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Title: Gilded Suffragists

Subtitle: The New York Socialites who Fought for Women's Right to Vote

Author: Johanna Neuman

Narrator: C.S.E. Cooney

Format: Unabridged

Length: 6 hrs and 59 mins

Language: English

Release date: 09-05-17

Publisher: Tantor Audio

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 3 votes

Genres: History, 20th Century

Publisher's Summary:

In the early 20th century over 200 of New York's most glamorous socialites joined the suffrage movement. Their names - Astor, Belmont, Rockefeller, Tiffany, Vanderbilt, Whitney, and the like - carried enormous public value. These women were the media darlings of their day because of the extravagance of their costume balls and the opulence of the French couture clothes, and they leveraged their social celebrity for political power, turning women's right to vote into a fashionable cause.

Although they were dismissed by critics as bored socialites "trying on suffrage as they might the latest couture designs from Paris", these gilded suffragists were at the epicenter of the great reforms known collectively as the Progressive Era. From championing education for women, to pursuing careers, and advocating for the end of marriage, these women were engaged with the swirl of change that swept through the streets of New York City.

Johanna Neuman restores these women to their rightful place in the story of women's suffrage. Understanding the need for popular approval for any social change, these socialites used their wealth, power, social connections, and style to excite mainstream interest and to diffuse resistance to the cause.

Members Reviews:

The few for the many

In the superb 2004 HBO film âIron Jawed Angelsâ, Molly Parker plays Mrs Emily Leighton, the wife of Senator Tom Leighton. When the film begins Emily, in line with the doctrine of the separate spheres, regards politics as her husbandâs realm and contents herself with supporting him and bringing up their two daughters. Gradually, though, she takes more of an interest in the suffragist cause. At first her support is financial but gradually she becomes more radical and more active, even joining those women who picketed Wilsonâs White House and as a consequence is imprisoned, and goes on hunger strike.

The character of Emily Leighton is fictional but Johanna Neumanâs book âGilded Suffragistsâ, subtitled âThe New York Socialites who fought for womenâs right to voteâ tells the actual story of those upper class women who lent their support, albeit in much less dramatic ways than Emily, to the campaign for votes for women, which eventually triumphed when women gained the right to vote in federal elections in 1920, as a result of the 19th Amendment.

According to Neuman it was over 200 socialites, including âwomen named Astor, Belmont, Harriman, Mackay, Rockefeller, Tiffany, Vanderbilt, and Whitneyâ who made a decisive contribution to that constitutional change when, in 1908, they reanimated the suffrage cause by exploiting their social status to âde-toxifyâ and normalize it.

This celebrity endorsement was, it is claimed, so potent - ultimately helping to âpush womenâs suffrage over the finish lineâ - because these women had the ear of the media and because their glamour undermined the anti-suffragist taunt that women who demanded their rights were somehow âunfeminineâ and threatened the emasculation of men.

Neuman is an award-winning journalist turned historian and âGilded Suffragistsâ, her second book, represents a revised version of her doctoral dissertation.