suffragist

Dictionary: suf·fra·gist   (sŭf'rə-jĭst)

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suffragist

members of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, photographed in 1913 (Library of Congress)

An advocate of the extension of political voting rights, especially to women.

One who seeks extension of the franchise especially to women. In the UK between 1900 and 1918 the term was distinguished from suffragette on the basis that a suffragette was prepared to use direct action, whereas a suffragist was not.

A participant in the women's movement to win voting rights in the United States. The fight for women's suffrage was organized in the middle of the nineteenth century. Wyoming, while not yet a state, granted women's suffrage in 1869, though the struggle for universal suffrage was to last another fifty years. In 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified, guaranteeing that no state could deny the right to vote on the basis of sex.