The Suffrage Question: The Movement As Contentious Struggle

We can see different techniques and artistic styles at play in these images that work to support their opposing arguments. John Sloan, who advocated women's suffrage, chooses to collapse physical differences between men and women to argue that their natures were similar and therefore equally deserving the vote.

On the other hand, the illustrations by Gordon Grant, Louis Glackens, and Leighton Budd emphasize the differences between masculine men and feminine women, arguing that women did not have the same capacity to exercise the vote wisely.

Question to ponder:

• How do these contemporaneous cartoons about women voters get across different messages?