Int'l Women's Day: 2018 May Prove Watershed Moment For Women

ST. LOUIS, MO — When thousands of women took to the streets in January for the St. Louis Women's March, it was far from the first time women had raised their political voices in the city. Yes, the Women's March — which began in 2016 as a nationwide protest against the election of President Donald Trump — was the third such march in three years. But, the legacy of women's protest in the city is far older than that.

International Women's Day is March 8, and it's worth looking back at the history of the women's movement in St. Louis.

In 1916, at the height of the suffrage movement, more than 3,000 women marched in St. Louis to demand a constitutional amendment giving women the vote. On the eve of the United States entering World War I, the Democratic Party had convened in the city to nominate President Woodrow Wilson to a second term, and the St. Louis Equal Suffrage League, along with national groups, marched to demand the party add women's suffrage to its official platform.

The Democrats did, and four years later — on August 18, 1920 — the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified into law.

In a 2016 interview with St. Louis Public Radio, historian Rebecca Now, executive director of the Webster Groves-Shrewsbury-Rock Hill Chamber of Commerce, called it an important event not just in the suffrage movement but in the history of non-violent protest in general.

(RELATED: Read about some infamous women from Missouri History.)

The tactics and organizing principles of the suffrage movement would later inform the movement for African-American civil rights in the 1960s and still influence equality movements today.

Like 1916, 2018 is also proving to be a watershed moment. Empowered by the Time's Up and #MeToo movements, which brought a trove of stories from women who said they have faced sexual assault or harassment, women are seeking public office in record numbers.

According to the Rutgers' Center for American Women and Politics, more than 600 women nationwide are running for statewide and federal offices in the upcoming midterms.

Women are increasingly finding a path to victory in states where their election once seemed improbable. For example, Virginia voters in November elected Danica Roem, the first openly transgender woman ever to be elected to a state legislature. She was one of 11 progressive women who unseated Republican men in the state's House of Delegates last year.

Photo by J. Ryne Danielson/Patch