Votes for College Women: Alumni, Students, and the Woman Suffrage Campaign

The College Equal Suffrage League (CESL) played a significant role in the woman suffrage movement by organizing campaigns on college campuses to advance the Nineteenth Amendment. This book explores the league's archives to highlight the outsize and dynamic role of young women in the movement, which invigorated the amendment campaign and brought about a profound transformation in the culture of women's organizing and higher education. It also shows how the league's campaigns set trends in youth activism and laid the groundwork for later college protests against gender inequality.

Format: Hardback
Length: 288 pages
Publication date: 09 April 2024
Publisher: New York University Press

The woman suffrage movement is often portrayed as having been led and organized by middle-aged women and mothers in stuffy, formal settings. However, a significant demographic within the movement—college women—has been overlooked. Between 1870 and 1910, the proportion of college women in the United States rose from 21 to 40 percent. By 1880, there were 155 private colleges in the Northeast and the South for female students and numerous coeducational institutions in the West. The widespread extension of academic training for women helped spur a well-organized campaign for female voting rights on college campuses, where suffragists found a new audience and stage to earn respect and support. Votes for College Women examines archives from the College Equal Suffrage League (CESL), established in 1900 as an affiliate of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, to illustrate the outsize and dynamic role that young women played in the woman suffrage movement. The book vividly illustrates how the CESL's campaigns served a dual purpose: not only did they invigorate the Nineteenth Amendment campaign at a crucial moment, but they also brought about a profound transformation in the culture of women's organizing and higher education. Furthermore, Kelly L. Marino argues that the CESL's campaigns set trends in youth activism and helped lay the groundwork for later and more well-known college protests against gender inequality. Fascinating and timely, Votes for College Women shows how these brave women solidified the campus and the classroom as arenas for civic and social activism.

Weight: 612g
Dimension: 229 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781479825196