RNC Celebrates Women’s Equality
By HHR | July 21st, 2009 | Category: Featured, General |“I voted for the Republicans. They gave us the vote”
- Susan B. Anthony
August 26, 2009 marks an important day in the Women’s movement. This important day observes the many contributions that women have provided to our country over the years.
In 1872, Susan B. Anthony led a delegation of women to the GOP convention in Philadelphia. At the convention, Anthony lobbied for women’s suffrage. As a result of her efforts, the Republican Party became the first national party to recognize the role of women in its Platform, stating: “The Republican Party is mindful of its obligations to the loyal women of America for their noble devotion to the cause of freedom. Their admission to wider fields of usefulness is viewed with satisfaction, and the honest demands of any class of citizens for additional rights should be treated with respectful consideration.”
This recognition of the many positive contributions that women bring to the Republican Party and our country helped women like Jeannette Rankin, a Republican, become the first woman to serve in the U.S. Congress in 1917. She was followed to this distinguished body by such remarkable women as Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the first Republican woman to represent Florida in the U.S. Congress and Michele Bachmann, the first Republican woman elected to the U.S. Congress from Minnesota. Our very own RNC Co-Chairman, Jan Larimer, hails from the Equality State of Wyoming which was the first territory to grant women the right to vote in 1869.
In remembrance of this day, RNC Coalitions, the RNC Co-Chairman’s Office and RNC Chairman Michael Steele would like to highlight other notable Republican women, just like those listed above, who have made a positive impact in their communities across the country.
Click here to nominate a leading female Republican who could be nationally recognized for her involvement and dedication to her community.
In 1917, Jeannette Rankin, a Montana Republican, became the first woman to serve in the House. Shortly after Ms. Rankin’s election to Congress, the 19th Amendment was passed in 1919. The amendment’s journey to ratification had been a long and difficult one. Starting in 1896, the Republican Party became the first major party to officially favor women’s suffrage. That year, Republican Sen. A. A. Sargent of California introduced a proposal in the Senate to give women the right to vote.
Republicans led the fight for women’s voting rights — and the Democrats, as a party, opposed civil rights for women. All of the leading suffragists — including Susan B. Anthony, Lucretia Mott, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton — were Republicans. In fact, Susan B. Anthony bragged, after leaving the voting booth, that she had voted for “the Republican ticket — straight.”
The suffragists included two African-American Republican women who were also co-founders of the NAACP: Ida Wells and Mary Terrell, great leaders of our party, both of them.
The first women delegates to a national party convention did not go to the Democratic National Convention, they went to the Republican Convention. In fact, for years Democrats kept women out, while Republicans were letting women in. The goal of the Republican suffragists, including their male Republican elected official friends, was to add an amendment to the Constitution that would give women the right to vote. Sadly, there is not a single California schoolbook in use today that tells students it was a Republican U.S. Senator from California, Aaron Sargent, who authored the women’s suffrage amendment — or that he named it in honor of another great Republican, Susan B. Anthony.
Senator Sargent introduced the Susan B. Anthony Amendment in 1878, but it didn’t become the law of the land until 1920. Why? Because Republicans did not have majorities in both the House and the Senate at the same time, and the Democrats kept voting against it. But, in the meanwhile, in 1916, Montana — which had by state law given women the right to vote — elected Jeannette Rankin to be the first woman to serve in the United States Congress. She, of course, was a Republican.
In the national election two years later, in 1918, Republicans won majorities in both the House and the Senate. We then swiftly passed the Women’s Suffrage Amendment. And 1920, therefore, was the first presidential election in which all women could vote. What do you think most women in America did? They voted for Warren Harding. In fact, I remember having a conversation with my grandmother about this. I talked to her about the first time she was able to vote, and I asked her, “Who did you vote for?” She looked at me as if I were crazy. “Of course,” she answered, “I voted for the Republicans. They gave us the vote.” That’s why the Republican landslide for Harding was so big that year.
