This inquiry set is designed to provide context for students to be able to address with nuance and perspective the question, Why did women want the right to vote, and how did they convince men to grant it to them?Women in California won the right to vote in the 1911 election, nearly a decade before the national suffrage amendment passed.

The people who fueled industrialization in the nation’s expanding urban centers migrated domestically from more rural areas and came from nations all over the world. Students may consider these questions to organize their study of immigration: Who came to the United States at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century? Why did they come? What was their experience like when they arrived?

Because progressivism called for an expanded government to protect individuals, it is only natural that expanding voting rights were deemed equally important. In California, women received the right to vote in 199; on the national level, it took several more years. Students read about leading suffragists and their organizations, especially the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) and the National Women’s Party (NWP).