How to Teach a Child About Women's Suffrage
It's difficult for girls today to appreciate the sacrifices women made for the opportunities they enjoy today. They tend to think of the feminist movement as the only time in history women spoke up for themselves. It's important your child realize women couldn't always vote and the path to achieve this was long. Here's how to teach about women's suffrage.
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Instructions
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Learn about women's suffrage yourself. You must set an example for your child to appreciate women's accomplishments. Tap into resources on the Library of Congress website, including a timeline, documents, photos and even cartoons (see Resources).
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Describe to your child briefly women's involvement in the anti-slavery movement in America. This is important because the unfair treatment of women in this movement spurred them to take action for women's rights.
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Talk about the Women's Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, New York, in July 1848. Organized by five women, including Elizabeth Stanton, it produced a "Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions" that included women's right to vote (see Resources).
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Discuss the Fourteenth Amendment, which gave African American men the right to vote but ignored women of both races. It split the women's rights movement into two organizations with Stanton and Susan B. Anthony forming a more radical one.
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Introduce her to the National American Woman Suffrage Association, which combined Stanton's and Anthony's organizations into the more conservative one. Stanton was the leader of this organization though Anthony played a prominent role in getting the vote for women.
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Summarize their opponents' accusations so your child understands why it was such a struggle for women to be heard. Both men and women accused suffragists of being unfeminine, amoral and neglecting their duties at home.
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Teach your child how the first two decades of the twentieth century were a better time to advance women's suffrage. Women at that time were more involved with progressive politics, which led naturally to the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment on August 26, 1920.
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