A Study On The Woman Suffrage Movements In The West Of The U.S.(1866-1919)

The woman suffrage movements in the United States were a protracted socialand political reform movement whose aim was to grant women the right to vote. Thefight for woman suffrage began at the Seneca Falls Convention in New York in1848,and suffragists to continue their struggle by forming organizations and petitioning forthe next seven decades until they were granted the right to vote in1919. Despite itsNortheastern origins, the Western region of the United States proudly boasted of thefirst suffrage victories in various states.When Congress passed the19th Amendment in1919granting women votingrights,13western states had already adopted woman suffrage. Only2states outsidethe West had done so. The fact presents an interesting question in woman suffrage：Why were the states in west won the woman suffrage early than eastern states andsouthern states？Facing this problem, Alan Grimes’s hypotheses, those native-born,western men were willing to give women the vote to remedy western social problemsand to increase the number of women in the region, receive little support in this paper.Rather, this paper gives an alternative answer to Alan Grimes’ arguments.Based on sociological theories of social movement success, the author analyseswhy western states grant woman suffrage early. Thus, the paper analyzes that thestrategies of there vibrant suffrage movements used by the suffragists played animportant role in determining the successes and failures of the suffrage movementsin the West. The paper also posits that both political and gendered opportunityinfluenced the political decision-makers that gave women the vote.