Poster graphic emphasizing the maternal role of women as a basis for the right to vote.

FEMALE POLITICAL CULTURE

Creating a female political culture had been an ongoing endeavor for American women. Women of the Revolutionary Era, seeking a political role for themselves in the new nation, created the concept of Republican Motherhood, a concept thoroughly explored by historian Linda Kerber in her work Women of the Republic. [2] The concept of Republican Motherhood was echoed again in the mid-19^th century by such prominent women as Catherine Beecher (famous educator and promoter of domestic science as a study for women) and Sarah Josepha Hale (editor of the popular and influential women’s magazine Godey’s Lady’s Book. Building on the theme, women at the turn of the century continued to use aspects of their cultural role to political effect. The images and rhetoric comprising this political culture enabled women to transform their domestic experience into a powerful political statement, allowing them to extend their culturally-sanctioned role to include new public responsibilities. This politicized rhetoric and imagery of motherhood, as both a socially redemptive and politically compelling concept, became a central and forceful rationale, setting patterns for women's political participation in this country that continue to today.

	An amusing mainstream postcard basing women's right to vote on the motherhood claim. Note the use of the color yellow.

In creating a female political culture, American women used materials rooted in American traditions as well as those borrowed and adapted to American usage from the British suffrage movement. American suffrage women were inspired by political parades and demonstrations familiar throughout the 19^th century during presidential campaigns. The suffragists also embraced classical figures of women representing America, Democracy, Liberty, and Justice, which had been in American political use since the time of the Revolution. The Woman's Christian Temperance Union (a women's anti-alcohol and drug crusade that became the largest women's organization in the 19th century) had a history of street actions and public parades dating from the mid-1870s. Suffrage supporters in California had staged parades as early as 1906 (prior to the first British suffrage parades) to promote a state amendment for women's vote.