Universal white male suffrage did not come right after the American Revolution: it was legislated gradually in the United States through the 1830s and 1840s. Until then, property ownership had been a condition for voting. Many prominent American statesmen did not believe that the "common man" was equipped to participate fully in politics.
In subsequent years, the women's suffrage movement was competing, in a sense, with the fight for African American suffrage. Some leaders felt that gender equality in voting was the top priority; others believed that a concurrent struggle for women's suffrage would set back or distract from the quest for African American (male) suffrage. Race was eliminated, in principle, as an obstacle to voting with the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870. However, various other hurdles were erected in parts of the country, particularly the South, to keep African Americans from the polls.
By the 1800s, the notion of separate...
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spheres of action for men and women had become fairly deeply ingrained in Western society and culture. Changing the role of women had potentially far-reaching implications with regard to notions of the sanctity of the family and the woman as an overseer of the home. For some, their entry into public life and politics challenged the traditional role of women.
As stated in the other responses, Progressivism played a major role in the granting of women's suffrage in the United States; however, by 1920, many Western countries had already legislated women's right to vote, so the United States was relatively slow in granting voting equality. Even President Woodrow Wilson, who eventually granted women's suffrage, opposed it during his first term (see the link below). Western societies were challenged by instability in the pre–World War I era in the form of new ideologies like Marxism, Socialism, and Nihilism and worker grievances that led to labor unrest. Suffragists were often lumped in with others who seemed to pose a challenge to stability.
So, what changed after World War I? The United States achieved a new stature globally by virtue of being on the winning side and emerging from the war relatively unscathed. The Wilson Administration used this platform to champion democracy, and how could the United States preach equality and democracy abroad if it did not practice democracy at home? This pressure was among the factors that contributed to the granting of women's suffrage in 1920.
References
While the previous answer makes some very good points, it also leaves out important factors.
First, we must understand that the social reform movements (particularly abolitionism) of the 1830s and 1840s helped lead to the women’s suffrage movement. Women became very involved in these movements. As they became more politically involved, they started to question the idea that they were not capable of voting. They particularly questioned this as they fought hard for the rights of African Americans when some of the rights they were demanding for blacks were not available to them. The abolitionist movement is seen as the foundation of the suffrage movement and cannot be ignored in an answer to this question.
Second, we must understand that the Progressive movement had a lot to do with women getting the vote in 1920. Progressives were very much concerned with improving society. They felt that letting women vote would be one way to do this. They wanted, for example, to ban alcohol. That was an idea that had much more support among women than it did among men. In general, there was still the attitude in those days that women were morally better and had more social conscience than men. The Progressives felt that women would be their natural political allies and therefore they helped get women the right to vote.
We cannot understand the women’s suffrage movement without understanding the role of the social reform movements of the antebellum era and that of the Progressive Era.
The factors that lead to the women's suffrage movement and to the eventual adoption of the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution were relatively straightforward: in effect, women objected to being denied the right to vote in elections and to run for public office. Women were denied that right simply on the basis of gender. They were not seen as intellectually sophisticated and comprised of the gravity required of an informed citizenry.
The women's suffrage movement in this country dates to the pre-Revolutionary War period, when a small number of women began to agitate for the right to vote in elections. The movement slowly grew over the next century, with increasing numbers of women joining the movement. A New York woman named Susan B. Anthony joined the cause in the mid-19th Century, and became one of the more prominent standard-bearers for the suffrage movement.
A small number of states, particularly Utah, adopted the gender-neutral voting laws, but at the federal level, Congress continued to resist. The movement reached its climactic stage during the period of the administration of President Woodrow Wilson, who opposed suffrage. Demonstrations outside the White House in 1917 resulting in the arrest of some of the women followed by a hunger strike by one of the imprisoned demonstrators, Alice Paul, compelled President Wilson to shift his position on the issue. On June 4, 1919, the United States Senate passed an amendment to the United States Constitution that prohibited the federal and state governments from prohibiting someone to vote on the basis of gender. By 1920, enough states passed resolutions of approval for the amendment to become the 19th Amendment to the Constitution.