The revised strategy of the woman’s suffrage
movement in the twentieth century was, as I have argued, a distinctly modern
campaign. It used popular methods of Progressive reformers to engage a broader
audience than it had ever done before, yet it situated itself squarely into the
exclusionary concept of eugenics, which limited the support suffragists won
from the poor, the ethnic, and African-Americans. Indeed, suffragists abandoned
any notions of equality that nineteenth century suffragists had laid out in the
Declaration of Sentiments. Instead, suffragists framed their movement as a
celebration of the traditional. They used modern methods, but pushed a moderate
agenda that earned them favor from a large confederation of clubwomen, and poised
them as nonthreatening in the minds of male voters.

Suffrage found its way into the
consumer culture through every avenue possible. They produced postcards, films,
magazines, newspapers, plays, parades, pageants, songs, and even material
goods. Suffragists tried to saturate the media with their own message, which
was carefully crafted with the understanding that Progressive Americans did not
want revolution, they wanted progress.
Suffragists tried to define progress in the American consciousness as the enfranchisement
of women. To keep that message mainstream, suffragists threw themselves into
the culture of the Progressive world. They held onto older views of motherhood,
but injected their image with the youth and vibrancy of a new century. By
embracing modern media, suffragists were no longer on the margins, but instead
in the limelight through their relentless public spectacles. Suffragists, and
particularly the NWP, became media darlings. The found their way out of closed
meetings and small conferences, into streets and theaters.

Despite modern means, the message
of the new campaign mostly aligned to Victorian ideals of home and motherhood.
Suffragists played into existing gender roles as a tactic to de-radicalize the
movement. The suffrage movement was not the only social movement of the
Progressive era, but it was one of the most successful. The cause seemingly
stagnated after the 1880s, but it awoken as Catt and other suffrage leaders
successfully united a number of woman’s clubs buying into the potential of the
vote, for gradual, not radical change. Again the movement revitalized as Alice
Paul and the NWP coordinated a campaign that reframed the suffragist identity
in the American mind. The revised strategy presented suffrage as a cause that
would not weaken the virtues of womanhood, but rather strengthen them.

The Allender Girl was youthful,
bright, and very white. The model rejected the support of black suffragists to help
distance the movement from the controversy of race. Suffragists, very much a
product of the Progressive Era, recognized that race could be polarizing. To
create a movement that was incorporated into the mainstream media, they deliberately
chose to alienate those who stood apart from their white, middle-class vision
of suffrage. Leaders like Paul and Catt spoke publicly about this desire to
create distance between suffrage and race. These woman’s rights leaders were
not concerned for all women, but rather those who met their status, culture,
and race.  

 Suffrage was a cause, which motivated women to
work beyond themselves. They promoted an ideal of woman; an ideal, which many
early suffragists of the nineteenth century would have rejected. The Allender
Girl wore the latest fashions, had an education, and campaigned vigorously for
her cause. As the campaign hoped to draw in more support, it played on the
perceived fragility of womankind by labeling women like Inez Milholland and the
force-fed prisoners at Occoquan as martyrs. The new woman was meant to be a way
to remove woman from her exalted pedestal in the cult of true womanhood, but
certainly, the outlook given by NAWSA and the NWP between 1910 to 1920 was not
one of equality. The campaign sacrificed the vision of democracy laid out in
the Declaration of Sentiments as a means of expediency.

As a result, the loose
confederation of clubwomen who had formed a majority of the suffrage movement
fell apart in the years after suffrage passed. Nobody agreed on the particular
potential of woman’s enfranchisement. Some women voters clamored for
legislation that protected mothers and children from mistreatment in the
workplace. These women like Florence Kelley of Chicago, for example, wanted to
use the vote as a way of preserving the mystique of womankind. They wanted to
define women in terms relating to her biological role as mother and nurturer.
These type of women were typically more attuned to avenues for municipal
housekeeping.

On the other hand, a number of
women emerged as proponents for sexual equality. After the nineteenth amendment
passed, Alice Paul wrote the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) in 1923; the proposed
amendment would ensure equality of rights could not be denied based on sex. Members
of the NWP associated with this clamor for equality, which fundamentally
opposed most of the imagery they propagated during the campaign for suffrage.
Instead of framing woman as special, the NWP shifted their message to reflect the
New Woman ideal. However, as suffragists, these women, had situated their
entire media campaign on the fact that women were not equal to men. They had
argued that the vote would be used, not to make women equal to men, but so
women’s particular feminine virtue could elevate and shape society positively.
The suffrage movement’s films, parades, and cartoons celebrated the divide
between genders by promoting women as hyper-feminine.

Alice Paul’s proposed amendment
did not pass. Ninety-one years later, the amendment sits unratified. Perhaps
one reason that the ERA could not gain any traction is that it departed
drastically from the suffrage media campaign. Where suffragists had suggested
that suffrage would be a moderate change, the ERA failed to frame itself in
familiar terms. The ERA was bold, where the suffrage movement had been timid –
in message. The suffrage campaign was purposefully vague. In an attempt to
appeal to a very broad audience, suffragists suggested all the things that the
vote could do, but not specifically what aims they held.

While suffragists successfully
campaigned with modern methods, the original hopes for sexual equality
suffered. They won the vote, but not much else.The confederation of clubwomen
decayed in the years after 1920. While many enemies of suffrage had feared that
women would organize together, women split between political parties. Their
campaign had created an approachable vision of woman voters, but in doing so,
they neglected the nuances of what they thought the vote should do. They created an argument that appealed to many because
it did not hold significance one way or the other. The suffrage ideal was a
commodity, not a cause.