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Zeilenga, Jack

History

2006

MA

Over a one hundred year period from 1840 to 1940, women in Vermont struggled to improve their rights in the state and better protect issues of the hearth. While this struggle was not easy or immediate, women did make an impact on politics in Vermont during this period. Starting with the efforts of Clarina Howard Nichols in the 1840s and 1850s, the women's rights movement in Vermont began to take shape. It continued to grow after the Civil War, with the state's Council of Censors taking up the issue of woman suffrage in 1870 but ultimately voting it down. Interest continued, though, and women began to slowly gain more rights, first in 1880, then in 1900. In the end of the nineteenth century and into the early twentieth, the Vermont Equal Suffrage Association (VESA) was created to push for the ballot for women. VESA relentlessly petitioned the state legislature for decades. A level of victory was finally reached in 1917 when Vermont women gained the right to vote in municipal elections. In 1920, the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment gave women in Vermont and nationally the right to vote and hold office. As voters, women did not have a great and immediate impact. As legislators, though, they were able to make some progress.
In 1921 Edna Beard became the first woman to enter the State House, joining the House of Representatives. She would move on to the Senate in 1923. While her legal impact was minimal, her status as the first woman to serve opened the doors for others. In the twenty years that followed, between 1920 and 1940, a number of women would serve in the Vermont state legislature. They came from different backgrounds, but played a variety of roles while in the state house, sponsoring legislation and serving on legislative committees. The focus of many of the efforts of women in the legislature was the protection of maternalist issues that were important to them as women and which had been largely ignored by men-- issues of the hearth. The issues, such as family, children, education, and personal rights became the focus of women's efforts through the bills they sponsored in both the House and Senate. Through their efforts, women were able to begin to improve issues of the hearth across the state, giving increased protection to those who had been previously overlooked and making those issues not just women's issues, but Vermont issues. Women's impact over this one hundred year period was slow. Nothing came easy for them. They struggled for suffrage for the better part of eighty years, seeing their rights slowly evolve until receiving full suffrage in 1920. Once able to serve in the State House, women continued to make small steps, this time in the protection of issues of importance to them as women. While change came slowly and women's impact during this time was not dramatic, women did make an impact on politics in the state, gradually improving their own rights and better protecting the rights of all Vermonters.