Paige Tuft and Dr. Rebecca de Schweinitz, History Department
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As most of my research tends to do, this project took quite a different turn then originally intended. I intended this research to continue on with the topic of my senior thesis concerning the political activism of women in Utah during the 1920s by adding a different layer to the picture. In my research prior to this, I looked at Utah women in general without really looking at how religious convictions played into the equation. I intended this project to fill in this gap and to produce something I could add to my previous work. As it turns out, this research, while adding to a foundation I already have in Utah women’s political history, created a project and paper of its own.
This project opened a door to my understanding the political activism of women in Utah in the early 1900s. By looking at the Woman’s Exponent, the newspaper published by the Relief Society of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I got to see the movement through the lens of the Mormon women in Utah. Prior to conducting this research, the depth of the struggle for women’s political equality never occurred to me nor did the relationship the Relief Society had with the women’s movement and the struggle for suffrage in general.
Utah’s story concerning the process of enfranchising its women provides the background necessary for any in-depth understanding of greater struggle for women’s political equality its women took part in. Utah women’s experience with the vote demonstrated an intertwining relationship of religion and civic duty. Utah women first found themselves eligible to vote alongside their male counterparts in 1870 while Utah still held the status of a territory. Historians Rebecca Edwards and Beverly Beeton both attribute the timing of Utah’s extension of suffrage to women to the national government’s attack on the Mormon practice of polygamy. The nation at this time did not approve of Mormons practicing polygamy and considered several means to disenfranchise those who supported and practiced plural marriage. Both Edwards and Beeton suggest that Utah granted suffrage rights to women as a way to fight the government’s efforts to end polygamy. Utah men might have given women the right to vote because they knew that women would uphold Mormon religious practices or perhaps for other reasons, women in Utah used their votes to uphold the practice for over a decade. Since Utah women apparently refused to attack and end polygamy, Congress disenfranchised them as part of its anti-polygamy efforts. Not long after the Church officially ended the practice of plural marriage, the national government stopped its attack on Utah and Mormon control over the territory. Congress and the President did not even consider the past issue of polygamy when reviewing and approving Utah’s 1896 request for statehood, which included women as part of the electorate. Utah became the first state to guarantee women the right to vote.
Throughout Utah women’s struggle for equal suffrage, their feminist ideas took shape within the pages of the Woman’s Exponent. The Exponent continued to discuss the issue of women’s rights well beyond the time Utah reenfrachised women in 1896 and well beyond the borders of its own state and nation. The issue of equal suffrage for women remained a constant presence in the pages of the Woman’s Exponent from 1900 until it ceased publication in 1914.
The Woman’s Exponent ran articles concerning the state of women’s suffrage and political equality within Utah. In “Office for Women,” the paper chided the people of Utah for their seeming lack of care for how women’s suffrage played out in their own state. This article pointed out that women in Utah still hold fewer offices than women in the other four states where women have political equality. The article also points to women’s political apathy as the reason why they do not hold office even though they claim to enjoy the vote. Besides pointing to the shortcomings to encourage action, the Exponent also ran articles that encouraged from a more positive angle. A few months later, the Exponent ran an article almost praising the women in political offices in Utah and what they are accomplishing. In March 1913, “The Legislature” commented on how the tenth session of the legislature marked the fourth time since statehood that Utah men and women framed laws together. It also implied that because of the nine women present there, this body spent more time on educational and social interests which benefitted the interests of women and children especially. The Exponent’s articles reflected the accomplishments of Utah but also the need for more to be done to achieve the full political equality of women in practice.
The Relief Society’s involvement in the struggle for political equality extended to the individual struggle in other states to the struggle for a national amendment to the struggle other nations around the world encountered fighting for their own equal political rights for women. In “Four More States for Suffrage,” the article mentions that Kansas, Michigan, Oregon, and Arizona voted for suffrage in recent elections while also highlighting the good that women accomplish for their communities with their vote. The audience the Exponent catered to even cared for the state of suffrage in counties around the world, with Norway getting about as much coverage as Washington in its journey for political equality. Although, Utah women already possessed their own political equality, they still wished for and helped their fellow sister elsewhere gain theirs.
The Women’s Exponent opened my eyes up to the feminism that existed in the early 1900s among Relief Society women I did not know existed. I have not finished polishing the expression of my discoveries but plan on seeing that it gets published once I am fully satisfied with my work. The process has been a much longer and in depth than I originally assumed but I have also found more and learned more than I expected initially either.
References
- Rebecca Edwards, “Pioneers at the Poles: Woman Suffrage in the West,” in Votes for Women: the Struggle for Suffrage Revisited edited by Jean H. Baker, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 93; Beverly Beeton, “How the West Was Won for Woman Suffrage.” in One Woman, One Vote: Rediscovering the Woman Suffrage Movement edited by Marjorie Spuill Wheeler, (Troutdale, OR: NewSage Press, 1995), 105.
- Beeton, 106.
- Beeton, 109.
- Joan Iversen, “Feminist Implications of Mormon Polygyny,” Feminist Studies 10, no. 3 (Autumn, 1984), 505.
- “Office for Women, “ Woman’s Exponent 41, no. 1 (September, 1912), 4.
- Annie Wells Cannon, “The Legislature,” Woman’s Exponent 41, no. 6 (March, 1913), 44.
- “Four More States for Suffrage, “ Woman’s Exponent 41, no.3 (November, 1912), 21.