Why The Women's Suffrage Movement Failed

The women suffrage movement spanning across the 19th century up to 1920 was a movement that advocated for a women’s right to vote. The movement decisively failed during the 19th century without seeing much fruition of women’s suffrage; it then eventually gained success in the early 20th century and realizing its ultimate goal in 1920. The women’s suffrage movement failure during the 19th century largely due to the lack of unity and the strategic miscalculations. The movement made great strides towards success upon solving the unity problems by the early 1900s, which provides for the basis for later success. Their strategic turn towards more aggressive and pressing actions afterwards had finally led to success of the movement. The main reason for women suffrages’ initial defeat concerned the multiple incident that brought lack of unity. The first defeat the movement suffered was at the hands of the ratification of the fifteenth amendment. The prohibition of discrimination against the African American men indirectly allowed discrimination based on sex; delivered a severe blow against women’s suffrage as it possible even worsen women’s political position(Keyssar 2000, p. 179). The miscalculation became clear to ever since their first defeat and early failures, all were based on ground work of the movements lack of unification power. As the movement progressed, despite the gain on the way, it

197). Also the emergence of new generation leaders and the quick establishment of NAWSA braches in every state by the end of the1890s, layout the groundwork to the success that came after 1900(Keyssar 2000, p.