Exclusion

Organizations, Institutions, and the Electoral Mobilization of Women

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

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By the close of the first decade following ratification of constitutional female suffrage in the United States, it had become commonplace to read of female political leaders bemoaning the inefficacy of women's lobbying organizations, which despite their lobbying efforts did not engage in any electoral activity such as the mobilization of female voters (see, for example, NYT 10 March 1928: 3; NYT 31 March 1931: 22). That this should have been the case raises an interesting question: Why not? That is, given the likelihood that women's votes would have increased the efficacy of these lobbying efforts, why weren't the leaders of women's lobbying organizations, in particular those of the former suffrage machine, the National League of Women Voters (NLWV), pursuing those votes?

Type
Special Section: Institutions and Institutionalism, part 2
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 1996 

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