Celebrating 100 Years of the 19th Amendment
ISSUE 4 2020 | CAPITOL IDEAS
VOT E S F OR WOM E N
14
“There will never be a new world order until women are a part of it,” said Alice Paul, suffragist, women’s rights activist and author of the original Equal Rights Amendment. Paul devoted her life to advocating for women’s suffrage and equal rights for women. She was the main architect behind the 1910s campaign to ratify the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which decreed that no citizen could be denied the right to vote based on sex. When it became law on Aug. 26, 1920, some 27 million women became eligible to vote, the largest increase in potential voters in American history. However, this tremendous victory was incomplete. Because of restrictive state and federal laws including poll taxes, literacy tests and ethnic barriers to citizenship, many nonwhite women including African Americans, Native Americans, Latinas and Asian Americans, still could not cast a ballot.
We have come a long way in 100 years and have a long way to go still. Today, it is more important than ever that women exercise their hardearned right to vote. New challenges lead to disenfranchisement and even those who have the right to vote are often prevented from exercising it. In celebration of the centennial anniversary of the 19th Amendment in 2020, CSG asked some of its female members to reflect on this legislation and the doors that it opened — or didn’t open — for their current careers. As we celebrate the anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment, these glass-ceiling-shattering members remember all those who cannot vote in addition to those who can.
