A U.S. Constitution WI

While this is persumably unlikely, WI the original U.S. Constitution or the Bill of Rights granted women who owned property, or the wives of male property owners the right to vote?

How would this affect the long term political development of the United States, and the development of Women's Suffrage across the world?

Again, while the POD is extremely unlikely (If not reaching ASB territory), I must admit that radical changes it would cause would be interesting to discuss. As for the cause of the POD, perhaps the wives/daughters of the Founding Fathers had a greater emotional influence on their political actions?
 
Yes, its ASB since it wasn't until the 15h Amendment that the federal Constitution began granting/asserting a nation-wide "right to vote" for certain classes/groups of people. Before then, who did/did not have the right to vote was a state issue. As the Founding Fathers left the whole "right to vote" issue to the states I can't imagine that they'd grant this catagory of women a nation-wide right to vote. None the less, if they did this for land-owning women, then they'd have to consider it (Federal voting rights guarentee) for Jews (who couldn't vote in some places through the 1810's), Catholics (who couldn't vote in some places through the 1790's), blacks and etc.
 

Thande

Donor
There are precedents, but I think in the 18th and early 19th centuries the general idea was that women could vote under those circumstances providing everyone looked the other way. It wouldn't be put down in law, it'd be like the US constitution today explicitly saying "For the ensurement that we remain a two-party system forever, TV advertising shall be organised that only the two big parties have the money to compete". It's true, but you wouldn't put it down in black and white.

It's worth pointing out that women weren't explicitly banned from voting in Britain until the Reform Acts of the 1830s, which simply viewed this provision as a tidying-up exercise.
 
The issue of who can vote was left to the states, largely. So, it's pretty unlikely that the Constitution would include a provision allowing some women the right to vote, even if it was something supported at the time.
 
Might be useful to focus on individual colonies (to be states) and see if one or more of them might have tipped over towards explicitly franchising women. I am not a scholar on the subject, but some ideas which jump out to me are:
  • Georgia (imbalance - too many men, too few women - early on in the colony's history)
  • Connecticut (seemed to me to be a little more focused on social equality)
  • Pennsylvania (maybe a little like my perception of Connecticut, but also had lots of room in the western part of the colony in which to expand)
  • "Northern" Massachusetts (present-day Maine) - perhaps allowing women the vote on local issues as a means to attract them to the "wilderness" of the interior.
 
I could imagine a Constitution granting the right to vote for citizens owning a certain amount of property and a woman insisting she was a property owning citizen and winning a court case
 
Maybe if you have Pennsylvania stay mostly Quaker. But, that would lead to some major butterflies.
 
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