A closer look
Powerful Pictures Make the Case for Winning Women’s Voting Rights
How did suffrage activists use visual images to sway public opinion in favor of votes for women?
by Allison Lange, Wentworth Institute of Technology
Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Americans often saw pictures with negative stereotypes of women’s voting rights activists. These illustrations perpetuated the belief that domestic life and public participation were separate spheres and mocked women who defied traditional expectations that women should focus on their families and homes. Images like these policed gender roles in American society. Women suffragists (another term for women’s voting rights activists) had to develop a new model for womanhood to win over the public.
Popular cartoons commenting on women’s suffrage included an 1869 print entitled “The Age of Brass, or the Triumphs of Woman's Rights” by the famous printmaker Currier and Ives. In this image, the women who gather to vote are represented as masculine. They smoke cigars and wear top hats. One even abandons her husband and child to cast a ballot. While these choices might not seem unusual today, they challenged nineteenth-century ideas of gender norms.
Along with prints, illustrated newspapers published cartoons critical of women’s voting rights activists. In 1873, The New York Daily Graphic’s front page featured an unflattering engraving of suffragist Susan B. Anthony leading a protest and reversing traditional gender roles, forcing men to take care of babies and do grocery shopping.
To challenge such derogatory images, in the late- nineteenth century, women’s voting rights activists designed a national visual campaign that successfully changed the way they were portrayed in popular media. They distributed portraits of their most notable leaders (such as Anthony) and colorful posters that contested stereotypes. This campaign emphasized that white women could be effective political leaders and would remain loving mothers and wives even if they had the vote. Their organizations often excluded women of color, and their propaganda never featured them either.
By 1910, women had won the vote in five Western states, and suffragists were campaigning for more. Newspaper and magazine editors realized that a growing number of their readers supported the cause. They printed more positive photographs and cartoons (some drawn by a new generation of female illustrators) to appeal to readers, sometimes even reproducing suffrage movement propaganda.
The illustrated humor magazine Puck is a great case study of the suffragists’ success. From its founding in 1876, Puck regularly featured cartoons ridiculing female activists. For example, this 1899 cartoon entitled “Unconcerned” represents suffragists as wealthy white women who are avoiding housework to lounge instead. But, in February 1915, the magazine endorsed women’s suffrage. That year, New York State (where Puck was published) was set to decide whether women could vote. The issue containing the magazine’s endorsement, filled with positive images of female voters, reinforced for readers where the publication stood.
The cover illustration featured a cheery picture of a smiling white woman wearing a blue military-style jacket. She is embraced by the magazine’s familiar mascot, a cherubic, childlike version of the mythological fairy Puck. Both wear suffrage yellow “Votes for Women” sashes to declare their allegiances. Puck holds a pencil, too, eager to give the woman a tool to complete her ballot.
Other images in this issue similarly challenged the old stereotypes of female activists. An illustration by Rose O’Neill features four baby Kewpie Dolls (O’Neill’s wildly popular cartoon characters) marching with “Votes for Our Mothers” flags. An active suffrage supporter, O’Neill was a staff illustrator at Puck. While older cartoons mocked suffragists as bad mothers, these babies declare that voting will make women better mothers. Beneath the marchers, the text says:
“Our food, our health, our home, our schools,
our play are all regulated by men’s votes—
Isn’t it a funny thing
When father cannot see
Why mother ought to have a vote
On how these things might be?
Shortly after they appeared in Puck, the marching Kewpie Dolls and their message were reproduced in posters and distributed by the National American Woman Suffrage Association across the nation.
By the 1910s, suffragists had successfully challenged the older mocking stereotypes of female leaders. Their visual campaign emphasized that white women needed the vote to become better wives and mothers. By arguing the vote would support women in their traditional gender roles, suffragists won over more Americans. Puck and many other popular publications followed suffragists’ lead and made the case for women’s votes using these kinds of images. The widespread shift in pictures reflected popular support for the cause and helped win over even more supporters.
Reflection Questions
These images were made to entertain and persuade the public. Which image(s) do you think are the most successful? Why?
Today, we often see portraits in museums and documentaries of suffrage leaders like Susan B. Anthony that celebrate them and their achievements in museums and documentaries. Review the cartoon of Susan B. Anthony and compare it to this portrait of her with Elizabeth Cady Stanton from the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery: https://npg.si.edu/object/npg_S_NPG.77.48
What similarities and differences do you see between these two images?
Artists often copied photographs of famous figures for their cartoons. In what ways might this photograph have inspired this artist? What differences do you see?
In their own visual representations, suffragists emphasized that they were good wives and mothers. Why do you think they made this choice?
Several images are critical of women who participate in politics instead of focusing on their families. Do we still encounter images like this today? Can you give examples of current representations of women that are similar or different from these anti-suffrage illustrations?
Additional Reading
Martha H. Kennedy, Drawn to Purpose: American Women Illustrators and Cartoonists (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2018).
Allison K. Lange, Political Power: Images in the Women’s Suffrage Movement (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020).
Alice Sheppard, Cartooning for Suffrage (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1994).
Lisa Tetrault, Myth of Seneca Falls: Memory and the Women’s Suffrage Movement, 1848-–1898 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014).