Women have influenced and participated in American politics as voters, symbols, activists, campaigners and elected officials. Since the Second World War, women have broadened the definition of political work, though they did not begin winning numerous electoral contests until the 1980s.

The non-partisan League of Women Voters, founded after the ratification of the 19th Amendment, has long advocated good government and informed voter participation. In 1960 the League began sponsoring its popular televised election-year presidential debates.

Direct activism in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s around international peace, human rights, civil rights, education, labor unions, anti-nuclear issues and general environmental protection brought formative political experience to women, including Fannie Lou Hamer, Jessie Lopez De La Cruz and Jane Fonda, who would otherwise have been excluded from politics. Increasing participation in waged labor politicized many middleclass women by making systematic wage disparities, open sex discrimination in job placement and training, and choices in family life and reproduction into political issues.

These economic changes and the reinvigorated feminism of the 1960s and 1970s helped bring female experiences to the center of political debates and produced some successful electoral campaigns by women.

A small early group of elected leaders, including US representatives Bella Abzug and Shirley Chisholm and senators Margaret Chase Smith and Nancy Kassebaum, grew substantially after 1980. EMILY’s List, an organized fundraising group created in 1985 to elect pro-choice Democratic female candidates, has helped especially to bring highlevel financing to women’s campaigns. Between 1975 and 1995, women went from 4 to 10 percent of the US Congress and from 8 to 21 percent of state legislators.

Beginning with Eleanor Roosevelt, who bridged suffrage and feminism in her own life, First Ladies have been lightning rods for cultural debates and have helped to shape the image of political womanhood. Some worked on timely national issues, for example Lady Bird Johnson’s tireless efforts at highway beautification and Nancy Reagan’s championing of her husband’s “War on Drugs.” Pat Nixon’s very low, and loyal, public profile in the 1970s enhanced the Republican Party’s appeal to what her husband called the “Silent Majority” of social conservatives. Nixon’s successors, Betty Ford and Rosalyn Carter, acted more independently and were admired for it. Ford encouraged many to seek help with addiction problems by publicly admitting her own. Carter’s controversial role as her husband’s advisor set the stage for the even more controversial 1990s White House career of Hillary Rodham Clinton. Between Democrats Carter and Clinton, Nancy Reagan and Barbara Bush tried to re-establish a more formal role for the First Lady echoing the growing conservatism of the Republican political platform.

American women, from famous First Ladies to individual activists, have helped define modern politics as well as influence it, galvanizing voters as well as representing them.