National Woman's Party
Encyclopedia
Woman
A woman , pl: women is a female human. The term woman is usually reserved for an adult, with the term girl being the usual term for a female child or adolescent...
's organization founded by Alice Paul
Alice Paul
Alice Stokes Paul was an American suffragist and activist. Along with Lucy Burns and others, she led a successful campaign for women's suffrage that resulted in the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1920.-Activism: Alice Paul received her undergraduate education from...
in 1915 that fought for women's rights
Women's rights
Women's rights are entitlements and freedoms claimed for women and girls of all ages in many societies.In some places these rights are institutionalized or supported by law, local custom, and behaviour, whereas in others they may be ignored or suppressed...
during the early 20th century in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, particularly for the right to vote on the same terms as men
Man
The term man is used for an adult human male . However, man is sometimes used to refer to humanity as a whole...
. In contrast to other organizations, such as the National American Woman Suffrage Association
National American Woman Suffrage Association
The National American Woman Suffrage Association was an American women's rights organization formed in May 1890 as a unification of the National Woman Suffrage Association and the American Woman Suffrage Association...
, which focused on lobbying individual states (and from which the NWP split), the NWP put its priority on the passage of a constitutional amendment
Constitutional amendment
A constitutional amendment is a formal change to the text of the written constitution of a nation or state.Most constitutions require that amendments cannot be enacted unless they have passed a special procedure that is more stringent than that required of ordinary legislation...
ensuring women's suffrage
Women's suffrage
Women's suffrage or woman suffrage is the right of women to vote and to run for office. The expression is also used for the economic and political reform movement aimed at extending these rights to women and without any restrictions or qualifications such as property ownership, payment of tax, or...
. Alice Paul
Alice Paul
Alice Stokes Paul was an American suffragist and activist. Along with Lucy Burns and others, she led a successful campaign for women's suffrage that resulted in the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1920.-Activism: Alice Paul received her undergraduate education from...
and Lucy Burns
Lucy Burns
Lucy Burns was an American suffragist and women's rights advocate. She was a passionate activist in the United States and in the United Kingdom. Burns was a close friend of Alice Paul, and together they ultimately formed the National Woman's Party.-Early life and education:Lucy Burns was born in...
founded the organization originally under the name the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage in 1913; by 1917, the name had been changed to the National Women's Party. After the Nineteenth Amendment gave women the vote in 1920, the NWP turned its attention to passage of an Equal Rights Amendment
Equal Rights Amendment
The Equal Rights Amendment was a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution. The ERA was originally written by Alice Paul and, in 1923, it was introduced in the Congress for the first time...
(ERA)to the Constitution. Congress passed such an Amendment and most states ratified it, but at the last minute in 1960 it was stopped by a coalition of conservative women led by Phyllis Schlafly
Phyllis Schlafly
Phyllis McAlpin Stewart Schlafly is a Constitutional lawyer and an American politically conservative activist and author who founded the Eagle Forum. She is known for her opposition to modern feminism ideas and for her campaign against the proposed Equal Rights Amendment...
and ERA never passed. However the NWP in 1964 did succeed, with the support of conservatives and over the opposition of liberals, blacks and labor unions, to have "sex" added to the Civil Rights Act of 1964
Civil Rights Act of 1964
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a landmark piece of legislation in the United States that outlawed major forms of discrimination against African Americans and women, including racial segregation...
, thus achieving most of the goals sought by the NWP.
Militant suffragists
During the group's first meeting, Paul clarified that the party would not be a political party and therefore would not name a candidate for United States presidentPresident of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....
during elections. While non-partisan, the NWP directed much of its fire at President Woodrow Wilson
Woodrow Wilson
Thomas Woodrow Wilson was the 28th President of the United States, from 1913 to 1921. A leader of the Progressive Movement, he served as President of Princeton University from 1902 to 1910, and then as the Governor of New Jersey from 1911 to 1913...
when criticizing those responsible for the social situation in which women of the era lived. The National Woman's Party also opposed World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
.
Women associated with the party staged a suffrage parade on March 3, 1913, the day before Wilson's inauguration. They also became the first women to picket for women's rights in front of the White House
White House
The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., the house was designed by Irish-born James Hoban, and built between 1792 and 1800 of white-painted Aquia sandstone in the Neoclassical...
. The picketers were tolerated at first, but when they continued to picket after the United States declared war in 1917, they were arrested by police for obstructing traffic. Many of the NWP's members, upon arrest, went on hunger strike
Hunger strike
A hunger strike is a method of non-violent resistance or pressure in which participants fast as an act of political protest, or to provoke feelings of guilt in others, usually with the objective to achieve a specific goal, such as a policy change. Most hunger strikers will take liquids but not...
s; some, including Paul, were force-fed by jail personnel as a consequence. The resulting scandal and its negative impact on the country's international reputation at a time when Wilson was trying to build a reputation for himself and the nation as an international leader in human rights may have contributed to Wilson's decision to publicly call for the United States Congress
United States Congress
The United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Congress meets in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C....
to pass the Suffrage Amendment.
Fighting for equal rights
After the ratification of the Nineteenth amendmentNineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
The Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits any United States citizen to be denied the right to vote based on sex. It was ratified on August 18, 1920....
in 1920, the NWP turned its attention to eliminating other forms of gender discrimination, principally by advocating passage of the Equal Rights Amendment
Equal Rights Amendment
The Equal Rights Amendment was a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution. The ERA was originally written by Alice Paul and, in 1923, it was introduced in the Congress for the first time...
, which Paul drafted in 1923. The organization regrouped and published the magazine Equal Rights. The publication was directed mostly towards women but also intended to educate men about the benefits of women's suffrage, women's rights and other issues concerning American women.
The NWP spoke for middle class women, and its agenda was generally opposed by working class women and by the labor unions that represented working class men who feared low-wage women workers would lower the overall pay scale and demean the role of the male breadwinner. Eleanor Roosevelt
Eleanor Roosevelt
Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was the First Lady of the United States from 1933 to 1945. She supported the New Deal policies of her husband, distant cousin Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and became an advocate for civil rights. After her husband's death in 1945, Roosevelt continued to be an international...
, an ally of the unions, generally opposed the NWP policies because she believed women needed protection, not equality.
After 1920, the National Women's Party authored over 600 pieces of legislation fighting for women's equality; over 300 of these were passed. In addition, the NWP continued to lobby for the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment. In 1997, the NWP ceased to be a lobbying organization. Instead, it turned its focus to education and to preserving its collection of first hand source documents from the women's suffrage movement. The NWP continues to function as an educational organization and museum.
Civil Rights Act of 1964
In 1963 Congress passed the Equal Pay Act of 1963
Equal Pay Act of 1963
The Equal Pay Act of 1963 is a United States federal law amending the Fair Labor Standards Act, aimed at abolishing wage disparity based on sex . It was signed into law on June 10, 1963 by John F. Kennedy as part of his New Frontier Program...
, which prohibited wage differentials based on sex.
The prohibition on sex discrimination was added by Howard W. Smith
Howard W. Smith
Howard Worth Smith , Democratic U.S. Representative from Virginia, was a leader of the conservative coalition who supported both racial segregation and women's rights.-Early life and education:...
, a powerful Virginian Democrat who chaired the House Rules Committee; he was a conservative who strongly opposed civil rights laws for blacks. But he supported such laws for women. Smith's amendment was passed by a teller vote of 168 to 133. Historians debate Smith's motivation--was it a cynical attempt to defeat the bill by someone opposed to both civil rights for blacks and women, or did he support women's rights and was attempting to improve the bill by broadening it to include women? Smith expected that Republicans, who had included equal rights for women in their party's platform since 1944, would probably vote for the amendment. Historians speculate that Smith was trying to embarrass northern Democrats who opposed civil rights for women because the clause was opposed by labor unions.
Smith was not joking: he asserted that he sincerely supported the amendment and, indeed, along with Rep. Martha Griffiths
Martha Griffiths
Martha Wright Griffiths was an American lawyer and judge before being elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1954. Griffiths was the first woman to serve on the powerful House Committee on Ways and Means and the first woman elected to the United States Congress from Michigan as...
, he was the chief spokesperson for the amendment. For twenty years Smith had sponsored the Equal Rights Amendment --with no linkage to racial issues--in the House because he believed in it. He for decades had been close to the National Woman's Party and its head Alice Paul
Alice Paul
Alice Stokes Paul was an American suffragist and activist. Along with Lucy Burns and others, she led a successful campaign for women's suffrage that resulted in the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1920.-Activism: Alice Paul received her undergraduate education from...
, one of the leaders in winning the vote for women back in 1920 and the chief supporter of equal rights proposals since then. She and other Suffragettes
Suffragette
"Suffragette" is a term coined by the Daily Mail newspaper as a derogatory label for members of the late 19th and early 20th century movement for women's suffrage in the United Kingdom, in particular members of the Women's Social and Political Union...
had worked with Smith since 1945 trying to find a way to include sex as a protected civil rights category. Now was the moment. Griffith argued that the new law would protect black women but not white women, and that was unfair to white women. Furthermore, she argued that the laws "protecting" women from unpleasant jobs were actually designed to enable men to monopolize those jobs, and that was unfair to women who were not allowed to try out for those jobs. The amendment passed with the votes of Republicans and Southern Democrats. The final law passed with the votes of Republicans and Northern Democrats.
Further reading
- Adams, Katherine H. and Keene, Michael L. Alice Paul and the American Suffrage Campaign. (2008). 274 pp., the standard scholarly biography excerpt and text search; online review
- Butler, Amy E. Two Paths to Equality: Alice Paul and Ethel M. Smith in the Era Debate, 1921-1929 (2002)
- Dodd, Lynda G. "Parades, Pickets, and Prison: Alice Paul and the Virtues of Unruly Constitutional Citizenship," Journal of Law and Politics, Fall 2008, Vol. 24#4, pp 339-433
- Lunardini, Christine A. From Equal Suffrage to Equal Rights: Alice Paul and the National Woman's Party, 1910-1928 (2000) excerpt and text search, the standard scholarly history
- Walton, Mary. A Woman's Crusade: Alice Paul and the Battle for the Ballot (2010)