Dominance and Democracy: the Legacy of Woman Suffrage for the Voting Right
UCLA Women's Law Journal, Vol. 5, p. 113, 1994
114 Pages Posted: 15 Aug 2009
Date Written: August 13, 2009
Abstract
This Article explores the history of American women’s long struggle for the vote; it does so to illuminate the efficacy of the franchise to produce political emancipation. This history reveals that struggles over constitutional values and rights are so often a story of how the dominance of one group over another affects the actual prospects for real democratic inclusion. By looking at the efforts of females to share in governing the American society despite the objections of ruling groups, we can better judge what the women of the last two centuries accomplished by focusing on the voting right as their path to empowerment. Beyond that, their story asks us to consider the plausibility of the vote in general as the primary means for redressing the injustices visited on other under-represented groups.
Keywords: women, vote, franchise, women's history, suffrage, feminism, constitutional law, fourteenth amendment, reconstruction, reconstruction amendments, World War I, Civil War
JEL Classification: K10, K11, K19, K40, K49, J12, J16, J18, J70, J71, J78
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation