Women Historians Create Online Database of Early Women Political Candidates

Two women scholars have established the Her Hat Was in the Ring online database of women who ran for public office before the enactment of the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1920, which gave women the right to vote nationwide. The database now contains records of 3,327 women who ran for political office before 1920.

Picture here is a photograph of Jeannette Pickering Rankin, who in 1916 was the first woman to be elected to the United States House of Representatives. She was a Republican from Montana.

The database was co-established by Jill Norgren, a professor emerita of government and women’s studies at John Jay College and the City University of New York Graduate Center. She is the author of Rebels At the Bar: The Fascinating, Forgotten Stories of America’s First Women Lawyers (New York University Press, 2013).

Wendy Chmielewski, the George Cooley Curator of the Peace Collection at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania collaborated with Professor Norgren on the project. She is the co-editor of Jane Addams and the Practice of Democracy (University of Illinois Press, 2009).

The website was designed by Kristen Gwinn-Becker, the founder and CEO of HistoryIT. Dr. Gwinn-Becker, who holds a Ph.D. in history from George Washington University, is the author of Emily Greene Balch: The Long Road to Internationalism (University of Illinois Press, 2010).