Were there women who were against giving women the right to vote?

Question

The TV show Sherlock prompted an interesting question about the historical role of women during the United Kingdom's road to women's suffrage.

In the episode "The Abominable Bride" (set in Victorian London in 1895), there was a scene where Mrs. Watson says that she is part of a campaign to give women the right to vote:

MRS WATSON: I’m part of a campaign, you know.

LESTRADE: Oh yeah? Campaign?

MRS WATSON: Votes for Women.

LESTRADE: And are you – are you for or against?

MRS WATSON (sternly pointing to the stairs): Get out.

The scene was played for laughs with the joke being that Lestrade should have realized his question was misplaced; being a woman of course she would want the right to vote.

But this made me wonder; were there women in this era who historically were against giving women the right to vote? If so, what were their reasons?

I am interested in either organized campaigns led by women or prominent women who held this view. I'd like to know about UK movements, but similar movements outside of the UK would be interesting supplementary information too.

Answer 1

Strange at it may seem, there was a movement called "anti-suffragism" in the U.S. and U.K. composed mainly of women. Their numbers were small, since this posture would have been "counterintuitive."

The Americans were composed mainly of "conservative" women who liked the division of duties and society between "domestic" (for women), and "outside," for men. On the other side were radicals like Emma Goldman, who favored "anarchism," instead of working within the system, through suffrage.

Answer 2

Yes, there were. And at the beginning of the women's suffrage movement, suffragettes were viewed by most women as oddities rather than heroic liberators.

Basically, centuries ago, due to the technological and economical environment, the family as a unit was much more important than how many people view it today. It was close to impossible to survive (and especially to lead a decent life) alone, especially for a woman. There was no male conspiracy to oppress women. It's just how society formed to optimally face the challenges of their own time period. There were many women during history who had important roles in society, leading back to medieval and even ancient times.

Women during the suffragette movement who were against women's suffrage were not just religious fanatics. There were many well-educated and influential women who were against women entering the realm of politics.

Here is an interesting article about it.

Most of the female leaders of the anti-suffrage movement, says Goodier, “were earnest, intelligent, often educated and professional women who sincerely believed that women, and the nation-state, would suffer when women achieved political equality with men.”

Central to the movement was the then-prevalent notion that in order to be functional, prosperous and pleasant, American society required men and women to operate in separate spheres of influence: public life for men, and domestic life for women. These realms aligned with what were regarded as the inherent natural strengths of each sex. Women, who were considered nurturers, moral guardians, and peacekeepers, were expected to guide the moral development of the next generation by presiding over family and the home. (“Women is queen, indeed,” wrote Roman Catholic Cardinal James Gibbons, quoted in an anti-suffrage pamphlet, “but her empire is the domestic kingdom.”)

“Most nineteenth-century commentators saw strict differentiation between the roles of women and men as crucial to the proper functioning of the nation,” writes Goodier in No Votes for Women. “Anti-suffragists subscribed to the belief that women’s power base, the private home, was equivalent to the masculine power base in the public realm.”

When we analyze an earlier time period, we have to take care to also study it from their own perspective, taking into account all the socioeconomic factors and all the constraints of the level of technology they had back then, and its effects on daily life. Judging them solely from a modern, (or even utopian) viewpoint only leads to finding them either bizarre or evil, just like how they would view us if they didn't understand all the context which made our current civilization look like it is.

Answer 3

Not only were there women who opposed suffrage, there still are. For instance, here's Central Missisippi Tea Party President Janis Lane in 2012:

I'm really going to set you back here. Probably the biggest turn we ever made was when the women got the right to vote. [...] Our country might have been better off if it was still just men voting. There is nothing worse than a bunch of mean, hateful women. They are diabolical in how than can skewer a person. I do not see that in men. The whole time I worked, I'd much rather have a male boss than a female boss. Double-minded, you never can trust them.

Source: The Jackson [Mississippi] Free Press

And here's self-described polemicist Ann Coulter last year:

Well, as you know, my position is that women should not have the right to vote. [...] No, we can still write books; we can run for office. [Interviewer: You just can't vote.] Exactly.

Source: Unfortunately this isn't easily available from a neutral source, but this article includes an actual audio recording of the interview

Answer 4

A Spanish example: Victoria Kent. Quote from the link:

Kent was against giving women the right to vote immediately, arguing that, as Spanish women lacked at that moment social and political education enough to vote responsibly, they would be very much influenced by the Catholic priests, damaging left wing parties.

Answer 5

So a decade and a half ago, here in Kansas, we had a Senator named Kay O'Connor, a woman, who opposed women's right to vote. You can find all sorts of quotes from this individual around the internet, but this article sums it up pretty well.

Relevant quotes from the article:

"Sen. Kay O'Connor recently told the co-presidents of the Johnson County League of Women Voters that the amendment was the first step in a decades-long erosion of traditional family values."

I guess somewhere along the lines, the definition of "traditional family values" is needed, but from remaining context, she means that men work (and vote) while women tend house (and don't vote).

"'Wasn't it in the best interest of our country to give women the right to vote?' Furtado asked the senator.

'Not necessarily so,' O'Connor said."

and lastly:

Asked if she supports the 19th Amendment, the Republican lawmaker responded: "I'm an old-fashioned woman. Men should take care of women, and if men were taking care of women (today) we wouldn't have to vote.

Answer 6

Voting(at least in the US) was originally designed to revolve around land owner(freeholder) families. So the intention was that someone who was pulled together enough(paid taxes-as there was no income tax, had a legitimate interest in the community and most likely wasn't beholden to the very rich) to own property free and clear was the type of person who should vote, and that person's vote would represent their entire family's(and slaves/workers) view point.

So in the US it was more of an argument about the family vs the individual and in fact this discussion is still continuing today revolving around the equal rights amendment (http://www.equalrightsamendment.org/history.htm) - supported by the excellent historical figure Alice Paul. This amendment would (potentially) remove things like tax breaks for married couples among other things, and so has a group of people, especially women, who oppose it. eg http://www.eagleforum.org/era/

Answer 7

Of course there were some women opposed. My mother was one. Her opinion, which I can neither validate nor invalidate, was that women gave up many more intangible rights than they gained in tangible rights. In her view women were the mistress (read "master") of the home prior to the change. Being on "equal footing" with men meant giving up what she perceived as an advantage. Just FYI, she held a master's degree in Special Education and was a single parent head of household after my father died. So it would be an error to assume she was just some ignorant housewife. In truth she was a lot smarter than I ever gave her credit for in life. I had to approach retirement age myself before catching on to that. In this opinion, I just don't have her frame of reference to know if she was right or wrong.

Answer 8

If you follow democracy a bit, you'll know that there were women like that without requiring explicit proof.

• There are immigrants who advocate a stronger stance on immigration.
• There are officers who want to spend less money on the military.
• There are minimum wage workers who are opposed to a higher minimum wage.

I'm wondering if there's a friendly commenter who knows what psychologists call this phenomenon?

Also, it's sometimes easy to forget that people think in a democracy. So when they failed to allow women the right to vote, there must have been some arguments against it which made sense to a majority of the male population - the same arguments will have been known to the female population.

Answer 9

There are already several good answers, but it seems that nobody has mentioned the obvious yet: The most famous and most powerful woman in 1895 in UK (and on Earth) was Queen Victoria, aka "Her Majesty Victoria, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland Queen, Defender of the Faith, Empress of India."

Her opposition to women's vote and her hatred for suffragettes seem to have been constant during her reign.

She said that if women were to

unsex’ themselves by claiming equality with men they would become the most hateful, heathen and disgusting of beings and would surely perish without male protection.

Most of her daughters were not agreeing with Victoria on that stance, e.g.:

Princess Louise in particular was associated with suffragist circles. She met privately with suffragists and expressed regret that she could not support them publicly because of her mother, Queen Victoria’s opposition to women’s suffrage.

The prestige and the influence of the Queen on British citizens as a whole and conservative circles in particular must have led many women to follow her opinion on this subject.

Answer 10

psychologically speaking, people generally like to feel good about who they are and the choices they have already made. frequently that makes the opponents of social change people who have either resigned to it, or who will lose relative social standing. therefore married women who had relinquished control to their husbands would sometimes oppose the female suffrage movement because it would disproportionately benefit unmarried women upon whom the married women could currently regard with pity and/or contempt. also, these married women might have internalized their husband's political positions simply because they were resigned to not having a right to disagree.