Major theories of democratization emphasize the role of industrialization and class politics to explain the expansion of men’s voting rights while discounting women’s enfranchisement as a critical aspect of democratic development. My study makes an important theoretical contribution by considering women’s voting rights as central to the history of democratic politics rather than tangential to the expansion of men’s voting rights, and brings gender as a category of analysis into the study of democratic development. To begin expanding democratization theory to include an explanation of women’s enfranchisement, I conduct a forty-eight state event history analysis of the United States in combination with comparative case study analysis of a strategic sampling of five states, including Colorado, Oregon, Massachusetts, Georgia, and West Virginia. Within the context of democratization, I join the theoretical work of historical institutionalists about institutional governance and party politics with the social movement theory of political opportunity structures to explain the patterns of women’s full suffrage adoption in the United States prior to the ratification of the federal suffrage amendment in 1920.

Overall, my findings show that the extension of full voting rights to women was a political process, not directly affected by industrialization despite women’s dramatic, increased participation in paid labor. Instead of finding support for modernization accounts my analyses show that characteristics and strategies of organized movements demanding voting rights and the features of the political institutions these movements confront significantly effects their capacity to achieve successful outcomes. My findings demonstrate that there are greater opportunities for expanding democracy to include women at moments when political institutions are new, such as at the time of state government formation. Also, my results reveal that there are more possibilities for expanding democracy in polities with fewer institutional barriers, less entrenched political interests, and practices that allow greater direct participation in the political process. The existence of fewer institutional barriers increases the capacity of movements to succeed in their demands for democratic reform; and adopting more democratic practices creates institutional legacies that facilitate the expansion of political rights to previously excluded groups when they collectively organize to demand inclusion.