102 Years Since Women’s Suffrage: What’s Changed?

The enduring positives of women’s suffrage continue to powerfully unite women.

Like a stone tossed into a pond, the women’s suffrage movement in America created ripples of effect upon the water of Time and History that continue to be felt today. From Seneca Falls to today, we probe and reflect upon a few of the magnanimous positives of one of the grandest movements to rock and empower the United States to new heights.

The original suffragists threw long shadows we hope to honor and not step on.

What’s changed in the 102 years since suffragists changed the Constitution in August 1920 to make room for the 19th Amendment — the one granting all women the right to vote?

Here are three observations of change we’ve taken stock of:

1. The women’s vote led to the greater proliferation of female icons

What has changed since 1920 was the greater fielding and elevation of a scintillating array of female icons — made possible by the women’s vote, which helped pass laws that protected women in courts, business, family life, education, medicine, and other key arenas of life. With official nurturing and legal protection, eventually women began to rise up above the shoulders of their male counterparts, hold their own against these cohorts, and dictate top-to-bottom change from the female perspective.

Too many women fall under the umbrella of icons in our country today to be named here, but each deserves to be honored for their fights against sex discrimination. What is true today, however, is that girls and women can have their so-and-so heroine and such-and-such feminist figure to look up to and admire, whatever their skin color, cultural background, gender choice, or other.

It bears repeating that these powerful women would have had a much harder path forging their future for themselves and others if not for the women’s vote won by the suffragists — the original seed kernel of which was planted at the historical 1848 Seneca Falls Convention, wherein the first women’s rights movement was organized and founded.

Fast forward to eventual constitutional amendment ratification in late August 1920 and beyond, and key rights like divorce, abortion, universal career access, and broad protections against sexual discrimination were advocated for and earned by our women leaders.

​2. Pink businesses — owned and controlled by women — were born and respected

The success of the women’s suffrage movement meant that scores of public money and investment could be spent on growing businesses that banked upon female pursuits, passions, and interests, like beauty, health, and fashion. Not only did these greatly help economically lift entrepreneurial-minded women out of poverty, but paved the road for the eventual, successful proliferation of the “pink business,” wherein women make powerful business decisions that are (still) sometimes life-impacting.

Because money is important in running for office, women who nourished their own pink business enterprises in the decades since August 1920 began using their business know-how to nominate themselves to positions of power among the business and political establishments. Earning the right to vote ultimately meant women graduated from being solely consumers, to businesswomen, to political mavens who could wield political and economic power.

3. Women’s right to vote led to a greater access to higher education

Top of the bill at Seneca Falls was women’s proclamation of a great need for educational opportunity, which in turn led to greater economic opportunity. It was then that a fierce legal and social fight began, by women, for women to be allowed into realms of higher education — some of which were won, some of which were lost.

Through legal challenges that persisted before and after the vote was earned in 1920, universal access to higher education finally manifested when Title IX was enacted in 1972, which had federal law recognize a universal right to education free from sex discrimination. Since then, women and girls have reaped the massive rewards of refining and educating their minds at places of higher learning, as well as receiving official degrees and honors.

It is without question that the earned right to vote that came in 1920 greatly paved the way for women to mount legal and political challenges that led to this great wave of change in education halls everywhere.

What an honor it is to live in a country where women continue to gather and fight for their needs and rights without taking “no” for an answer. The women’s rights movement continues to press ahead against its current challenges.

Great victories and difficult challenges have marked the 102-year-old path since the women’s suffrage movement first earned the right to vote in America. With the fight still raging, do more to support women’s rights today!

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