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Engendering Democratic Change: How Three U.S. Presidents Discussed Female Suffrage
- Rhetoric & Public Affairs
- Michigan State University Press
- Volume 5, Number 1, Spring 2002
- pp. 79-103
- 10.1353/rap.2002.0002
- Article
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Although the history of democratic change in the United States has largely been read through its constitutive debates, here I suggest that we might also explore how such changes have been explained by political elites. Using the years immediately surrounding the 1920 female suffrage victory as a case study, this essay asks when and how Presidents Wilson, Harding, and Coolidge discussed U.S. women's transformation from citizens to voters within particular texts.