Questions for Classroom Discussion
Prepared by Jack Bareilles
History Teacher, McKinleyville High School, McKinleyville, CA
Women's Suffrage Broadsides
From Webster's New World College Dictionary: Broadside: origin: a large sheet of paper
printed on one side, as with a political message.
Article Questions:
1.
What are some of the ideas expressed by women suffragists in early 20
th
century
broadsides?
2.
What is the one word that is used to describe both the traditional work in the home and
the work they want to do in the city once they get the vote?
3.
Instead of claiming that suffrage would transform the housewife, in your own words say
what the suffragists were claiming would happen?
4.
What kinds of notions about men's and women's roles in society were conveyed in
periodicals and literature intended for middle-class women such as Godey's Lady's Book,
the Ladies Magazine, Mother's Book, Harper's Magazine?
5.
Suffragists tried to illustrate that with the vote, women could exercise their unique
abilities to accomplish what?
6.
Look at the five examples of societies ills that women could clean up--if they had the
vote. List two examples where the lack of governmental action by men prevents women
from raising their children as well as they can.
7.
Suffragists also promoted the nineteenth century notion that women had a firmer grip on
what?
8.
Why do you think suffragists were so willing to use nineteenth century stereotypes of
women's role in society in their propaganda?
9.
What are the four ways some of these flyers suggest that women's moral purity could
transform public behavior?
10.
What did the flyer say allowing women to vote would accomplish in regards to both male
and female workers?
11.
How did suffragists combat the notion that women would vote in opposition to their
husbands? Suffragists worried that this notion would imply what kind of social crisis?
12.
What argument do the women of the New Jersey Woman Suffrage Association make for
giving women the vote? What benefit will workingmen receive by giving women the
vote?
13.
In what reform movements in the last half of the nineteenth century were women active?
14.
When the Woman Suffrage Party of the City of New York declared "Women Ought to
GIVE Their Help. Men Ought to HAVE Their Help. The State Ought to USE Their
Help" what were they trying to get men to think about?
15.
What did some suffragists argue would happen to women if they didn't get the vote?
16.
What was one of the leading national women's suffrage associations?
17.
When did women's suffrage experience a rapid expansion?
