The Weight of Their Votes: Southern Women and Political Leverage in the 1920s Book

After the ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920, hundreds of thousands of southern women went to the polls for the first time. Schuyler shows that from polling places to the halls of state legislatures, women altered the political landscape in ways both symbolic and substantive. Challenging popular scholarly opinion that women failed to wield their ballots effectively in the 1920s, she argues instead that in state and local politics, women made the most of their votes. Even as southern Democrats remained in power, the social welfare policies and public spending priorities of southern states changed in the 1920s as a consequence of the demands of the new female voting constituency who lobbied for change.