Were Women to Blame? Female Suffrage and Voter Turnout

1982/01/01 by Paul Kleppner · 1 citation
Social Sciences · #American Constitutional Law and Politics #Gender, Labor, and Family Dynamics

paper · doi:10.2307/203548

Abstract

Were Women to Blame? Female Suffrage and Voter Turnout When the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified in I920, women obtained a constitutional guarantee of their right to vote. It is ironic that a steep decline in the level of non-southern voter participation followed this democratizing change. Turnout in the I920s plunged to a nadir that would not again be reached until the late 1970s. The synchronization of these occurrences implies a causal relationship between them.1 Were women entirely to blame for the sharp drop in voter turnout? That would be true only if male turnout rates remained basically unchanged while there was a large sex-based difference in participation rates. But why assume that male turnout remained relatively stable? And why assume that a large underlying malefemale turnout differential was an inevitable or natural state of affairs?

Cited by

• Explaining the Persistence and Eventual Decline of the Gender Gap in Voter Registration and Turnout in the American South, 1956–1980

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