The passage of the Nineteenth Amendment by Congress is presented as a hard-won milestone in the American women’s suffrage movement, not as the end of women’s struggle for equality. In Simone de Beauvoir’s account, organized campaigns, protest, imprisonment, and hunger strikes preceded congressional action; the amendment’s adoption opened a path to political enfranchisement, while wider social and economic inequalities persisted.

Background and Mobilization

Women’s political organizing in the United States developed alongside their participation in economic and civic life. By 1900, five million women worked, including in industry and business, and women had entered professions such as law and medicine. They also formed clubs with about two million members. Yet only nine states had granted women the vote, leaving national suffrage unresolved.

In 1913 the movement adopted a more militant model associated with the British campaign. Doris Stevens and Alice Paul led the effort, securing permission from President Wilson to march with banners and signs. Activists then organized lectures, meetings, marches, and other public demonstrations. Women who already had the vote in nine states traveled to the Capitol in a highly visible show of support for nationwide enfranchisement. A gathering in Chicago formed the Women’s Party, giving the campaign an organized political vehicle.

Protest and Congressional Action

In 1917 suffragettes stationed themselves at the White House gates with banners, sometimes chaining themselves there so they could not be removed. After six months, authorities sent them to Occoquan Workhouse. They went on hunger strike and were eventually released. Further demonstrations led to riots, after which the government agreed to establish a House Committee on Woman Suffrage.

The Women’s Party executive committee held a conference in Washington, and a suffrage amendment went to the House, which approved it on January 10, 1918. Senate approval remained necessary. Wilson would not promise to exert sufficient pressure, and a renewed demonstration at the White House followed. Although Wilson then appealed to the Senate, the amendment was rejected by two votes. The setback did not end the campaign: in June 1919, a Republican Congress voted for the amendment.

Significance and Limits

The congressional passage represented the culmination of a sustained campaign that had moved from public demonstrations and organized lobbying to the amendment process. The account underscores the cost and persistence behind that advance: activists faced imprisonment, undertook hunger strikes, and returned to protest after an initial Senate defeat.

Yet Beauvoir distinguishes formal political progress from complete equality. The struggle continued for the next decade, and later gains included the establishment of the Inter-American Commission of Women in 1928 and treaties signed by nineteen American republics in 1933 that recognized women’s equality in rights. The amendment’s passage thus stands as a decisive step in enfranchisement within a longer, unfinished movement for equal standing.