The Women Who Fought Against Women’s Right to Vote

The National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage

User Quadell on en.wikipedia, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

There have always been groups of people who acted in ways seemingly opposed to their self-interest. Here are a few current examples:

1. Log Cabin Republicans- They support a party whose platform has historically opposed same‑sex marriage, transgender rights, and LGBTQ anti‑discrimination protections. They endorse candidates who campaign on restricting LGBTQ rights. Put another way, the Log Cabin Republicans have been unable to demonstrate any sway within the Republican Party; they only provide them with cover.
2. Black Voices for Trump- Publicly support candidates and policies widely viewed by civil‑rights groups as harmful to Black political power. Promote narratives that contradict mainstream Black political advocacy (e.g., on policing, voting rights, affirmative action)—often used symbolically at rallies to signal multiracial support. Name any individual with influence from the Black Voices for Trump group?
3. Latinos for Trump/Latinos for America First- Supports candidates who advocate for strict immigration enforcement, border militarization, and policies that disproportionately affect Latino communities. Some members support mass deportation policies while others stay silent when family members, church members, and co-workers (some American citizens) are targeted by ICE and Border Patrol. Every Hispanic-looking person in America may one day have to produce their papers if they get the chance.

I could make a case for Catholics supporting Democrats who are pro-abortion or wealthy liberal donors who may be affected by Democratic tax policies, but the case isn’t as clear.

The National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage (NAOWS) was founded in 1911 in New York City, at the very moment the suffrage movement was gaining national momentum. Its founders included wealthy, socially prominent women such as Josephine Dodge, who became its first president. Dodge and her allies believed that political participation would distract women from what they considered their “proper” roles in the home, family, and charitable work. They argued that women already exercised influence through moral authority and social reform, and that entering electoral politics would corrupt that influence rather than strengthen it.

NAOWS quickly grew into a national lobbying organization, with state chapters, a newspaper (The Woman’s Protest, later renamed The Woman Patriot), and a sophisticated propaganda operation. The group’s messaging blended traditional gender ideology with fears about social upheaval. They claimed that suffrage would increase taxes, empower “undesirable” voters (a coded reference to immigrants and Black women), undermine the family, and burden women with responsibilities they neither wanted nor were suited for. NAOWS also courted business interests — especially the liquor industry, which feared that enfranchised women would vote for Prohibition. By 1916, the organization had tens of thousands of members and was distributing millions of pamphlets, posters, and newspaper ads.

The Woman Patriot Publishing Co., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Despite its size, NAOWS was ultimately overtaken by the political momentum of the suffrage movement, World War I, and shifting public opinion. After the 19th Amendment was ratified in 1920, the organization dissolved. However, many of its leaders continued their activism through successor groups such as the Woman Patriot Publishing Company, which opposed not only women’s political equality but also immigration, labor rights, and anti‑lynching legislation. NAOWS remains a revealing example of how women themselves were mobilized to defend the gender and racial hierarchies that the suffrage movement sought to dismantle.

Josephine Jewell Dodge, the group's leader, married Arthur Murray Dodge in 1881. He was a wealthy New York businessman and philanthropist. Their marriage positioned her within the elite social circles that later became the backbone of the anti‑suffrage movement. The couple had several children, and Dodge’s public arguments against women’s suffrage often leaned on her identity as a wife and mother, claiming that political participation would distract women from their “proper” domestic roles. Arthur Dodge died in 1894, leaving Josephine a wealthy widow with the time to devote to NAOWS.

Her marriage also provided the financial and social resources that allowed her to found and lead the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage, making her one of the most influential anti‑suffrage organizers of the early 20th century.

Here are 10 Verbatim Quotes from Josephine Jewell Dodge

1. “Woman suffrage is an unnecessary burden placed upon women.”
2. “The best service that women can render the State is through the home.”
3. “Most women do not want the ballot and will not use it if given.”
4. “Political duties would take women from the duties for which they are best fitted.”
5. “The vote will not purify politics; it will only double the electorate.”
6. “Women’s influence is greatest when it is indirect.”
7. “The home is the woman’s sphere, and it is there she serves the nation.”
8. “The ballot is not a privilege but a responsibility, and one which women have not sought.”
9. “The family is the unit of the State, and the husband represents that unit.”
10. “We oppose woman suffrage because it means competition of women with men instead of cooperation.”

The National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage was never the largest women’s organization in the country, but it was unquestionably the most coordinated and politically effective voice of anti‑suffrage activism, and its influence varied sharply by region. Its strongest base was in the Northeast, where New York and New England chapters drew from wealthy social clubs, conservative reformers, and women with deep political connections; it was there that NAOWS built its national headquarters, raised money, and produced its widely circulated newspaper, The Woman Patriot.

In the Mid‑Atlantic, especially Washington, D.C., NAOWS leveraged proximity to Congress to shape hearings, distribute testimony, and lobby lawmakers directly.

The South told a different story: anti‑suffrage sentiment there was powerful, but it was driven less by NAOWS itself and more by explicitly white‑supremacist state associations that opposed suffrage because it threatened to expand Black political power. These Southern groups often cooperated with NAOWS but operated with their own racial logic and political priorities.

In border states like Delaware, NAOWS influence came through elite women with direct access to legislators, who successfully stalled ratification. And in the Midwest and West, where NAOWS had fewer formal chapters, its presence was felt mainly through national speaking tours and the distribution of anti‑suffrage literature rather than mass membership.

Taken together, NAOWS was numerically strongest in the Northeast, racially driven in the South, politically surgical in border states, and ideologically present everywhere through its print network, an organization whose influence far exceeded its size.

NAOWS avoided explicit racist language — but relied on racial implications

NAOWS leadership (Josephine Jewell Dodge, Kate Douglas Wiggin, and Minnie Bronson) wanted to appear educated, elite, non‑emotional, and “above” racial politics. They rarely printed overtly racist statements. Instead, they used euphemisms, such as “the ignorant vote,” “the unfit voter,” “the undesirable classes, “ “the foreign vote,” and “the illiterate masses.” These were widely understood in 1910–1920 as referring to:

• Black voters in the South
• immigrant voters in the North
• working‑class voters everywhere

This allowed NAOWS to signal racial hierarchy without saying it outright.

NAOWS publications amplified Southern white‑supremacist arguments without taking ownership of them. Southern anti‑suffrage women were explicit:

• “Woman suffrage will double the Negro vote.”
• “White supremacy must be preserved.”
• “The 15th Amendment was a mistake.”

NAOWS did not print these statements directly. But they reprinted Southern anti‑suffrage speeches, letters, and legislative testimony, without comment, allowing the racial message to circulate while keeping their own hands clean. They allowed Southern women to say the racist part out loud. Which they then distributed nationally

NAOWS used race as a fear‑based argument about “political chaos.” NAOWS publications frequently warned that woman suffrage would:

• “upset the balance of political power”
• “increase the burden on government”
• “introduce new and untested elements into the electorate”

These phrases were understood as:

• fear of Black political participation
• fear of immigrant political participation
• fear of working‑class political participation

NAOWS framed these concerns as administrative, not racial:

“The electorate must remain stable and orderly.”

But the subtext was clear to contemporary readers. NAOWS wanted to remain acceptable to Northern elites, so they kept their racism polite, coded, and deniable. NAOWS was not the loudest racist voice in the anti‑suffrage movement — but it was the most effective at laundering racial arguments into polite society.

The passage of the 19th Amendment did not cause NAOWS to dissolve immediately. Instead, it mutated, keeping its leadership, mailing lists, and newspaper, redirecting its energy toward new political enemies. NAOWS died as an anti‑suffrage group but survived as an anti‑feminist, anti‑labor, anti‑immigrant, and hyper‑patriotic watchdog organization.

After August 1920, NAOWS renamed its newspaper The Woman Patriot. It shifted its mission from opposing suffrage to opposing “radicalism,” “feminism,” “pacifism,” and “foreign influence.” The newspaper kept the same leadership and donors, and continued publishing until at least 1932

The organization’s new focus included:

• attacking the League of Women Voters
• opposing the Equal Rights Amendment
• fighting labor protections for women
• promoting anti‑communist and anti‑immigrant policies
• supporting restrictive citizenship and morality laws

In other words, NAOWS became an early 20th‑century culture‑war organization.

Josephine Jewell Dodge (founder, first president)

• Retreated from public political life after 1920.
• Returned to philanthropy and elite women’s club work.
• Remained socially influential but no longer led national political campaigns.
• Died in 1928.

Dodge’s withdrawal left the organization in the hands of more ideologically extreme successors.

Alice Hay Wadsworth was the NAOWS president during the final anti‑suffrage years. She was the wife of U.S. Senator James Wadsworth and became the central figure of post‑1920 NAOWS.

After suffrage passed, she:

• kept the organization alive under the new banner, Woman Patriot Publishing Company
• expanded its mission to oppose feminism, pacifism, socialism, and immigration
• attacked women’s organizations like the League of Women Voters
• promoted nativist and anti‑communist rhetoric
• remained a major figure in conservative women’s politics into the 1930s

Wadsworth is the reason NAOWS didn’t simply vanish.

Mary Kilbreth, the editor and intellectual architect, became the driving force behind The Woman Patriot.

After 1920, she:

• ran the newspaper as a platform for anti‑feminist and anti‑left politics
• attacked birth control advocates, pacifists, and “internationalists”
• opposed the Equal Rights Amendment
• aligned the publication with the early anti‑communist movement

Kilbreth’s writing style became sharper, more conspiratorial, and more ideological after suffrage passed.

Many NAOWS board members:

• stayed active in conservative women’s clubs
• joined anti‑communist and anti‑immigrant organizations
• opposed international treaties, the World Court, and the League of Nations
• fought women’s labor protections and minimum‑wage laws

They did not disappear — they shifted their political battlefield.

From 1920–1932, NAOWS effectively became a national anti‑feminist propaganda bureau, attacking the National Woman’s Party, the Equal Rights Amendment, women in politics, “foreign agitators,” labor unions, pacifists, Catholics and Jews (increasingly, by the late 1920s), the NAACP and anti‑lynching bills. NAOWS drifted into the orbit of early 20th‑century nativism and proto‑McCarthyism.

By the early 1930s:

• the publication lost funding
• the leadership aged out
• the political climate shifted
• the Great Depression changed national priorities

The Woman Patriot ceased publication around 1932, marking the effective end of NAOWS.

But its ideological descendants lived on in:

• anti‑ERA groups
• conservative women’s clubs
• Cold War anti‑communist women’s networks
• 1970s STOP ERA activism

NAOWS was an early ancestor of modern anti‑feminist organizing.

Here are several current groups that owe a debt to NAOWS:

1. Independent Women’s Forum (IWF)

The most influential anti‑feminist policy organization in the U.S. today.

What they do:

• Oppose the Equal Rights Amendment
• Oppose expanded Title IX protections
• Oppose federal paid family leave mandates
• Promote “choice feminism” and deregulation
• Advocate for limiting gender‑equity policies in workplaces and schools

Why they matter: They are well‑funded, media‑savvy, and have strong ties to conservative think tanks and donors.

2. Concerned Women for America (CWA)

The largest Christian conservative women’s organization in the country.

What they do:

• Oppose abortion rights
• Oppose LGBTQ+ protections
• Oppose the ERA
• Support traditional gender roles
• Mobilize women in churches and state legislatures

Why they matter: They have chapters in all 50 states and a powerful lobbying presence in Washington.

3. Eagle Forum

Founded by Phyllis Schlafly, the architect of the STOP ERA movement.

What they do:

• Oppose the ERA
• Oppose reproductive rights
• Oppose gender‑equity legislation
• Promote traditional family structures

Why they matter: They are the direct organizational descendant of the 1970s anti‑feminist movement.

4. Heritage Foundation (on gender policy)

Not a women’s group, but a major driver of anti‑feminist policy positions.

What they do:

• Oppose the ERA
• Oppose expanded Title IX protections
• Oppose federal childcare and family‑leave programs
• Promote traditional gender norms in policy

Why they matter: Their policy papers shape state and federal legislation. Every Republican nominee to the Supreme Court must pass muster with the Heritage Foundation.

5. Family Research Council (FRC)

A Christian conservative policy group with strong anti‑feminist positions.

What they do:

• Oppose reproductive rights
• Oppose gender‑identity protections
• Oppose feminist sex‑education programs
• Promote traditional gender roles

Why they matter: They influence state legislatures and school‑board politics.

6. Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF)

A legal advocacy group.

What they do:

• Litigate against Title IX expansions
• Litigate against reproductive‑rights protections
• Litigate against gender‑equity policies in schools and workplaces

Why they matter: They are one of the most active legal challengers of feminist policy.

7. Moms for Liberty

A newer but rapidly growing group.

What they do:

• Oppose gender‑equity curricula
• Oppose LGBTQ+ inclusion in schools
• Oppose feminist‑aligned educational content
• Promote parental‑rights framing

Why they matter: They have become a major force in school‑board politics.

I’m going to become a hater for a minute and bring up the sex scandals involving Moms for Liberty figures.

Bridget Ziegler (co‑founder)

• Involved in a high‑profile sexual misconduct scandal involving a three‑way relationship and allegations of coercion. Ziegler was part of the statewide (Florida) power structure and closely aligned with the DeSantis education agenda.

Ashley Grobbelaar (formerly Ashley Hall)

Position: Moms for Liberty chapter chair, Hernando County, Florida. Scandal: Arrested in 2023 for sexually assaulting a minor (a 15‑year‑old boy).

According to police reports and local Florida news coverage:

• Grobbelaar was a Moms for Liberty chapter leader.
• She was arrested and charged with unlawful sexual activity with a minor.
• The victim was a teenage boy she met through her children’s school.
• She resigned from Moms for Liberty immediately after the arrest.
• Moms for Liberty removed her name from its website and issued a statement distancing itself from her.

8. PragerU (especially PragerU Kids)

A media organization shaping anti‑feminist narratives.

What they do:

• Produce content opposing modern feminism
• Promote traditional gender roles
• Critique gender‑equity policies

Why they matter: Their reach among young audiences is significant.

9. Turning Point USA (TPUSA)

Not exclusively anti‑feminist, but influential in anti‑feminist messaging.

What they do:

• Promote anti‑feminist influencers
• Oppose gender‑equity policies on campuses
• Frame feminism as “anti‑male” or “anti‑family”

Why they matter: They shape youth political culture.

After the 19th Amendment passed, the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage never truly disappeared — it simply changed its name, changed its targets, and kept fighting. The same women who once argued that voting would destroy the family rebranded themselves as guardians of “Americanism,” using The Woman Patriot to attack feminism, labor protections, immigration, and civil‑rights legislation well into the 1930s. Their ideological descendants are still with us. The Equal Rights Amendment remains unratified not because women lack political power, but because enough women — organized, well‑funded, and deeply invested in preserving traditional hierarchies — have worked alongside men for a century to stop it. And the racial logic that animated NAOWS has hardly vanished; it has been modernized, coded, and redistributed through new institutions and new language. The anti‑suffrage movement didn’t die in 1920. It adapted, it rebranded, and it continues to shape American politics in ways NAOWS leaders would recognize instantly.