Jane Addams: “Why Women Should Vote”

Explanation and Analysis of the Document

Addams's essay on women's suffrage, “Why Women Should Vote,” published as an editorial in the Ladies' Home Journal in January 1910, inscribes itself in the intense debate on the topic that took place at the beginning of the twentieth century in America. The women's movement was a crucial part of Progressivism, and one of its most pressing questions was how women could attain equality with men and reform a society dominated by them. Many women's rights advocates claimed that voting was essential for women to achieve their reformist goals. Addams shared this belief. Yet, contrary to other women's rights campaigners, she rooted her support for female suffrage within the values of domesticity. While many within the movement argued that suffrage would be instrumental in helping women move beyond the narrow boundaries of the home, Addams begins her essay by situating women's place firmly within the home. She finds that no social change will release women from their domestic obligations. However, for women to fulfill such obligations, it is crucial that they can vote so that they can “take part in the slow upbuilding of that code of legislation which is alone sufficient to protect the home from the dangers incident to modern life.”

In that the essay apparently embraces the traditional domestic role that Victorian society ascribed to women, Addams was criticized by her contemporaries as bowing to the popular and conservative perceptions of gender and womanhood. Yet, as Victoria Bissell Brown has pointed out, “Why Women Should Vote” is indicative of Addams's “unusual ability to weave [her] concern [for economic and political democracy] with her own mediating temperament, diplomatic style, and genuine respect for domesticity into a pro-suffrage argument that appealed to mainstream sensibilities.” Addams's rhetorical ability is apparent not only in what she includes in her essay but also in what she leaves out. While many pro-suffrage writings took direct issue with arguments against women's voting rights, Addams never once cites her adversaries in her speech, such that her style comes across as completely nonconfrontational.

To Addams, the quest for women's suffrage represents an opportunity to hear women's voices in matters that are fundamental to the improvement of family life and to the struggle against urban vices. In its focus on the enhancement of living conditions within the urban environment, “Why Women Should Vote” ties the question of women's suffrage to the larger Progressive agenda, clearly stating that the two mutually reinforce each other. Because women have deep knowledge of the needs of youth, they can provide unique insights into effective ways “on the one hand to control and on the other hand to provide recreational facilities for its young people.” Defining voting rights for women as a potential service toward the entire community, the essay is typical of the Progressives' affirmation of collective over individual concerns. As Brown writes, Addams assigns domesticity a crucial place in women's life not to “placate the patriarchs,” but “because her daily experience taught her that domesticity was … a utilitarian reality for her working-class neighbors, and one that could be powerful if deployed in the political arena against America's individualistic patriarchs.”