Women’s Suffrage and the 1918 Pandemic
Beginning in the mid-19th century, several generations of women suffrage supporters lectured, wrote, marched, lobbied, and practiced civil disobedience to achieve what many Americans considered a radical change to the Constitution – the right for women to vote. In 1918, Spanish Influenza swept the globe infecting one-third of the world’s population. Just like today, the severity of the pandemic was enough to temporarily shut down parts of the economy. The virus disproportionately affected young men, which in combination with World War I, created a shortage of labor. This gap enabled women to play a new and indispensable role in the…