Women in Politics

Archive Report

Women as Voters in Presidential Elections

The election campaign this year will be the tenth presidential contest held since the 19th Amendment extended the franchise to women on a nation-wide basis in 1920.1 After 36 years of political equality under the law, women today hold only a handful of major public offices and have not cut appreciably into male dominance at the centers of political power.

Women nevertheless constitute a majority of the population of voting age, and in many communities they outnumber men among active campaign workers. A woman—Mrs. Katherine G. Howard—served four years ago on the Eisenhower-Nixon “strategy and policy” campaign committee with the function of marshaling the women's vote. As the 1956 contest approaches, both Democratic and Republican forces are intensively courting the ...

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