Women’s Suffrage and Reform Movements in the Gilded Age

The Gilded Age brought the expansion of industry, the growth of individual wealth, and the emergence of social reform movements. In what came to be known as the Progressive Era, reformers worked to bring greater measures of safety and equality to the civil service, labor practices, and urban life. Among these reform movements were those steered by women, including women’s suffrage, temperance, and Black women’s rights.

While women had led this work in the past, industrialization brought the expansion of roles for women, and women could pursue reform even more in the public eye, undertaking tactics such as speaking on a lecture circuit and getting arrested. The examples of three women—Susan B. Anthony, Ida B. Wells, and Frances Willard—demonstrate the breadth of approaches to reform, as well as the moral transgressions that arose in pursuing this work in a world riddled with prejudice.