Women were blocked from participating in government by the male figures who dominated them. Specifically in the United Kingdom, women were ignored by the Parliament and suffragists did not have a say in forming legislation. These posters show women being shut out by the Parliament, both literally and figuratively, as women’s interests and opinions were disregarded by those with political power. Suffragists’ efforts getting overlooked was the focus of The Haunted House, depicting the silhouette of a suffragist sitting on the British House of Parliament. Women Need the Vote sends a message to the viewer that the members of Parliament are deciding upon a vote, a right obtained only by men, while a woman is "crowded out" from "political power."

Some British posters were more direct in their messages to women. For example, these two posters clearly referenced two significant British suffragists and a notorious Prime Minister, H.H. Asquith. Asquith was the main subject of The Right Dishonourable Double-Faced Asquith, a poster that attempts to make clear the prime minister’s hypocrisy and the wrongness of his opposition to giving women the vote. In Electors!, a British suffragist urges representatives to support women's suffrage. Both these posters were created on behalf of the Women’s Social and Political Union, founded by Emmeline Pankhurst and assisted by Emmeline Pethick Lawrence, whose names appear in the posters. The WSPU was founded as an independent movement to advocate for British women’s right to vote, specifically for their representation to expand past the Conciliation Bill

The Conciliation Bill was designed to conciliate the movement by passing women's suffrage while limiting potential female voters through property and marriage status requirements, therefore reducing the overall number of women who could vote. The passing of the bill in 1910 caused women to riot and led to several to be seized by the police and arrested. This bill was a topic of several British suffrage posters, one of which includes Who’s Afraid? Not I! which clearly depicts the continuing vulnerability of women. The poster states that the bill would result in one woman voter to seven men voters which refers to the ratio that resulted from the Conciliation Bill that granted suffrage to approximately one million women versus the entire adult male population in the United Kingdom. Occupier of this House brings attention to the unfair qualifications for the few women who were given the right to vote and how that compares to the reality of women as citizens paying rates and taxes.

Women's suffrage was an international movement that crossed the globe. With the formation of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance in 1902, women from all over the world united to voice their support of women's equality and to strategize over how to best achieve suffrage rights for women in their respective nations. The Kongress Bureay Budapest poster promoted IWSA's seventh annual conference, held in Budapest, Hungary. At this, one of the most significant conferences held by the IWSA, a total of 240 delegates from 25 different countries gathered.

In contrast to the British and International posters in our exhibit, these additional political drawings, done typically in one media, depict the messages of women’s suffrage in the United States. In the Votes for Women Bandwagon, the viewer can understand the mounting pressure on male legislators to support women’s suffrage in the U.S. The vehicle labeled “BandWagon” suggests that legislators would jump on the suffrage bandwagon to, eventually, pass the ninetheenth amendment.

In the drawings, we also get a sense of the strength of the ideal of democracy and its connection to women’s suffrage. In Insulting the President?, a drawing for the newspaper, The Suffragist, a picketing suffragist holds a banner that quotes from President Wilson’s April 2, 1917 War Message to Congress, in which he committed U.S. troops to combat in World War I, which he argued would make the world safe for democracy.  In consequence, women's suffrage was left to wait. As shown in the drawing of Uncle Sam, the American government was actively promoting democracy for the world, but in his shadow is a suffragist who argues that democracy starts at home, with the people, and specifically, the women. Then-President Wilson was indebted to the country’s women for their support of the war effort, so he eventually came to champion the suffrage movement and actively supported the ratification of the 19th Amendment.

Source: Wilson Center. "Woodrow Wilson and the Women’s Suffrage Movement: A Reflection," June 4, 2013. https://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/woodrow-wilson-and-the-womens-suffrage-movement-reflection.

Pictured, from left to right, are Mrs. Ogden Mills Reid, Mrs. Norman Der. Whitehouse, Theodore Roosevelt and Mrs. James Lees Laidlaw. On September 8, 1917, the suffragists, headed by Mrs. Whitehouse, were talking to Roosevelt at the second New York State suffrage campaign held in Sagamore Hill. The first campaign in 1913 was unsuccessful as the woman suffrage amendment was rejected by voters in 1915. However, on November 6, 1917, the amendment to the New York State Constitution was approved by the voters.

Source: Roosevelt, Theodore, Vira Boarman Whitehouse, Helen Rogers Reid, H. B Laidlaw, and Theodore Roosevelt Association Collection. Women suffragettes visit TR at Sagamore. [United States: s.n, 1917] Video. https://www.loc.gov/item/mp76000037/.