Anna Howard Shaw was a leader of the women's suffrage movement in the United States.
Background
She was born on 14 February 1847 in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England. When she was four, her family immigrated to the United States and settled in Massachusetts. She had several siblings.
She had a very difficult childhood. Her father was mostly absent and her mother suffered a nervous breakdown, unable to take care of the children all alone. The illness of a brother added to their miseries.
She was a responsible and hard working girl who not only tended to the household chores, but also performed physically laborious works like digging wells and chopping firewood.
Education
She studied at Alma College in Michigan and at Boston University's theological school, from which she graduated in 1878. Pastoral work grew tiresome, and at the age of 35 she entered Boston University's medical school, receiving her medical degree in 1886. The practice of medicine proved equally unsatisfying, and she abandoned it for lecturing and temperance activities.
Career
She rose to head the suffrage department of the Women's Christian Temperance Union before leaving for the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA).
Susan B. Anthony, then president of NAWSA, valued Dr. Shaw's oratorical talents highly and put them to frequent use. But when Anthony resigned in 1900, she chose Carrie Chapman Catt to succeed her. Four years later Catt resigned, and Dr. Shaw's loyalty was rewarded. Although she was president of NAWSA for 11 years, her tenure was not a success. NAWSA had become a large national organization that demanded diplomatic, political, and administrative talents that Dr. Shaw lacked.
By 1915 it was apparent that while support for women's suffrage was growing, Dr. Shaw was incapable of translating this into votes for women. Accordingly, she was replaced by Carrie Chapman Catt, who led NAWSA to victory in less than five years. Dr. Shaw accepted this demotion with good grace and distinguished herself as chairman of the Woman's Committee of the Council of National Defense, when the United States entered World War I. Though the Woman's Committee was only a symbol of the government's appreciation of women's eagerness to serve, it amounted to more than that, thanks largely to Dr. Shaw, whose stubborn energy compelled the government to give women more responsibility. She died in Moylan, Pennsylvania, on July 2, 1919, only 16 months before she would have exercised the right to vote; the right for which she gave half her life to win.
Views
Quotations:
"Think of submitting our measure to the advice of politicians! I would as soon submit the subject of the equality of a goose to a fox. "
"Around me I saw women overworked and underpaid, doing men's work at half men's wages, not because their work was inferior, but because they were women. "
"Nothing bigger can come to a human being than to love a great cause more than life itself. "
"God made a woman equal to a man, but He did not make a woman equal to a woman and a man. We usually try to do the work of a man and of a woman too; then we break down . .. "
"I wake up every morning with a great desire to live joyfully. "
"A gentleman opposed to their enfranchisement once said to me, women have never produced anything of any value to the world. I told him the chief product of the women had been the men, and left it to him to decide whether the product was of any value. "
"It is better to be true to what you believe, though that be wrong, than to be false to what you believe, even if that belief is correct. "
"What is Americanism? Every one has a different answer. Some people say it is never to submit to the dictation of a King. Others say Americanism is the pride of liberty and the defence of an insult to the flag with their gore. When some half-developed person tramples on that flag, we should be ready to pour out the blood of the nation, they say. But do we not sit in silence when that flag waves over living conditions which should be an insult to all patriotism?"
"I care nothing for all the political parties in the world except as they stand for justice. "
Personality
She was a hot-tempered, pugnacious woman and offended both friends and enemies of woman's suffrage. An associate said that she was very witty, but always terribly down on men, and sometimes one really almost winced when she attacked them so vigorously that they got red in the face and looked ready to do murder. "