1900-1915
"If women had the ballot… they would have passed the 54-hour bill… I do want the ballot to be able to register my protest against the conditions that are killing and maiming…" Hat trimmer Melinda Scott
Melinda Scott was perhaps echoing what Emma Heath and other hat trimmers in Danbury were feeling with regards to the vote.
Suffrage associations sprung up around the country. The Connecticut Woman Suffrage Association (CWSA) was founded in 1869 and by the early 20th-century, it was a formidable organization that would have kept people like Emma Heath informed of the movement's progress.
Thomas Gisborne, an Anglican priest, laid out for an early 19th-century audience what he felt were the differences between men and women, how to educate women, and how women should choose a husband, raise children and spend free time.
The views expressed in 1797 differed little from what was present at the turn of the next century (as is made clear by these postcards from the early 20th century) provided a basis for humor and subjugation based on stereotypes perpetuated in a male-dominated landscape.
It was this deep bias that women (even among themselves) had to challenge and subdue in order to win the vote.
To counter the deep societal bias against women, the mass media of the time - print - was used to promote (and as seen above - to discredit) the women's suffrage movement. WestConn has a small collection of tracts, pamphlets, and period literature that document this period.