Women fight for political equality and the political association they enjoy today is not a new occurrence in history. It has been a long process that has spun many decades. The most historic was the great national suffrage organized in March 1913 in Washington DC with the aim of revolutionizing and mobilizing women to stand firm in their pursuit of voting rights. This paper attends to ways in which the National Woman’s Party (NWP) influenced the politics of the United States by helping women become enfranchised citizens through ways such as picketing and militant strategies.
The National Women’s Party (NWP), traces its origin to the National American Woman Suffrage Association’s (NAWSA). The main people who led to the formation of the National Woman’s Party are Alice Paul (1885-1977) and Lucy Burns (1879-1966). Alice Paul and Lucy Burns joined the NAWSA in 1913 through the NAWSA they created the Congressional Union for Women Suffrage. Alice Paul’s tactics were too extreme for the NAWSA, leading to a split of the Congressional Union from NAWSA (Baker, 2002). The main focus of Paul and Burns was to lobby for a constitutional amendment that aimed to give women the right to vote.
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The Congressional Union continued to demand women suffrage rights, in 1916 the CU formed the NWP, it was briefly known as the Women’s Party of Western Voters. The CU continued to exist in the states in which women were not allowed to vote. The NWP existed in western states that had allowed women to vote. In 1917 the two groups merged and became a single organization which was named the NWP. Anne Martin (1875-1951) became the first chairwoman of the NWP ( Ford, 1991). The main goal of the NWP was to remain independent of the existing political parties. The main aim of the National Woman’s Party was to achieve constitutional amendment that allowed women in the United States to vote. The amendment is referred to as the Susan B. Anthony Amendment. The NWP concentrated its efforts on the federal government rather than the state as was the case of NAWSA. The NWP employed tactics such as street marches, open-air meetings and picketing in front of the White House and the Capitol ( Ford, 1991).
The NWP opposed all Democratic Party candidates. They opposed the Democratic Party because it was the party that resisted the most women suffrage demands. This strategy worked because, in states where women had voting rights, the Democrats had lost congressional seats in 1914 ( Lunardini, 1986). As the 1916 elections approached the NWP wanted to increase its efforts since this would tip the results of the upcoming elections in the western states against the Democrats. The NWP main focus was the passage of the Susan B. Anthony Amendment. The NWP aimed to punish the major parties that did not support equal suffrage. Despite their efforts, the NWP was not influential enough in their opposition to the Democratic Party, because President Woodrow Wilson was reelected in November.
The NWP did not produce a presidential candidate because their focus was on the constitutional amendment. The NWP wanted to achieve equal voting rights for women in the United States. All their efforts were concentrated on pressuring President Woodrow Wilson into passing the amendment that allowed them to vote. During World War 1, women contributed so much to the war effort, this and the militant tactics of the NWP forced President Wilson to endorse the 19th Amendment. On January 9, 1918, the House of Representatives endorsed the amendment and later on June 4, the U.S Senate endorsed it. The NWP achieved its goal gradually after this, first on May 21, 1919, the U.S House of Representatives passed the Susan B. Anthony federal suffrage amendment, on June 4, the U.S. Senate also passed the Amendment ( Merriam, & Oberly, 1995). This shows how the NWP after a long struggle managed to achieve its goal of equal voting rights for women in the U.S. It also managed to have the Equal Pay Act of 1963 passed, made it possible for women to be paid the same wages as men. This was another victory for the NWP.
The NWP is no longer a political party and exists as a 501c3 educational organization ( Hodgkin & McClain, 2016). The NWP that exists today maintains the history of the National Woman’s Party of the past. It keeps the collection and archival materials of the NWP of the past. It has ceased to be a lobbying party and its main objective since 1997 is to educate the public on women’s rights and the women’s movement. The preservation of the history of the suffragist movement is now one of its main responsibilities.
In U.S politics two parties reign supreme and have won every election since 1852. The two parties are the Republican Party and the Democratic Party. Elections in the United States are based on a winner-take-all system, this means there is no reward for the party that finishes second. This means parties will try to be as large as possible to ensure victory in the elections, this makes it hard to form a third party which can have a chance for victory ( Black, 2012). The two party systems take away voters from third parties, voters know that the chances of third party winning are minimal, meaning a vote for a third party may lead to victory for the party the voter liked least. U.S Elections are based on plurality voting, this means the individual candidate with the most votes wins, whether or not they gained a majority of the total votes cast.
References
Baker, J. H. (2002). Votes for women: The struggle for suffrage revisited. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Black. E. (October 8, 2012) Why the same two parties dominate our two-party system. Minnpost. Retrieved from: https://www.minnpost.com/eric-black-ink/2012/10/why-same-two-parties-dominate-our-two-party-system
Ford, L. (1991). Iron-Jawed Angels: The suffrage militancy of the National Woman's Party, 1912-1920. Lanham, Md: University Press of America.
Hodgkin Marina & McClain Halle (2016). Mapping American social movements through the 20th century. Retrieved from: http://depts.washington.edu/moves/index.shtml
Lunardini, Christine A. (1986) From Equal Suffrage to Equal Rights: Alice Paul and the National Woman's Party, 1910-1928. (New York: New York University Press),
Merriam, L. A., & Oberly, J. W. (1995). United States history: A bibliography of the new writings on American history. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
