The Constitution's original language was strictly gender-neutral, referring repeatedly to "persons" or "citizens," rather than to "men" or "women." Gender distinctions did not enter the Constitution until 1868, with the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, which addressed the voting rights of all "male...citizens."
In this theme, we will look at two crucial events in the long campaign to expand the rights of American women. The woman suffrage movement, which fought to extend the right to vote to all American women, ended successfully in 1920 with ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution. But the effort to pass the Equal Rights Amendment, which would have guaranteed women all the same legal rights as men, ended in defeat in 1982, when the amendment fell three states shy of the 38 needed for ratification.
We will use these two case studies to examine the historical concept of causality and to learn more about evaluating and searching for primary and secondary sources. Evaluating sources is important, because it helps you make sure that whatever research you use in your academic research paper is appropriate.