The Women's Suffrage Movement

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California women and men worked tirelessly to strengthen the women’s suffrage campaign from 1893, when the state legislature passed an amendment permitting women to vote in state elections, through the final passage of the amendment in 1911. The strength of the movements themselves, passionate support overcoming harsh opposition, pushed by the people and the organizations championing for the women’s vote were the main contributing factors which accumulated in the eventual passage of Amendment 8. Since California women have begun to vote, there have been many advancements and setbacks in the other women’s rights movements, including the Nineteenth Amendment and the Equal Rights Amendment.

In 1849, California entered the United States as a state. Less than fifty years later, in 1893, the state legislature approved an amendment allowing women to vote in state elections. According to the Women of the West Museum, a museum dedicated to sharing the accomplishments of women in the western United States, “it [the amendment] was vetoed by the governor who thought it was unconstitutional” (Women of the West Museum). Just three years after its first defeat, women’s right to vote was put into a state referendum. It was again defeated, this time by the voting public in a wide margin (Women of the West Museum). This defeat brought even more determination to the women’s suffrage movement, women, men, and organizations worked together to ensure the franchisement of women. This time, the movement succeeded in allowing women the right to vote when voters approved the referendum introduced in 1910 in the election of 1911. The amendment became known as Amendment 8 to the California state constitution. California was the sixth state to approve wome...

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...he supporters of the ERA, the Equal Rights Amendment was passed in Congress. The proposed Twenty-Seventh Amendment was sent to the states for ratification on March 22, 1972 (Francis). The states, though, only had a limited amount of time to ratify the amendment, seven years. In the beginning, it did not appear that there would be a problem getting the states to ratify as twenty-two of the necessary thirty-eights states within the first year. After the first year, the ratification speed slowed down until it stopped in 1977 with Indiana (Francis). As the seven year deadline approached, advocates of the ERA appealed to Congress to give the amendment a deadline of 1982, which it did not make. But the Madison Amendment, introduced in 1789 and ratified in 1992, shows that it may be possible to still ratify the amendment if Congress repeals the time limit (Francis).

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