There are several similarities between the assertions that professors Kuhlman and Woodworth-Ney makes about women suffrage. The two of them contend that different regions achieved suffrage at different times in history. However, Kuhlman has a global focus while Woodworth-Ney focuses on the USA for their discussions on women suffrage. Nations acquired woman suffrage in different times in history. There is also evidence to absence of patterns because when women were granted suffrage in different nations whether east or west. Kuhlman notes that there are female second-class citizens in different parts of the world. African countries mostly granted woman suffrage in the 1960s after independence due to the enthusiasm that came with the independence. Women had to ask male-dominated governments for the right to vote.
In the case of America having diverse dates in which it granted women suffrage, Miller notes that the American system of federalism created enormous variations across states and these differences affected the laws governing women’s suffrage (2).
There was a Victorian cult of domesticity in the US produced some conservative and wealthy middle-class. The image of the domestic wife was a symbol of decent womanliness, which was the only women occupation worthy of reverence and prestige (Herx, 74). The League of Women Voters records that the American civil also had significant effects on the suffrage of women in the US. The abolishment of slavery through the 13th Amendment also led Susan B Anthony to organize the American Equal Rights Association, which had the goal of attaining civil rights for black women (5).
Kuhlman and Woodworth-Ney see slight patterns and largely no patterns in the suffrage movements in the world, but she takes note that some countries in one area at times had suffrage around the same time. Kulhman notes that there is a pattern where protestant dominated countries granted women suffrage at earlier dates as compared to catholic dominated countries. White men had given women the vote because they were more egalitarian. Texas in the West shows that there were no patterns in the west for women suffrage. There is no pattern in the passing of women suffrage in the west.
Besides the right to vote, had Professors Kuhlman, Woodworth-Ney and Foner had other concerns. They all advocated several rights and not just the suffrage rights. They, for instance, advocated divorce rights, equal protection before the law, equal eco rights. In most cases, women did not have right to have custody of children until 1974.
The concerns were answered with suffrage. This was so because women could voice out their concerns and take part in decisions that affected them. Granting women the right to vote was evolutionary since it would take time for their participation to change things in male dominated societies. The reformers argue that women could live in shared housekeeping, and in proximity to other women. Women needed better education opportunities. Suffrage was successful reform as compared to other reforms. The passage of suffrage act cast the other issues into darkness and hence the slow progress in balancing the achievement of universal women rights. The reformers never had the same amount of authority before the 10th amendment was passed. Texas was the first to pass voting rights. The anti-separatist argument had long been that if women were allowed to vote the black voters would increase relative to white. Women were the advocates to change, and they protested that white women would allow more white women to votes as compared to the black women in Texas.
Nation-state ought to have people living in a geographical area sharing a common culture, history and language. However, the sharing of the above issues is a mirage. When women gained the right to vote, they became politicized. In certain years after World War1 and World War 2 there were increments in the granting of women suffrage. In Germany and the USA, there were increased cases of women suffrage after the wars due to the quest for economic growth.
Suffrage of the women in the American West was created by egalitarianism created by the frontier experience. The frontier made Americans more democratic and that interaction created a situation where people had more choices, and some white male historians extrapolated that women suffrage was a beneficiary of the frontiers experience.
Works Cited
Herz, Nicloe. Opposition to female suffrage in the United States. The Concord review. Inc. 1992. Print
League of Women Voters of the Greater Dayton Area, The Woman’s Suffrage Movement Curriculum for grades 4 – 12 December, 1994. Print
Miller Grant. Women’s Suffrage, Political Responsiveness, And Child Survival In American History. Stanford Medical School and NBER. 2007. Print
