19th Amendment Arguments

    There were many arguments against women's suffrage, specifically the right to vote.  They would say nearly anything to make sure they did not earn the right to vote. A major argument was simply that women did not want the right and responsibility to vote.  Their reasoning, which was also given by women, was that because of all the housework, there was simply no time to pay attention to the progression of politics or to go out and vote.  By this logic, many anti-suffragists would say that if women did get the right to vote, only a select few would actually vote. This would mean that because some women may not want to deal with the burden of voting, then the rest have no choice in the matter and automatically can not vote.  Men would also say that women should not get involved with the dirty world of politics because they were too delicate.

    There were many different arguments that were for belittling the women of the suffrage movement.  This was shown through the argument that women do not have the mental capacity to offer a helpful political opinion.  This idea would also make people reason that if women have no helpful political opinion, then they would just listen to the ideas of their husband or father.  This would then make sense of the argument that letting women vote would simply double the electorate, leaving no change to the state of the voting population.  Also, the idea of letting uneducated women was just scary to some men, and was the driving reason men opposed women's right to vote. Also, there was the idea that since women weren't capable of serving in the military, and that all strong governments use force.  Therefore, since women were not capable of exerting force physically, or socially, they should not be able to participate in government.

https://www.history.com/topics/womens-history/19th-amendment
https://ehistory.osu.edu/exhibitions/1912/womens_suffrage/interest
http://www.crusadeforthevote.org/naows-opposition/