The National Anti-Suffrage Association

Men in line outside of the National Association Opposed to Women’s Suffrage headquarters.³

The National Anti-Suffrage Association

The National American Women’s Suffrage Association (NAWSA) emerged from two primary, yet rivalry factions merging to create one large organization. They combined their strengths and campaign strategies to secure the 19^th Amendment.⁴ However, in contrast to NAWSA, Anti-Suffragists argued that because women’s primary role during this time was to be family caregivers, that most women did not want to vote. The ratification of the 19^th Amendment was nothing short of a challenge due to organizations such as the National Association Opposed to Women’s Suffrage (NAOWS), The Anti-Suffragist Magazine, and simple opposers of equal rights for women. This image shows a line of similar-looking men outside the National Association Opposed to Women’s Suffrage headquarters. The NAOWS was founded by Josephine Dodge and other women who believed that gaining the vote would undermine their traditional roles as wives and mothers. They believed that women were already adequately represented by their husbands and other men in their lives and granting them the right to vote would simply cause social unrest. 

One of the key reasons for why the amendment took so long to pass was because as NAWSA grew, they had to receive support from groups that they typically did not ethically agree with. Such as the democratic party who saw voting women as a way to cancel out African American votes even more than the Jim Crow laws already did. NAWOS, as shown in the image, became the voice of a movement who opposed women’s voting rights because they believed it was “contrary to nature” and they took it upon themselves to publish the first issue of The Anti-Suffragist.⁵ Britannica provides a short but detailed article written on the basis of The Anti-Suffragist and their motives to block the amendment from passing. Alongside their beliefs, some simply believed that women did not belong in the “dirty world of politics” and were essentially just different from men.