Who Were The Anti-Suffragettes?

Meet The Anti-Suffragettes

Most people are at least somewhat familiar with a few of the more famous suffragettes and their various actions in securing the vote for women. Susan B. Anthony, for instance, was famously arrested and fined for illegally voting in 1872. She helped found the National American Woman Suffrage Association in the U.S. with her friend Elizabeth Cady-Stanton. In England, Emmeline Pankhurst and her militant feminist friends, the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, participated in hunger strikes and committed property damage in the name of women’s rights. But did you know that not only were the pro-suffrage activist groups in the minority, but that there were also prominent anti-suffragist women who formed activist groups in response to the suffragettes? You probably don’t, because this is another part of the history of women’s liberation that is intentionally hidden. In fact, some of the most vehement opposition to women voting came from women themselves. I find their reasoning to be prescient and compelling, which is why I believe it is intentionally obscured from history.

In 1914, the Nebraska Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage group published this pamphlet in response to a ballot initiative petition campaign proposed by the Nebraska Women Suffrage group. They quite accurately predicted that pushing women to enter the political sphere, and the women’s liberation movement in general, would cause the breakdown of the family, division in marriages, and a lack of effort and focus on children and community, which had always been the main work of women until that point. They also correctly pointed out that women enjoy greater protection and privilege under patriarchy than is afforded to “liberated” women. They believed, as I do, that women are much more influential and effective outside direct involvement in governing. They also wisely asserted that the primary role of government is to protect people and property, and that men are the only ones capable of that task. Therefore, burdening women with a task of which they are incapable is inappropriate and detrimental to women themselves. Below is a copy of the original pamphlet from 1914 listing the ten reason anti-suffragists opposed the vote for women.

In England, The Women's National Anti-Suffrage League was fighting radical social change for the same reasons. They produced political cartoons shaming suffragettes as old spinsters and depicting a Great Britain without wives and mothers.

What struck me about these depictions is that they are derided as superstitious, paranoid, attempts by simple-minded dolts to prevent noble progress by pro-feminist historians of today. These old post cards, posters, and cartoons are often only posted online as an attempt at mocking anti-suffragists as woman hating misogynists who wanted to keep society in the dark ages so they could continue their unfair exploitation of women. However, they seem to have accurately predicted the feminist future as far as I can tell. Did these cartoons not accurately foretell the birth rate dropping from an average of 5 children per family in 1870 just prior to first wave feminism taking off, to an average of just 2 children by 1940? (Source: US Census) That’s a staggering drop. Were these cartoons not correct in predicting that feminism would inevitably result in the attempted demonization and domination of men? Anti-suffragists were right to ask, “who will take care of the children?” The overall number of U.S. children under 5 with mothers working outside the home in 1900 was less than 6%. By 2012 that number had jumped to 58%. The anti-suffragists were also right about what the future of marriage and family would look like if we instituted such sweeping societal change. In 1900, the rate of births outside marriage was 4%. By 2010, not quite a century after the passage of the 19th Amendment, the rate of out of wedlock births had reached 41%. There are numerous other statistics I could cite here, but I don’t want to repeat too much material that is already covered in the book, and most of you can look around you at the society you live in and see the results of the work of woman suffragists. But were MOST women in favor of this massive upheaval to the social order as is often implied by educators, politicians, and feminists of today? The answer might surprise you.

Suffrage was so unpopular with women in 1895, that the state of Massachusetts asked women of voting age whether they wanted suffrage. Of the 575,000 eligible women voters, only 22,204 voted yes. That’s only 3.8%. So, if the female populace at large was NOT demanding the right to vote as we’re always told they were, how was such a thing passed? Stay tuned for my next essay to find out.