Woman Suffrage Postcard/National Museum of American History

Women countered the argument that they were too pure for the dirty business of politics by invoking the Progressive Era’s belief in “social housekeeping.” The logical extension of women’s ability to clean and order their homes was to apply those skills to clean and remedy the ills of society. Some postcards used images of children to project a nonthreatening image of women voters.
The postcard was part of a 1911 campaign for suffrage in California, which by a state-wide referendum in that year became the sixth state to approve woman’s suffrage.