NARA Holds Panel on How ‘Suffragents’ Helped Women Get the Vote

WASHINGTON, November 14, 2019 —The drive for women's suffrage in the early 20th century got a big boost from men who were sympathetic to the cause—“suffragents”—a panel of authors told an audience at the National Archives recently.

These men, said Johanna Newman, author of Gilded Suffragists: The New York Socialites who Fought for Women's Right to Vote, “gave a burst of energy to the [suffrage] movement.”

Newman and other guests recounted the years in the first decade or so of the 20th century, when some men were willing to go public with their support of the drive to give women the vote. That drive was successful in 1920, when the 19th Amendment was ratified and became part of the U.S. Constitution.

But men who joined the cause early on also faced ridicule from other men. “It disrupted the gender role expectation that men had,” Newman said.

Those men who gave their open support to the woman suffrage movement were made fun of by other men, with chants like "Who's going  to take care of the baby?"