Women have long been involved in politics and public life, even before the Nineteenth Amendment gave them the vote in 1920, but women’s political activism took a giant leap forward starting in the 1960s. To be sure, we haven’t yet had a woman president, but at all other levels of American political life, women have crafted a strong and vibrant history. Some are public leaders and elected officials; others supply critical power behind the scenes.

For a long time, politics was defined very traditionally as voting, participating in organized political parties, and seeking elective office. In a key insight that spawned the field of women’s political history, feminist scholars realized that women had in fact played myriad roles in politics and public life over the entire course of American history, profoundly influencing social movements, civic life, and the provision of charity and social welfare, among other outcomes. How did they do this even before they got the vote? By forming voluntary organizations, lobbying, organizing petition drives, raising money, and participating in a range of activities that placed them in the thick of public life.

Women also have a strong history in partisan politics, one that — surprisingly, to some — predates the winning of suffrage in 1920. In 1870, women in Wyoming and Utah territories were the first to cast ballots in general elections. In other states, women won the right to vote in municipal elections or for school boards. Women also formed auxiliaries to the major political parties and joined third parties such as the Populist, Socialist, and Progressive parties.

The drive for woman suffrage, first enunciated at Seneca Falls in 1848, spanned seventy-two years and drew on three generations of female political activism. Especially in its final stages, it offered a single issue around which a broad constituency of women could coalesce. Conversely, when suffrage was won, that unity of purpose disappeared, and women scattered their political energy into a wide range of causes, not all specifically related to the advancement of women’s status.