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Defining Documents in American History: Dissent and Protest

“Why Women Should Vote”

by Luca Prono, PhD

Date: 1910

Author: Jane Addams

Genre: Editorial

Summary Overview

Addams’s essay on women’s suffrage, “Why Women Should Vote,” published as an editorial in the Ladies’ Home Journal in January 1910, inscribes itself in the intense debate on the topic that took place at the beginning of the twentieth century in America. The women’s movement was a crucial part of Progressivism, and one of its most pressing questions was how women could attain equality with men and reform a society dominated by them. Many women’s rights advocates claimed that voting was essential for women to achieve their reformist goals. Addams shared this belief. Yet, contrary to other women’s rights campaigners, she rooted her support for female suffrage within the values of domesticity. While many within the movement argued that suffrage would be instrumental in helping women move beyond the narrow boundaries of the home, Addams begins her essay by situating women’s place firmly within the home. She finds that no social change will release women from their domestic obligations. However, for women to fulfill such obligations, it is crucial that they can vote so that they can “take part in the slow upbuilding of that code of legislation which is alone sufficient to protect the home from the dangers incident to modern life.”

Defining Moment

Jane Addams was part of the Progressive movement, a broad and diverse middle-class coalition that, at the turn of the twentieth century, tried to reform American society and reconcile democracy with capitalism. The steady industrialization and urbanization of the 1880s and 1890s had deeply transformed American society, spurring harsh conflicts between labor and management. The middle class had supported the process of industrialization by espousing the Victorian values of laissez-faire individualism, domesticity, and self-control. Yet by the 1890s it was apparent that these values had trapped the middle class between the warring demands of big business and the working classes. Growing consumerism, a new wave of immigration, and tensions between the sexes further challenged bourgeois existence. In the face of these confrontations, the Progressives tried to reform the American capitalist system and its institutions from within, seeking to strike a compromise between radical demands and the preservation of established interests.

While the women’s suffrage movement (“suffrage” meaning the right to vote) predated the progressive movement by several decades, the effort to gain increased political rights and participation for women fit in well with the broader aims of the movement. In her editorial, Addams connects women’s fight for the right to vote to the wider political aims of progressivism.

Author Biography

Jane Addams was born on September 6, 1860, in Cedarville, Illinois. She earned a bachelor’s degree in 1881 from Rockford Female Seminary, in Illinois. In the 1880s Addams began studying medicine, but she had to suspend her work because of poor health. Despite her poor health, she visited Europe several times. During one of her voyages, Addams and her companion, Ellen Gates Starr, visited London’s original settlement house of Toynbee Hall, established in 1884. The visit led the two women to establish the Chicago settlement house of Hull House in 1889, the second such house to be established in America. Through Hull House, Addams found a vocation for her adult life.

Addams campaigned for every major reform issue of her era, such as fairer workplace conditions for men and women, tenement regulation, juvenile-court law, women’s suffrage, and women’s rights. While in the first part of her life Addams was mainly involved in social work in Hull House, in the twentieth century she used her notoriety to advance political causes and became a well-known public figure. In 1910 she was the first woman president of the National Conference of Social Work, and in 1912 she actively campaigned for the Progressive presidential candidate, Theodore Roosevelt, becoming the first woman to give a nominating speech at a party convention. Addams was also a founding member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

In the 1920s, Addams concentrated many of her efforts on antiwar efforts, she became the president of the Woman’s Peace Party in 1915 and chaired the International Women’s Congress for Peace and Freedom at The Hague, Netherlands. Americans were not unanimous in their praise for Addams’s campaigning for peace. Despite her unpopular views in the US, Addams’s antiwar efforts won her the Nobel Peace Prize, which she shared with Nicholas Murray Butler. Addams died in Chicago on May 21, 1935, three days after being diagnosed with cancer.

DDProtest_Why_Women_Should_Vote.tif

Historical Document

For many generations it has been believed that woman’s place is within the walls of her home, and it is indeed impossible to imagine the time when her duty there shall be ended or to forecast any social change which shall release her from that paramount obligation.…

Many women today are failing to discharge their duties to their own households properly simply because they do not perceive that as society grows more complicated it is necessary that woman shall extend her sense of responsibility to many things outside of her own home if she would continue to preserve the home in its entirety.…A woman’s simplest duty, one would say, is to keep her house clean and wholesome and to feed her children properly. Yet if she lives in a tenement house…she cannot fulfill these simple obligations by her own efforts because she is utterly dependent upon the city administration for the conditions which render decent living possible. Her basement will not be dry, her stairways will not be fireproof, her house will not be provided with sufficient windows to give light and air, nor will it be equipped with sanitary plumbing, unless the Public Works Department sends inspectors who constantly insist that these elementary decencies be provided. Women who live in the country sweep their own dooryards and may either feed the refuse of the table to a flock of chickens or allow it innocently to decay in the open air and sunshine. In a crowded city quarter, however, if the street is not cleaned by the city authorities no amount of private sweeping will keep the tenement free from grime; if the garbage is not properly collected and destroyed a tenement-house mother may see her children sicken and die of diseases from which she alone is powerless to shield them, although her tenderness and devotion are unbounded. She cannot even secure untainted meat for her household, she cannot provide fresh fruit, unless the meat has been inspected by city officials, and the decayed fruit, which is so often placed upon sale in the tenement districts, has been destroyed in the interests of public health. In short, if woman would keep on with her old business of caring for her house and rearing her children she will have to have some conscience in regard to public affairs lying quite outside of her immediate household. The individual conscience and devotion are no longer effective.…

In other words, if women would effectively continue their old avocations they must take part in the slow upbuilding of that code of legislation which is alone sufficient to protect the home from the dangers incident to modern life.…

The more extensively the modern city endeavors on the one hand to control and on the other hand to provide recreational facilities for its young people the more necessary it is that women should assist in their direction and extension. After all, a care for wholesome and innocent amusement is what women have for many years assumed. When the reaction comes on the part of taxpayers women’s votes may be necessary to keep the city to its beneficent obligations toward its own young people.…

Ever since steam power has been applied to the processes of weaving and spinning woman’s traditional work has been carried on largely outside of the home. The clothing and household linen are not only spun and woven, but also usually sewed, by machinery; the preparation of many foods has also passed into the factory and necssarily a certain number of women have been obliged to follow their work there, although it is doubtful, in spite of the large numbers of factory girls, whether women now are doing as large a proportion of the world’s work as they used to do. Because many thousands of those working in factories and shops are girls between the ages of fourteen and twenty-two there is a necessity that older women should be interested in the conditions of industry. The very fact that these girls are not going to remain in industry permanently makes it more important that someone should see to it that they shall not be incapacitated for their future family life because they work for exhausting hours and under insanitary conditions.

If woman’s sense of obligation had enlarged as the industrial conditions changed she might naturally and almost imperceptibly have inaugurated the movements for social amelioration in the line of factory legislation and shop sanitation. That she has not done so is doubtless due to the fact that her conscience is slow to recognize any obligation outside of her own family circle, and because she was so absorbed in her own household that she failed to see what the conditions outside actually were. It would be interesting to know how far the consciousness that she had no vote and could not change matters operated in this direction. After all, we see only those things to which our attention has been drawn, we feel responsibility for those things which are brought to us as matters of responsibility. If conscientious women were convinced that it was a civic duty to be informed in regard to these grave industrial affairs, and then to express the conclusions which they had reached by depositing a piece of paper in a ballot box, one cannot imagine that they would shirk simply because the action ran counter to old traditions.…

To turn the administration of our civic affairs wholly over to men may mean that the American city will continue to push forward in its commercial and industrial development, and continue to lag behind in those things which make a city healthful and beautiful. After all, woman’s traditional function has been to make her dwelling-place both clean and fair. Is that dreariness in city life, that lack of domesticity which the humblest farm dwelling presents, due to a withdrawal of one of the naturally cooperating forces? If women have in any sense been responsible for the gentler side of life which softens and blurs some of its harsher conditions, may they not have a duty to perform in our American cities?

In closing, may I recapitulate that if woman would fulfill her traditional responsibility to her own children; if she would educate and protect from danger factory children who must find their recreation on the street; if she would bring the cultural forces to bear upon our materialistic civilization; and if she would do it all with the dignity and directness fitting one who carries on her immemorial duties, then she must bring herself to the use of the ballot—that latest implement for self government. May we not fairly say that American women need this implement in order to preserve the home?

Glossary

dooryards: small front yards

incident to: related to, or following from

tenement house: a slum dwelling

this implement: the vote

Document Analysis

Addams begins her editorial by reiterating the common sentiment that “woman’s place is within the walls of her home.” Addams agrees that it is likely that women will be tied to their home-making role for the foreseeable future. There is no sense of irony or sarcasm here—Addams did focus more than other women’s rights and suffrage figures on the importances of women’s domestic role.

However, as she continues in the first long paragraph, Addams explains that as American society—particularly in cities—grows more complex and complicated, women will have to “extend” their “sense of responsibility” to what was consider the “public sphere” rather than only the domestic one. This is not because women will be forced to abandon their domestic tasks and duties but, rather, because the complexities of modern society will require a broader perspective in order to carry out that domestic role successfully.

This is because women do not live in equal domestic situations. Addams uses the example of a woman’s “simplest duty,” to maintain a clean home and properly feed her children. This job, however simple, became nearly impossible for women who live in tenement buildings that are unfit for habitation. The onus for maintaining building safety, she explains, lies with a city’s Public Works Department. Women in rural areas have more freedom to control their own environment than do women living “in a crowded city quarter.” At the end of this paragraph, Addams presents her argument for women’s involvement in the public sphere, saying “if woman would keep on with her old business of caring for her house and rearing her children she will have to have some conscience in regard to public affairs lying quite outside of her immediate household. The individual conscience and devotion are no longer effective.” Modern urban society means that the personal, domestic life is intricately bound with public affairs. They must contribute to “the slow upbuilding” of legislation that will defend that domestic sphere.

Another example are opportunities for young people (and laws that limit their activities). Women must play a role in shaping government policy on these issues, Addams explains, because that is the sort of nurturing work that women have done throughout human history. “When the reaction comes on the part of taxpayers,” Addams says, “women’s votes may be necessary to keep the city to its beneficent obligations toward its own young people.” By possessing the vote, Addams argues, women will provide a necessary bulwark against the short-sightenedness of male voters who might not understand or appreciate the need for governmental measures that affect the domestic sphere.

Addams traces these developments to the industrial revolution, with steam power and other developments moving things like textile manufacturing out of the home. Later, food production became industrialized and women were “obliged to follow their work there,” with a huge number of young women working as “factory girls.” Thus, she explains, older women have an obligation to ensure that their working environments are safe so they are healthy “for their future family life.” Women, Addams asserts, have been slow to recognize their obligations that exist outside their domestic worlds. Women—particularly middle class women—were focused on their own homes and families, only recently recognizing the issues faces by women and youth in America’s factories and cities. The process of taking fuller responsibility for their communities relies on women gaining the right to vote.

Allowing control of governments to remain solely in the hands of men may, Addams explains, improve industry and the economy but the urban issues—“those things which make a city healthful and beautiful”—may continue to take second place. Women’s voice in government is necessary to maintain the proper balance. Women, she asserts, have a “duty” toward American cities and those who live in them.

Addams closes by encouraging women who have been active in social issues such as educating and protecting working children and caring for their own families have an obligation to work for voting rights, arguing that voting is necessary in order for women “to preserve the home.”

Essential Themes

To Addams, the quest for women’s suffrage represents an opportunity to hear women’s voices in matters that are fundamental to the improvement of family life and to the struggle against urban vices. In its focus on the enhancement of living conditions within the urban environment, “Why Women Should Vote” ties the question of women’s suffrage to the larger Progressive agenda, clearly stating that the two mutually reinforce each other. Because women have deep knowledge of the needs of youth, they can provide unique insights into effective ways “on the one hand to control and on the other hand to provide recreational facilities for its young people.” Defining voting rights for women as a potential service toward the entire community, the essay is typical of the Progressives’ affirmation of collective over individual concerns. As Brown writes, Addams assigns domesticity a crucial place in women’s life not to “placate the patriarchs,” but “because her daily experience taught her that domesticity was…a utilitarian reality for her working-class neighbors, and one that could be powerful if deployed in the political arena against America’s individualistic patriarchs.”

Bibliography and Additional Reading

1 

Brown Victoria Bissell, The Education of Jane Addams (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007).

2 

DuBois, Ellen Carol. Women’s Suffrage and Women’s Rights (New York: New York University Press, 1998).

3 

Knight, Louise W. Citizen: Jane Addams and the Struggle for Democracy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005).

4 

——Jane Addams: Spirit in Action (New York: W.W. Norton, 2010).

5 

McGerr, Michael. A Fierce Discontent: The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement in America, 1870-1920. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).

Citation Types

MLA 9th
Prono, Luca. "“Why Women Should Vote”." Defining Documents in American History: Dissent and Protest, edited by Aaron Gulyas, Salem Press, 2017. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=DDProtest_0080.
APA 7th
Prono, L. (2017). “Why Women Should Vote”. In A. Gulyas (Ed.), Defining Documents in American History: Dissent and Protest. Salem Press. online.salempress.com.
CMOS 17th
Prono, Luca. "“Why Women Should Vote”." Edited by Aaron Gulyas. Defining Documents in American History: Dissent and Protest. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2017. Accessed May 30, 2026. online.salempress.com.