This interactive timeline chronicles twelve important suffrage moments from 1776 to 1920. Included are resources and guides for teachers and students alike. Click on highlighted resources within for access.

100 Years Later

The Institute for Women’s Leadership (IWL) at Marquette University is pleased to announce our 2020 Suffrage and Innovation Conference. We are celebrating the 100th anniversary of the passing of the 19th Amendment, which granted women the right to vote. The conference will celebrate the historical significance of its passage, while exploring what remains to be done in the struggle for women’s equality in the United States.  

This virtual conference will have broad pedagogical and civic value. Given our dual focus on suffrage and innovation, the conference will provide both scholarly and interactive materials, reaching across multiple disciplines appropriate for high school and college-age people–many of whom will be voting or thinking about voting for the first time this November. 

You will find voting resources on this site and we welcome your reflections as well. Feel free to share about this event on your social media feeds and to follow the IWL social media.

We invite everyone to Engage, Inspire, and Transform our democracy. Vote.

Speaker Video Sessions

About IWL

The Institute for Women’s Leadership (IWL) was launched with a generous $5 million endowment from the Thomas J. Rolfs Family Foundation; and is positioned to leverage the research talents of Marquette’s remarkable community of scholars to become a national thought leader on women’s leadership issues.

The IWL is a story of partnership and problem-solving that is both the genesis of its creation and mirrored in its leadership structure. Thus, the IWL uses a shared governance model that takes advantage of a talented and diverse group of faculty and staff who collaboratively lead the institute. As we live out the IWL’s mission to advance women’s leadership locally and globally through pioneering research, innovative programming and collaborative engagement, we remain deeply appreciative of the support from our partners, Claire, Tom, Janet, and Ted Rolfs

As advocates for justice, we invite everyone to join us to bring to life the IWL’s vision of intersectional inclusivity and gender equity as we Engage, Inspire, and Transform.

The Suffrage Team

This conference would not have been possible without an interdisciplinary team effort of faculty, staff, and students from across the university. In addition to the Steering Committee Members below, assistance from Meghan Holland (Graduate Student of History, Marquette University) and Elizabeth Wawrzyniak (Digital Humanities Specialist, MU Raynor Memorial Libraries) must be recognized. It is with gratitude that we acknowledge each one of them.