I found the video on women’s suffrage very informative. There are certain things that most people don’t know about the movement. People typically simplify it by seeing it as a spontaneous movement when all women finally decided to fight for the vote, but it was a much more complicated and strenuous process. The women involved in the suffrage movement began as abolitionists. I thought it was interesting how the movement for women’s rights began because women were locked out of the anti-slavery discussion, despite being abolitionists themselves. To this end, one of the points of the video that I enjoyed the most was when they talked about how former slave Frederick Douglass himself came forward in support of the women’s suffrage movement. Unfortunately, when slavery was finally abolished and down the line when black men were guaranteed the right to vote, the women’s suffrage movement didn’t achieve the same success.
On this point, I thought it was interesting to consider how the women’s movement has always seemed to be on the “back-burner” of American politics. As more and more classes of men were allowed to vote (the poor, blacks, etc.) nobody besides women themselves seemed to care about their movement. Even as the most radical change in American politics since the creation of the Constitution was occurring with the abolition of slavery, American men were still unyielding and were refusing to even consider a women’s perspective on the matter. Living conditions aside, it seems like women had a social status equal to a slave. Despite all of this, I found it at least interesting how World War I secured the suffrage movement, with women becoming crucial figures in the factories at home while men were off fighting in the war. This time it seems women made themselves heard and refused to be swept aside despite the global conflict. And finally, after the war concluded, women guaranteed their vote.