The Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits the United States and its states from denying the right to vote to citizens of the United States on the basis of sex, in effect recognizing the right of women to vote. The amendment was the culmination of a decades-long movement for women's suffrage in the United States, at both the state and national levels, and was part of the worldwide movement towards women's suffrage and part of the wider women's rights movement. The first women's suffrage amendment was introduced in Congress in 1878. However, a suffrage amendment did not pass the House of Representatives until May 21, 1919, which was quickly followed by the Senate, on June 4, 1919. It was then submitted to the states for ratification, achieving the requisite 36 ratifications to secure adoption, and thereby go into effect, on August 18, 1920. The Nineteenth Amendment's adoption was certified on August 26, 1920.
The League of Women Voters (LWV) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan political organization in the United States. Founded in 1920, its ongoing major activities include registering voters, providing voter information, and advocating for voting rights. In addition, the LWV works with partners that share its positions and supports a variety of progressive public policy positions, including campaign finance reform, women's rights, health care reform, gun control and LGBT+ rights.
Bertha Maria Júlia Lutz was a Brazilian zoologist, politician, and diplomat. Lutz became a leading figure in both the Pan American feminist movement and human rights movement. She was instrumental in gaining women's suffrage in Brazil and represented her country at the United Nations Conference on International Organization, signing her name to the United Nations Charter. In addition to her political work, she was a naturalist at the National Museum of Brazil, specializing in poison dart frogs. She has four frog species and two lizard species named after her.
Carrie Chapman Catt was an American women's suffrage leader who campaigned for the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which gave U.S. women the right to vote in 1920. Catt served as president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association from 1900 to 1904 and 1915 to 1920. She founded the League of Women Voters in 1920 and the International Woman Suffrage Alliance in 1904, which was later named International Alliance of Women. She "led an army of voteless women in 1919 to pressure Congress to pass the constitutional amendment giving them the right to vote and convinced state legislatures to ratify it in 1920". She "was one of the best-known women in the United States in the first half of the twentieth century and was on all lists of famous American women."
Pan-Americanism is a movement that seeks to create, encourage, and organize relationships, an association, and cooperation among the states of the Americas, through diplomatic, political, economic, and social means.
Elena Torres Cuéllar was a leading Mexican revolutionary, feminist, progressive educator and writer. A member of the communist party, in 1917 she was the only woman to participate on behalf of the Liga Central de Resistencia at the first meeting of the Yucatán Socialist Party in Mérida. In 1919, she founded the Mexican Feminist Council campaigning for better social and economic conditions for women as well as the right to vote. She devoted considerable efforts to improving education in Mexico, especially by facilitating the training of primary school teachers in rural areas.
Graciela Mandujano (1902–1984) was a Chilean politician and feminist. She was the Chilean official delegate to the Pan-American Conference of Women (1922).
Madeleine Lemoyne, Mrs. Charles E. Ellicott was an American suffragist. She was the founder of the League of Women Voters of Maryland, serving as its president for 20 years, longer than anyone else.
Elena Arizmendi Mejía was a Mexican feminist who established the Neutral White Cross to care for casualties of the Mexican Revolution that the Red Cross would not aid. Participating in the first wave of Mexican feminism, she established two international women's rights organizations: the "Mujeres de la Raza" and the International League of Iberian and Latin American Women.
The Primer Congreso Interamericano de Mujeres was a feminist meeting held from 21 to 27 August 1947 in Guatemala City, Guatemala. It was called together by the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) and hosted by the Unión Democrática de Mujeres of Guatemala. This organization had been formed by Angelina Acuña de Castañeda, Berta Corleto, Elisa Hall de Asturias, Gloria Menéndez Mina de Padilla, Rosa de Mora, Irene de Peyré, and Graciela Quan immediately following the Guatemalan 1944 coup d'état to push for recognition of women's civil rights.
The Inter-American Commission of Women, abbreviated CIM, is an organization that falls within the Organization of American States. It was established in 1928 by the Sixth Pan-American Conference and is composed of one female representative from each Republic in the Union. In 1938, the CIM was made a permanent organization, with the goal of studying and addressing women's issues in the Americas.
Esther Neira de Calvo (1890–1978) was a prominent educator, feminist and women's right advocate. She was the first woman elected as a National Deputy to the Third Constituent Assembly in Panama. She was the founder and president of the National Society for the Advancement of Women and of the Women's Patriotic League, and actively worked for Panamanian women's enfranchisement, finally attained in 1945–46. She served as Executive Secretary of the Inter American Commission of Women from 1949 to 1965 and was Panama's Ambassador to the Council of the Organization of American States from 1966 to 1968.
First Conference of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance was held in 1902 in Washington D.C. to consider the feasibility of organizing an International Woman Suffrage Association.
Second Conference of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance was held in Berlin, Germany in June 1904. The main features of the second conference were the formation of "The International Woman Suffrage Alliance," and the adoption of the Declaration of Principles.
Sixth Conference of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance was held in June 1911 in Stockholm, Sweden. It was led by the organization's president, Carrie Chapman Catt.
The Seventh Conference of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance met in Budapest, Hungary, 15–21 June 1913. As had been the case with all the preceding International Woman Suffrage Alliance conferences, the location had been chosen to reflect the status of woman suffrage: a place where the prospects seemed favorable and liable to influence public sentiment by demonstrating that it was now a global movement. When it had been announced at the sixth congress that the next one would be held in the capital of Hungary, it was felt that the location seemed very remote, and there were concerns that Hungary did not have representative government. In fact, it proved to be one of the largest and most important conventions. Furthermore, the delegates stopped en route for mass meetings and public banquets in Berlin, Dresden, Prague and Vienna, spreading its influence ever further afield.
The Eighth Conference of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance occurred June 6–12, 1920, in Geneva, Switzerland.
Sadie L. Adams was an African-American teacher, suffragist, and clubwoman. She was one of the first women to serve on an election board in Chicago and one of the founders of the Douglas League of Women Voters. In 1916, she served as a delegate from Chicago's first black suffrage organization, the Alpha Suffrage Club, to the National Equal Rights League conference. She was elected president of the Chicago and Northern District Association of Colored Women's Clubs in 1921, serving into 1934. She was also involved in various charity clubs and organizations that helped to engage women in war work during World War I, provide resources for underserved youth, and increase suffrage for Black women.
Milagros Benet de Mewton was a Puerto Rican educator, women's rights advocate and suffragist. Born into an intellectual, liberal family, Benet trained as a teacher. Inhabitants of the island gained U.S. citizenship in 1917, two decades after the United States acquired Puerto Rico from Spain in the Spanish–American War. Benet was active in the struggle for women's enfranchisement and joined the first suffragist organization Liga Femínea Puertorriqueña that year. When U.S. women gained the right to vote with the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1919, Benet led the push to extend its coverage to Puerto Rico. In 1924, she filed a lawsuit challenging the right of the electoral board to refuse to register women as they were U.S. citizens. The Supreme Court of Puerto Rico ruled that states and territories have the right to determine who can vote and denied her claim.
María Elena Landázuri Gil was a Mexican educator, musician, pacifist, and woman's rights activist. She was born into an upper-class family and grew up in Mexico City. After attending the National Conservatory of Music, she earned a degree in music from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and began teaching there. In 1915, she wrote a libretto for the opera Dos amores, which was composed by Rafael J. Tello. It was the first known libretto by a Mexican woman and premiered within a year. When an educational exchange program was launched between Mexico and the United States in 1918, she enrolled in sociology courses at the University of Chicago. While in Chicago, she worked in various settlement houses becoming friends with feminists Grace Abbott, Jane Addams, and Mary McDowell. Joining the Consejo Feminista Mexicano, she represented the organization at the 1921 Vienna congress and 1924 Washington congress of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. She served as a translator for the 1922 Pan-American Conference of Women held in Baltimore, Maryland and organized with Elena Torres the 1923 Pan-American Conference of Women at Mexico City.
