Women in the United States were nationally guaranteed the right to vote in 1920, when the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified on August 18 and certified on August 26, 1920. Earlier, some Western territories and states had already granted women voting rights decades before the federal amendment.

Key dates in the U.S.

  • 19th Amendment passed by Congress: June 4, 1919.
  • Ratified by the required number of states: August 18, 1920 (Tennessee as the 36th state).
  • Officially certified and in effect nationwide: August 26, 1920.

Before 1920

  • Some territories and states enfranchised women earlier, starting with Wyoming Territory in 1869, which later entered the Union in 1890 with full women’s suffrage.
  • Other states such as Utah, Colorado, and Idaho followed in the late 19th century, and more states adopted full or partial women’s suffrage in the 1910s.

Global context

  • Women’s suffrage is the legal right of women to vote in elections, and it spread country by country over the late 19th and 20th centuries.
  • One early national example is New Zealand, which granted women the right to vote in 1893, well before many other countries.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.