This dissertation fills a conspicuous gap in the literature on the U.S. woman suffrage movement by developing and testing a model of state woman suffrage success. This model is based on a version of the resource mobilization perspective on social movements which emphasizes the importance of social movement organizations (such as the National American Woman Suffrage Association) as resource-gathering agencies which can exploit the structure of organized politics by mobilizing their own resources and neutralizing those of opponents. Accordingly, this model taps four alternative types of variables used by woman suffrage scholars to explain state success: state political structure, NAWSA mobilization, and liquor and allied interests (opponents of woman suffrage) as well as demographic characteristics.

This dissertation offers a new narrative for the local woman suffrage movement in nine rural counties in Texas. I argue that, unlike cities, where women used dense organizational networks to create a coherent suffrage movement, conservatism inherent in rural Texas denied suffrage advocates the means to achieve similar objectives. Rural women nevertheless used the suffrage campaign to articulate feminist sensibilities, thereby reflecting a process of modernization ongoing among American women. Rural suffrage advocates faced unique obstacles, including the political influence of James E. Ferguson, who served as Governor for almost two administrations. Through Ferguson's singular personality, a propaganda campaign that specifically targeted rural voters, and Ferguson's own tabloid Ferguson Forum, rural voters found themselves constantly bombarded by messages about how they should view questions of reform in their state. The organizational culture that sustained suffrage organizations in urban Texas failed to do so in rural Texas. Concerned for their status, rural women scorned activism and those who pursued it. Absent an organized campaign, the success of suffrage initiatives in rural Texas depended on locally unique circumstances. Key factors included demographic trends, economics, local politics, and the influence of frontier cultural dynamics. The tactics and rhetoric employed by rural suffragists in Texas generally reflected those used by suffragists nationwide. While rural suffragists mustered arguments grounded in natural and constitutional rights, rural voters responded more to the claim that votes projected woman's feminine virtue into public life, which accommodated prevailing attitudes about woman's place. The First World War supplied rural suffragists with patriotic rhetoric that resonated powerfully with Texans. Rural Texas women successfully reframed public dialogue about women's roles, articulating feminist ideas through their work. Unlike rural clubwomen, suffragists pursued the ballot as a means to improve the status of all women. Feminist ideas increasingly obtained with women in visible leadership, and eventually reached all rural women, as countless hundreds registered to vote, and still more educated themselves on political issues. In doing so, rural women in Texas joined women across America in challenging the limits of domesticity and envisioning a fuller role for women in public life.

This is a state-level analysis of the impact of state building on woman suffrage legislation in the United States. This study examines all states in which state legislatures were conferred the power to submit a constitutional amendment to the electorate for approval. I use a sequential random-effects logistic regression model to estimate the effects of state building on legislative outcome. Legislative outcome is measured in three stages: whether or not a bill is introduced in either the House or the Senate during a legislative session, whether or not a bill is voted on in either the House or the Senate during a legislative session, and whether or not a bill is passed in either the House or the Senate during a legislative session. The data used in this study were collected from legislative journals and other sources which represent the most comprehensive and accurate data that have been used to study woman suffrage legislation. Most studies of woman suffrage explain success by concentrating on changing gender norms. While this may have explained eventual success, it overlooks barriers that existed within state governments. Only 15 states granted full woman suffrage prior to the Nineteenth Amendment, the majority of which were in the West. I argue that understanding the structure of state governments provides insight into the success of western states and also provides insight into the timing of success. I do this by moving beyond contemporary social movement theory and by adapting aspects of institutional politics theory and organizational theory. Specifically, I examine the dynamics of partisan politics, organizational characteristics of state government, and the legislative process. I find that partisan politics and organizational dynamics impact legislative success. Specifically, legislatures are more likely to pass suffrage bills in states that are more democratized, that are characterized by reform-oriented regimes, where woman suffrage advocates have a greater political presence, where there is less structural inertia, and where a smaller constitutional majority is required.

Esta tese procura compreender o processo que culminou com a conquista do voto feminino no Brasil em 24 de fevereiro de 1932. O objetivo é desvelar, analisar e compreender as articulações e os principais personagens que fizeram parte dessa conquista, tendo como limites temporais os anos de 1850 e 1932. A narrativa se centra em dois grupos principais. O primeiro grupo é representado pelos parlamentares brasileiros e as tentativas de inserção da mulher no pleito eleitoral, via legais, durante todo o período da Primeira República. O segundo grupo é representado pelas figuras de Leolinda de Figueiredo Daltro à frente do Partido Republicano Feminino e de Bertha Lutz, líder da Federação Brasileira pelo Progresso Feminino, ambas responsáveis pela articulação do movimento organizado feminino e sufragista no Brasil. A vertente a que esse trabalho se vincula é a dos estudos de gênero e da história política, no sentido que trata da luta em prol do sufrágio feminino procurando dar ênfase tanto aos atores convencionais do jogo político como para as mulheres que se organizaram para reivindicar seus direitos. Através da análise de um conjunto heterogêneo de fontes, tais como: Anais do Congresso Nacional, correspondências, matérias de jornais e revistas, materiais bibliográficos diversos e pesquisas acadêmicas, procura-se também acentuar que mais do que uma concessão do governo de Getúlio Vargas, o sufrágio feminino foi o resultado de uma longa luta empreendida por homens e mulheres em prol da igualdade eleitoral. / This thesis seeks to understand the process leading to the conquest of women’s suffrage in Brazil on February 24th, 1932. The objective is to uncover, analyze and comprehend the articulations and main characters that were part of these achievements, setting the years 1850 to 1932 as the timeframe for this investigation. The narrative is centered on two main groups. The first group is represented by Brazilian congressmen and the successive attempts to legally insert women in the electoral process during the entire period of the First Republic. The second group is represented by the figures of Leolinda de Figueiredo Daltro, heading the Women’s Republican Party and Bertha Luz, leader of the Brazilian Federation for Women’s Progress, both responsible for the articulation of the organized feminist and suffragist movement in Brazil. This work is best understood as a piece on gender studies and political history, as it deals with the struggle for women’s suffrage, aiming to focus on the conventional actors in the political game as well as the women who organized to claim their rights. Through an analysis of a heterogeneous set of sources, such as the Annals of the Parliament, correspondence exchange, newspaper and magazine articles, and academic research this work seeks to stress that women’s suffrage in Brazil was the result of a long struggle by women and men for electoral equality, rather than a concession of Getulio Vargas’ government.

Esta tese procura compreender o processo que culminou com a conquista do voto feminino no Brasil em 24 de fevereiro de 1932. O objetivo é desvelar, analisar e compreender as articulações e os principais personagens que fizeram parte dessa conquista, tendo como limites temporais os anos de 1850 e 1932. A narrativa se centra em dois grupos principais. O primeiro grupo é representado pelos parlamentares brasileiros e as tentativas de inserção da mulher no pleito eleitoral, via legais, durante todo o período da Primeira República. O segundo grupo é representado pelas figuras de Leolinda de Figueiredo Daltro à frente do Partido Republicano Feminino e de Bertha Lutz, líder da Federação Brasileira pelo Progresso Feminino, ambas responsáveis pela articulação do movimento organizado feminino e sufragista no Brasil. A vertente a que esse trabalho se vincula é a dos estudos de gênero e da história política, no sentido que trata da luta em prol do sufrágio feminino procurando dar ênfase tanto aos atores convencionais do jogo político como para as mulheres que se organizaram para reivindicar seus direitos. Através da análise de um conjunto heterogêneo de fontes, tais como: Anais do Congresso Nacional, correspondências, matérias de jornais e revistas, materiais bibliográficos diversos e pesquisas acadêmicas, procura-se também acentuar que mais do que uma concessão do governo de Getúlio Vargas, o sufrágio feminino foi o resultado de uma longa luta empreendida por homens e mulheres em prol da igualdade eleitoral. / This thesis seeks to understand the process leading to the conquest of women’s suffrage in Brazil on February 24th, 1932. The objective is to uncover, analyze and comprehend the articulations and main characters that were part of these achievements, setting the years 1850 to 1932 as the timeframe for this investigation. The narrative is centered on two main groups. The first group is represented by Brazilian congressmen and the successive attempts to legally insert women in the electoral process during the entire period of the First Republic. The second group is represented by the figures of Leolinda de Figueiredo Daltro, heading the Women’s Republican Party and Bertha Luz, leader of the Brazilian Federation for Women’s Progress, both responsible for the articulation of the organized feminist and suffragist movement in Brazil. This work is best understood as a piece on gender studies and political history, as it deals with the struggle for women’s suffrage, aiming to focus on the conventional actors in the political game as well as the women who organized to claim their rights. Through an analysis of a heterogeneous set of sources, such as the Annals of the Parliament, correspondence exchange, newspaper and magazine articles, and academic research this work seeks to stress that women’s suffrage in Brazil was the result of a long struggle by women and men for electoral equality, rather than a concession of Getulio Vargas’ government.

Esta tese procura compreender o processo que culminou com a conquista do voto feminino no Brasil em 24 de fevereiro de 1932. O objetivo é desvelar, analisar e compreender as articulações e os principais personagens que fizeram parte dessa conquista, tendo como limites temporais os anos de 1850 e 1932. A narrativa se centra em dois grupos principais. O primeiro grupo é representado pelos parlamentares brasileiros e as tentativas de inserção da mulher no pleito eleitoral, via legais, durante todo o período da Primeira República. O segundo grupo é representado pelas figuras de Leolinda de Figueiredo Daltro à frente do Partido Republicano Feminino e de Bertha Lutz, líder da Federação Brasileira pelo Progresso Feminino, ambas responsáveis pela articulação do movimento organizado feminino e sufragista no Brasil. A vertente a que esse trabalho se vincula é a dos estudos de gênero e da história política, no sentido que trata da luta em prol do sufrágio feminino procurando dar ênfase tanto aos atores convencionais do jogo político como para as mulheres que se organizaram para reivindicar seus direitos. Através da análise de um conjunto heterogêneo de fontes, tais como: Anais do Congresso Nacional, correspondências, matérias de jornais e revistas, materiais bibliográficos diversos e pesquisas acadêmicas, procura-se também acentuar que mais do que uma concessão do governo de Getúlio Vargas, o sufrágio feminino foi o resultado de uma longa luta empreendida por homens e mulheres em prol da igualdade eleitoral. / This thesis seeks to understand the process leading to the conquest of women’s suffrage in Brazil on February 24th, 1932. The objective is to uncover, analyze and comprehend the articulations and main characters that were part of these achievements, setting the years 1850 to 1932 as the timeframe for this investigation. The narrative is centered on two main groups. The first group is represented by Brazilian congressmen and the successive attempts to legally insert women in the electoral process during the entire period of the First Republic. The second group is represented by the figures of Leolinda de Figueiredo Daltro, heading the Women’s Republican Party and Bertha Luz, leader of the Brazilian Federation for Women’s Progress, both responsible for the articulation of the organized feminist and suffragist movement in Brazil. This work is best understood as a piece on gender studies and political history, as it deals with the struggle for women’s suffrage, aiming to focus on the conventional actors in the political game as well as the women who organized to claim their rights. Through an analysis of a heterogeneous set of sources, such as the Annals of the Parliament, correspondence exchange, newspaper and magazine articles, and academic research this work seeks to stress that women’s suffrage in Brazil was the result of a long struggle by women and men for electoral equality, rather than a concession of Getulio Vargas’ government.