Women’s Suffrage Centennial

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. The Nineteenth Amendment was ratified on August 18, 1920 and certified on August 26, 1920, ending decades of struggle for women’s right to vote.  

The suffrage movement started in the nineteenth century and became notable in several parts of the world. By the beginning of the twentieth century women had gained the right to vote in national elections in a few countries including New Zealand, Australia and Finland. New Zealand was the first country to grant women the right to vote in parliamentary elections, allowing women to vote in national elections for the first time in 1893. See the New Zealand Ministry of Culture and Heritage Women and the Vote online guide for more information. Also, see this Women in History: Voting Rights post to learn when women gained the right to vote in other countries.

Books about women’s suffrage from our e-book collections:

• Votes for Women (by Sandra Holton and June Purvis)
• Woman Suffrage and Women’s Rights (by Ellen Carol DuBois)
• Alice Paul and the American Suffrage Campaign (by Katherine H. Adams and Michael L. Keene)
• No Votes for Women: The New York State Anti-Suffrage Movement (by Susan Goodier)
• Joyous Greetings: The First International Women’s Movement, 1830-1860 (by Bonnie S. Anderson)
• Why Movements Succeed or Fail : Opportunity, Culture, and the Struggle for Woman Suffrage (by Lee Ann Banaszak)

For additional information about the history of women’s suffrage in the United States visit our library guide Votes for Women: A Virtual Exhibition.

[About the header image: Suffrage envoys from San Francisco, retrieved from Wikimedia Commons, is in the public domain. Source: Library of Congress, Records of the National Woman’s Party Collection.]