Women's Role In Prohibition

In the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth, women became very active in political and social movements. Women played roles that shaped the future of the laws that prohibited women in many ways. Women’s suffrage and women’s role in prohibition are two ways in which women have shaped political and social moments in United States history. Women have never given up on fighting for rights, many times with monetary and social consequences for trying to gain rights they felt belonged to them. Along with gaining those rights women have fought for destigmatizing women and consider them equals to men. This view has been questioned since colonial times; however, no action was taken until almost a century later. One account states that the
The Women’s Organization for National Prohibition Reform, also known as WONPR, “argued that Prohibition exacerbated the evils it was designed to combat.” While the opposing temperance group, the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, WCTU, “a group that claimed to speak for all women—believed that Prohibition protected the home and family from the violence and immorality associated with alcohol” (Neumann 31). The women in these movement groups jointly had a goal of maintaining the sanctity of the home, meanwhile the group “WONPR believed that the widespread bootlegging, smuggling, and imbibing of alcohol under Prohibition fostered an ever-increasing contempt for law,” as a result, this caused the disheartenment toward family and home life (Neumann 31, 32). Temperance movements and campaign leaders for suffrage worked hand-in-hand on many levels from local to international organizations. Although it was in good cause, temperance caused a few complications since at the time it was both a political and moral controversy. A few concepts for temperance clashed with the suffrage movement because of how exactly it aided suffrage was one of the hindrances. Support for both causes simultaneously was not popular with everyone, for example one leader in suffrage movements, Abigail Scott Duniway, regarded that temperance was an obstruction in the efforts
Once the women were “enfranchised,” the inevitable next steps were to take part in other political and legal areas, for example jury duty or representatives in congress. Their goals of larger fairness would influence later movements, some in the 1960s (Stalcup 12). On the opposite end, there were people who wanted to separate suffrage and temperance. Abigail Scott Duniway argued for this, she said that males would not wish to vote in favor of suffragists if there was a connection between the suffragists and temperance campaigners since temperance was targeting the males. Some thought “women would use their voting privileges to bring prohibition to the state so they voted against woman suffrage to keep prohibition from having a chance in Oregon” (Hardy). One reason some suffragists supported prohibition was to prevent abuses that stemmed from alcohol. WCTU leaders stimulated its members to support suffrage since they thought it would be effective, they also thought it would go hand-in-hand for prohibition to be approved