In Simone de Beauvoir’s history of women’s political struggle, the White House is the site of a prolonged suffrage protest and a measure of the distance between being heard and gaining political rights. In 1917, suffragettes stood at its doors with banners, sometimes chaining themselves to the gates; their demonstrations brought arrest and hunger strikes, and the campaign continued even after a proposed suffrage amendment failed in the Senate.

The White House as a protest site

By 1913, American suffrage organizers had adopted the militant English model. Alice Paul and Doris Stevens led a movement that used lectures, meetings, marches, and public demonstrations. Women from the nine states where women could vote traveled to the Capitol to demand the vote nationwide, while the Women’s Party emerged from a gathering in Chicago.

In 1917, the campaign brought its tactics directly to the White House. Suffragettes took positions at the entrances with banners, and some chained themselves to the gates to prevent their removal. The location made their claim visible at the threshold of national political power: women demanded a voice in the government whose authority governed them.

Arrest and escalation

After six months, authorities stopped the protest and sent participants to Occoquan Workhouse. There they went on hunger strike, and they were eventually released. Demonstrations resumed, escalating into riots and helping prompt the government to establish a House Committee on Woman Suffrage.

The White House remained a point of pressure as the proposed amendment advanced. After the House voted for it on January 10, 1918, the measure still needed Senate approval. When President Wilson would not promise to exert sufficient pressure, suffragettes rallied again at the White House doors. Wilson then appealed to the Senate, but the amendment was rejected by two votes.

Political outcome and significance

The protest did not itself deliver immediate victory. A Republican Congress voted for the amendment in June 1919, while the larger campaign for full equality continued for another decade. In de Beauvoir’s account, the White House episode shows how organized women used public pressure to contest their exclusion, while also exposing the limits of protest when political change still depended on decisions by male-controlled institutions.

The site’s significance is therefore not simply that demonstrations took place there. The gates gave the campaign a concrete point of confrontation with national authority: banners, arrests, imprisonment, hunger strikes, and renewed rallies formed a sequence of pressure, yet the Senate’s rejection showed that visibility and political leverage were not the same as possessing the vote.