Women’s Suffrage

EmpowHER recognizes the first assembly fanatical to women’s rights in the United States was 1848 in Senaca Falls, New York. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott were the principal organizers of what is now the Seneca Falls Convention. The preamble of the Declaration of Independence “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men and women are created equal” became the script for women voting rights.

5,000 suffragists from across the county gathered in Washington, D.C. on March 3, 1913 to demand the right to vote. The elaborate parade, which marched from the U.S. Capitol to the Treasury Building, consists of empowered women such as nurses, college students, academics, and clergywomen united in the struggle for women’s suffrage. The League of Women Voters (LWV) is an American civic organization that was formed to help women take a larger role in public affairs as they won the right to vote. It was founded in 1920 by Carrie Chapman during the last meeting of the National American Woman Suffrage Association approximately six months before the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution gave women the right to vote. The League of Women Voters began as a “mighty political experiment” aimed to help newly enfranchised women exercise their responsibilities as voters. Originally, only women could join the league; but in 1973 the charter was modified to include men. LWV operates at the local, state, and national level, with over 1,000 local and 50 state leagues.

The League of Women Voters of Palm Beach County is a nonpartisan organization supporting a variety of progressive public policy positions, including campaign finance reform, universal health care, abortion rights, climate change action and environmental regulation, and gun control.

Voting Rights Act 1965

EmpowHER acknowledges the celebration of Women’s Equality Day, a historical day granting white women the right to vote.

The Voting Rights Act, signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson (1908-73) on August 6, 1965, aimed to overcome legal barriers at the state and local levels that prevented African Americans from exercising their right to vote under the 15th Amendment (1870) to the Constitution of the United States. The act significantly widened the franchise and is considered among the most far-reaching pieces of civil rights legislation in U.S. history. It was the Act that empowers ALL WOMEN in the United States the ability to cast a ballot as full citizens.
http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/voting-rights-act

Gender Gap in Voting

Every presidential election has proven to be a gender gap where there are a greater percentage of women than men turnout for the voting process. Empowered women are a powerful voting syndicate, deciding the outcome. We need more women on the ballot because women support women in higher number.
For more on gender gap study: http://www.cawp.rutgers.edu/facts/voters/gender_gap

Power of the “Women’s Vote”

Empowered women rock and make the difference in our nation!
Women determined the outcome of the presidential elections based on exits polls from the 2012 election. It’s reflected with the record numbers of women in both the House and Senate. Our country’s policies will look very different in the next decade than in the pass. Important issues such as economic fairness, equal pay and work-family balance will surely be top priorities on the agenda.

Dianne Bystrom, the director of the Carrie Chapman Catt Center for Women and Politics at Iowa State University, says the reason the gender gap is critical is that more women are registered to vote than men in most states and there is a much higher female turnout rate at the polls. In the 2008 election, 10 million more women than men voted. The equation is simple: more female voters=more female power, especially in battleground states where women out-vote men in the hundreds of thousands.