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40 Historical Markers on the Road to Prohibition

Khalid Elhassan December 2, 2019 31 min

Black and white - Monochrome — 19th century Brewery. Pintrest

24. Temperance and Prohibition Became a Women’s Issue

Considering the booze epidemic’s negative impact on women, women’s rights advocates such as Susan B. Anthony and Eliza Thompson made temperance a women’s issue. As they saw it, women’s issues could not be resolved if authority was left solely in the hands of men.

Thus was borne one of the most potent arguments for rallying women to demand the right to vote. The logic was airtight and solid enough to break through the widespread acceptance by many women that they had no business in politics. Alcohol harmed women. Women wanted something done about alcohol. Men were not doing enough about alcohol. Women needed the vote to see to it that something was done about alcohol.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.