Cartoons, postcards, and other images of women participating in electoral campaigns
From the early days of the woman's rights movement, cartoonists and satirists made fun of the women and their goals. The cartoons, comic images, and postcards depicted here all concern the possibility of women gaining access to elected political offices. These images cover a forty-year period, with similar themes re-occuring over and over again throughout that time. If women gained access to the franchise and political office then all traditional roles would be overturned. Women would take on the worst behaviors of men in politics, becoming sexualized, coarse, and unethical; men would become feminized and domesticated. In the images shown here political women are either parodied as men or as exaggerated women. The "masculine" women are dressed (at least partially), in male clothing, appear in male bodily positions-arms crossed, legs crossed, fists raised, and smoking a cigar or cigarette. Alternatively women have large hairdos, over-sized hats, and extra flounces or ribbons on their clothes. Often the politics or political positions of these overly "feminized" women candidates are trivialized-for example, calling for a reduction in tariffs on Paris gowns, in the 1909 Walter Wellman postcard "The Suffragette for Senatoress." The issues women's rights activists were fighting for: access to the franchise and elected office; equal rights in marriage; access to education and job training, the professions and skilled worked; economic independence, equal rights to, and protection for their children, were often made to appear ridiculous, trivial, and extremist.
A few positive images of women as pariticipants in the political system, in elected office, or as actual politicians did also appear in magazines and newspapers of the day.
For further suffrage and election images online, see the Palczewski Suffrage Postcard Archive at the University of Northern Iowa and Women Suffrage Memorabilia site by Kenneth Florey.
A few positive images of women as pariticipants in the political system, in elected office, or as actual politicians did also appear in magazines and newspapers of the day.
For further suffrage and election images online, see the Palczewski Suffrage Postcard Archive at the University of Northern Iowa and Women Suffrage Memorabilia site by Kenneth Florey.
Campaigns & Electioneering
*From the private collection of Jill Norgren and Wendy Chmielewski